Worst PC Game you've ever purchased

[The Green Bean]

Cities XL 2011

 

[spittledip]

The Sims: Wow. A game that takes the most tedious aspects of life and makes you repeat them ad nauseum.

X-men: MAdness in Murderworld: I was so excited to get this game when I was a kid. The controls were so incredibly poor it was unreal. I have never played a game with such poor control. Also, the game was a platformer and relied on a lot of jumping over fireballs and other projectiles. You had to time the jumps so precisely b/c your character would only stay in the air for a millisecond- no room for error at all. Of course, that was when the game actually responded to your input.

Times of Lore: I think I have found that alot of people look back on this game fondly, but all I remember is how bored I was playing it. Of course, alot of people like The Sims also...

 

[TheSlamma]

Some of you guys must play like 2 games a year, and only the most-hyped, blockbuster "9.5 out of 10" games every blue moon.

Outside of trolling, it's hard to imagine anyone seeing games like Half Life 2, Bioshock, Mass Effect 2, GalCiv, etc as the worst game they've purchased. Again, unless they buy only the Game of the Year every year.

Anyone who says any of the games you mentioned is 100% trollfest, most of these clowns most likely still live at home or boomeranged back so they can afford more than 2 games a year.

There are a boatload of horrid games out there that make any of these titles look like a masterpiece

 

[Genx87]

Age of Conan, Warhammer Online

 

[Dumac]

Anyone who says any of the games you mentioned is 100% trollfest, most of these clowns most likely still live at home or boomeranged back so they can afford more than 2 games a year.

There are a boatload of horrid games out there that make any of these titles look like a masterpiece

I can afford more, sure, but I only buy good games that I am pretty confident I will enjoy. I think that is the smart thing to do...you end up with less duds that way.

 

[Dankk]

Anyone who says any of the games you mentioned is 100% trollfest, most of these clowns most likely still live at home or boomeranged back so they can afford more than 2 games a year.

There are a boatload of horrid games out there that make any of these titles look like a masterpiece

No kidding. I think there are some major trolls in this thread.

Anyone who says Half Life 2 is the worst game they've ever purchased: Please, let me know what other games you buy, because you must have some pretty goddamn amazing games.

 

[Balt]

I'll probably get some hate for this, but.... Civilization III. I thought it was considerable downgrade from Civ II.

Maybe it would be more accurate to say it was the most disappointing game I've ever played since I had high expectations.

 

[scooterlibby]

I hated the last 2 Stalker games. Just not my style of game I guess, but specifically the character movement was just awful. For example, you push the duck button and you're instantaneously transported to the ground. No ducking motion. That kind of jerkiness of movement applied to all the game play.

Metro 2033 was almost as jerky in terms of movement, but I felt more immersed in that game so it gets a pass.

As a side note, after seeing it mentioned so many times, I'll cop to liking FC2 a lot despite the justified hate about having to drive around pointlessly 90% of the time. Totally dug the premise because I was studying the role resources play in civil war while in graduate school at the time. The graphics and physics were pretty ace to me as well.

 

[Modular]

Mirror's Edge.

 

[d3fu5i0n]

Mirror's Edge.

Lol, Mirror's Edge is one of my favourites. I think it's quite subjective to personal taste - a bit like Marmite, huh?

 

[Dankk]

Lol, Mirror's Edge is one of my favourites. I think it's quite subjective to personal taste - a bit like Marmite, huh?

Same here. Mirror's Edge is one of my favorite games ever.

 

[linthat22]

Homeworld

I couldn't gel with that game. The worst part? My dad bought that for me for Christmas back in the 90's when it was released. It's supposedly was THE space strategy game at the time, but man the learning curve was immense.

 

[Modular]

Same here. Mirror's Edge is one of my favorite games ever.

I don't know - I played it and it got old REALLY quickly. It's the same thing over and over and over and over...

 

[DeathReborn]

It's a toss-up between Renegade Ops & Civ 5 for me.

Renegade Ops controls are just hideous, uninstalled it after 15 minutes & will never install it again. Games that only work well with the 360 controller are now blacklisted by me. Due to old sports injuries I just can't use the controller without pain.

Civ 5, lets just say I started on the Atari & Amiga and 5 is easily the biggest pile of excrement of the lot & I was expecting so much more.

Special mention to X3, I was told it was amazing... it's just average.

 

[DeadFred]

Soldier of Fortune: Payback- It has to be at the pinnacle of crap PC games. If there is one worse, I dont even want to hear about it.

Coming in at a close second is- Deus Ex: Invisible War

 

[Jimmah]

F.E.A.R.

Bought it a few weeks ago on sale from Steam, huge letdown, terrible graphics even for its day, hated the gameplay.

Other than that I can say Total Annihilation 2, Team Fortress 2, A-train, Mechwarrior 4, Starcraft (I was a TA guy, never liked the small-scale of Starcraft).

 

[skace]

I couldn't get into stalker (call of pripyat) either. Which was strange because the game has almost universal praise....

UI and graphics are extremely dated, NPC's don't seem interesting at all.

