From broken physics to creepy dating sims, gaming has seen some truly awful releases. Join us as we count down the worst video game disasters from each year since 2000! Our list features notorious flops that crashed harder than a glitchy racing game, with some so bad they actually killed their studios!
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00:00Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're going through the past quarter century and looking
00:11at the worst games that came out between the years 2000 and 2024.
00:16Who's ready to wallow in some filth?
00:202000 Mortal Kombat Special Forces
00:36Midway was really struggling in getting Mortal Kombat to transition into the early years of 3D gaming.
00:42Some may point to Mythologies as the worst game in the franchise, but there's a strong case to be made for Special Forces.
00:48A game starring Jax and his burly cybernetic muscles sounds awesome until you start littering the game with the same two corridors and rooms as the previous two.
00:58It winds up making the game feel insanely repetitive, especially when all we're doing is just going room to room to beat up baddies.
01:05That's your loop? Really?
01:072001 The Simpsons Wrestling
01:26Now, you want to talk about one of the worst games to come out on the first PlayStation console?
01:31Here's your big ticket item.
01:33The Simpsons Wrestling is an absolute mess from head to toe with its annoying audio, horrendous visuals, and unbelievable busted gameplay.
01:41Regardless if it's you or the AI, be prepared to hear the same couple of sound effects and dialogue in quick succession.
01:48Also, pray to God that you don't ever have to fight Ned Flanders, as he is the one character that breaks the entire game.
01:55You would think that title would go to Mr. Burns and Smithers as you fight them both on a 2v1 match,
02:01but when you got Mr. Doodly-Doo here calling God to strike you down repeatedly, controllers will get thrown.
02:082002 Sneakers
02:20Between the big three, Xbox has never really had that strong of a lineup when it comes to exclusives.
02:34Case in point, Sneakers, an action-puzzler published by Xbox Game Studios themselves when they were known as Microsoft Game Studios.
02:42Sneakers tasked players with leading a group of mice through a series of rooms to fight other mice hiding in various spots.
02:49And that's all there is to this game.
02:51Wander around, fight mice, head to a slightly bigger area, fight more mice, rinse and repeat until you fall asleep, or hope the tediousness causes the disc to crash.
03:02Considering this was a game you could only buy from a Toys R Us store, you would hope the toy store chain would have known this was not worth the investment before the game was out.
03:112003 Big Rigs Over the Road Racing
03:28In the wonderful world of racing games, you will never find a more wretched hive of bugs and glitches as Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.
03:37Look, we won't judge anyone for shopping at their preferred retail store, but being a Walmart-exclusive game is already setting off some alarms in our heads.
03:45Big Rigs lacks any semblance of vehicle physics, collision detection, not even proper level design as you can drive over any and all terrain regardless of whether it makes logical sense.
03:56This would only be one of the earliest signs of Game Mill Entertainment's abysmal efforts in becoming a notable game publisher.
04:032004 The Guy Game
04:23Given the hot water The Guy Game found itself in after launch, it's impossible for any other game that came out in 2004 to top this one.
04:32For those unaware, The Guy Game was a simple trivia game where players had to answer questions from various categories.
04:38The better they performed, the more uncensored the game gets as, uh, hotties expose themselves to the camera for getting questions wrong.
04:46It could have been deemed as just a weird game for anyone to own until one of the contestants filed a lawsuit against developer Top Heavy Studios towards the end of 2004.
04:56Turns out, the contestant was not of age when she participated in the game's recording.
05:01The Texas justice system ruled in favor of the contestant and ordered Top Heavy to cease all distribution of The Guy Game.
05:08Top Heavy's response on their website was,
05:10The man has decided that our fun and hilarious presentation of Spring Break Revelry just wasn't appropriate for the world of gaming.
05:17Top Heavy would eventually close its doors in 2005.
05:232005 Ninja Bread Man
05:33Moving on to slightly less manure-filled pastures, Ninja Bread Man was just one of many shovelware titles flooding the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo Wii throughout the 2000s.
05:43While a violent gingerbread man sounds like it'd make for an awesome video game, the idea is quickly deflated once you realize the game is only three levels long, not including the tutorial.
05:54Its reputation only worsened as developer Data Design Interactive would take the game's levels and re-skin them for a handful of other games.
06:02So, if you ever played Rock and Roll Adventures, Trixie in Toyland, or Anubis 2, you've experienced the same clunky combat and unreliable controls as Ninja Bread Man.
06:172006 Sonic the Hedgehog
06:31While revisionists today like to pretend that Sonic 06 was actually good, no. No, it wasn't actually good, and it never has been under any lens.
