Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Johnathan Strickling. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: before I jump into today's episode topic, I want to
Speaker 1: give a couple of corrections that I got to recent episodes,
Speaker 1: which is totally valid. You guys are an awesome audience,
Speaker 1: and I really appreciate when you reach out too gently.
Speaker 1: Remind me that sometimes I get stuff wrong because you
Speaker 1: typically do it in a responsible way, which I greatly appreciate,
Speaker 1: and I should stress in almost every case, it's where
Speaker 1: I have researched something and somewhere between the process of
Speaker 1: reading it and taking my notes, my brain has inserted
Speaker 1: information that has made it wrong. So the fault lies
Speaker 1: on me and I accept that. So first correction in
Speaker 1: the Pebble episode, I mentioned that the Pebble Watch, the
Speaker 1: original Pebble Watch, had an e paper display, and then
Speaker 1: I explained how e ink works. And indeed the two
Speaker 1: terms are frequently used interchangeably. You will often find e
Speaker 1: paper and ink both talking about the same technology that
Speaker 1: one that uses those electro statically charged capsules. However, that
Speaker 1: being said, the display that the Pebble the original Pebble
Speaker 1: watch had was not a true e ink style e
Speaker 1: paper one, even though they referred to it as e paper.
Speaker 1: It was actually a low powered l c D screen
Speaker 1: called a transflective l c D so it works in
Speaker 1: a different way than the ink stuff does. The purpose
Speaker 1: of it is very similar, the idea being that you
Speaker 1: want to be able to read the screen based upon
Speaker 1: available light in the environment as opposed to having a
Speaker 1: backlit screen like your typical smartphone. But it works in
Speaker 1: a different principles, so thank you for that correction. Secondly,
Speaker 1: listener Ben pointed that in the Cambridge Analytica podcasts, I
Speaker 1: mentioned a sting operation conducted by the BBC. Small problem
Speaker 1: that wasn't the BBC. It was actually Channel four News
Speaker 1: in the UK, not a BBC channel. So this one
Speaker 1: is just comes down to my stupid American brain, because
Speaker 1: my stupid American brain says, oh, it was British television
Speaker 1: that means BBC, which is ridiculous. I know there's more
Speaker 1: television in the UK than the BBC channels. I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm just an ignorant American, So I apologize for that.
Speaker 1: And third, there's a software engineer who would absolutely love
Speaker 1: it if I stopped saying degrees kelvin because the unit
Speaker 1: of kelvin is the kelvin, not the degree. So that's
Speaker 1: the correct thing. You want to say, kelvin, not degrees kelvin. Now,
Speaker 1: you will frequently see and hear people use the phrase
Speaker 1: degrees kelvin, but it's technically wrong until enough people use it,
Speaker 1: because that's how language works if it if enough people
Speaker 1: use it the wrong way, the wrong way becomes the
Speaker 1: right way. So I charge everyone out there to start
Speaker 1: saying degrees kelvin because if enough of you do it,
Speaker 1: I don't have to worry about saying it the right way.
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I'll try my best to remember to
Speaker 1: be accurate. I appreciate all of those corrections. Now, onto
Speaker 1: the topic for today. Way back in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: my then co host Chris Pellette and I did an
Speaker 1: episode about the worst video games of All Time. But
Speaker 1: these were titles that were submitted by listeners. We solicited
Speaker 1: uh various nominations, and we did it over Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter and email, and we just asked people nominate what
Speaker 1: you think are the worst video games of all time,
Speaker 1: and then we taied them all up. And so in
Speaker 1: that episode we talked about games that had been considered
Speaker 1: bad for various things. Maybe they had missed release dates repeatedly.
Speaker 1: Duke Nukem Forever was a famous one and had just
Speaker 1: come out that year after more than a decade of
Speaker 1: being in development. We also talked about games that were
Speaker 1: buried in the desert after too many cartridges had been
Speaker 1: made and not enough people wanted to buy a copy,
Speaker 1: like E. T. The Extraterrestrial for the A. But what
Speaker 1: about the games that have come out since two thousand eleven.
Speaker 1: What are some of the most notoriously bad games of
Speaker 1: that era. Well, before I jump in and start talking
Speaker 1: about specific titles, I do want to say that we
Speaker 1: need to keep in mind that real people worked on
Speaker 1: these games. They dedicated their time, their effort, their energy
Speaker 1: into making a game a reality, and things just didn't
Speaker 1: go right. So in some cases, maybe they tackled more
Speaker 1: than they could handle and ultimately the game they created
Speaker 1: was a disappointment. In other cases, you might have had
Speaker 1: executives who are constantly shifting expectations and the development team
Speaker 1: was kind of left in the lurch as a result,
Speaker 1: and maybe they even had things like a hardline deadline
Speaker 1: that had to be the date that the game would ship,
Speaker 1: whether the game was ready or not. A lot of
Speaker 1: games have suffered from that sort of thing, But I
Speaker 1: think in most cases, no one really sets out to
Speaker 1: make a crappy game on purpose, And so while the
Speaker 1: games I'm going to go through here have a reputation
Speaker 1: for being bad, we need to remember they probably did
Speaker 1: not start off that way, most of them. Anyway. There
Speaker 1: might be a few cynical cash grabs in here that
Speaker 1: do not qualify for such consideration. But you game developers
Speaker 1: out there who are trying to deliver upon crazy expectations,
Speaker 1: both from within a company and from the gaming community
Speaker 1: at large, my hat is off to you. You do
Speaker 1: incredible work. Now, for this episode, I consulted Metacritic to
Speaker 1: look at the games that scored the lowest in aggregated
Speaker 1: reviews since the original episode came out in late From
Speaker 1: the Metacritic website, here is how they described their methodology quote.
