Redfall

Initial reveals of Redfall didn’t look terrible. The lighting, shadows and overall mood that Arkane Lyon was going for looked intriguing and could have made for intriguing supernatural action. Things took a turn when it was confirmed not to launch with a 60 FPS Performance Mode on Xbox Series X/S.

Nothing could have prepared us for the actual game, though, with its broken animations, lackluster facial animations, terrible effects, pop-in, bland world with lifeless textures and overall lack of polish. The 30 FPS mode wasn’t the worst on Xbox Series X, but the motion blur still isn’t ideal. Having no animated cutscenes throughout the game feels like the cherry on top of this dumpster fire of a presentation.

AEW: Fight Forever

When AEW: Fight Forever was announced, it was hyped as paying homage to WWF No Mercy on the Nintendo 64. You can feel that with the perspective and some of the idle animations. However, it also feels like it wants to be a major wrestling title with its price without doing the appropriate groundwork with its mechanics, animations, features and much more.

The animations during actual combat look and feel incredibly janky. Some wrestlers barely resemble their real-life counterparts, and the glitches and bugs, like wrestlers clipping into the environment or phasing through ladders, are just terrible. The fact that so much work went into nonsensical mini-games rather than polishing the overall presentation – like having full entrances, fleshing out Road to Elite or improving the character creator – says a lot about the overall focus.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

On the one hand, you have to feel bad for Daedalic Entertainment. It probably wanted to make an adventure game and explore different avenues for the legendary character, like the moral choices between Smeagol and Gollum. However, unlike Deponia, it went with an action-adventure focus in full 3D. It also focused on some of the least interesting parts of Gollum’s life imaginable, like spending time in prison guiding a bird and then, get this, guiding a fellow prisoner.

Throughout all of this, the facial animations, texture quality, environments, and so on look horrible. The performance is also horrid with all the glitches, clipping and whatnot. If priced lower, The Lord of the Rings: Gollum may not have received much blowback. Unfortunately, at $60, with day one DLC costing extra, it just looks so much more awful.

Crime Boss: Rockay City

When you’re watching glitzy, edited trailers for it, Crime Boss: Rockay City looks decent. The lighting and shadows aren’t the worst, and sometimes, the city seems to come alive due to multiple light sources. On closer inspection, the textures on environments, characters and weapons look off.

The enemies animate in such a rudimentary manner. All NPCs suffer from almost no facial animations, and the big-name Hollywood actors fare only slightly better, looking uncanny at best and wooden at worst. One could forgive this if the script was better or the gameplay was compelling, but alas.

Ravenbound

Ravenbound could have done something with its lore and presentation. Not many games dip into Scandinavian folklore with its dark themes and whimsical yet terrifying creatures. Unfortunately, it seems that developer Systemic Reaction’s reach exceeded its grasp. The massive open world feels dull and lifeless with the same enemy camps and the same-looking enemies with the same limited animations (right down to the same telltale charge before an attack).

Texture quality in the environments and on models is poor, while Ravenbound’s performance was very iffy at launch (visibility during rain while activating Ravensight was non-existent). All in all, its mid-tier presentation needs a lot of work and polish.

Wanted: Dead

Wanted: Dead is a game that badly wants to emulate the look and design of sixth-generation console titles. Which is fine, but it didn’t need to look this poor. The textures on characters and environments already look pretty average, but outside of finishers, the character models animate stiffly with little by way of facial animations. There’s a constant jank to it all, but at least it’s over-the-top and crazy, right?

It feels like the same problem as AEW: Fight Forever – that developer Soleil wanted to make a throwback title instead of polishing the presentation but slapped a “homage to the classics” label on it to excuse the same. “It’s supposed to look like this, you see!” Regardless, the overall result is awful, even with the random wackiness.

Farming Simulator 23

It should be reiterated – when I saw the critics panning this game, I had to do a double take because Farming Simulator is generally well-liked. Farming Simulator 22 sold over 1.5 million copies in its first week and has 94 percent positive user reviews on Steam. So how did we get here? Farming Simulator 23 didn’t release on Xbox, PlayStation and PC like other platforms.

