• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Have you ever played a game that was offensively bad?

For me it has to be Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5. It's like the devs just didn't understand what made the originals so great and went out to make the most bland experience they could imagine.
 
Postal 1 is offensively bad and offensive and bad but Postal 2 is the greatest game of all time so I don't understand why anyone would waste their time with Postal 1.

Disagree.
Portal 1 is a fine little game while 2 is unfunny with puzzles that are more boring than anything else.

Couldn't be bothered to finish it, but at least the co-op and level sharing are great.

(Not saying Portal 2 is "offensively bad". Just replying to a post.)
 
Disagree.
Portal 1 is a fine little game while 2 is unfunny with puzzles that are more boring than anything else.

Couldn't be bothered to finish it, but at least the co-op and level sharing are great.

(Not saying Portal 2 is "offensively bad". Just replying to a post.)

He's talking about Postal, lmao.
 
Eat Lead.

"It's ironic. The game is spoofing shitty games"

I wish it was. Instead it's like a third rate Scary Movie with abhorrent controls. I feel bad for the devs who worked on it.
 
Sniper Elite V2. After the bullet-time effect (quickly) wore off it just became a chore to play. Very mediocre 3rd person shooter with a nice shiny violent gimmick.
 
Halo 4.

You're given the biggest Xbox exclusive franchise, ever, and what do you do? Hire people who hate Halo and want to turn it into CoD, shit on all characters and interesting plot points that Bungie spent a decade developing, add in quick time events, tedious and highly scripted level design, an art pallet that makes you want to vomit, and then treat your customers like a group of inept idiots (wheelchair picture, anyone?)

No respect for 343i after what they did. Even Halo 5 is still a mess (at least in the campaign department) because of some of the decisions they made.
 
Battlecruiser Millennium.

I remember the music that played on the menu was awful and weird, like a sign of things to come. Literally never, before or since, have I "played" a game like it.

It was at a time that I wasn't jaded, but it was like the game was subliminally trying to make me jaded. Like the awfulness was on purpose and it was forcing me to existentially question the concept of fun.

At the time, I didn't have the full context of its development, but I remember the warning about it and how I disregarded that warning. After about 2 hours of playtime, I smashed the disc into pieces and buried them. That is a very melodramatic way of dealing with this game's awfulness, but at that time, the innocent, unjaded gamer that never thought of games as "offensively bad", felt the act was just.
 
The Elder Scrolls franchise

I know a lot of people will disagree with me, but man, I just don't understand how Bethesda gets away with it. It's soooo bad.
 
Lunar remake for PSP (Silver Star Harmony). It updates the graphics, which is fine, I suppose, although the charming SD sprites of the original and its PSX remake looked better. What it really does to RUIN the game is make it brain dead easy, to the point where you'll wonder why you're even playing this game after a while. The soundtrack is also arguably worse and the entire game seems to lose the charm it once had. I love Lunar and Silver Star Story Complete, and I would not recommend this game to anyone - there's about fifty billion better RPGs on PSP to play. I might be jaded because I enjoyed the PSX remake so much, but I don't have an unbiased opinion to fall back on, so...

lunar.ssh.03.lg.jpg


Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 is a clunky mess of a game. And when I say that I don't mean like, it's pretty bad by fighting game standards or the standards of it's time - it's an awfully designed, ugly game (despite using spritework, even) that feels less fun to play than Pong or Minesweeper. I was excited when it was localized years after it was a Japan only game, only to find out it's not only boring, but frustrating to play. The music was pretty good, at least.

psx_466-1.jpg
 
Animal Crossing Amiibo Festival

It's bad as an Animal Crossing fan.

It's bad as a video or board game.

There is very little control or decision making. It's you vs RNG. It's like watching a let's play video and using your Amiibo to get to the next turn in that let's play video.
 
Yes I've played a couple of Bethesda games.

Fallout 3 and 4 were the worst offenders because besides just being completely terrible they had the added unfortunate position of being a continuation of an IP that I used to be a huge fan of.
 
Battlecruiser Millennium.

I remember the music that played on the menu was awful and weird, like a sign of things to come. Literally never, before or since, have I "played" a game like it.

It was at a time that I wasn't jaded, but it was like the game was subliminally trying to make me jaded. Like the awfulness was on purpose and it was forcing me to existentially question the concept of fun.

At the time, I didn't have the full context of its development, but I remember the warning about it and how I disregarded that warning. After about 2 hours of playtime, I smashed the disc into pieces and buried them. That is a very melodramatic way of dealing with this game's awfulness, but at that time, the innocent, unjaded gamer that never thought of games as "offensively bad", felt the act was just.