Speaker 1: Creating our proprietary meta scores is a complicated process. We
Speaker 1: carefully curate a large group of the world's most respected
Speaker 1: critics assigned scores to their reviews and apply a weighted
Speaker 1: average to summarize the range of their opinions. The result
Speaker 1: is a single number that captures the essence of critical
Speaker 1: opinion in one meta score. Each movie, game, television show,
Speaker 1: an album featured on Metacritic gets a meta score when
Speaker 1: we've collected at least four critics reviews end quote. So
Speaker 1: in other words, they're aggregating all these different reviews and
Speaker 1: then kind of determining where on a score between zero
Speaker 1: and one hundred, that review rates the product. So a
Speaker 1: zero would be the absolute worst, one would be the
Speaker 1: absolute best. For games, anything beneath the score of fifty
Speaker 1: is considered generally unfavorable. If it's less than twenty, it
Speaker 1: is overwhelming dislike is the nature of those reviews. And
Speaker 1: spoiler alert, we have some on this list that dropped
Speaker 1: down below twenty. But the first one we're gonna talk about,
Speaker 1: number ten, the ten worst video games since the Fall
Speaker 1: of two thousand eleven would be flat out three Chaos
Speaker 1: and Destruction that came out December two thousand eleven, so
Speaker 1: just a few months after we had done our episode,
Speaker 1: and it came out for the PC. The Metacritics score
Speaker 1: was twenty three yikes, and this was a car racing game,
Speaker 1: and as the name indicates, it was the third such
Speaker 1: in a series of games. The original game developer for
Speaker 1: the series was a company called Bugbear, but Bugbear developers
Speaker 1: were actually busy working on a totally different title, that
Speaker 1: of Ridge Racer unbounded. The jab of developing the next
Speaker 1: entry in the Flat Out series then fell to a
Speaker 1: Dutch video game development studio called Team Six. As a
Speaker 1: review on I g N pointed out, this was actually
Speaker 1: an early sign of concern because the games that had
Speaker 1: come out of Team six lacked something. They had great titles.
Speaker 1: I'm definitely intrigued by a game that's titled Calvin Tucker's
Speaker 1: Redneck Farm Animals Racing Tournament. What. But the studio developed
Speaker 1: a different physics engine for this rather than the previous
Speaker 1: one that was used for Flat Out two, and this
Speaker 1: one reviewers said was sloppy. It was in direct contradiction
Speaker 1: with earlier games in the series. So in the past
Speaker 1: you could drive really aggressively. You could you could kind
Speaker 1: of smash your way through opponents. You can nudge them
Speaker 1: and knock them off course and and continue on your way.
Speaker 1: But in Flat Out three. It seemed like the slightest
Speaker 1: contact with anything would result in your car flipping all
Speaker 1: over the place. It suddenly looked like you could not
Speaker 1: behave in this way, and it wasn't consistent you would.
Speaker 1: You would have what would appear to be a colossal,
Speaker 1: disastrous crash on screen, and your car would only suffer
Speaker 1: a little bit of damage, or you might just gently
Speaker 1: grace up against another car and then suddenly your engine
Speaker 1: is smoking. The AI was substandard as well, with computer
Speaker 1: controlled racers spending more time crashing into each other than
Speaker 1: trying to race the course. So it sounds pretty much
Speaker 1: like all the design decisions going into Flat Out three
Speaker 1: created a game that was not fun to play. It
Speaker 1: didn't make sense, and was a total departure from earlier
Speaker 1: Flat Out games. The lack of consistency or logic really
Speaker 1: hurt the game's reception. Team six is still around and
Speaker 1: the company primarily focuses on developing racing games. To this day,
Speaker 1: I'm not terribly familiar with their work. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've played any of their racing games, but as I
Speaker 1: understand it, many of those games have received a poor
Speaker 1: critical reception, not as bad as Flat Out three, but
Speaker 1: not great either. We're talking like Metacritics scores in the thirties,
Speaker 1: so I'm not much of a racing game player. I
Speaker 1: cannot speak to it personally, but it doesn't sound great.
Speaker 1: Number nine is Rambo the video game, which came out
Speaker 1: February twenty one, two thousand fourteen, and it came out
Speaker 1: for the PlayStation three, the Xbox three, sixty PC, and
Speaker 1: Metacritic gave it a score also of twenty three. Now.
Speaker 1: In general, video game adaptations of licensed characters frequently show
Speaker 1: up on lists about bad games. Now, I talked about
Speaker 1: ET the Extraterrestrial that is frequently listed as the worst
Speaker 1: game of all time, although it really isn't. But it
Speaker 1: is frequently the truth that a game of a licensed
Speaker 1: character doesn't turn out well. Now, that's not universally true.
Speaker 1: The recent PS four game of Spider Man is pretty
Speaker 1: darn fun to play. In my opinion, I think it's
Speaker 1: a great game, or at least I've really been enjoying it.
Speaker 1: But one cannot say the same for Rambo the video game. Now,
Speaker 1: Rambo refers to John Rambo, who's in several movies, the
Speaker 1: first being First Blood. He's a Vietnam war veteran in
Speaker 1: verse Blood, he returns to America and causes quite the
Speaker 1: ruckus going on essentially what it amounts to being a
Speaker 1: rampage at one point, and in subsequent films in the series,
Speaker 1: Rambo would become the archetypical action hero. He would carry
Speaker 1: enormous guns and just mow down antagonists left and right.
