Hoo boy.
As great as 2023 was for many game releases, it was also a year of big disappointments. Redfall let us down in all the wrong ways; and don’t even get us started on Call of Duty: We Could Use a Longer Modern Warfare Campaign 3.
But there were worse games afoot, and now’s the time to see what the five absolute worst ones out there were. So let’s dig deep into this pile of crap and see what we can dig out. Bring your gloves and a clothespin for your nose.
Dishonorable Mention: Forspoken
Square Enix may have built this game on good intentions, but Forspoken feels broken right from the start. The protagonist simply doesn’t present enough to stick with her story, and the gameplay just fails to keep us interested for very long. There is some interesting world building going on here, but little to back it up for the long-term. Honestly, we’d rather just play Marvel’s Avengers again. Or better yet, Guardians of the Galaxy.
5. Skull Island: Rise of Kong
We can’t blame the developer for this one, as they were only given a single year to craft a King Kong experience. And, boy, this isn’t it. Rise of Kong is an ugly mess, with gameplay that never really changes, and poor visuals that remind us of the PS1 era. Yes, that bad. You’d be better off playing King Kong back on the Xbox 360. Or better yet, any given Godzilla game. (Even the PS4 one).
4. Crime Boss: Rockay City
Apparently 505 Games thought it would be a good idea to get all the characteristics of a Grand Theft Auto game, but none of the fun. Enter Rockay City, a stunning star-ridden mess of a game that can’t even capture the elements of lesser Payday titles. Its story is all over the place, its gameplay is bland and repetitive, and, worst of all, this game makes Chuck Norris look bad. And you never, ever make Chuck Norris look bad.
3. The Walking Dead: Destinies
And the streak of pitiful Walking Dead games continues with the horrid Destinies. It brings a lot of familiar characters from the series, but does very little with them, between poor combat, bad storytelling choices, and the kind of visuals that make you wonder if GameMill even cares about game development. Stick with Telltale’s brilliant series instead and leave this one to rot.
2. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
Yeah, this isn’t precious. Another poor decision from a big-budget standpoint, Gollum is so terrible that we wanted to throw it into Mount Doom from the start. Broken, shattered gameplay never really gets anywhere, especially on the stealth side of things; and the graphics are so bland that it makes the LOTR universe look second-grade. Which it should never be. The older Lord of the Rings games from EA are leagues better than this one.
1. The Day Before
We could sit here and get into the whole drama surrounding Fnatic and how they shut down and simply vanished four days after the game’s release. But The Day Beforeserves as a cautionary tale that even the most-hyped trailers can’t equate for a good game.
What could’ve been a neat open-world MMO is instead an extraction-based shooter with bargain basement visuals and terrible gameplay with no real depth. Not to mention the glitches, poor online performance, and other problems.
The real positive to all this is that the game is long gone off Steam, and will never debut on consoles. But for those that purchased it, we pour one out to you. You ended up with the most disastrous wreck of the year – and one that serves as a showcase of what notto do with game development.
