by Esmeralda Draic

Created on: May 21, 2009

Evaluating the Worst Video Games

Well, where do you even begin. There have been so many terrible games, across all platforms, that it would require a book, not an article, to list and evaluate them all. So here I'm restricting it to the Top Five that came the most immediately to mind for me.


1. DAIKATANA (PC, 2000)

I'd bought Daikatana immediately on its release in 2000, eager to play this new game that had been so hyped for so long. The CD blurb says 'From John Romero, the legendary co-creator of Wolfenstein 3D, the Doom series, Heretic, Hexen, Quake, and now: DAIKATANA! Are you ready?' Yes, yes, yes, I thought, having enjoyed all of those games as each came out. I installed it and...

No, no, no, I thought, finding that despite having been several years in the making, the game gave the impression of a rush job; it was buggy (two major bug fixes were required), the graphics were awful, looking more like something from 1995 than 2000, and there were vast, yawning, boring gaps in the gameplay. One got the idea that the publishers became fed up with how long it was taking the developers to release the game and gave them an ultimatum. So here it was, ready or not.

The main thing you're struck by as you play is that it COULD have been great: the basic idea was good and was ambitious, a broad, sweeping time-travel saga through several eras and countries, two sidekicks who help you fight (a novel idea at that time in an FPS), a decent storyline of a quest to find an ancient magical sword (the Daikatana) that has time-altering capabilities. You need to restore the future that should have been, which had been altered for the worse by a madman, Kage Mishima, who stole the Daikatana for his own evil gain.

But sadly, the game itself is a huge letdown. Gameplay is very shallow and repetitive, more reminiscent of the first primitive 3D shooters of the early 90s where just hordes of same-y adversaries descend on you. Disconcertingly, attacking an opponent results in their spontaneously exploding into big chunks of meat, exactly the same effect for each type of character; this looks amateurish, again like bad early 90s shareware. OMG, what hard work it was to play. I really had to force myself to keep playing to the end, finding it total torture. This was absolutely the most boring gameplay in a mainstream commercial game I have ever experienced. You begin to wonder, was this game not tested for playability?

The story begins in 25th century Japan, and you play as Hiro

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