06:40For some reason, Sega joined the handful of other publishers that were trying to make their cartoony mascots greedy in embarrassing ways.
06:48But what made Sonic 06 stand out from Bomberman Act Zero were three things.
06:53First, the broken physics which often made Sonic uncontrollable and defied any and all logic in physics.
06:59Second, the lack of unique visuals and environments resulting in a generic looking game.
07:04And lastly, shall we all remember that infamous kiss scene? I think I speak for all of us when we say we'd rather not.
07:192007 Boogie
07:28Developers, if you ever have your heart set on making a music game for your next product, it's absolutely critical that you make your controls and input latency as accurate and responsive as possible.
07:39EA Montreal seemed to have forgotten that little tidbit as Boogie was as hard or easy as you wanted to make it.
07:45The microphone peripheral barely worked half of the time, while the motion controls for dancing were so loose that you could just flail the hell out of it and still pass every song.
07:55That said, good luck getting through your favorite songs if you're wanting to sing and dance to them.
08:062008 Facebreaker
08:16For a time, Electronic Arts was making a solid push for sports games aimed towards casual players with their EA Sports Freestyle label.
08:24The first of these games was Facebreaker, and it was not only the first under this label, it was among the worst games EA ever published.
08:31We can respect the presentation and character designs here, but when the AI is so unforgiving with its input reading and borderline touch-of-death combos, Facebreaker becomes utterly rage-inducing and annoying.
08:43It doesn't help that some characters have game-breaking moves like hypnosis or firing missiles.
08:552009 Rogue Warrior
09:06An action game starring Mickey Rourke sounds like it could make for a highly entertaining experience.
09:12Plus, we don't see many games set in the Cold War era.
09:15The thing is that Rogue Warrior was too painful to play even after Bethesda brought Rebellion Developments in to try and save the game.
09:23Alas, it was too late. Rogue Warrior was plagued by an absolutely abysmal story, boring combat encounters that amounted to visceral shooting galleries, and an absurdly short campaign that would only take you a little over an hour to finish.
09:37The only thing that came out of this game that was kind of neat was the famous rap that Mickey Rourke performs during the credits.
09:44At least that turned out to be so bad that it was good.
09:542010 Final Fantasy XIV
10:07Most folks forget that A Realm Reborn was not the first iteration of Final Fantasy XIV, hence the name.
10:14No, the original version was a completely different game in the worst ways possible.
10:19While many loved the world of Eorzea, the user interface was abysmal in how menu-riddled it was, not to mention the general confusing layout.
10:28Plus, the game constantly suffered for performance issues no matter which way you went. Frame drops, stuttering, and glitches aplenty.
10:35With it having been so long since we started with A Realm Reborn, it's almost hard to comprehend that this rendition actually existed at one point.
10:502011 FlatOut 3 Chaos and Destruction
11:05The FlatOut series has enjoyed a quiet life, earning its own slice of the niche vehicular combat genre in gaming.
11:12However, things were looking rather bleak when this third entry in the franchise exploded onto the scene, and crashed and burned in the most miserable way possible.
11:21From the general performance issues to the obscene amount of bugs and glitches, it's hard to tell what exactly happened here.
11:28Was the game rushed out the door, or was this just a bad circumstance of awful programming?
11:33No matter which way you spin it, FlatOut 3 was simply unsavable as it also had some abysmal controls and questionable AI.
11:41FlatOut 4 thankfully turned out better than we had dreaded, but even so, it wasn't as great as FlatOut 2.
11:552012 Infestation Survivor Stories, aka The War Z
12:00Remember the era of Steam Greenlight and the amount of drivel that spewed from the program?
12:12Well, Infestation Survivor Stories was among those.
12:16The game was originally listed as The War Z until producer Sergei Titov received the notice from the United States Patent and Trademark Office to rename the game to avoid violating Paramount Pictures' trademark of World War Z.
12:29But this would be the least of Titov's worries, because after seeing some fairly positive reception, Titov went on a spree of awful behavior using homophobic slurs,
12:39dismissing any criticism thrown at the game, and advertising features that weren't even present.
12:45Things got so bad that Valve began investigating the game, Titov, and his development studio, OP Productions, as hackers began trying to get the game taken down.
12:55I mean, hey, what else would you expect from one of the key developers behind big rigs over-the-road racing?
13:092013 Ride to Hell Retribution
13:13We don't see many games centered on motorcycles or biker gangs unless they're being portrayed as thugs, in-game enemies to throw at the player.
13:28Ride to Hell Retribution could have been a gateway for folks interested in biker culture until folks got their hands on it.
