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WHILE 2023 is often called one of the best years ever for games, not everything that came out this year was a success.
Some big-name games made the worst of the worst, including some with popular franchises attached.
However, there are some car crashes that you can’t look away from, and we’ve rounded up 10 beautiful messes.
Here are the 10 of the worst games of the year decided by Metacritic score.
10. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
10
Metacritic score: 53
A late entry in the year, both fans and critics were hugely disappointed by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.
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The new single-player campaign was painfully short, and potentially offensive, and the multiplayer mode didn’t fare much better.
A week later, the game was complete, but people were furious that what felt like a DLC package at best, was charging £70.
The worst thing about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is that it’s driving players away from Modern Warfare 2.
You can check out our CoD: MW3 single-player review and CoD: MW3 multiplayer review here.
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9. Unholy
10
Metacritic score: 52
When people first saw this atmospheric horror game, it looked the part enough for people to buy it.
However, Unholy’s highest review was a 70 thanks to the terrible gameplay that did not live up to what the game showed.
The game has been likened to a series of uninteresting puzzles and terrible AI.
Worst of all is the controls which are difficult to make sense of, and have led many players to the point of frustration.
8. Xuan-Yuan Sword: Mists Beyond the Mountains
10
Metacritic score: 52
While this game is part of a classic series, it seems that the terrible localisation is at fault for making the game fall flat.
The story is one of the best aspects, but this translation was seen as boring, making the long run time hard to endure.
The gameplay is seen as serviceable, but this wasn’t enough to encourage people to read the dire dialogue.
It also wasn’t much to look at, which didn’t help its case.
7. Crime Boss: Rockay City
10
Metacritic score: 52
Crime Boss was one of the bigger failures of the year, as it seems the game put more effort into getting a star-studded cast than on the gameplay.
While people were excited to see Chuck Norris and Vanilla Ice in their heist game, almost every star put in a terrible performance.
This made the story completely uninteresting, but this wasn’t redeemed by the gameplay.
There were some good concepts for levels, but the gameplay was far too repetitive to keep people playing.
6. Loop8: Summer of Gods
10
Metacritic score: 49
Loop8 showed signs of promise, offering Persona-style gameplay with life-sim and RPG elements.
This is put into a time loop mechanic, for what seems like a very promising game.
However, Loop8 fumbled all of these ideas, the characters were shallow, the story had a glacial slow pace, and the combat was boring.
While everything functioned fine, overall it led to a boring and dragged-out experience.
5. Quantum Error
10
Metacritic score: 42
Quantum Error isn’t like the other games in this list, in that it isn’t just boring or lacklustre, but it is simply bad.
You play as a firefighter who carries around a whole arsenal of weapons to take down rogue AI in a horror setting.
Tonally none of it makes sense, and it struggles to marry any of these concepts together.
Shooting is weak, the firefighting isn’t interesting, and it’s filled with overdone horror game tropes.
4. Testament: The Order of the High Human
10
Metacritic score: 41
This is a game where the team had dreams far beyond what they were capable of.
If the scope had been narrowed down, then it could have been a tight and satisfying experience instead of a bloated mess.
It’s a fantasy RPG that reminds us of Skyrim, if everything about it was bad.
And it’s a shame because the team showed some skill and promise, but their ambitions got away from them.
3. Greyhill Incident
10
Metacritic score: 38
Screenshots of Greyhill Incident may make it seem acceptable, but the whole thing falls apart as soon as you see some video.
It looks like every other early-access survival game on the market, and there are plenty of them to play already.
The gameplay is the same boring cookie-cutter clone, and it contains a lot of nothing.
It feels distinctly unfinished, but that hasn’t stopped it from selling for £21 and releasing DLC.
2. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
10
Metacritic score: 34
The highest-profile flop of the year, people were thoroughly excited for the next big Lord of the Rings game.
However, Gollum was barely functional, extremely ugly, and nothing like the team had promised.
The team had to release a public apology about the games quality, but that drew anger after spelling mistakes in the title led people to think it was AI and not at all sincere.
Even if it had worked as intended, Gollum’s gameplay was boring at best and frustrating at worst.
1. Skull Island: Rise of Kong
10
Metacritic score: 23
We’ve become numb to terrible design, clunky graphics and Steam marketplace asset flips over the years, but we weren’t prepared for this.
With a big-name IP like King Kong on the front, this diabolical nightmare was somehow let through the cracks and allowed to be published.
It was horrible to look at, and terrible to play, with still images intercut into the motion cutscenes.
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Worst of all the developer has a gall to ask for £35 for this mess.
Written by Georgina Young on behalf of GLHF.
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