Before starting with the list, it’s important to acknowledge that our opinion of these games is subjective – so while we may find them to be disappointing, you could have had a great time with them regardless. And if that’s the case, more power to you!

With that out of the way, let’s begin:

Godfall

When Counterplay Games showcased Godfall for the first time, it seemed like a great RPG with spectacular visuals and addictive combat. But when it was finally released, it turned out to be a disappointing experience that was rife with apparent flaws all around. The game is plagued with repetitive gameplay and uninteresting loot mechanics – all of which result in an experience that’s not worth sinking your teeth into.

Rustler

Jutsu Games tried to mix medieval elements with the chaotic top-down action of the original Grand Theft Auto games with Rustler, and while that combination certainly sounds enchanting – the end result is anything but. Rustler suffers from all kinds of issues ranging from poor game design to bland missions to technical issues and so much more. There are some cool ideas here, but they crumble under the weight of the shoddy moment-to-moment gameplay which makes the entire package a big disappointment.

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy — The Definitive Edition

Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition aims to bring the experience of the PS2 era GTA games to a modern gaming landscape, and it could have been so much better if the developers put a little bit of effort towards it all. What fans got was an underwhelming package filled to the brim with bugs, glitches, and improvements that felt more like downgrades from the original experience. It’s easily one of the biggest disappointments of recent memory, and Rockstar’s conscious decision to keep vital information hidden from the public up until launch also made the whole situation so much worse.

In Nightmare

Maximum Games’ In Nightmare tries to instill the same feelings of distress and constant tension as Little Nightmares, but it fails to achieve that design goal by a significant margin. And that can largely be attributed to poor puzzle design that hinges on being frustrating throughout the entire experience, and a narrative that doesn’t have much in terms of interesting plot revelations or twists or really anything doesn’t help the game’s case either.

Balan Wonderworld

While post-release reports have shed more light on the disastrous development cycle that Balan Wonderworld had to endure, that doesn’t really soften the blow that fans received when they booted up the game for the first time. Balan Wonderworld had some interesting concepts going for it, but they were surrounded by a poor technical framework and half-baked mechanics that made playing through the game an exercise in pain.

eFootball 2022

Konami’s attempt at rebranding its Pro Evolution Soccer series has started off on a pretty bad note with eFootball 2022. This free-to-play soccer sim is plagued with game-breaking bugs at launch, and while post-launch patches have alleviated some of those issues – other prominent criticisms such as the lack of varied game modes and general polish within gameplay mechanics haunt the game’s fates to this date.

LEGO Brawls

LEGO Brawls fared as a mostly fine fighting game when it was released on mobile platforms as a part of a subscription service, but in a console landscape where there are so many better options available – some even free to play – it ends up being one of the worst ones of the bunch. LEGO Brawls has a super thin gameplay loop that goes along with an uninteresting progression system and little variety in game modes that makes it suitable only for infants and younger audiences.

MX vs ATV Legends

THQ Nordic’s MX vs ATV Legends could have had a strong run if it had spent some more time in the making, but as it stands now – it’s a game that has some neat ideas at its epicenter, but they get muddled up in a buffet of technical and game design problems that make the whole ordeal a lot more frustrating than it needs to be.

Werewolf – The Apocalypse Earthblood

Developer Cyanide’s latest Werewolf – The Apocalypse Earthblood is a game that should by all means have been a smash hit. Hell, it’s a game where you can turn into a werewolf and wreak havoc upon your adversaries with your bare hands. But in practice, Werewolf – The Apocalypse is plagued with an overwhelming amount of game design problems ranging from poor combat design to sloppy narrative and dull visuals makes this adventure a pure disappointment on so many levels.

Zorro The Chronicles

It’s not everyday that we get linear adventure games that mix stealth and action elements together, so when Zorro The Chronicles was released – it certainly piqued the interest of many fans. But that feeling of ecstasy was rather short-lived, as Zorro The Chronicles constantly bombards the player with one frustration after another. And even as a game meant for younger audiences, Zorro The Chronicles fails on more fronts than it succeeds.