Speaker 1: That was always like the one man army kind of trope,
Speaker 1: and he became the model for all sorts of violent
Speaker 1: excess in the in the eighties and nineties. So what
Speaker 1: better character would you use to adapt to a video game?
Speaker 1: I mean, he's certainly inspired lots of different video game characters.
Speaker 1: So a developer named Tayon and a publisher called Reef
Speaker 1: Entertainment were responsible for adapting the material from the first
Speaker 1: three Rambo films and publishing them in video game form. Now,
Speaker 1: the actual game style took the form of a rail shooter.
Speaker 1: This is a type of game that you might see
Speaker 1: in arcades with light guns things like Time Crisis and
Speaker 1: the Past. You take through a level is set, and
Speaker 1: often even the speed at which you move through the
Speaker 1: level is set, and the way that villains or bad
Speaker 1: guys antagonists jump out at you that is set. Everything
Speaker 1: is kind of on a script, and it's your job
Speaker 1: to just try and do the best you can and
Speaker 1: shoot your enemies. Uh. This, however, didn't play on a
Speaker 1: system with a light gun. You would either use a
Speaker 1: controller or you would use a mouse and keyboard, and
Speaker 1: with the mouse in particular, it was reportedly incredibly easy
Speaker 1: to make every shot, so there was no challenge, there
Speaker 1: was no variety, The gameplay was outdated. Uh, the the
Speaker 1: the whole process appeared to be pretty substandard. The one
Speaker 1: good thing I saw in the critical reviews was that
Speaker 1: they did a pretty good job at replicating the environments
Speaker 1: that you would see in the actual Rambo movies, so
Speaker 1: that the video game versions of these seem to be
Speaker 1: fairly accurate to those. But apart from that, the actual
Speaker 1: game was substandard. Well, we've got more bad games to
Speaker 1: talk about, but first let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. We're up to number eight and number
Speaker 1: eight would be Fast and Furious Showdown another licensed property.
Speaker 1: This one came out in May two thirteen and came
Speaker 1: out for the Xbox three sixty, the PC, the PlayStation
Speaker 1: three apparently, the Nintendo three D S and the we
Speaker 1: you as well, and it scored on Metacritic a twenty two,
Speaker 1: so he's taken a step down. Now. This was published
Speaker 1: by Activision, and it was another kind of combination racing
Speaker 1: game and shooting game, and also a licensed game, so
Speaker 1: it had a lot going against it. The Fast and
Speaker 1: Furious film series is known for a crazy automobile action.
Speaker 1: Characters frequently pull off car stunts in those films that
Speaker 1: would be impossible in the real world, and everybody in
Speaker 1: those movies are They're all incredibly skilled race car driving
Speaker 1: superheroes essentially. So you'd think a video game based off
Speaker 1: the series would allow the player to take control of
Speaker 1: a car and likewise do impossible feats in a series
Speaker 1: of breathtaking missions, but unfortunately, the game's engine wasn't up
Speaker 1: to that challenge. The collision detection in the game was
Speaker 1: pretty bad. Virtual objects in the game had little mass.
Speaker 1: You would have, you know, like enormous obstacles crashed down
Speaker 1: in front of you, and your car would just kind
Speaker 1: of gently pushed them all the way there. Nothing seemed
Speaker 1: to have any weight to it. The level design was uninspired.
Speaker 1: The art style was not terribly pleasing from an esthetic
Speaker 1: point of view. The cinematic cut scenes weren't much better.
Speaker 1: They were they appeared to be of a lower quality
Speaker 1: than other current generation or that current generation cut scenes.
Speaker 1: People often said, this looks like it belongs on the
Speaker 1: previous generation hardware instead of PS three, less like it
Speaker 1: would have been at home on a PS two. The
Speaker 1: loading time between missions was incredibly long, and if you
Speaker 1: wanted to upgrade your car you could. You could earn
Speaker 1: experience in the game and use that experience to create
Speaker 1: upgrades for your vehicles or or other features. So let's
Speaker 1: say you want to boost your your vehicle's performance so
Speaker 1: that you can tackle the next level better, you would
Speaker 1: have to actually back out of the game entirely to
Speaker 1: the main menu, go into a different option, then make
Speaker 1: the changes, then back all the way back out again,
Speaker 1: and then go back in and restart up to where
Speaker 1: you were in the game in the within the storyline.
Speaker 1: Uh and keep in mind those loading screens were really long,
Speaker 1: and the menus also had spelling or grammatical errors in
Speaker 1: them which made it look a little amateurish. And most missions,
Speaker 1: you could control the driver of a vehicle and a
Speaker 1: passenger in the vehicle who was hanging outside of the
Speaker 1: window acting as a shooter. They have a gun and
Speaker 1: so you can fight off your opponents that are trying
Speaker 1: to run you off the road. The AI made very
Speaker 1: little sense. The cars did not move like real cars.
Speaker 1: The missions were mostly all variations on a common theme
Speaker 1: of running gun and so the lack of variability, the
Speaker 1: bad physics, the graphics. All of this contributed to the
Speaker 1: low scores and put it on our list of worst
Speaker 1: video games is two thousand eleven. Number seven is Afro
Speaker 1: Samurai to Revenge of Kuma, which came out in September
Speaker 1: two thou fifteen. Came out for the PlayStation four and
Speaker 1: the PC. It was supposed to come out for the
Speaker 1: Xbox One, but hang on here. Metacritic gave it a
Speaker 1: score of twenty one. This is another licensed property. Afro
Speaker 1: Samurai is a manga series in Japan, and the series
Speaker 1: follows a character named Afro Samurai, and he's out for revenge.