13:35Oof. Major oof.
13:37It wasn't enough for developer Eutechnics to implement lazy shortcuts in animations and reused assets.
13:43Nope, there were also women who were set as prizes and rewards for the player with steamy cutscenes between missions.
13:50This wasn't just a complete trainwreck of a game.
13:52It was kind of a complete exploitation and objectification of women in the most offensive, tasteless, and insensitive way possible.
14:00That was fun, Jake. I had fun.
14:062014 Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric
14:09He's an evil, ruthless, dangerous, pitiless, remorseless monster. Thank goodness he's locked up for all eternity.
14:18Yeah, funny story. Might have accidentally unleashed him on the world.
14:24Look, Sonic may be seeing better days in the modern era, but man, the blue blur was on a really bad run for a long, long time.
14:32Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric was practically the death knell for Sega's longtime mascot as the publisher bet big on this reboot only to flop and dry out like a cod in the desert.
14:42Rise of Lyric was infested with bugs, glitches, and performance issues around every freaking corner.
14:48Cutscenes show characters T-posing a few frames, frame drops happen at random parts of the game, Knuckles can jump forever just by frequently hitting pause, and can potentially skip a substantial part of the game.
15:00What hurts more is that quality assurance staff had to come out as the public dogpiled on them to say they warned both Big Red Button and Sega about the game's poor state.
15:11Clearly they were ignored.
15:13Chuck another one up for Team Sonic!
15:152015, Alone in the Dark Illumination
15:25Alone in the Dark just can't seem to catch a break anymore. Not like it did in the good old days anyway.
15:31Even after the awful 2008 reboot and the mediocre 2024 reboot, Illumination remains the worst title in the franchise's history.
15:39Just everything about this game reeks of sheer laziness in quality between the stiff character animation, constantly recycled environments, and over-reliance on random generation for its level design.
15:51Perhaps Alone in the Dark would have had a future as an online co-op multiplayer game had there been more time and care put into crafting a morbidly imaginative world rather than trying to shortcut its way to success.
16:102016, Umbrella Corps
16:23Speaking of games focused on online multiplayer, does anyone remember the dumpster fire that was Umbrella Corps?
16:29Yes, this was a PvP Resident Evil spinoff where Capcom desperately wanted to break into the eSports scene.
16:36Even though nothing about Resident Evil ever screamed competitive play. I mean, isn't that more Street Fighter's thing?
16:42The thing about Umbrella Corps is that it was so chaotic that no one can tell what in the hell was happening.
16:48You want a typical team deathmatch, but you also want zombies and biomutants running around attacking everyone and everything?
16:55What about that seems entertaining enough to catch the eSports crowd?
16:59Thankfully, Capcom ditched this before they got too deep into potential post-launch support.
17:062017, 1-2 Switch
17:25The Switch's launch year was absolutely stellar with titles like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Breath of the Wild.
17:31But 1-2 Switch?
17:331-2 Switch?
17:35Even the right minds saw this game and thought, yes, I need this.
17:39This was a $50 package of cheaply designed minigames made to demonstrate the tech integrated into the Joy-Con controllers.
17:46Had this been a part of the Switch at launch, perhaps we wouldn't be talking about this game and instead be dunking on, say, Star Wars Battlefront 2.
17:54But when you want us to pay $50 to compete with our friends in cow milking and pretend eating?
18:00Let's be real here.
18:021-2 Switch!
18:052018, Super Seducer, How to Talk to Girls
18:09Hey, excuse me, can I tell you something really quickly?
18:12Sure.
18:13I just saw you and wanted to let you know that you look really elegant.
18:17I love the skirt as well, it's really summery.
18:20In 2018, we named Super Seducer the worst game of the year and we're putting another glaring light of scrutiny on it now.
18:27Unrealistic in presentation, creepy in execution, Super Seducer claims to help players talk to women and get dates
18:34all while depicting women as easy to manipulate and ultimately gamifying what should be the romantic part of life.
18:40Somehow, self-proclaimed pickup artist Richard LaRuina still managed to get two sequels out of this endeavor before leaving the gaming industry and YouTube.
18:49This is undoubtedly a cool thing about her, so you definitely need to connect on it and compliment it.
18:552019, WWE 2K20
19:05At the time WWE 2K20 came out, it was almost a tradition for WatchMojo to put a WWE game on the worst games of the year list.
19:13Trust us, there were a ton of bad ones.
19:16Unbeknownst to us, this would be the last goldmine of surreal technical problems we would see from the franchise.
19:23From jiggly rope physics to bugged character models, WWE 2K20 became the laughingstock of the internet for a solid month or two in 2019 as more and more clips went viral.
