2023 has been a gamer's dream come true. But let's get our cringe muscles ready and remember how far we've come in the year that eventually brought us "Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom," "Baldur's Gate 3," and "Starfield." Here are the worst games 2023 has seen so far.
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00:002023 has been a gamer's dream come true, but let's get our cringe muscles ready and remember
00:05how far we've come in the year that eventually brought us Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom,
00:10Baldur's Gate 3, and Starfield.
00:12Here are the worst games 2023 has seen so far.
00:16Daedalic Entertainment's The Lord of the Rings Golem is the very definition of a game that
00:20was not worth the wait.
00:21Originally announced in 2019 for a 2021 release, Golem finally stumbled onto store shelves
00:27in May 2023.
00:28When fans finally got a chance to play their precious game, they discovered a final product
00:33that barely resembled the sprawling, epic RPG they had been promised.
00:37The graphics had been majorly downgraded when compared to the early promo screenshots, while
00:41the majority of the game's complex decision-based mechanics had been boiled down to inexplicable
00:46one-word choices like spider or argue.
00:50Worst of all, the game was prone to frequent crashes, making it impossible for some to
00:54play and for some critics to even finish reviewing it.
00:57It's hard to imagine another game getting more abysmal reviews on Metacritic this year,
01:01and it's easy to see why.
01:03This is a game so bad that the developer issued an apology online and shortly thereafter closed
01:08its development division, putting an end to plans for a follow-up Lord of the Rings game.
01:12Even worse, it was revealed months later that Daedalic had not even written the apology
01:16letter, which, by the way, misspelled the name of the game.
01:20Members of the development team revealed to Game Two that the publisher behind the title,
01:25used ChatGPT to generate the apology, without consulting the devs at all.
01:29In so many ways, The Lord of the Rings Golem is a frustrating mess from start to finish,
01:34and its Metacritic scores of 38 on PC, 34 on PS5, and 43 Series X are almost generous.
01:41For every live service game that manages to dazzle players with fun mechanics and to an
01:51ever-expanding world of content, there's another that seemingly uses the idea of live
01:55service to release a game that's unpolished to the point of feeling incomplete.
02:00Crime Boss Rock A City falls into the latter category.
02:03The game boasts a cast of celebrated Hollywood actors, but that's its only claim to fame.
02:08Crime Boss is an FPS roguelike in which players take on the role of Travis Baker, an up-and-comer
02:13in the crime-ridden streets of Rock A City.
02:15Players can recruit a team of gun-toting NPCs to help them conquer the city, or team up
02:20with their friends online in a multiplayer mode that explores the urban legends of the
02:23city's criminal underworld.
02:25Regardless of the mode, the missions in Crime Boss are so straightforward and fast-paced
02:29that they never feel satisfying.
02:31A typical run can easily be finished in just a few minutes.
02:35Then it's back to menus, team management, and finding another turf to attack.
02:39Unfortunately, these levels aren't exactly short but sweet.
02:42The gameplay in Crime Boss is riddled with bugs, most of which are basically game-breaking.
02:47Players can get trapped inside walls, enemies can fail to fully spawn, littering the battlefield
02:52with invisible NPCs that make actually finishing the mission borderline impossible.
02:57As a live-service game, there's a chance Crime Boss cleans up the bugs, but it will still
03:01be left with mindless missions, an incomprehensible story, and a disappointing lack of customization.
03:07Crime Boss Rock A City received a criminally mediocre Metacritic score of 52.
03:12That's it.
03:13We end this.
03:14Yeah.
03:15Charge!
03:18Originally released in 2013 for the PS3, The Last of Us was, and remains, a masterpiece.
03:23Thanks to its excellent combat, engrossing world design, and unparalleled storytelling,
03:28The Last of Us quickly became known as one of the best video games of all time.
03:32When Naughty Dog announced that a remaster of the game was coming to PC, fans were ecstatic,
03:37but that enthusiasm quickly soured once they got their hands on the port.
03:40Was that everything you hoped for?
03:42On launch, the game spent hours building shaders.
03:45A week and two patches later, that wait time had barely been cut in half.
03:49The game pushed CPUs to their absolute limit, and regardless of the hardware players had
03:53to run it, freezes, hilariously weird bugs, and even crashes were a frequent occurrence.
03:58Players reported input lag from their controllers that was either difficult or impossible to
04:02work around.
