Videogames You Love To Hate

Thanks to FiringSquad for their editorial discussing why sheer wretchedness is (allegedly) a good thing in gaming. The author rhapsodizes: "Bad experiences define this hobby. As much as we all enjoy sharing love stories about great moments in gaming, we tend to play up the bad stuff even more. Even though I'll always have fond memories about racking up 400,000 points in Donkey Kong... while a crowd cheered me on... the time that Daikatana taught me the true meaning of sorrow will somehow always be more powerful." Which legendarily bad games have given you fondly hateful memories?

Comments

Extreme Paintbrawl

[PurpleFloyd]

A few years ago, a friend handed me a CD that'd seen its share of abuse; it was called "Extreme Paintbrawl." Quite simply, it was the worst game I've ever played. It's a credit to the creators to call the piece of trash a game. It was done in the Build engine (same as Duke Nukem 3D), at a time when Quake III was just out. Although it's certainly possible to make a good game with older technology, the game was full of errors: half the sprites weren't done correctly: some models, you'd only ever see the back (even if they were facing you). The AI was miserable: your own "teammates" would jump around like they were having a seizure, while the enemy would manage to both look like idiots and land every single shot. Not only that, but the damned thing was absolutely chock-full of bugs. I would have been seriously pissed if I had paid money for it; I've seen it still languishing in bargain bins here and there for $5 or so. On the positive side, though, it provided a great joke among friends. Any buggy, crappy, or half-finished game immediately draws comparisons to the Great Evil Game, Extreme Paintbrawl.

On a more serious note, the one game I've had serious expectations for that turned out to be a waste of money was the original Outpost; it had a wonderful premise and lots of interesting concepts, but was awfully buggy and had a user-hostile UI. Sadly, the sequel was fairly good but was saddled by the "Outpost" name and tanked. Still, I was able to get my space-colony sim fix five years later with Alpha Centauri, which I still play to this day. That's a game worth getting out of the bargain bin.

Re:Extreme Paintbrawl

[Bazouel]

This game earned one of the lowest PC Gamer score ever. I think it was 6 % but I'm not sure. Reading the review was quite entertaining :)

Tegals Mercenaries

[anon*127.0.0.1]

My "worst game ever" experience. It was about hmmmm.. 10 years ago.

1. Box has a little piece of paper with manual errata. Stuff like "though the manual says you can blow walls up, you really can't". Game was hurried out the door, maybe?

2. Installation process runs for HALF AN HOUR and is only 10% done. This is off of a floppy disk. I quit in disgust, take a look at the game file in a hex editor, and find it's an .arj file. I decompress it with my .arj decompressor program, and game installs in five minutes. Obviously they didn't want to pay royalties on a commercial program, and tried to write their own installer.

3. Time for some gameplay! Listed specs: 286/8, 2 meg of ram. My computer: 386/25, 16 meg. Game crawwwwwwwwls. Character AI is non-existent. Controls are buggy and unresponsive. It's real-time, but order and character information screens cover up the gameplay screen. My characters get slaughtered because I can't control them and they're too stupid to save themselves.

4. I finally give up and check out some of the other files in the game. I find a .gif with the games final screen. Seems like the guy who's been giving you missions the whole time was actually one of the aliens you've been fighting, and he gloats about how he used you etc etc etc. Damn, what a shocking surprise.

5. I came across the game a few years later sitting in the back of my floppy disk bin. Thought I'd try it with my new system, a 486/33. Maybe it would be okay with that much raw processing power. Nope. Still buggy, still slow, still sucked.