Worst video game you've ever played?

[virtualpet2001]

Pac Man World 3 for the Nintendo DS...I have no idea how well it actually stands up as a port OR as a standalone game but that thing baffled me as a child. The environments are all extremely desolate and pacman himself sticks out like a sore thumb in them. i cant remember if I didnt have the instructions or if they were just extremely vague because it took forever to figure out how to progress in the game, and I still had no idea what I was doing. I don't think i got past the third level.

despite it all I do think it still has merits as a game lol. maybe ill revisit it someday. ive actually randomly met another person who said this was their least favorite game which is an insane coincidence to me

[rhyswynne]

There are few games that I'm bored, frustrated or not enjoying playing, but the worst video game I've ever played is one that made me actively angry.

That was The Witness.

I absolutely hated it as it was so pretentious and difficult. It didn't respect your time either - illogical puzzles that just were ridiculous. I got to the end, hated the ending, went back and watched the true ending on YouTube. That was even more pretentious and wasted 15 minutes of my life.

Actually hate it with a passion.

[zomboid]

my last mainline pokemon game was ultra sun/ultra moon and i honestly did not enjoy it at all. im not against remakes or remasters fundamentally but USUM felt like it added NOTHING in terms of content, even postgame. plus I will always compare the newer pokemon games against XY because it felt much more compelling with gameplay functionality. the story was not good in XY but they introduced a ton of new gameplay mechanics like pokemon amie, rollerblades, and character customization, and it makes my nose crinkle in disgust that Nintendo threw all of those features out the window to make progressively worse games in recent years.

another big one would be Sun Haven, honestly. i played maybe 1 or 2 hours of it and it was so janky and buggy when i played it like 4-5 years ago that i got a refund and then a few years later i learned about the amount of burnout and abuse the employees faced and how many people arent even credited for their work.

[alexela64]

the Zero Escape series

SO glad someone mentioned this series. I watched a friend play the first game and we kept looking at each other like "??????" Genuinely makes no sense.

That was The Witness.

I've never played Witness but would HIGHLY recommend watching a playthrough of its parody game "The Looker", specifically Joseph Anderson's. Genuinely brought me to tears of laughter

im not against remakes or remasters fundamentally but USUM felt like it added NOTHING in terms of content, even postgame.

I loved Sun so much that I bought Ultra Sun when it came out only to be Massively Dissapointed when it was just The Same Thing. The blatant cashgrab with like 2 whole tweaks to what I considered a genuinely good story at the time messed me up i was so mad. Got maybe like 6 hours in and haven't really touched it since, been trying to complete my Sun pokedex.

As for the worst game I've ever played. I love playing terrible shovelware games so there are definitely a ton, but I usually enjoy them, so I have trouble saying something is "bad." If we're speaking objectively, probably an itch game of some sort. I believe I played one that was literally just a reskin of enter the gungeon that was pretty bad... Or Garten of BanBan. Genuine trash.
Subjectively, Helltaker. Not interesting after like the first three puzzles, clearly just "ooh look at hot demon girls." And while I'm a fan of that concept, I can watch a playthrough and get the same effect lol

[Zero Kirby]

For me it's without a doubt Metroid: Other M. Even though I could generously describe it as a "mediocre action game" with pretty decent graphics for a Wii game, being forced to control a 3D action-platformer with a lone Wii Remote is not my idea of fun, and the world design is so lockstep linear that I can barely even call it a Metroid game. There's absolutely zero satisfaction in getting new powerups because for most of them, the game just traps you in an inescapable situation for a few seconds, then says, "oh yeah, you can use this now to get out of it." No sense of discovery or little "a-ha" moments, no excitement. There's a part where you're stuck in first-person mode until you find a patch of green blood splattered on green grass and you have to swivel around 180 degrees to find it when you never had to do that with any of the other dumb pixel hunt sections. And wow, swapping between view modes in combat is obnoxious and awful and barely works. But you gotta do it if you want to shoot missiles.

And that's all without mentioning how abysmal the story is. A horrendous garbage fire where every character has to be soul-crushingly stupid for it to even work. If the characters just talked with each other, like, once, but no, we instead get Samus' droning monotone inner monologue, which, unlike the actually interesting and introspective monologues from Fusion, add absolutely nothing to every scene except spelling out what you already saw. On top of that, she accomplishes absolutely nothing over the course of the game. Every single event of actual consequence is handled by another character in the narrative. Samus may as well have not even been there.

I've probably played games with worse gameplay and worse stories, but as a huge Metroid fan that was extremely hyped for this game until it released, it was a devastating one-two punch and a lesson that you shouldn't get too excited about something before you have it.

[oldmurray34]

Genuinely makes no sense

At least it's funny in all the wrong ways in my opinion. And if you compare it to Danganronpa, I do prefer Zero Escape as trashy VNs go

[alexela64]

At least it's funny in all the wrong ways in my opinion. And if you compare it to Danganronpa, I do prefer Zero Escape as trashy VNs go

I absolutely agree, the critique of it came from a place of adoration as i love games like those, where nothing really makes sense. It's funnier to me than a lot of the danganronpa stuff i've seen that's for sure lol

Should I ever play through them you think? Would i gain anything from playing rather than just experiencing secondhand

[oldmurray34]

It's funnier to me than a lot of the danganronpa stuff i've seen that's for sure lol

Danganronpa is too self-aware but at the same time not self-aware enough, whilst Zero Escape takes itself half-seriously, which makes nonsense tastier lol

Should I ever play through them you think? Would i gain anything from playing rather than just experiencing secondhand

Honestly unless you REALLY like puzzles (it is an escape room game after all), I'd watch someone stream it or whatever, because it gives it that cozy communal vibe, when you and the fellas gather to watch something bad, but funny. Or, well, you could play it together with a couple of friends, I think it should be a blast!

Oh, silly me, thought of it only after the fact: since you have mentioned Joseph Anderson, you can watch his Zero Escape vods. He played through the whole trilogy and his playthrough is very funny

[Kissasta]

I dunno if its the worst game I've ever played but I remember playing Pacman world for the GBA and it being such a miserable time I had ripped the cartridge out while it was saving and had heavily considered breaking it or damaging it in some way (it was a rental from BlockBuster before they went kaput). Luckily I didnt and it was simply returned, but goodness I rarely raged that bad even back then when I was a tween and angsty but I just lost it for that game for some reason.

[Zero Kirby]

I dunno if its the worst game I've ever played but I remember playing Pacman world for the GBA and it being such a miserable time I had ripped the cartridge out while it was saving and had heavily considered breaking it or damaging it in some way (it was a rental from BlockBuster before they went kaput). Luckily I didnt and it was simply returned, but goodness I rarely raged that bad even back then when I was a tween and angsty but I just lost it for that game for some reason.

I had that one too! I had no idea until years later that it was actually a port of the PlayStation game, not an adaptation like so many other portable versions of console games back then, which is absolutely bonkers to me. I mean, it's kind of impressive that they tried to make as faithful a port as they could given the difference in hardware, but with the compromises they made and the content that's missing, I don't think it was worth it.