I think I got 3000AD for free on some demo disk, and just the time I wasted on it felt like a ripoff. Everything was so hilariously broken and horrible, yet at the same time I kept holding out hope there was a gem under all that shit with the hints of piles of freedom. Nope, no gem, just a giant pile of shit.

Other M I suppose would be in the offensively bad category for me. If it had no relation to Metroid and just some random other main character and universe, it just would have been a mediocre action game. Instead it was a knife to the back of a beloved franchise. Federation Force was just the cold body being pissed on. Metroid NX better be amazing...

Mario Party 8 (the first on the Wii) was pretty offensive as well. I've generally been fine with the Party games failing to push the envelope, just because I always had such a good time playing with friends. Eight was just insulting. It was clearly being made for the Gamecube and then rushed out on the Wii instead. It was missing piles of the good minigames from 7, had a fake 480p mode (4:3 with left/right side borders to fill up the screen), and even though it would be totally acceptable to have waggle minigames in Mario Party, failed to make much use of motion controls. We typically would pop in 7 instead as a result.
 
Not yet, NeverDead got really, really close though.

Most of the game is really bad (save for 1 or 2 cool bossfights) but there's this one level that is just on a whole other level of godawful

In that level, you have to navigate through a completely dark section by lighting yourself on fire, and the combination of running speed and camera angle, as well as having to still fight enemies AND you still not being able to see shit even if you are on fire, made for one of the most nauseating sections I've ever experienced in a game

EDIT: Here is the level in all of its glory

Jesus
 
Banjo-Kazooie_Nuts_%26_Bolts_Game_Cover.jpg


It literally does everything wrong expect for visuals and some (returning) songs I guess. Even worse is they're acting like it's okay and they keep making self-conscious jokes about themselves, but it ends up being extremely offensive in the sense that they're like "yes, we know you probably wanted Banjo Threeie to be a 3D platformer, but hey, have this instead!" One of the worst games I have ever played. The worst thing is, I'd probably have enjoyed it if it wasn't a Banjo game.

Great game. Sorry you didn't enjoy it.
 
Hour of Victory, ugh, I'm not even sure how to describe just how bad it was.
Turning Point fall of Liberty, file that one under oh that sounds interesting, but it plays like a pig.
 
Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 is a clunky mess of a game. And when I say that I don't mean like, it's pretty bad by fighting game standards or the standards of it's time - it's an awfully designed, ugly game (despite using spritework, even) that feels less fun to play than Pong or Minesweeper. I was excited when it was localized years after it was a Japan only game, only to find out it's not only boring, but frustrating to play. The music was pretty good, at least.

psx_466-1.jpg

LOL at
Captain Jinyu(TM)


I put off Rainbow Moon pretty much indefinitely after a year of seeing the ridiculous amounts of micro-transactions. Like, I own the game, but don't see any reason to play it with that garbage.
 
I recently went through the Mana series and while several of the later games are mediocre or disappointing, Dawn of Mana (PS2) is one of the worst games I've ever played.

Extremely clunky controls, and the game's main gameplay hook involves using a lasso to awkwardly fling objects on the map at enemies - the more you fling, the more EXP you get. Sure, you can just hack and slash away, but you are skipping out on most of the EXP if you do that. So in order to play effectively, you have to waste so much time just flinging items around. It's really, really weird.

Not only that, but the game throws enemy after enemy after enemy at you in a way that's cumbersome and takes forever to clear. Not to mention levels drag on and on, it's not always clear what you have to do to progress, and boss fights can easily take around 40+ minutes.

There's also this weird ability upgrade system that I think is supposed to entice multiple playthroughs? Depending on your rank scores, you can up your health and attack power. Sounds maybe okay on paper, but to unlock these bonuses you have to redo the levels several times to achieve the proper bonuses. Forget. That.

Take the worst elements of Kingdom Heart's controls/platforming, Jak 2's level/checkpoint design, and Sonic Unleashed's nighttime brawler slogfests and you have Dawn of Mana.

Im still so sad because of this game... Hands down one of the prettiest ps2 games, completely ruined. Its seriously my pick for best looking ps2 game. The art direction, graphics and art style are so amazing... Which makes it even worse, because the game sucked so bad... But i wanted to like it so much.
 
Same thing, but with

X-Blades_Cover.jpg


A friend lend it to me in exchange of Infamous 1; even tho it was borrowed, i still felt ripped off.

X blades wasn't the worst, i managed to play through it and i kinda enjoyed it. However at this point i can't remember anything about the game other than there was some dude exploring the place also and some of the stages were super short trap stages. I kinda remember that you could abuse the shit out of the combat system which made it fun, or something along those lines.
 
Turning Point fall of Liberty, file that one under oh that sounds interesting, but it plays like a pig.