Speaker 1: His father was killed in the series, so he's out
Speaker 1: to revenge his his father's death. To avenge his father's death,
Speaker 1: I guess I should say, and an earlier video game
Speaker 1: adaptation of this story in two thousand nine had received
Speaker 1: average to decent reviews. It wasn't considered a blockbuster, but
Speaker 1: it was people said, now, so, hey, you know, it's
Speaker 1: not not a terrible game. It featured cell shaded animation
Speaker 1: as uh kind of a beat him up in a way,
Speaker 1: and the player controlled the titular character in his quest
Speaker 1: for revenge. So this this is the sequel to that game,
Speaker 1: and the sequel was supposed to be the first episode
Speaker 1: in a series. So the idea was to release the
Speaker 1: sequel in episodic format, and it put the player in
Speaker 1: control of a different character named Kuma, and Kuma wears
Speaker 1: a big mascot style bear head. The word Kuma is
Speaker 1: Japanese for bear, and Kuma is seeking out Afro Samurai
Speaker 1: to seek revenge for Kuma's sisters death, and like some
Speaker 1: Facebook relationship status is, it's complicated. So this game did
Speaker 1: come out for the PC and for the PS four.
Speaker 1: It was going to come out later for the Xbox One,
Speaker 1: but the PCMPS four versions got such bad reviews that
Speaker 1: not only was the Xbox One version canceled, ultimately the
Speaker 1: publisher actually withdrew through Afro Samurai too, from the Steam
Speaker 1: Store and from the PS store. So after getting really
Speaker 1: raked over the coals, by critics. The developer said, you
Speaker 1: know what we're going to just we're gonna take this down.
Speaker 1: So now no more copies are ever going to be sold. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was pretty negative reaction to warrant that kind of
Speaker 1: a response. Also, I think it makes the fact that
Speaker 1: the developer's name was redacted studios somewhat tragically comedic. The
Speaker 1: planned episodic sequels also got scrapped. So what made this
Speaker 1: such a bad game? Well, the answer to that question
Speaker 1: is a kind of everything. So critics were saying the
Speaker 1: voice acting for the game was over the top and cringeworthy,
Speaker 1: as the kids used to say, and at times the
Speaker 1: sound levels in the game made it really difficult to
Speaker 1: hear what was being said because sound effects or music
Speaker 1: was drowning out everything else, and so you're missing out
Speaker 1: on valuable and formation, although apparently it was valuable information
Speaker 1: that was delivered in this over the top kind of way,
Speaker 1: so maybe you were better off in the long run.
Speaker 1: The game style was that of a classic beat him up,
Speaker 1: kind of like the old side scrolling games of the
Speaker 1: early nineties, but this one was with sort of three
Speaker 1: dimensional levels, and it also had that cell shaded art
Speaker 1: style of its predecessor. The game had frame rate problems
Speaker 1: in which frames would drop and that would result in
Speaker 1: a type of skipping effect that made playing the game
Speaker 1: really hard and not much fun at all. It's difficult
Speaker 1: to time a counter attack if the action is skipping
Speaker 1: forward in spurts. You can't really time when you need
Speaker 1: to hit a button in order to avoid an oncoming
Speaker 1: attack and counter it. So, according to reviews, the animations
Speaker 1: of the character didn't always reflect the commands that they
Speaker 1: were sending through the controls. And then there was the camera.
Speaker 1: This would be the point of view for the player,
Speaker 1: and the camera would shift around and the player could
Speaker 1: not control it, so you would be stuck with whatever
Speaker 1: the camera angle happened to be, and that would sometimes
Speaker 1: call as the perspective to put the player at a disadvantage. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you might be moving through a level, but
Speaker 1: the camera angle makes it impossible for you to see
Speaker 1: what is directly ahead of you as a character. So
Speaker 1: as you're continuing through the level, you suddenly encounter a
Speaker 1: pet and fall right into it because you couldn't see
Speaker 1: it as a player. But if you were actually the character,
Speaker 1: if you were Kuma, you would have seen that pet
Speaker 1: coming from a mile away. So you think about that,
Speaker 1: an objective observer would just see someone running toward a
Speaker 1: pit for a really long time and then fall in
Speaker 1: the pit, and they would think that person couldn't see
Speaker 1: or they wanted to go in the pit. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine any other outcome. But in fact, the problem was
Speaker 1: that as a player, you couldn't see the pit at all,
Speaker 1: just because the perspective. So there are a lot of
Speaker 1: problems in this game that ultimately convinced the publisher to
Speaker 1: bring it back to cancel it. Number six was Infestation
Speaker 1: Survivor Stories, which released in October two thousand twelve for
Speaker 1: the PC. Metacritic gave it a score of twenties, so
Speaker 1: now we're hitting that threshold of overwhelming dislike. Uh. The
Speaker 1: studio that developed it was Hammer Point Interactive. The man
Speaker 1: most frequently associated with this game as a guy named
Speaker 1: Saragei Titov, who was one of the developers behind this game,
Speaker 1: And it was actually released under a different title originally,
Speaker 1: which was The war Z And if you think that
Speaker 1: sounds like a zombie game, you win a prize. The
Speaker 1: war Z was following on the success of a mod
Speaker 1: called day Zy and This mod was for a tactical
Speaker 1: shooter called Arma Too, and both Daisy and The war
Speaker 1: Z had very similar features. They would put players in
Speaker 1: a world dealing with a zombie outbreak, and in both
Speaker 1: games players would be in multiplayer maps, meaning you could
Speaker 1: encounter other humans as you played, and in both games
Speaker 1: you would scavenge for items and weapons and see how
Speaker 1: long you could survive. Steam removed the game from the
Speaker 1: store not too long after it was released, and Valves
Speaker 1: said that adding the game to the store was quote
Speaker 1: a mistake end quote. Some gamers probably agreed. Valvo releast
Speaker 1: the statement that said it was working with Titov to
Speaker 1: get the build of the game right so that it
Speaker 1: would meet expectations. So The war Z was a collaborative
Speaker 1: multiplayers survival game, and the game's listing on Steam mentioned
Speaker 1: features like the ability to create a friends list to
Speaker 1: rent a private server so that you and your friends
Speaker 1: could play without fearing the interference of griefers. Um there
Speaker 1: were supposed to be a skill system that would allow
Speaker 1: the players to progress in their capabilities. They were supposed
Speaker 1: to be up to a hundred people allowed to play
Speaker 1: on the same server at the same time, and there
Speaker 1: were supposed to be maps that were as big as
Speaker 1: four hundred square kilometers, but in actuality, the game didn't
Speaker 1: support those features, and that was the the root of
Speaker 1: some of the most harsh criticisms. They were saying, the
Speaker 1: game is promising us one thing but delivering something else.