04:03Days after launch, Naughty Dog released a statement on Twitter, saying,
04:07We know some of you have not experienced the Naughty Dog quality you expected.
04:11The studio promised to continue working to fix the game, and in the first month after
04:15its release, multiple updates attempted to address all the problems.
04:19Considering Naughty Dog's reputation, the port's release was particularly jarring.
04:23Then again, the fact that footage for the port's announcement trailer was captured on
04:26PS5 should have been a red flag for everyone.
04:29While The Last of Us Part I was a great addition to the PS5's library, its PC Metacritic score
04:34leaves a lot to be desired at a measly 57.
04:37The idea of leading a team of customized orcs in a bloody match of football that mostly
04:41throws out all the rules sounds great.
04:44The Blood Bowl franchise, based on the niche tabletop game of the same name, is fantasy
04:48football set in the Warhammer universe.
04:50The very premise of the game appeals to a narrow selection of gamers, but fans truly
04:54love the concept.
04:55They don't, however, truly love Blood Bowl 3 itself.
04:58One player took to Reddit to express their disappointment, writing, quote,
05:01Blood Bowl 3 has broken me.
05:03One of the biggest problems with the game is that it's riddled with bugs and prone to
05:07crashing.
05:08Luckily, since it's ostensibly a live-service game, there's a good chance that those issues
05:12will be resolved in the future.
05:13The bigger problem with Blood Bowl 3 is that it's filled with so many microtransactions
05:18that players might need a small business loan just to get into the game.
05:21One major appeal of the game is the ability to customize your players, but getting a full
05:25team tricked out in the way you want them can cost around $50, with additional special
05:30items available for even more money.
05:32That's a lot to ask just to gain access to the full experience of a game that already
05:36costs $30 on its own.
05:37Sorry, tabletop fans.
05:39With Metacritic scores of 57 on PC, 59 on PS5, and 51 on Series X, this one isn't for
05:46you.
05:47Look out, Mario!
05:48Disney is trying to move in on your turf!
05:50Disney's Speedstorm is a car racing game with all your favorite Disney characters, and all
05:54of your least favorite monetization systems.
05:56Planned as a free-to-play title, Speedstorm takes the usual gotcha systems inherent in
06:01those games and cranks them up to 11.
06:03There's a battle pass, of course, but there are also blue tokens, purple tokens, gold
06:08tokens, multiplayer tokens, chests of randomized cosmetics, racer shards for character upgrades,
06:13and more.
06:14It's a seriously heavy-handed approach to a system that gamers already primed for developers
06:18to abandon.
06:19Is everything clear?
06:20Uh-uh.
06:21No.
06:22But it sounds like a good deal.
06:25Fine, fine.
06:26Sign here.
06:27With all the monetization out of the way, it's time to turn to the gameplay.
06:31Nothing breaks the mold here.
06:32Characters all have individual special moves to use during races, which adds some nice
06:36variety, but repetitive tracks hold back the pleasure of that invention.
06:40The cars themselves handle particularly well and can be fun to use, but considering all
06:44the baggage the game has, and the fact that currently only PS5 players can enjoy four-person
06:49split-screen, there are so many better options out there.
06:52Hopefully the full version of the game will feel more worth players' time.
06:55On Metacritic, Disney's Speedstorm scored a dismal 69 and 75 on PS5 and Xbox Series
07:01X, respectively.
07:03Forspoken is another game with a ton of potential that it just didn't quite live up to.
07:07On a positive note, the game blends magic and parkour into a traversal system that feels
07:11great to play, and remains visually engaging throughout the entire game.
07:15Beyond that, the game is a collection of good ideas that all needed a bit more time to develop.
07:19Initially, the game's combat feels varied and exciting.
07:22Players have access to a wide range of magical abilities that, when combined with their traversal
07:27mechanics, make controlling a large crowd of enemies fun.
07:29Over time, though, the lack of any real challenge transforms the combat into a blurry of button-mashing
07:34that you can more or less perform on autopilot.
07:37While all of the magical effects are flashy enough, the visuals don't look as good as
07:40they should on a PS5.
07:42The biggest struggle in Forspoken is the narrative.
07:44Frey is an interesting enough main character, but she constantly undercuts the drama of
07:48her situation with a steady deluge of jokes that mostly fall flat.
07:52"...Did I just do that?"
07:54"...Well, definitely with my assistance."
07:55"...I did not just do that."
07:57"...We did."