Dragon Ball The Breakers

At first, Dragon Ball The Breakers seemed like a fun concept with its asymmetric multiplayer gameplay putting a fresh twist on the standard video game adaptation of this classic anime. But when the game was released, fans realized how shallow the game actually is. Dragon Ball: The Breakers is riddled with prominent issues ranging from a finicky camera system, ill-designed gameplay mechanics, and plenty of microtransactions to go along with it.

The Last Oricru

Soulslike games are dime a dozen these days, and while some are excellent takes on this newfound genre – others are anything but. As you might have already guessed, The Last Oricru finds itself in the latter category, mostly thanks to uninteresting writing and a wonky combat system. Story choices in The Last Oricru do hold interesting ramifications for the plot, but that doesn’t really amount to much in the face of other prominent problems with the moment-to-moment experience.

Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance

A co-op action RPG set against the backdrop of one of the most recognizable tabletop games of all time should be a surefire hit, right? Well, countless fans thought so – but Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance laid waste on those expectations with a bland product that’s rife with issues both technical and otherwise. The visuals are impressive to some degree, but taken as a whole – it’s a disappointing product that doesn’t stand up to the sheer potential of its source material.

Matchpoint Tennis Championship

Torus Games’ Matchpoint Tennis Championships might not be the worst game on the list, but it’s not a game that’s going to hold your attention for more than a couple of hours at best. The actual gameplay mechanics are fine if simplistic enough for the most part, but everything surrounding that is underwhelming – and that includes a barebones career mode with little personality and bland visual presentation among other issues.

Tennis World Tour 2

While Tennis World Tour 2 is a game that delves into the more technical aspects of the sport, Big Ant Studios’ latest finds itself on the receiving end of most of the criticisms that were addressed with Matchpoint Tennis Championships a while before. Tennis World Tour 2 could have been something great, but for that to happen – it really needed some more time in the oven.

In a long Twitter thread written in Japanese, Naka explained that he had filed a lawsuit against Square Enix for his untimely removal from the project, and now that the proceedings are over, he is free to share additional details on the matter (he was also apparently banned by Square Enix from liking and sharing any posts on social media).

Naka says that Square Enix knew about the rocky state of the game at launch, but went ahead and released it anyway. Developer Arzest had submitted the game’s final build without fixing many of the bugs, even when Naka was pushing for additional polishing. Upon his removal from the project months before release, Naka also tried to negotiate with his business partners to allow him to fix issues until the game went public, sadly to no avail.

Naka also explained how Square Enix used rearranged music from a YouTuber for promotional purposes, instead of original tracks. He insists that an original game should feature original music since it’s an important aspect of the presentation that fans are instantly drawn towards. Furthermore, he also shared how the game’s producer continued to impose tight deadlines, to the detriment of the development team.

Naka further goes on to talk about how he is sorry for the version of the game that fans got to play, and concludes that developer Arzest and Square Enix “are companies that don’t care about games and game fans.”

Here are the translated tweets (courtesy of Twitter user @cheesemeister3k):

"I think it's wrong of Square Enix not to value games and game fans. According to court documents, I was removed as the director of Balan Wonderworld for 2 reasons. It was done by the producer, head of marketing, head of sound, managing director, and HR."https://t.co/eJhBAwNGFq

— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) April 28, 2022

"Second, according to court documents, [Naoto] Ohshima told producer [Noriyoshi] Fujimoto that the relationship with Arzest was ruined due to comments I made wanting to improve the game in the face of Arzest submitting the game without fixing bugs."https://t.co/xSbdvcyHMK

— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) April 28, 2022

"The staff's been down lately, but their spirits have been revived. Thank you very much. All of us on the staff will work hard.' So the schedule wasn't up to me, but the producer, yet the schedule being tight was the producer's doing. Something was off."https://t.co/59tXC4rBmK

— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) April 28, 2022

"I believe that every effort must be put in to make games the best they can be until the very end so that game fans will enjoy what they buy. It wasn't right to, without discussion, remove and completely disassociate from the project a director saying so."https://t.co/Kbgn8j2H1o

— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) April 28, 2022

"Myself, I'm truly sorry to the customers who bought Balan Wonderworld in an unfinished state. From this point onward, I will be able to react to posts tagging me or directed only toward me on SNS and such."https://t.co/tbzyMHAqGm

— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) April 28, 2022

"For Sonic the Hedgehog, 2 weeks before finalizing, the spec was changed so that if you have even 1 ring, you won't die. This now well-known rule was the result of improving the game until the very end, and people world-over have enjoyed it as a result."https://t.co/PgW5YmOqmR

— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) April 28, 2022

"I think that the resulting Balan Wonderworld and the critical reception it received have a lot to do with what happened. I'm really disappointed that a product I worked on from the start turned out this way."https://t.co/1cxNHjGoBf

— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) April 28, 2022

"I personally regret that Balan Wonderworld was released to the world in an unfinished state. I wanted to consider all kinds of things and release it as a proper action game. I don't think that Square Enix and Arzest value games and their fans."https://t.co/gjE4fcCOyd

— Cheesemeister (@Cheesemeister3k) April 28, 2022

Dimitrescu’s Daughters – Resident Evil Village

In the lead-up to Resident Evil Village, Dimitrescu and her daughters – Bela, Cassandra and Daniela – seemed like they’d be a major part of the game. While that proved false, Lady Alcina still managed to provide a memorable fight. The same can’t be said for her daughters though. After effortlessly stalking Ethan throughout the castle, being invulnerable to all kinds of damage and seemingly being unkillable, they were undone by…a gust of cold wind? It’s like killing if the T-1000 was killed after being frozen and didn’t reassemble itself (but on three separate occasions so you got the point).

Balan Wonderworld

When most of the context for your game’s story is explained in a separate, near-200 page book, there are bound to be problems. But Balan Wonderworld’s ending is just so many kinds of bullshit that it’s actually hilarious. Lance is defeated and subsequently dragged off by the Negati. Balan reveals himself to be a similar being to Lance and…nothing more? What was his relation to Lance, aside from their names sounding like Balance when combined together?

As for Leo, he finally fulfills his dream of being able to dance while Emma realizes that her servants were actually planning a birthday party (as opposed to gossiping rudely). What the point of it all was – the Tims, Balan’s theater and the truth behind Balan and Lance – is never revealed. Good riddance.

Konami’s eFootball tops the list with a Metacritic score of 25 for the PC platform. Other dishonorable games of the year include Balan Wonderworld for Nintendo Switch (with a Metacritic score of 36) and Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition, which has a score of 47 for the Nintendo Switch. Other notable releases such as the likes of Necromunda: Hired Gun and Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood also make the cut. The full list is as follows:

10. Necromunda: Hired Gun – 49 (PS4)
9. Demon Skin – 48 (PC)
8. Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace – 48 (PC)
7. I Saw Black Clouds – 48 (PS4)
6. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition – 47 (Nintendo Switch)
5. Of Bird and Cage (PC)
4. Taxi Chaos – 42 (PS4)
3. Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earthblood – 42 (PS4)
2. Balan Wonderworld – 36 (Nintendo Switch)
1. eFootball 2022 – 25 (PC)

Recently, as part of our own 2021 wrap-up, we also compiled a list of what we felt were the worst games of 2021, decided by an internal voting process. Check that out through here.

Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance

Much has been said about Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance, from its dull combat and story to the multitude of bugs. Even if it didn’t have a huge marketing push leading up to release, it was receiving more than its fair share of hype (not to mention that the Dark Alliance and Dungeons and Dragons names had recognition). Predictably though, its sales were nothing to write home about. It debuted in 23^rd place on Gfk Chart-Track’s UK boxed charts but didn’t even receive a mention in The NPD Group’s June 2021 report, failing to even crack the top 20. Whatever deal was made for its Xbox Game Pass release may have helped recoup some revenue. But the sheer lack of sales data from publisher Wizards of the Coast seemingly points to it wanting to forget about this disaster as much as everyone else did.

Balan Wonderworld

Sonic the Hedgehog programmer Yuji Naka made his return to the spotlight with Balan Wonderworld – a janky 3D platformer with an incomprehensible story, puzzling design decisions, shoddy visuals and the list goes on. Who are the main characters? Who is Balan? Why are the protagonists trying to save people who’s hearts are filled with darkness or something? Why is there an elaborate dance number at the end of every boss fight? Balan Wonderworld inspires many questions and answers almost none of them including the all-important “When does this get fun?”