Speaker 1: Te Top would say that players had quote unquote misread
Speaker 1: those features, implying that there whether uh, these were planned features.
Speaker 1: They were going to be in the game, they just
Speaker 1: weren't the game yet. They would be released later on
Speaker 1: the game's life. In addition, the game featured what some
Speaker 1: critics felt were predatory micro transactions that were intended to
Speaker 1: coax more money from players. So, for example, if your
Speaker 1: character died in the game, you'd get hit with a
Speaker 1: four hour cool down period before you could respawn unless
Speaker 1: you bought in game currency with real money, and then
Speaker 1: you could purchase an instant respawn. So in order to
Speaker 1: play the game, you would have to pay again. And
Speaker 1: keep in mind, this was already a game where you
Speaker 1: were buying it, it wasn't free to play. By a
Speaker 1: The game died an inglorious death, and the publisher said
Speaker 1: that the servers running the online game had been taken offline,
Speaker 1: and the reason given was that the servers had been
Speaker 1: hacked and the hackers had stolen cust more information from
Speaker 1: the databases, apparently not payment information, but other account information,
Speaker 1: including the user names, of passwords and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: They had also taken it into their own hands to
Speaker 1: ban certain players from the game on their own, and
Speaker 1: that was it. That was that for that game. Number
Speaker 1: five is Alone in the Dark Illumination, which came out
Speaker 1: June two thoft for the PC. The Metacritic score is nineteen.
Speaker 1: The Alone in the Dark series was fostered by Atari,
Speaker 1: and it falls in the category of survival horror. In fact,
Speaker 1: Alone in the Dark is often cited as the first
Speaker 1: title in modern survival horror games. Illumination was the sixth
Speaker 1: entry in that series. The developer for that particular game
Speaker 1: was Pure FPS, and unlike earlier games, which were single
Speaker 1: player experiences, this one featured online and cooperative play. Up
Speaker 1: to four people could play cooperatively at a time, and
Speaker 1: it would also become the lowest added game of up
Speaker 1: to four would play. But gameplay featured no puzzles. There
Speaker 1: was no real story involved. This was mostly done as
Speaker 1: a third person shooter survival horror game. Players could only
Speaker 1: inflict damage on enemies if those enemies were exposed to light.
Speaker 1: The light would make them vulnerable to damage. So your
Speaker 1: strategy for every level was exactly the same. You would
Speaker 1: run around the levels creating as many light sources as
Speaker 1: you could, then you would try to lure enemies into
Speaker 1: the light, and then you try to inflict enough damage
Speaker 1: to take those enemies down. And level layouts were different,
Speaker 1: but they all had the exact same sequence of events involved,
Speaker 1: and the enemies were apparently just kind of mindlessly throwing
Speaker 1: themselves in harm's way. They didn't try to avoid the light,
Speaker 1: they would just keep coming at you. On top of that,
Speaker 1: the game's sound was criticized as being unfinished and barely
Speaker 1: even present. There were times where sound effects and music
Speaker 1: seemed to be completely absent in the game. There were
Speaker 1: a ton of bugs that were affecting gameplay, including ones
Speaker 1: that would let enemies attack players through a solid surface
Speaker 1: like a wall. Overall, critics said the game was just
Speaker 1: unfinished and boring, and so it did not score well.
Speaker 1: Where We've got four more games to talk about, and
Speaker 1: before I jump into those, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor number four is Double Dragon to
Speaker 1: Wander of the Dragons, which sounds like a really weird
Speaker 1: title to me. Came out in April tween for the
Speaker 1: Xbox three sixty. This was an Xbox Live arcade game
Speaker 1: and probably the lowest rated one of all time. It
Speaker 1: got a Metacritics score of seventeen. The Double Dragon games
Speaker 1: in general feature two protagonists who punch and kick their
Speaker 1: way through swarms of enemies as they progress through levels. Typically,
Speaker 1: each level ends with some sort of boss battle, and
Speaker 1: there are numeras injuries in this series. I actually remember
Speaker 1: playing the original Double Dragon in arcades, but this particular
Speaker 1: entry came from a Korean developer called Gravity Games. Critics
Speaker 1: said that the developer, which was mostly known for making
Speaker 1: m m O RPG style games not beat them ups,
Speaker 1: got the fundamental elements of Double Dragon games all wrong.