07:58"...I just moved s— with my mind."
08:00The magical world of Athea, much like the game's combat, is intriguing at first glance,
08:04but reveals itself to be almost paper-thin as the game progresses.
08:07Ultimately, the story is about as satisfying as a bag of potato chips, which is a big step
08:12down from the four-course meal we've come to expect from Square Enix games.
08:16Forspoken earned a lukewarm Metacritic score of 63 on PC and 64 on PS5.
08:22What if Katahiro was also a fighting game?
08:25That's essentially the premise in God of Rock, in which players choose from a number of fighters
08:29and step onto the stage for a one-on-one rhythm battle.
08:32Hitting notes more accurately than your opponent dishes out damage, but also has the unfortunate
08:36side effect of spiraling some fights out into a never-ending war of attrition.
08:40Every once in a while you can throw out a super move using more traditional fighting
08:43game inputs, but good luck nailing one of those intricate attacks without losing track
08:47of the beat entirely.
08:48For all it's promised, God of Rock feels like a rough draft.
08:51It's not just that the rhythm and fighting mechanics are sometimes at odds with each
08:54other, but also that neither side of the equation is particularly strong on its own.
08:58The game's UI can make tracking all the notes a struggle, and PC players might as well pass
09:02on the game entirely.
09:03A Shacknews reviewer noted,
09:05"...the keyboard inputs, to put it bluntly, straight up don't work."
09:09The music in the game suffers, too, as the lack of licensed songs prevent the game from
09:14feeling like a real rock and roll celebration.
09:15It would be great to see this idea explored more in the future, but for now, it's a definite
09:19disappointment with Metacritic's scores of 63, 62, and 54 on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series
09:26X, respectively.
09:28Arkane Studios is the renowned developer behind titles like Dishonored, Prey, and Deathloop.
09:33Any time Arkane has something new to release, gamers everywhere get excited.
09:37Sadly, 2023 has not been Arkane's year.
09:40Redfall was meant to be the studio's next big hit.
09:42The game is set in a fictional Massachusetts island town, and takes place shortly after
09:46a group of vampires moves in and makes the islands their new hunting ground.
09:50Players have four different characters with varying skill sets to choose from, and they
09:54can fight back against the vampires and their loyal cultists in single-player, or co-op,
09:58FPS action.
09:59That's a great premise for a game, but the execution leaves plenty to be desired.
10:03The first thing most players will notice in the game is its slew of performance issues.
10:08Textures can take upwards of ten seconds to load in, and many of them are low-resolution
10:12even when properly loaded.
10:13The game is also locked at 30 FPS on consoles, including the Xbox Series X.
10:18Players have complained about in-game assets being reused so frequently it utterly breaks
10:22immersion.
10:23On top of that, the enemy AI leaves a lot to be desired, leading to moments where simply
10:27standing on the other side of a car can prevent a vampire from being able to actually attack
10:32the player.
10:33Overall, Redfall just doesn't feel like the next-gen game it's supposed to be.
10:36This is not the Redfall I remember."
10:39This game puts the suck in bloodsuckers, earning Metacritic scores of 56 on PC and 59 on Xbox
10:46Series X.
10:48Atomic Heart might be one of the rockier games SVG has reviewed this year, but to be fair,
10:52it does manage to get plenty of things right.
10:55The game takes place in an alternate 1955 in which advanced technology has allowed the
11:00Soviet Union to build Facility 3826, a communist utopia powered by sci-fi robotics.
11:07All is well until the robots turn on their masters and utter chaos breaks out across
11:11the entire city.
11:13That premise sounds reminiscent of Bioshock, but the bright, dazzling visuals of Atomic
11:17Heart couldn't be further from Rapture.
11:20As players make their way through the game, the gunplay is mostly engaging, and only somewhat
11:25hampered by repetitive, overly simple puzzles.
11:28Sounds like a hit, right?
11:30What ends up weighing down Atomic Heart like a two-ton chunk of steel is the writing.
11:34By the end of the game, the main storyline doesn't really go anywhere satisfying, but
11:38even that could be forgiven if the line-by-line dialogue didn't make you constantly cringe.
11:43The protagonist P3 dishes out incessant quips, and in-between jokes that fail to land.
11:49He says crispy critters so much that gamers have made compilation videos about the phrase.
11:53"...crispy critters.
11:55F-----, it really is, Petrov."
