Last year had a lot of great games. However, it had a lot of polished turds too. Here’s a list of the worst.
Driveclub
This game sucks. If you like it, I’m sorry if you take offense to this, but it’s awful. While its graphics are incredibly well-rendered and the lighting effects are top notch, you can’t take the time to enjoy them for all the swearing and throwing of things due to server issues. The fact that this game can only be played online should have been its savior, but ended up being its destroyer. Well, that and there are only like 60 cars you can get – and only half of them are actually cool. And you can’t really do any customizing. And the online play is atrocious and goes down more frequently than it should. Garbage…this game.
The Crew
Yet another driving pile of trash is The Crew . This game also sucks. If you’re a fan, I only have one question…why? Let’s start with the fact that the CGI trailers that we saw at trade shows were actually far better than anything the game itself has to offer. The AI for other drivers in the game is just crappy. They apply the old “rubbin’s racin’” mentality of the semi-pro NASCAR circuit and smash your ass all over the course. As for the open-world concept? It again falls short. Lastly, let’s talk about how bad the controls are. Wait. On second thought, let’s not. I really don’t want to get that angry right now.
Tranformers – Rise of the Dark Spark
Full disclosure: I love the Transformers. Not the Michael Bay, explosion-soaked, crappy script, licensing and merchandising super-powered new Transformers – I like the old school ones…a lot. So playing War for and Fall of Cybertron , I was a very happy guy. They had their issues, but they were at the very least enjoyable. This game is not. The story is lackluster at best, the script is lame, and beyond all that, it screws up the most important thing in a Transformers game. The combat system is horribly clunky and awful. They even managed to make transforming feel more like a hassle than a bonus. It’s tragic, but this is a truly forgettable game.
Basement Crawl
Before I get into this, let me first say that no one – including me – expected this game to be awesome. But I was a Bomberman fan back in the day and I thought it looked fun. What I discovered was quite the opposite. The game is EXACTLY like Bomberman …only not as fun. The online connectivity is terrible and marred with lag, timeouts, and players getting dropped for no reason. Then there’s the horrible respawn issue on top of the lame online play. Finally, there are really only about three environments to play in. Oh sure, they have blocks in different places, but essentially they’re the same. God help you if you have 8 players on the board. You might get to play, but you also might sit and stare while your character is frozen and your opponents kill you over and over again.
Destiny
It pains me to put this game on this list. It really does. But I have good reasons for it being here. Number one? Activision. The Call of Duty publisher has managed to take what could’ve been the most innovative MMORPG of all time and turned it into a money-grab game with little to no story. They released nothing but a setup for gamers to buy overpriced DLC packs. There is little content in the game itself and a finite number of levels and zones to explore. The one thing they did right was the graphics and conceptual design. But the frame rate problems that continue to plague the game mixed with the incessant server issues make Destiny fall short of its intended glory. The saddest part of all is that players are coerced to repeat zones and levels over and over again to get the weapons and loot they are seeking. The Crucible as well as the strike playlists get repetitive and boring after a while and the Dark Below DLC did little to curb this lack of content.
Sonic Boom – Rise of Lyric
The long and short of this game is that it tries to do too much and fails miserably. The story is crap, the gameplay covers the styles of side-scrollers, 3D platformers, beat-em-ups, and rail-based games, but none of them feel good or right. The gameplay is just clumsy on all fronts and nothing feels intuitive. The voice acting is limp at best and the story is unimaginative. Beyond that, there are tons of frame rate issues, the texturing is garbage, and honestly the soundtrack may be a re-hash from a hodge-podge of earlier Sonic titles, but it does nothing to add to the overall feel of the game. This game is just a lame attempt at bringing Sonic into to the next gen of gaming. All they actually manage to do is create the most lackluster Sonic title to date.
Amazing Spider-Man 2
This is quite possibly the worst Spider-Man game ever made, especially for the generation that it was released to. Hell, I actually liked playing Spider-Man 2 on the GameCube more than this. At least that one had Bruce Campbell to voice the craptastic script. This game has one of the worst scripts I have ever seen in a super hero game. The voice acting is laughable at best and the web-swinging controls are wonky and difficult to execute consistently. What I don’t understand is how Beenox could release such a terrible game when I have actually kind of enjoyed their other Spidey outings. Oh well, I guess we’ll just try and forget this one and move on.
Rambo: The Video Game
Just like the string of horrible sequels that the first Rambo film spawned in the eighties, this game is an atrocity. It has horrible graphics, terrible gameplay (it’s a rail-shooter…who does that on console anymore?), and most of all the voice acting is terrible. Looking at this turd, it could easily have been a last gen or even gen-before-last title. But even if it were, it still wouldn’t be any better. It’s just awful. There’s no real array of power-ups. No real progression for your character. No noticeable change in gameplay from start to finish. And lastly, no reason to even buy or play this game in the first place.
Assassin’s Creed: Unity
It’s no secret that I am a fan of the AC franchise. But it’s also no secret that with the exception of Black Flag , I have been completely let down by recent AC releases. Rogue is hot garbage and feels very stale in comparison to its parent game, AC III . And Unity is the absolute epitome of trash. While Paris is absolutely gorgeous to look at, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. The controls are nearly identical to AC IV (which actually I am OK with, for the most part), there are tons of frame rate issue, and the servers are always going down. Don’t even get me started on the micro-transaction bulls#!t. If this is the way the Assassin’s Creed franchise is headed, just go ahead and count me out now.
Watch_Dogs
There was so much hype surrounding this game that there just wasn’t any way that Ubisoft was going to deliver. Well guess what? They didn’t. This game plays like a more boring version of Grand Theft Auto and does little in the way of inspiring gamers to continue playing it. The whole, “You can hack nearly every electronic device and use it to your advantage,” thing is kind of cool at first, but gets super-old really quickly. Then there’s the fact that the game doesn’t look nearly as good as anything we saw at E3. And then the while connectivity with tablets thing was a total bust. All in all I can say without doubt that this game does little to impress anyone at all. The word I hear everyone use to describe it is “uninspired.” I’d agree with that.