Holy shit, yeah, I picked that up because I love alternate history stuff and am a huge Freedom Fighter fan and oh my god was this game not that. Played like junk, I tried at least 3 or 4 times to start that game and always gave up within half an hour.
 
Universal_Studios_Theme_Parks_Adventure_Coverart.png

Universal Studios Theme Parks Adventure for the GameCube. I remember I saw this game at Target and I thought a game with Jurassic Park, E.T. and Back to the Future would be awesome. My ten-year old self was completely wrong about that. I still kept on playing it though because it was the only new game I had but eventually I shoved it to the side and went back to play actual games like Metroid Prime, Melee and even Star Fox Adventures.

If others haven't seen or heard about it this game and are interested in how bad it is, please take a look at Angry Video Game Nerd's video on it.
 
Universal_Studios_Theme_Parks_Adventure_Coverart.png

Universal Studios Theme Parks Adventure for the GameCube. I remember I saw this game at Target and I thought a game with Jurassic Park, E.T. and Back to the Future would be awesome. My ten-year old self was completely wrong about that. I still kept on playing it though because it was the only new game I had but eventually I shoved it to the side and went back to play actual games like Metroid Prime, Melee and even Star Fox Adventures.

If others haven't seen or heard about it this game and are interested in how bad it is, please take a look at Angry Video Game Nerd's video on it.

Oh man now that's a trash game right there.

No literally, that's actually what the game is, a trash collecting simulator.
 
Banjo-Kazooie_Nuts_%26_Bolts_Game_Cover.jpg


It literally does everything wrong expect for visuals and some (returning) songs I guess. Even worse is they're acting like it's okay and they keep making self-conscious jokes about themselves, but it ends up being extremely offensive in the sense that they're like "yes, we know you probably wanted Banjo Threeie to be a 3D platformer, but hey, have this instead!" One of the worst games I have ever played. The worst thing is, I'd probably have enjoyed it if it wasn't a Banjo game.

So it's a good game?
 
I don't consider them good games, but I do consider both Metroid: Other M and The 3rd Birthday to be games that legitimately offended me.
 
Sonic 2006, though to be honest I actually enjoyed the game back in 2006. Was the first game I played on X-mas day, and the whole reason I wanted a 360 in the first place. More than Gears or Oblivion in-fact! But yeah, that game is objectively horrible lol.

Yeah same, except I don't find it to be "offensively bad". I mean, it's still playable so it still isn't quite a 1/10 game for me. The Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis port for the GBA though? That's a 1/10. Good lord.
 
Universal_Studios_Theme_Parks_Adventure_Coverart.png

Universal Studios Theme Parks Adventure for the GameCube. I remember I saw this game at Target and I thought a game with Jurassic Park, E.T. and Back to the Future would be awesome. My ten-year old self was completely wrong about that. I still kept on playing it though because it was the only new game I had but eventually I shoved it to the side and went back to play actual games like Metroid Prime, Melee and even Star Fox Adventures.

If others haven't seen or heard about it this game and are interested in how bad it is, please take a look at Angry Video Game Nerd's video on it.
The t-rex looks like it should be wear glasses at the end of it's nose looking over them at you with disappointment at buying the game.

Also I vote for Thief 2014. Jaysus.
 
First two recent examples that come to mind are The Order: 1886 and Dark Souls II. Things like Yasai Ninja are up there too but you don't expect as much.

Edit: Oooh, Other M is a top candidate too.
 
Games that barely qualify as games - that don't even approach the quality of a throwaway Flash game today - were a dime a dozen on the 2600. So yeah, I've played some.

After that generation, not as many. I'm not saying horrible games don't still exist, but they're so much easier to avoid now. And even pretty bad games, like your average licensed platformer in the 16-bit era, or a generic copycat FPS last gen, aren't so bad.

Having said all that, I'd nominate Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), which I played at E3 2006, and assumed was a long way from done. Surely the game wouldn't be as buggy and sloppy as the E3 demo. But nope, it was.

And also Superman (64), which I first played on a very early N64 emulator, and assumed that the emulator wasn't functioning properly because the control was so bad. Again, nope. When I later picked up the game (as a laugh; by then its reputation had cemented), it controlled just as poorly.

Those games are pretty much universally recognized as bottom of the barrel, so I'm hardly saying anything shocking or new, but those are the ones I found out for myself before the public spread the word.
 
I wouldn't call it offensively bad, but probably Metroid: Other M. The story and characters dragged the entire game down from being acceptable to bad, because the story and characters heavily affected the way the game's structure. I wish the control scheme was changed from remote only to remote + nunchuk too.
 
I would love to tell you about that time I played Enslaved - Odyssey to the West but I tried to repress the memories... most of them.

God, that combat and traversal system... yikes.

kHHC9Mj.gif
 
Top Bottom