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 Miyamoto, descendant of the ancient forger of the Daikatana. You have been tasked with finding Mikiko Ebihara, descendant of Inshiro Ebihara who was the Daikatana's original owner. Nasty evil Kage Mishima had stolen the Daikatana from Ebihara back in those dark days, and now Mikiko Ebihara is being held captive in the headquarters of Mishima Industries which is owned by Kage Mishima's descendants.
You start out in a swamp, where you are constantly attacked by irritating metallic dragonflies and frogs (this sets the style for the rest of the game - everywhere you go, numerous rats or frogs nip at your heels and whiney flying things divebomb your head while you're trying to get on with bigger tasks), and have to find your way to the HQ. Here, after mind-numbingly repetitive spontaneous exploding guards, you find Superfly Johnson, a big macho musclebound Afro-American dude, imprisoned in one of the rooms. He explains that he is the company's security chief and had been locked up and condemned to death for opposing Mishima's cruel business practices (a bit harsh, why not just a written warning?).
You free him, and the two of you look for Mikiko. Once you free her, she and Superfly accompany you on your quest which takes you from 25th century Japan to ancient Greece, then medieval Norway, and finally 21st century San Francisco.
Unfortunately, the sidekicks detract even more from the already awful gameplay and slow the game to a crawl. Mikiko and Superfly spend most of their time getting stuck to walls or being killed simply by walking through doors that close on them. You constantly have to push them or even shoot them (gently) to get them to move, and they do things like falling into ditches or jumping into pools and not being able to get out, so you have to save your game constantly so that you don't have to go back too far each time one of them does something stupid to themselves.
They are not only stupid, but fairly useless in fighting. They refuse to pick up weapons and ammo even when you order them to, so that they are often unarmed and you spend much of your time nursemaiding them, trying to keep them from getting killed (as well as stuck to objects). When unarmed, Superfly, for all his macho posturing, runs off screaming like a girl at the first sight of an enemy. Mikiko has such a thoroughly irritating personality that you wish you could leave her behind or even murder her yourself (I did do the latter on a few occasions just to vent my frustration - if you are driven to do the same, save first as the game immediately ends if one of the sidekicks is killed). The only reprieve is when Mikiko becomes ill and Superfly has to carry her for one level - at least then you only have one dork to worry about.
*SPOILER AHEAD - DON'T READ THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO PLAY THIS GAME AND ACTUALLY CARE HOW IT ENDS* At the end, you have to kill Mikiko - she turns bad (ie, even WORSE), deciding she wants to be a Dr Evil type and begins spouting her plans for world domination. She first kills Superfly (quickly and unexpectedly, so that this time he doesn't even have the chance to run off screaming like a girl) and then you have to have a duel to the death with her. I must say this was the only satisfying part of the game for me, although I won't go so far as to say it's worth playing the whole game just to get this brief moment of revenge for the preceding several evenings of boredom and irritation. *END SPOILER*
It's incredible to realise that the same year Ion Storm released this turkey, they also released Deus Ex, thought by myself and millions of others to be the BEST game ever made! (Of course, Deus Ex was developed by a totally different team at Ion Storm, led by Warren Spector.)
After I finished playing Daikatana, having witnessed my suffering throughout its course, my Significant Other quipped: 'Just flush it down the toilet or put it on eBay.' Wise words.
This is by far my favourite worst game of all time. Contradictory as that sounds, I'm actually sort of fond of it in a perverse way; it sort of grows on you in some strange manner. For that, I give it 3/10.
2. CUSTER'S REVENGE (Atari, 1982)
This Atari game is just awful. With the graphics quality you would expect from 1982, it depicts stick characters of what is supposed to be General Custer and a captive Indian Princess tied to a stake. They are positioned at opposite ends of the screen. Gameplay consists of playing as General Custer who you have to navigate across to the other side the screen, avoiding being killed by arrows being shot at you, to reach the Princess. This sounds reasonable enough, until you realise that General Custer is sporting nothing but a hat, boots, scarf, and er, a huge erection. As if that wasn't bad enough, the gameplay is complete rubbish. I spent all of about 10 minutes on this on a friend's console years ago and that was more than enough for me.
This game caused a massive outbreak of offence among all sorts of people at the time, ranging from anti-porno protesters to Native American groups who felt it belittled Indian women, to gamers who simply thought the gameplay was total crud. Just no redeeming features whatsoever, and therefore 0/10.
3. ET: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (Atari, 1982)
Atari was to blame for this one too, and 1982 must have been a specially bad year for them. Again, as with the above, too-simplistic gameplay and graphics doomed this game from the start. Thankfully I don't remember too much about this game except having to collect pieces of candy (if you could even recognise them as such) and falling into wells. That's about all I care to remember.
This game was one of the worst disasters in gaming history, sales-wise. Sales were so poor that in the end, it was reported that several truckloads of them were used as landfill in Texas. Another firm 0/10.
4. ZERO WING (Sega, 1989)
This started out as an arcade game in Japan and then was ported to the Sega Mega Drive. It was a side-scrolling space shooter in which you had to blast away at approaching bad guys in order to try to save the Universe. The gameplay is brain-deadingly repetitive and mediocre and it is overly-difficult to progress in the game and avoid getting killed (at least, that was my own experience! I never came anywhere near to even completing the first level, never mind beating it!).
BUT, it had one huge saving grace: its incredibly poorly translated intro which caused mass hilarity all over the English-speaking world. This is the game that the famous catchphrase 'All your base are belong to us' came from. This occurs when a baddy who, for some reason, revels in the unusual name of 'Cats', makes contact with your ship and tells you that all your base are belong to him. Your ship's engineer informs you 'Someone set up us the bomb' and Cats taunts you with 'You have no chance to survive make your time', another good couple of phrases that have also passed into Internet meme-ology.
For the classic intro alone, I give it 8/10 but for gameplay 1/10.
5. MACJESUS PRO GOLD (Mac shareware, c1990)
This was a zany shareware program written for early Macintosh. Designed along the lines of the early Artificial Intelligence computer game 'ELIZA', in which you would type in questions to a 'virtual psychologist' who would answer your questions in suitably profound and analytical ways, MacJesus answered your questions in a similar manner but with a comedy twist. The graphical interface is depicted as an IRC-type conversation on the right-hand side where you type your questions and receive your answers, and an animation of a long-haired and bearded dude on the left. His replies are much along the lines of those in ELIZA but with snippets to do with Heaven, Hell, and what seems to be an obsession with sex. While replying, 'Jesus' sniffs, snorts and belches from time to time.
This would seem to be a game that, like Custer's Revenge, would have offended many and provoked a public outcry, but I think because it was an obscure shareware game rather than a mainstream commercial one like the others described in this list, it kept a low profile and eventually disappeared into the mists of time. I still have a copy on my ancient Mac LC III, and fired it up in honour of this review. After a few words of somewhat dubious wisdom in reply to my probing questions, I signed off 'Bye', as you do, and was rudely met with 'I'M SENDING YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL' in reply. Er, well, I think I'll stay away from that game for a while, then. 2/10 just for sheer weirdness value.
There are so many more I could have included, as the video game field is such a fertile one for terrible offerings. But I'll let you probe your own memories to see if you can top any of these!