19:34The reception was so poor that 2K had to come out and announce that the franchise would be skipping a year
19:40so that the publisher and developer Visual Concepts could figure out how to move forward with the franchise.
19:45Imagine our surprise when WWE 2K21 came out as amazing as it did.
19:50And so ends an era of dunking on this series once a year.
19:582020, Warcraft 3 Reforged
20:09Everyone draws their own starting point from when Blizzard Entertainment truly burned all of its goodwill.
20:15For most, that point was Warcraft 3 Reforged.
20:19What was supposed to be a remake honoring the 2002 RTS turned out to be a lazy remaster lacking in features that were promised during marketing.
20:27Where were all of the shiny new cutscenes?
20:30Angering fans even more was the hostile ad user license agreement which stated that any mods made under Reforged would be immediately under Blizzard's ownership.
20:39The fans were pissed, and that's just putting it super lightly.
20:43Listen, when your game gets review bombed so hard that it becomes the lowest user rated game on Metacritic, you know you've royally screwed things up.
21:002021, Balan Wonderworld
21:04A brand new 3D platformer from famed developer Yuji Naka, the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog, sounds like enough of a reason to get excited.
21:18Especially with the unique theme of musical theater tied to it.
21:22Ultimately, Naka's attachment meant nothing to the game's quality as Balan Wonderworld would go so far as to taint it.
21:28Not including the touchpad, d-pad, and analog sticks, controllers have 8 usable buttons.
21:344 face buttons, 2 shoulder buttons, and 2 triggers.
21:38So why does this game dedicate every single one of them to a single ability?
21:42It amounts to piss-poor design and a severe lack in implementing creative gimmicks to help the game truly shine.
21:48But sure, let's focus on the feel-good attitude over everything else.
21:52No one will mind the de-rendering objects and awkward reuse of the same mo-cap dances.
22:072022, Babylon's Fall
22:10Prior to 2022, Platinum Games had been in a slump with several games having flopped about as hard as most of the entries on this list.
22:28And yes, we mean critically and commercially.
22:31Surely a partnership with Square Enix might revive faith in the studio in some way, right?
22:36Well, not with Babylon's Fall.
22:38But come on guys, did anyone truly expect a live-service game with copy-pasted corridors and a gameplay loop that made no sense to really take off?
22:47Not in your life, sport.
22:49Babylon's Fall didn't even live for more than half a year before Square Enix pulled the cord.
22:54And to think there were people dumpster diving for discarded GameStop copies just for a temporary free game.
23:042023, The Lord of the Rings Golem
23:08Let's get this over with.
23:16The Lord of the Rings Golem was the worst game we had seen in 2023.
23:20And we saw some massive stinkers in the tail end of the year with Skull Island Rise of Kong and The Walking Dead Destinies.
23:27But Golem was such an enigma in how long it spent in development and the public perception that no one was really wanting a game starring Golem and Smeagol.
23:36Everyone thought the game would turn out unremarkable at most.
23:40What we witnessed was a technical train wreck of game-breaking bugs that could be easily replicated,
23:45areas where you could see skyboxes in dev assets,
23:48and frequent crashes caused by Golem's hair physics, which were removed from the game prior to launch.
23:54This all resulted in the development side of Daedalic Entertainment being closed entirely.
23:59The company is now focusing only on publishing games.
24:062024, Concord
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24:272024, Concord
24:31Wow.
24:34When isolated to the game itself and only what the game delivered, Concord isn't terrible.
24:39Just mundane, lifeless, and erratic in character design and art direction.
24:44However, the reason it was 2024's worst game is because of the impact.
24:48Absolutely no one wanted this game.
24:51And reception was so bad that Sony pulled the game from sale less than two weeks after launch with servers being shuttered not long after.
24:59Digital customers were refunded their 40 bucks, while physical buyers were now stuck with plastic containing now useless, inaccessible code.
25:07And as if things couldn't get any worse for Sony, word got out by Colin Moriarty, founder of podcast network Last Stand Media,
25:15that Concord had cost Sony nearly half a billion dollars between the game's development and the acquisition of developer Firewalk Studios.
25:23Today, Concord only exists as a random episode of the Amazon series' Secret Level.
25:28As for Firewalk Studios, the company was closed by Sony in October 2024, a little more than a month after the game's removal from storefronts.
25:37It's on.
25:41Did you suffer through any of these games yourself? Let us know down in the comments.
25:45How's about after I win the qualifier, I work with you two?
25:49Perhaps. You'll have to win first.
25:53Off you pop.
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