11:59Meanwhile, every single line spoken by Nora, the sentient in-game item shop, is so aggressively
12:05sexual, you'll feel uncomfortable even if you're playing by yourself.
12:09With another pass through the script, Atomic Heart might have been something truly spectacular.
12:13Sadly, that was not the case, and it earned Metacritic scores ranging from 70 to 75, depending
12:20on the console.
12:22Wanted Dead is part hack-and-slash, part third-person shooter, part minigame extravaganza, and part
12:28cyberpunk anime.
12:29As with anything that tries to be everything, the game doesn't pull off any of its multiple
12:33genres very well.
12:35Though the game proudly proclaims that it shares a lineage with Ninja Gaiden and Dead
12:39or Alive, it by no means stands shoulder-to-shoulder with those hits.
12:43The story follows an elite police team murdering its way through zombies in the streets of
12:47Hong Kong.
12:49Despite the amount of time the game dedicates to showing the squad working with each other,
12:53don't expect to walk away with a new favorite fictional character.
12:57The storytelling here is decidedly subpar, but that's okay as long as the gameplay is
13:02great, right?
13:03Yeah, right.
13:05It's not.
13:06For a hack-and-slash game, there's a shocking lack of abilities and moves for players to
13:10really dig into.
13:11When performing the same attacks gets dull, players can swap over to their guns, but the
13:16enemies in the game are so good at bullet-sponging, it hardly feels worthwhile to try.
13:21On top of that, the AI runs into frequent problems, getting held up when limbs are flying,
13:26and for the most part, all the enemies use the same attacks.
13:29Though there are only five levels in the game, extremely long encounters, infrequent checkpoints,
13:34and an overload of cutscenes stretch the entire experience out for about ten grueling hours.
13:40Wanted Dead was dead on arrival, with Metacritic scores of 57 on PC and PS5, and 60 on Series X.
13:48It's hard to overstate how much of a disaster the day before was.
13:52Like a slow-motion train wreck, gamers began flagging the game as one big warning sign
13:56in the months leading up to its release.
13:58Despite being the most wish-listed game on Steam, some remained convinced that it wasn't
14:03a real game at all.
14:04Skeptics cited the developer's lack of experience and numerous delays as just a few of the reasons
14:09for these suspicions.
14:11Sure enough, when it was finally released, the day before hardly resembled the game that
14:15had been advertised.
14:16In place of the expected survival MMO, players were shocked to drop into a buggy and derivative
14:21extraction shooter.
14:22Though Fantastic promised to continue updating the game, players in early access were left
14:27with a title that featured, as GamesRadar's Rick Lane put it,
14:30"...no meaningful ideas, no distinctive mechanics, no creative stylistic choices, and certainly
14:36no compelling characters."
14:38Mere days after the game's launch, the developer announced that all further development of
14:43the game would cease as the company closed down.
14:46The game has since been removed from Steam, and all players have been refunded the money
14:49they spent on The Day Before.
14:51The game's servers will cease to function in January 2024, bringing the saga of The
14:56Day Before to a quick and brutal end.
15:00Skull Island Rise of Kong is a kind of licensed game that feels like it just doesn't happen
15:04anymore.
15:05It's a kind of game where so little effort appears to have been spent on actual development
15:09in the hopes that a recognizable name and lead character will carry it to success.
15:13In the case of Rise of Kong, the game's shortcomings quickly carried it to ridicule at the hands
15:17of the internet.
15:18Clips of the game's half-baked graphics and banal gameplay went viral on X and Reddit,
15:24with gamers basking in the glow of its sheer silliness.
15:27Some declared it to be a worse game than The Lord of the Rings Golem, while others found
15:31it to be wholly entertaining.
15:33Eating that sweet spot of, so bad it's good.
15:35Of course, many of those fans damning it with famed praise didn't actually attempt to play
15:40the game.
15:41Those who did mostly shared the sentiments expressed by IGN's Phil Hornshaw, who wrote,
15:46"'Skull Island Rise of Kong' is ugly and full of bugs, but the real trouble is that, at
15:51its core, it's just boring.
15:53It feels like a worse version of every action game from the last 20 years, thus it earned
15:58a well-deserved Metacritic score of 23 on PC."
16:02The Walking Dead Destinies seems to have a cool premise from the outset, acting as a
16:06sort of choose-your-own-adventure take on the beloved TV series.