It arrived on iOS and Android and was ported to Nintendo Switch. The production values are not up to par, and the overall scale, sense of freedom and feature set also suffer from this paring down. The worst part? Despite looking so middling, it runs terribly on Nintendo Switch.

Redemption Reapers

Considering the experience of Adglobe and Binary Haze Interactive on the stunning Ender Lilies, the shift to a more realistic style for Redemption Reapers is somewhat puzzling. Given the post-apocalyptic nature of this medieval world, the gritty monotone visuals make sense, but they still feel overly washed out at times. While the cinematics look decent, the environments look extremely dull.

Character models also feel low-res, with animations that could have been better. It’s harsh, I know, especially since it doesn’t have the biggest budget, but even Harvestella from Live Wire (who also worked on Ender Lilies) looks better.

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

It’s not that the aesthetic of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is bad. Team Ninja has always done good with its action hack-and-slash titles (except maybe Stranger of Paradise in terms of fidelity), and Wo Long’s showcase of Romance of the Three Kingdoms is quite good. Unfortunately, it’s weighed down by dull textures, lackluster facial animations outside of cutscenes and average-looking environments.

Its fidelity is probably on par with Nioh 2, which isn’t terrible, but considering the latter is a 2020 title originally exclusively for PS4, you’d expect some improvements at this point. Of course, the fact that Wo Long continues to have performance issues on PC also doesn’t help.

Greyhill Incident

Once again, when viewing the Greyhill Incident in trailers, it appears to be a low-budget B-movie-style game that could offer some fun and decent visuals. However, you’re exposed to wooden animations and awful character models during gameplay. The facial animations fare worse – the little grey aliens have very little, not even when taking damage or getting shot in the head.

Expected, but still lame, as their bored walking animations make you ponder their existence instead of feeling threatened. At the same time, while it does offer some interesting lighting and shadows, Greyhill Incident piles on the motion blur and washed-out textures. On the bright side, at least it’s true to the name with all the “grey” you’ll see.

Greyhill Incident

What could have been a B-movie horror game turns into an unfunny, painfully unaware low-budget horror game. Aliens invade your small town, and you go around “saving” people. You fight the aliens sometimes, and they’re as threatening as inflatables at a pool party. Throw in lots of awful dialogue, dumb objectives that are difficult to parse, a nonsensical plot, terrible voice acting and bugs galore, and the Greyhill Incident is just one of the absolute worst games of the year.

The Lord of the Rings: Gollum

How do you mess up a Lord of the Rings game, that too with one of its most recognizable characters? The Lord of the Rings: Gollum makes it look easy, focusing on bland events in Smeagol’s life with asinine mechanics and tedious objectives. The stealth is poor, and Gollum’s character is nothing like the books or films, not that the script does a good job of delivering something original. Such was the failure of this game that Daedalic Entertainment has stopped game development entirely, halting another Lord of the Rings title (rumored to be a sequel to Gollum) and focusing instead on publishing.

Stray Blade

Stray Blade does have some potential with its lore and art style. Unfortunately, this is quickly undone thanks to the annoying protagonist, frustrating combat where you can dodge some attacks and parry others (not both), poor and limited enemy design, progression-blocking bugs and more. Improvements have reportedly been made to the combat post-launch, but its other flaws still stick out.

Redfall

Arkane Austin’s Redfall could have capitalized on improved communication and paved the way for other high-profile Xbox exclusives like Starfield and Forza Motorsport. Instead, it crashed and burned, packed to the brim with bugs, dumb AI, a sparsely populated and boring world, lackluster enemy variety, stupid vampires, terrible weapons, horrible dialogue – and, of course, performance issues on PC. Playing on Xbox Series X/S is torturous, thanks to no aim assist or advanced control settings. Top it off with no matchmaking, and this “co-op experience” just sucks.

Crime Boss: Rockay City

With the initial announcement, Crime Boss: Rockay City appeared to have poured most of its budget into big-name Hollywood stars. Unfortunately, it didn’t give them much direction or compelling dialogue, and the gameplay feels completely superfluous. Missions feel like little more than shoot-outs against tanky foes, and the campaign is forgettable at best. What could have been a pulpy take on Payday’s heists ends up as a bug-riddled, cheesy mess.