Balan Wonderworld was widely criticized upon launch, and recent updates to Yuji Naka’s Facebook and Twitter pages suggested that he’d left Square Enix in the aftermath. Now, Naka has officially confirmed the same, saying in a tweet that he left the Japanese company at the end of April. Though he cannot go into the reasons why, he hopes to “be able to tell you when the time comes.” Naka also states that since he’s 55 years old, he’s considering retirement.

Balan Wonderworld is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. In our review of the game, we gave it a score of 4/10, criticizing it for its “shallow gameplay and questionable design choices.” You can read our full review through here.

メディアの方やユーザーさんにお問い合わせ頂くので、2021年4月末でスクエニを退職いたしました。理由は今はお話出来ませんが、時が来ればお話出来ればと思います。今後の活動については、もう55歳なので引退もありかも知れませんね。写真はセガハードヒストリアの取材で撮って頂いた写真になります。 pic.twitter.com/YgFT0eq2Jk

— Yuji Naka / 中　裕司 (@nakayuji) June 5, 2021

The news of his departure comes via Naka’s LinkedIn and Facebook pages, which were recently updated to show that he had departed Square Enix on April 30th. The updates were first spotted and translated by VGChronicle. Square Enix has not officially confirmed Naka’s departure.

Naka formed Balan Company, an internal studio at Square Enix composed of several veteran developers including Naoto Ohshima, the artist who created the original designs for Sonic the Hedgehog, to develop the game. It is not clear what Naka’s departure would mean for the studio or any of its staff members.

Immediate comparisons don’t flatter Balan Wonderworld. Even though it comes from the creator of Sonic, it takes the clearest inspiration from many recent 3D Mario games, most evidently Super Mario Odyssey, and the comparisons are as unflattering as they are inevitable. In most instances, Wonderworld plays it straight as a 3D platformer challenging you to use the different abilities of the playable character to collect various items hidden around each level and defeat bosses to progress. The platforming isn’t as tight or precise as many modern peers of the genre, but if you can tame the often-unpredictable camera, it’s inoffensive enough on its own.

"In most instances, Balan Wonderworld plays it straight as a 3D platformer challenging you to use the different abilities of the playable character to collect various items hidden around each level and defeat bosses to progress. The platforming isn’t as tight or precise as many modern peers of the genre, but if you can tame the often-unpredictable camera, it’s inoffensive enough on its own."

Everything you do in Balan Wonderworld is contextualized with a cheerful story about overcoming inner demons. There are twelve cabaret-inspired chapters, each of which contains two stages, a boss, and a third stage unlocked after you complete everything once through. While they’re diverse in design, they all maintain the same cheerfulness, with consistently bright colors and dancing NPCs. They don’t always push the limits of the hardware, but the art style is easy enough on the eyes. The opening cutscene portrays your character getting laughed off a basketball court and taken in by a mysterious man in a big top hat, and you’re then transported into this unexplained new world. It’s nearly incomprehensible at points, with cutscenes loosely related to the worlds you’ve completed, though the most interesting aspects are the impossible-to-hate showtune-like musical numbers that come after you beat a boss. It all gives off an air of unwavering positivity that’s a breath of fresh air in a lot of ways, but it only does so much to hold up the gameplay.

The game’s primary unique offering is its abundance of costumes, which offer different abilities to the wearer to solve puzzles, and which are littered throughout to allow the player the agency to choose which costumes to wear. But while the idea behind the costumes is well enough in concept, its execution leaves a lot to be desired. You can only hold up to three costumes at a time, and it frustratingly doesn’t restrict you from holding the same costume more than once. Frequently I ran into the problem of losing a costume I was saving to solve a specific puzzle because I accidentally gathered one I already was wearing. What’s more is that to acquire a costume you have to use a key found around the world, but the game never makes an effort to utilize this concept, so keys are almost always very close to the costume pick-ups. Even in boss fights, the game showers you with keys so you have no trouble picking up the costumes when necessary, forcing the question of why the keys are in the game in the first place.