Speaker 1: Moving the character was awkward, It was slow. It made
Speaker 1: it unreasonably difficult to face off against opponents who would
Speaker 1: swarm around the player. Reversing a direction was not natural.
Speaker 1: You couldn't just quickly turn around and confront someone who's
Speaker 1: coming up behind you. You would actually scoop backwards first
Speaker 1: before turning around. So in other words, if someone was
Speaker 1: coming up behind you, you would actually move into their
Speaker 1: range before you would turn around to face them. The
Speaker 1: quasi three D design made it really hard to direct
Speaker 1: attacks to specific targets, particularly if you were trying something
Speaker 1: beyond just the basic kick or punch moves. So, for example,
Speaker 1: there's an attack in a lot of Double Dragon games
Speaker 1: which involves an elbow attack, and it was really important
Speaker 1: because it was an attack that you could unleash against
Speaker 1: someone who was coming up behind you. So if someone's
Speaker 1: coming up behind you really fast and you don't have
Speaker 1: time to turn around, you could use this attack to
Speaker 1: fend them off. But in this game, the elbow attack
Speaker 1: was much harder to direct. So there might be someone
Speaker 1: come up behind you and you're fighting someone in ahead
Speaker 1: of you, and you try and do this elbow attack,
Speaker 1: but the elbow attack just swings wild with making you know,
Speaker 1: no contact. The developers also added in some other new
Speaker 1: elements that gamers were not crazy about. There was a
Speaker 1: stamina bar that also served more or less as your health,
Speaker 1: so if you got attacked, your stamina would take a hit,
Speaker 1: but that would mean you would actually slow down a
Speaker 1: little bit, which meant that it was even easier for
Speaker 1: enemies to hit you again, so you were getting punished
Speaker 1: for being hit. You get hit now it's easier for
Speaker 1: you to get hit. Also, if you got knocked down,
Speaker 1: then enemies could hit you as you were standing up,
Speaker 1: and standing up was an animation. You couldn't do anything
Speaker 1: about it. You couldn't block or dodge or anything. It
Speaker 1: was a sequence that would happen automatically, so there's nothing
Speaker 1: you can do. There's no way for you to intervene.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, and enemy just knocks you down again. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of cheesing effect. You're you're in this constant
Speaker 1: process of trying to stand up while enemies are hitting you. Uh,
Speaker 1: and then your stamina is all gone. And maybe you
Speaker 1: could argue that's realistic in a fight, but it's not
Speaker 1: much fun for a video game. They also did something
Speaker 1: that blows my mind. They built in a special supermove
Speaker 1: ability as well. There were actually quite a few different
Speaker 1: supermoves you could do, and the game mechanic was that
Speaker 1: you would have a meter that was filling up as
Speaker 1: you would build in combos. Let's say you have a
Speaker 1: successful combination where you you land a sequence of attacks
Speaker 1: with no gaps, no mistakes, you would start to fill
Speaker 1: up this meter. That's not that unusual. A lot of
Speaker 1: games have that. And when the meter was full, then
Speaker 1: you would be able to unleash one of these special
Speaker 1: attacks and potentially cause additional damage to your enemies. Again,
Speaker 1: totally makes sense. But the meter did not build up properly.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you would land these combos in the meter didn't
Speaker 1: seem to reflect it at all. Sometimes you'll be playing
Speaker 1: the game and the meter would just start to drain
Speaker 1: for no apparent reason. And in addition, while the game
Speaker 1: incorporated this mechanic, it would actually discourage you from using it.
Speaker 1: So it gave you this ability. It had all these
Speaker 1: different elements to it that were supposed to support this ability,
Speaker 1: and it didn't do it very well. But if you
Speaker 1: used a special move, even just one time, it would
Speaker 1: mean you would get the quote unquote bad ending of
Speaker 1: the game should you play it all the way through
Speaker 1: it to the end. The only way to get the
Speaker 1: good ending would be not to use these special moves.
Speaker 1: So it's always fun when a game builds in a
Speaker 1: mechanic and then punishes you for actually using it. Yuck.
Speaker 1: Number three was Room in the Night Sky, might be
Speaker 1: my favorite title among the ones that are on this list.
Speaker 1: It came out in March two thousand seventeen, so it's
Speaker 1: one of the most recent games. It came out for
Speaker 1: the Nintendo Switch and was the lowest rated game on
Speaker 1: the Nintendo Switch. Has a Metacritic score of seventeen. This
Speaker 1: is the only Nintendo Switch title on our list. And
Speaker 1: in the game, you controlled a protagonist, a girl who
Speaker 1: would travel on a motorbike. She's magical, so she can
Speaker 1: make the motorbike do all sorts of stuff like fly,
Speaker 1: and she collects star dust as sort of almost like
Speaker 1: an in game currency going through these different stages. Wonder
Speaker 1: reviewer called it a racing game in which there are
Speaker 1: no opponents, So you're just driving around these environments collecting
Speaker 1: star dust until you move through these rings that were
Speaker 1: called key stars, and you would unlock a gate that
Speaker 1: would lead you to the next stage, and then you
Speaker 1: would rinse and repeat. There was no way to die,
Speaker 1: there was no way to fail out. You could take
Speaker 1: some damage. There was a antagonist character who would occasionally
Speaker 1: show up and you would lose star dust if you
Speaker 1: took damage, but otherwise you would just keep on going.