That is because, *drum roll*, stalker is a difficult game to get into. It was made by a small foreign developer and has many rough edges. However, it has lots of universal praise because despite those rough edges it brings a very interesting FPS experience to those who give it a chance (I mean a real chance).

I've beaten all 3 STALKERs, however, I waited to play the 3rd one until Complete was out. First is still my favorite.

While I could probably write a lot about STALKER, I think the main thing it does right is setting up a desolate atmosphere. Even the AI behavior is very different from your run of the mill arcade game where every enemy will shoot you on sight.

 

[skace]

Some of you guys must play like 2 games a year, and only the most-hyped, blockbuster "9.5 out of 10" games every blue moon.

Outside of trolling, it's hard to imagine anyone seeing games like Half Life 2, Bioshock, Mass Effect 2, GalCiv, etc as the worst game they've purchased. Again, unless they buy only the Game of the Year every year.

I agree, but not so much for this reason, but because I had really hoped this thread would have some awesome stories of extremely bad games.

For instance, if you go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_games_notable_for_negative_reception you'll notice that you won't see Halo or Half-Life 2, but seriously, absolutely horrible games. I was hoping people had personal stories about stumbling across something like this.

I've probably played tons of terrible games, considering I've been playing PC games since they were text only. However, even one of my most memorable worst games I'm having trouble remembering the name of. What I do remember is that it was a PC RPG, 3rd or 1st person and it was being hyped up significantly in the RPG community because one of the developers had some serious RPG history (like wizardry/ultima type history). Anyhow, Day 1 purchase, game ends up being complete shit. It wasn't finished at all, menus barely worked and the world was nearly impossible to navigate. But out of some sick masochist desire I continued playing through it just to see how far I could get and I ended up beating the whole thing. I made a map of it that is on my photobucket account under skacre (that I can't access right now), because mapping it was the only way to figure out the game. It was one of those games that was so unfinished, the community had to come together to figure out just what you were supposed to be doing.

Even mentioning that though, I'm not sure it was the worst game I ever purchased.

 

[Via]

F.E.A.R.

Bought it a few weeks ago on sale from Steam, huge letdown, terrible graphics even for its day, hated the gameplay.

terrible graphics for it's day?

Now we're just getting silly in this thread.

 

[IGemini]

terrible graphics for it's day?

Now we're just getting silly in this thread.

Agreed. FEAR was the veritable Crysis of its time in graphics and was a generation ahead in shaders (important for a horror FPS I would think). If you wanted all the eye-candy from that game at release, forget running at native resolution unless you had a cutting-edge PC. Its sequel was a disappointment.

 

[thespyder]

Some of you guys must play like 2 games a year, and only the most-hyped, blockbuster "9.5 out of 10" games every blue moon.

Outside of trolling, it's hard to imagine anyone seeing games like Half Life 2, Bioshock, Mass Effect 2, GalCiv, etc as the worst game they've purchased. Again, unless they buy only the Game of the Year every year.

I see it as equal parts people trolling, having selective memory loss, wanting to be 'Cool' or funny and just having drasticaly different tastes (or having had unusual and bad experiences with a given game) than the rest of us.

Several posters here have defended some (IMHO) really horrible games with the (apparently) honest perspective that they enjoyed them. I guess as with everything, there are people who enjoy mediocrety or merely were more tolerant of it than I personally would be. For it's time, Pong was an excellent game. But against today's standards and expectations, it would get rated rather poorly.

 

[Red Storm]

Keep in mind this isn't a discussion about what what worst games are, it's the worst game you've purchased. I personally am very selective with my purchases. I don't just buy mediocre/crap games because they're on sale, I only buy them if I'm pretty damn sure I'm going to enjoy it.

 

[zinfamous]

I see it as equal parts people trolling, having selective memory loss, wanting to be 'Cool' or funny and just having drasticaly different tastes (or having had unusual and bad experiences with a given game) than the rest of us.

Several posters here have defended some (IMHO) really horrible games with the (apparently) honest perspective that they enjoyed them. I guess as with everything, there are people who enjoy mediocrety or merely were more tolerant of it than I personally would be. For it's time, Pong was an excellent game. But against today's standards and expectations, it would get rated rather poorly.

and that would be stupid.

I imagine some people would use that reasoning to rate a game like Fallout, today, rather poorly. While others, like myself, would still put it above most of the crap that is released today. Against the standards of its time, it is almost without equal. Against today's stuff, it remains unique, amazing, perfectly designed and a true pleasure to play.

 

[zinfamous]

How about this: I never purchased it, but I consider Doom one of the worst games I ever played. Loved games like X-Wing and Wing Commander, the various amazing Sierra games of that time, but I thought Doom was shit.

 

[Red Storm]

and that would be stupid.

I imagine some people would use that reasoning to rate a game like Fallout, today, rather poorly. While others, like myself, would still put it above most of the crap that is released today. Against the standards of its time, it is almost without equal. Against today's stuff, it remains unique, amazing, perfectly designed and a true pleasure to play.

I agree. If games like Baldur's Gate II and Age of Empires II released today my high opinion of them wouldn't change one bit and I'd be burning countless hours playing them.