There are dozens of costumes to find overall, most of which are well-designed and cosmetically diverse to match their stage. When it comes down to it, though, there aren’t enough unique abilities to justify having this many costumes. They all only have one ability, most of which are repeated at some point somewhere else, and those that aren’t repeated are generally specific to their original stage. Because they each allow just a single ability, many costumes don’t allow the ability to jump, which forces you to hold a spot for one that can jump, as almost every segment of every stage requires it. It’s a baffling design choice, and one wonders why so many costumes were necessary if they weren’t going to be entirely unique, as they become cumbersome and overwhelming to manage, especially in later levels.

"The game’s primary unique offering is its abundance of costumes, which offer different abilities to the wearer to solve puzzles, and which are littered throughout to allow the player the agency to choose which costumes to wear. But while the idea behind the costumes is well enough in concept, its execution leaves a lot to be desired."

Balan Wonderworld certainly gives you a lot of different mechanics to conquer in order to progress, but it fumbles the attempt to make them feel related or interconnected. You can play each stage as a straightforward platformer, solving the few puzzles each gives with the costumes provided without much difficulty. There really isn’t much in the way of difficulty on the critical path of each level at all. It’s very forgiving with puzzles, and combat can be incredibly easy provided you have a costume that can perform an attack. The game features an adaptive difficulty, so better players may experience better enemies, but I never felt like I was ever challenged or like the difficulty ever changed. Even boss fights almost always follow the three-hit rule, and once you figure out a way to hit them, you’re pretty much in the clear. Admittedly, boss fights are some of the more rewarding aspects of the entire experience, as their general scale makes it all the more satisfying when you take them down.

Progression, though, comes in the form of Balan statues, which you can find around the world and are generally comparable to Super Mario Odyssey’s Moons. Every stage contains around eight of them, and you need a certain number of statues to unlock the next batch of stages. What the statue system falls short on, though, is balance. Since you don’t get a statue upon completing a level, it’s not uncommon to complete a level without finding a single one, and since many of them are locked behind puzzles that require costumes from a different, often future world, the game almost requires backtracking to progress.

This isn’t an inherent problem, but the levels are often not conducive to the types of backtracking and experimenting required to get every statue. Checkpoints aren’t always easily accessible, and if you haven’t stored a costume from a previous stage by completing the stage while wearing it, you have to go back to the costume’s stage, often sit through multiple long loading screens, and pick one up before coming back, hoping all along you don’t take a cheap hit or fall off the stage and lose the costume you were holding so dearly. Because of this tension, the backtracking often feels at odds with itself, wanting you to explore and try new things but not giving you the tools to easily do so, and for a game that holds your hand in so many ways, this is an out-of-place design choice that sours much of the rest of the experience.

"Balan Wonderworld certainly gives you a lot of different mechanics to conquer in order to progress, but it fumbles the attempt to make them feel related or interconnected. You can play each stage as a straightforward platformer, solving the few puzzles each gives with the costumes provided without much difficulty."

Other ways to obtain statues do exist, though they’re generally not substantial enough to put much thought into unless you’re pushing for 100%. One of the most frequent gameplay interludes is the Balan Bout, which features a series of glorified quick-time events that, if executed perfectly, rewards a statue. While interesting at first, these bouts become stale after just a few experiences of what tends to be highly similar scenes, and it’s finnicky about what constitutes a perfect execution. You can also manage the hub world, which is your home base between worlds and lets you take care of the small companions that stay by your side. In this so-called Isle of Tims, you can feed the Tims with the magical drops you collect on each stage and help them build a monument in the center, but this again didn’t offer enough reward for my time, and I found other ways to get statues. Instead of adding depth or variety to gameplay, these additional mechanics feel more tacked-on than anything. They don’t evolve the core gameplay in any way and often feel more like chores than substantial additions, and I was happier to do without them.

Balan Wonderworld’s central dichotomy lies between its ideas and its execution. What looks like a great idea on paper to employ dozens of unique costumes to solve puzzles and find collectibles in an undeniably cheerful world turns into a shallow experience filled with nightmarish backtracking and undeveloped mechanics. The art style and world are fun, but the good will it gains at the beginning is quickly lost when it starts to artificially slow you down. What I liked about the ideas Balan Wonderworld purports was quickly overshadowed by the gameplay structure and general lack of execution, making for an experience that’s often anything but wondrous.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.