Speaker 1: You could use that stardust to buy upgrades or new
Speaker 1: items in the game, but critics said the art style
Speaker 1: was dated. The levels, while they were huge, didn't have
Speaker 1: a whole lot to do in them, so they were big,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't much there, and that this antagonist that
Speaker 1: you would occasionally encounter would usually remain completely out of
Speaker 1: sight during a level. The levels were so big and
Speaker 1: the antagonist wasn't necessarily moving around very much that you
Speaker 1: might not even notice her as you're moving around. And
Speaker 1: also you would have a little sidekick on your motorbike
Speaker 1: who would automatically attack the bad guy if you did
Speaker 1: happen to wander too close, so the odds of you
Speaker 1: getting hit were very low anyway. The English version of
Speaker 1: the game also had a script that suffered from poor translation.
Speaker 1: There's a group called Legends of Localization that created a
Speaker 1: video that detailed some of the more egregious examples with screenshots.
Speaker 1: The very first one reads night Sky of the Lovely
Speaker 1: It is a wonderful night sky where the moon is beautiful,
Speaker 1: suitable for you for the first time to fly the sky.
Speaker 1: A patch would try to address this issue with a
Speaker 1: new translation, but really added just different bad translation to
Speaker 1: the game including spelling errors. Number two is a game
Speaker 1: called Ride to Hell. Retribution came out in June two
Speaker 1: thirteen for the Xbox three, sixty, the PlayStation three, and
Speaker 1: the PC. Metacritic gave it a sixteen. As destruct Oid
Speaker 1: reported in their review, the first warning that the game
Speaker 1: wasn't very good was when the publisher refused to send
Speaker 1: out review copies to game critics. You see this in
Speaker 1: movies to where film studios will choose not to have
Speaker 1: a critic screening, and more frequently than not, this is
Speaker 1: typically a sign that the studio behind a property doesn't
Speaker 1: have a whole lot of faith that it's going to
Speaker 1: do well in critics eyes, and they'd rather skip that
Speaker 1: step to try and sell as many units or as
Speaker 1: many tickets as possible. Be four bad reviews start to
Speaker 1: cannibalize those sales. So that was the bad first sign.
Speaker 1: Now in the game, you play as a biker who's
Speaker 1: out for revenge common theme and video games. A bike
Speaker 1: gang had killed his brother and now he's out to
Speaker 1: get them. And the review that I read from Destructori
Speaker 1: had stated that the game opened in a very confusing way.
Speaker 1: You immediately start off and you are behind a turret.
Speaker 1: You're you're controlling a gun turret. And he says that
Speaker 1: he failed almost instantly upon spawning in in the game
Speaker 1: and had no idea what was going on. Then on
Speaker 1: his second attempt, he died almost instantly. Then on his
Speaker 1: third attempt he survived, but he had no idea what
Speaker 1: he had done differently that led to this new outcome.
Speaker 1: So he didn't learn anything, he didn't get better at
Speaker 1: the game. It just was different. What's more, then he
Speaker 1: got transported into a desert environment and got into a
Speaker 1: quick time event that is in the form of a brawl.
Speaker 1: So quick time, of course, you're responding to button props
Speaker 1: like hit X now or hit A now or move
Speaker 1: thumbstick left, But there was no context as to what
Speaker 1: was going on. There was no explanation why this was happening.
Speaker 1: And then after that the game officially started. Now, apparently
Speaker 1: the physics in the game are just playing broken. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you'll phase through a surface, like you're riding your bike
Speaker 1: and you'll just phase through the ground. UH textures pop
Speaker 1: in and out in graphics, so you might look at
Speaker 1: a featureless UH surface and then suddenly the images pop
Speaker 1: in and you can see what the design is supposed
Speaker 1: to be on there, and then they pop out again.
Speaker 1: There were major problems with the visuals in general, and
Speaker 1: the action sequences were repetitive and uninspired. The game's camera
Speaker 1: made moving around environments really frustrating. You could easily get
Speaker 1: caught on something and not be able to see what
Speaker 1: it was that you were caught on, so you couldn't
Speaker 1: fix it, and the control scheme and execution artificially made
Speaker 1: the game more difficult, so that was hard to progress,
Speaker 1: and it was hard to progress not because the game
Speaker 1: was challenging, but because the mechanics of the game were broken.
Speaker 1: The story also didn't win any points, and several reviewers
Speaker 1: I saw pointed out that there were some really misogynistic
Speaker 1: elements in this game, where women exist for no reason
Speaker 1: other than to be exploited by the main character, who
Speaker 1: is not a nice guy, so didn't seem to have
Speaker 1: any real redeeming qualities. Number one according to Metacritics Scores
Speaker 1: is Family Party thirty Great Games Obstacle Arcade, which came
Speaker 1: out on November two thousand twelve for the Wii U.
Speaker 1: Out of the possible one points, it got an eleven,
Speaker 1: and this is it the worst reviewed game. According to Metacritic,
Speaker 1: it was meant to be a game you would play
Speaker 1: with up to three other people on a single console
Speaker 1: in the same space. So these sort of games for
Speaker 1: the Wii and the Wei you were meant to bring
Speaker 1: people together in the same physical location, kind of like
Speaker 1: a board game and you have a game night, but
Speaker 1: instead of pulling out a copy of Monopoly, you put
Speaker 1: one of these inside the Wii or the Wu and
Speaker 1: you have yourself a grand old time playing the series
Speaker 1: of mini games. And there are tons of different examples
Speaker 1: in this genre um and a lot of them belong
Speaker 1: to Nintendo's game library. The mini games had no real
Speaker 1: cohesive theme to them. Some of them were really uninspired games.