Ravenbound

Despite Systemic Reaction’s previous titles, like Generation Zero, being middling, I was genuinely stoked for Ravenbound. A rogue-lite set in a fully 3D open world based on Scandinavian folklore sounded interesting. The actual game was a different story, with baffling design decisions for combat, the Hatred system, exploration, long-term progression and more. Underwhelming performance and bugs didn’t help either, and it all just felt so poorly put together. Like Stray Blade, there have been improvements, but it’s got a ways to go.

Beyond Contact

Though published by Deep Silver, Beyond Contact passed completely unnoticed when it was released last April. It’s a sci-fi survival open-world title with base-building and real-time combat with a bright aesthetic, which is all good, but it messes up so much. Most materials do nothing, base defense is poorly balanced, farming is way too much work for little rewards, and the less said about the combat and tanky enemies, the better. Beyond Contact could have been interesting and settled for being fundamentally mediocre.

Rendezvous

With titles like A Space for the Unbound highlighting the game development talent in Indonesia, it hurts to see stuff like Rendezvous. It’s marketed as a “2.5D cyber-noir pixel art action-puzzle adventure.” Sure enough, its aesthetic is very sharp and eye-catching. However, it offers little beyond that than annoying puzzles and stealth to go with its boring combat and half-hearted narrative.

Mia and the Dragon Princess

Wales Interactive has a reputation for FMV-style games, with some standouts (The Complex) and duds (I Saw Black Clouds). Mia and the Dragon Princess sadly falls into the latter category. The story, about Mia and the mysterious Marshanda as they meet and go on the run, is baffling and full of throwaway characters. There’s a lot of fight choreography courtesy of – I kid you not – “Ginger Ninja Trickster”, and you can make some choices which don’t lead to any satisfying conclusion. Is it a good or bad thing that it’s over quickly? You decide.

The Last Worker

In The Last Worker, players control the last human worker who struggles in a world of automation and corporate greed. So it’s a shame that the protagonist Kurt isn’t particularly likeable or the writing very interesting. Some solid gameplay could have saved it, but unfortunately, The Last Worker offers awful mini-games and some poorly handled themes. Not even VR and unique mechanics can help.

Clive ‘N’ Wrench

Dr Daucas has stolen Professor Nancy Merricarp’s blueprints for time travel. It’s up to Clive (not that one) and Wrench, a monkey and not a talking wrench, to venture through time to stop Daucas. Making a compelling 3D platformer can be challenging, and Clive ‘N’ Wrench sadly fails where it counts. Controls and combat are terrible, and the performance leaves much to be desired (watch out for projectiles from enemies running at a different frame rate). It may have been something with more time and polish, but unfortunately ends up awkwardly skirting by.

Colossal Cave Reimagined

A 3D remake of the 1979 text-based adventure, Colossal Cave Reimagined comes from Ken and Roberta Williams, known for legendary adventure games like the King’s Quest series under Sierra Entertainment. Sadly, it’s let down by underwhelming visuals and outdated design, like annoying mazes and instant deaths. While the puzzles are decent, the remake feels unnecessary at best and downright frustrating at worst.

Curse of the Sea Rats

A Metroid-style title with hand-drawn animations and somewhat cute visuals, Curse of the Sea Rats ultimately wastes its potential. The rats may as well be human, without any unique mechanics designed around them (much less interesting scenarios for each of the four playable characters), and the world design is as confounding as it is boring. Cap this off with balancing issues, where some enemies are far more challenging than the bosses, and you have a fairly lop-sided, dull adventure.

Farming Simulator 23

At first, I did a double take on seeing Farming Simulator 23 rated so low. How could this be, especially when the previous entries were so beloved? It’s because this year’s iteration launched on mobile devices and ported to the Nintendo Switch. The result is a pared-down experience with limited freedom, fewer features, horrible performance and visuals, and a much higher price tag than the mobile versions.

The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR

Considering how well-received Until Dawn: Rush of Blood was on PlayStation VR (read: not very well), there was concern that The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR could repeat those mistakes on PlayStation VR2. Unfortunately, it’s worse, even with powerful technology and new features like eye tracking for scary blinking moments. It doesn’t present an interesting story or offer much beyond rudimentary rail shooter segments. Performance issues also bog the entire thing down, which isn’t something you want to highlight on Sony’s next-gen VR.