16:10Unfortunately, as COG Connected's Jazz Sargo put it,
16:14The Walking Dead Destinies would have been a fitting release a decade ago during the
16:17peak of the series' popularity, ironically.
16:20The game plays as if it belongs to that era, too.
16:23The game is riddled with technical problems.
16:25When Destinies isn't crashing or randomly dropping out or sound effects, players must
16:29contend with characters getting stuck in walls and AI that barely registers the player
16:34character's presence.
16:35Even the game's so-called biggest draw, the ability to reinvent the show's story, doesn't
16:39quite work, thanks to the laziness of the cutscenes.
16:43In IGN's review of the game, writer Tariq Moussa mentioned seeing characters that had
16:52already died in his playthrough suddenly appearing in later cinematics, ruining the feeling that
16:57any of the player's choices really matter.
16:59Add on clunky combat, awkward-looking character models, and a skill tree system that's essentially
17:05useless, and you have a recipe for a game that ain't coming back from the dead.
17:09A Metacritic score of 29 on PS5 almost seems too generous for this one.
17:14Minecraft Legends tries its best to appeal to multiple different audiences.
17:18On the one hand, it reaches out to legions of Minecraft fans with its world and characters,
17:23but it also tries to grab the attention of people who love unit-based tactical strategy
17:27games.
17:28It ends up working its way to the middle, offering neither group much of anything.
17:32The main problem with Minecraft Legends is that its tactical gameplay is unfocused and
17:36likely to alienate gamers who've spent more time with polished strategy games.
17:40Instead of putting players into the position of a god overseeing the battlefield, the game
17:44inserts the player character into the action, but that greatly limits your strategic options
17:49in practice.
17:50There are other limitations that feel out of place for the genre, like the inability
17:54to give orders to individual units on the battlefield.
17:57Instead, you've got to send groups of combatants to the same objective, and it's a 50-50 shot
18:02if the AI will carry them to their proper destination.
18:05The game also includes building mechanics, just like you'd expect from a Minecraft title,
18:10but those are just as rough as the tactical elements.
18:12Because the actual gameplay is centered around the battles, all the building comes across
18:16as being included only by necessity.
18:19Maybe Minecraft Legends can introduce a new audience to the RTS genre, but considering
18:23gamers are advising each other to avoid the title, there's not much hope for that, either.
18:28Far from legendary, Minecraft Legends received Metacritic scores of 67 on PC and 71 on Series
18:35X.
18:36There are few games that have as little to offer as Dookie Dash.
18:39The first game from Yuga Labs, the parent company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, Dookie
18:44Dash goes all-in on NFT gaming.
18:46Players can only hop into the game if they own a Bored Ape, Mutant Ape, or a new invention
18:51called a Sewer Pass, which comes in several tiers.
18:54That skyrockets the ground-floor costs of getting into the game.
18:57The trade-off is that the best players in the game are granted a Power Source, which
19:01is just another NFT that can potentially be used in future Yuga Labs games, or sold off
19:06to some other poor soul.
19:08What kind of gaming experience do you get after dropping, as some gamers have noted,
19:12upwards of $2,000 for the opportunity to play the game for just a few weeks?
19:17You'll pilot an ape down a long sewer tunnel filled with obstacles to avoid or smash through
19:22in fragments to collect.
19:23The further you make it down the tunnel, and the more fragments you pick up, the higher
19:27your score will be.
19:29That might sound like something you would have played on your iPod Touch, and it looks
19:32like it, too.
19:34We play a lot of video games at SVG, experiencing a wide swath of the best and worst that gaming
19:40has to offer in that particular year.
19:42While not every game is suited to every person's particular tastes, it can often be relatively
19:47easy to pinpoint the most disappointing of the bunch.
19:50Some of these games emerge from a long development time and simply didn't meet expectations,
19:55while others outright fail to deliver on a developer's promises.
19:59Some are just plain broken, an issue that is painfully obvious from the moment a player
20:02hits the start button.
20:04No video game is released in a vacuum.
20:06Several factors are considered when putting together a list like this, including Metacritic
20:11scores, community backlash, customer reviews, and personal playtime.
20:16We also considered what kind of impact these games had on the overall conversation in 2023.
20:21Some of these games have been brought up time and time again as cautionary tales, while
20:25others have been so reviled that they've been swept under the rug and mostly forgotten as
20:29soon as the memes ran their course.
20:32Sometimes it's hard to tell which is a worse fate or a bad game.