Speaker 1: According to Nintendo Life, one of the games would show
Speaker 1: a selection of balloons with numbers on it, and then
Speaker 1: you'll be told to pick the balloon that has a
Speaker 1: specific number, like the number two, which doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: much of a game to me. Maybe it's kind of
Speaker 1: like musical chairs, I guess, but it's kind of weird, right.
Speaker 1: That doesn't seem like there's much satisfaction in that game style.
Speaker 1: The game would force play is to use the we
Speaker 1: use motion controls, so even though the WU controller has
Speaker 1: a D pad on it, you couldn't use the dpad
Speaker 1: and most of the mini games instead you were supposed
Speaker 1: to jab the controller in whatever direction to get the
Speaker 1: results you were supposed to get. So, for example, there
Speaker 1: might be a level where you're supposed to guide a
Speaker 1: character across a series of platforms through jumping, but the
Speaker 1: way you would control jumping is by jabbing the controller
Speaker 1: in whatever direction the platforms in forward, left, or right,
Speaker 1: and the game mechanics weren't done very well, so you
Speaker 1: could be waiving the controller like a crazy person and
Speaker 1: nothing's happening, your character is not going anywhere, or you
Speaker 1: might jab it to the left but your character jumps
Speaker 1: to the right. Uh. It just didn't seem to have
Speaker 1: any connection with what you did and what the character
Speaker 1: was doing, so that was very frustrating. They also Critics
Speaker 1: also said that the sound design was terrible, that the
Speaker 1: carrecter design was not great, the host of the games
Speaker 1: was a teddy Bear that from what the description I read,
Speaker 1: sounded like it would fit better in Five Nights at Freddie's.
Speaker 1: It sounded like a true monstrosity, and the lackluster games
Speaker 1: were really what doomed this went to last place. The
Speaker 1: game was poorly designed, but worse than that reviewers, Essentially,
Speaker 1: we're saying, even if the game were well designed, even
Speaker 1: if these controls worked great, the actual mini games are
Speaker 1: so boring that the game would still be terrible. So
Speaker 1: that's not a great review. If you're saying this game
Speaker 1: is broken, but even if it weren't broken, it would
Speaker 1: still be terrible, that's a bad review, and that's it.
Speaker 1: Those are the worst video games according to Metacritic. And
Speaker 1: again that's just one source. If you were to ask
Speaker 1: anybody who covered video games, they might say, hey, you
Speaker 1: didn't talk about that Alien game that literally did not
Speaker 1: work until someone went through the source code saw that
Speaker 1: one of the settings was wrong, fix the setting, and
Speaker 1: now the game works years after it came out. That's true.
Speaker 1: I didn't talk about that one. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of different examples since two thousand eleven that would probably
Speaker 1: fall on a worst video games list. This was just
Speaker 1: through the Metacritic approach. I am curious what you guys think,
Speaker 1: and I will do another worst video Games episode that's
Speaker 1: crowdsourced if you guys like so. If there are specific games,
Speaker 1: whether it's for a console, computer, system, or a handheld
Speaker 1: system or even a mobile game. If there's a game
Speaker 1: you think warrants being put on a worst video game list,
Speaker 1: right to me. Give me the subject worst video game
Speaker 1: and send that email to text Stuff at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. I will gather those together and we'll
Speaker 1: do a follow up episode where, once again as chosen
Speaker 1: by the listeners of tech Stuff, we will talk about
Speaker 1: some of the worst video games of all time. If
Speaker 1: you want to also include why you think it's one
Speaker 1: of the worst games you've ever played or has ever
Speaker 1: been made, that would be great too. Um. Now, in general,
Speaker 1: just as a quick rule of thumb, I'm gonna mostly
Speaker 1: stick stay away from any games that are like sexual
Speaker 1: in nature any of those, because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of those are just hastily put together to uh, to
Speaker 1: appeal to the more base instincts of certain players. And
Speaker 1: we could go through on for hours about the countless
Speaker 1: games in those genres that are just terrible. They're either
Speaker 1: carbon copies of existing games but with nudity, or they're
Speaker 1: just playing terrible excuses for games. So we know those
Speaker 1: are terrible. Let's just all agree to that, and let's
Speaker 1: look beyond those for the other terrible games. Also, if
Speaker 1: you have any suggestions for other types of topics that
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with video games, all feel free
Speaker 1: to send me a message let me know what you
Speaker 1: would like me to cover. Um, you can make that
Speaker 1: subject whatever you like. And again, the addresses tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com or you can drop
Speaker 1: me a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle for
Speaker 1: both of those is text stuff h s W. Don't forget.
Speaker 1: You can head on over to t public dot com
Speaker 1: slash tech stuff, pick yourself up some tech stuff merchandise.
Speaker 1: Be a super cool person like I am, or more
Speaker 1: cool because you probably already are. I mean, let's be honest,
Speaker 1: and I accept that that's okay. I appreciate that you
Speaker 1: a cool person are listening to me. Thank you, and
Speaker 1: don't forget. Follow us over on Instagram and I'll talk
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Speaker 1: bathands of other topics because at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com