The limiting rule, however, is that the game must be a major release game - something that would have shown up on the “New releases” racks at your local EB or Babbage’s and that was priced at a normal full price for a PC game. You can’t cite some shitty Flash game or $9.99 tycoon clone.
My nominees:
1. Patriot. The game that killed Three-Sixty This was an attempt to make a land warfare version of Harpoon; the game was utterly unplayable. The only war you could fight was the 1991 Gulf War, which featured two armies so hopelessly mismatched that nothing you could do would alter the outcome. Of course, the game was so confusing that it was difficult to tell what the outcome was, or if the game had in fact ended, so I might be wrong.
2. Star Wars: Rebellion. Marketed as a sort of Master of Orion for the STar Wars nerd, Rebellion was in fact nothing of the sort; it was a lame-ass, third-rate MOO clone that they had pasted a few Star Wars graphics onto to make use of the license. Star Wars characters were used as playing cards and the strategy aspect of the game didn’t really draw any distinction between the Empire and the Alliance. That would be bad enough, but on top of that, the interface was almost sadistic, forcing the player to memorize a series of alternating left and right clicks to do pretty much anything.
3. Master of Orion 3. MOO3 is not, in fact, a video game; it’s a grand psychological experiment to see how many PC gamers can be driven insane by a specially designed software program with the worst interface ever.
SiN. Wotta crapfest. Even after downloading and applying the mammoth patch, it was still slow-loading and buggy. When it worked right, it was no more than a generic shooter.
For some reason, I thought I already posted to this thread, but I guess not.
My nomination is for Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas.
What a crap fest! What a way to turn a great franchise into a steaming pile of crap by screwing the controls so that they’re so awkard to use that it sucks the life out out of you to even try to set them to something useable.
Well, the OP covers 2 of the 3 that I would have said. I can’t help but agree with SW:R and MoO 3. I’ve never played Patriot so I’ll reserve judgement there. In its stead I will offer Outpost. The box listed all sorts of features that were in a beta version, but not in the consumer version. After about 10 turns it became as exciting as watching paint dry, before that it was as exciting as watching grass grow.
I have to disagree with you here on your specifics, and herein lies a tale (it’s not a very interesting tale, but what do you want?)
In 1979, the strategic board game company SPI said, “Hey, this Star Wars thing is pretty popular. How can we rip it off and make money on it while changing enough to avoid getting sued?” So they created a game called “Freedom in the Galaxy” (later published by Avalon Hill). The plot of “Freedom” was that there was a rebellion against an oppressive Galactic Empire. One side played the Rebels and the other the Empire, both of which tried to get support for their cause, either by sending troops to occupy planets or by sending special characters on missions. Characters were able to use diplomacy to sway planets to their cause, assassinate other characters, sabotage military units, and start or put down rebellions. The ultimate goal of the Rebels was to overthrow the Imperial homeworld, and the ultimate goal of the Empire was to destroy the hidden Rebel base.
Star Wars:Rebellion was never an MOO clone. It was a Freedom in the Galaxy port.
Actually, I have my own addition to this list…There was a game made by a French company and published Dreamcatcher called “Pax Romana”, which had a lot of potential…you controlled a faction in the Roman Republic, and had to use diplomacy, military might, economic and political strength to become Emperor. Unfortunately, the game had so many bugs and unimplemented features, it was almost unplayable. They made two patches for the game (which didn’t help very much), then decided “We’re not going to support the game anymore. Stay tuned for Pax Romana II!”
I actually have to say I enjoyed SW:Rebellion a fair amount. Not a great game, and a semi-frustrating interface, and depending on the details of the universe generated you could be doomed from the get-go. Still, it was kind of fun. I enjoyed watching the space battles play out.
How were the controls any worse/different than GTA3 or GTA:VC?
The only bad parts of San Andreas are the stupid dancing and vehicle bouncing competitions. Luckily I’ve played enough Pirates! that I’m passably good at it now.
When MOO 3 came out, I would have been right there with you in calling it one of the worst computer games ever, but I recently dusted it off and found it to actually be pretty good.
Of course, that is with, let’s see… with ten fan mods and the version 1.25 patch. The game was pretty much unplayable until the modders got a hold of it.
I’ve played the PC port of the game and I can’t remember any differnces to the controls of GTA3 or GTA:VC either. Maybe Enrightwasn’t talking about the port.