# What is the worst computer game you've ever played? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [February 29, 2008, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668 "2008-02-29T20:11:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Pixilated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aeb1de/32.png) [@Pixilated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixilated)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/81 "2008-03-26T15:47:20Z")
[QUOTE=Rysto] Pikmin was released in 2001 for the Nintendo Gamecube. [/QUOTE] Would’ve been for the PC, so I dont believe that was the title. ---
**Author:** ![WolfpackJeep](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpackjeep/32/2921_2.png) [@WolfpackJeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WolfpackJeep)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2008, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/82 "2008-03-26T23:47:30Z")
[QUOTE=Illuminatiprimus] Which is ironic as one of its sequels, Journeyman 3: Legacy of time, is one of my favourite games. [/QUOTE] TJP3 was awesome. I got it as part of a three-pack, with all the Journeyman games. TJP2 was pretty decent too (you get to propel yourself through space with cheese food product!), but I could never get the original to run on my computer. ---
**Author:** ![sturmhauke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47c2d/32.png) [@sturmhauke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sturmhauke)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/83 "2008-03-27T01:01:21Z")
I helped spare the world from NBA Live 07 for PS3. I was a tester on it, and wrote up a crapload of pretty serious collision bugs, among other things. My favorite one was when someone did a slam dunk and his hands and the ball passed through the backstop. Other versions were released, though, and they all sucked to one degree or another. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Il\_Palazzo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Lord\_Il\_Palazzo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Il_Palazzo)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/84 "2008-03-27T12:39:32Z")
The worst PC game I’ve ever played is **Majesty**. The premise is that you’re a king in a magical land. This means that to get anything done, you have to order/pay someone else to do it. Thus, when a giant spider saunters into one of your towns, you can’t do anything directly. You can just put a bounty on it and home someone decent from the local guild is hard up for some cash. This means that after a few clicks, everything is out of your hands and you find yourself watching rather than playing as wave after wave of low level rangers come rushing out of the nearby Rangers’ Guild and get slaughtered by this spider. And of course each one who dies repeats the same death line so you get a chorus of “I join [moment’s pause] the wild spirits.” until the spider eventually collapses (probably more from exhaustion than anything else.) ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/85 "2008-03-27T13:44:50Z")
[QUOTE=DKW] No list of horrible comptuer games is complete without a mention of the unholy nightmare that was **Defender of the Crown** , which had the rare distinction of being grossly oversimplictic and absolutely impossible. How? By ratcheting the BS up to eleven _thousand_. A disaster happening to you, and only you (“Raided, lose half your gold!” “Sheriff ambushed, lose half your taxes!” “Seeds of dissent thing, lose half your castle troops!” “Huge soccer riot, lose a territory!” ), and a better than 50/50 chance of losing a territory…EVERY. DAMN. TURN. And money issues. Did I mention money issues? As in, constantly running out of, mainly due to getting robbed all the time? My question to anyone who spent however many years it took to win this: 1. How? 2. And more importantly, why? [/QUOTE] That reminds me of the first Nobunaga’s Ambition, which I want to simultaneously nominate for the worst and the best strategy games ever (along with Masters of Magic.) It had the unavoidable non-player disasters which would hopelessly destroy your chances of winning, but only about 1/8 of the turns. But one of your ~4 neighbors might at any time decide to invade you, which in the beginning would be a Pyrrhic victory at best and usually resulted in both of you losing quickly. (Cause even if you won, one of your unhurt neighbors would mop up what’s left.) But at least it was fair in that it could also happen to your NPC opponents. Of and did I mention you could only do one thing per turn per territory, in the first game? You couldn’t even move troops around AND invest in your territory at the same time. So it was impossible to guard against all possibilities in the beginning. ---
**Author:** ![TommyTutone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c4cdca/32.png) [@TommyTutone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TommyTutone)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/86 "2008-03-27T13:48:23Z")
[QUOTE=Lord Il Palazzo] The worst PC game I’ve ever played is **Majesty**. [/QUOTE] Wow, this is one that I’d put in my top 10 for pc games because of its originality and execution. For worst that I have owned, **Ultima IX** is way up there since I had played them all since Ultima IV (and then going back and beating the first three). They took the deep history of the game and just shat all over it. **Anarchy Online** I’d say was the worst though. I was giddy about exploring a new MMORPG. If I recall, it was the 4th of the big ones at the time, after Ultima Online, Everquest, and Asheron’s Call, which were amazing for the time. I create my futuristic AO character and enter the world and movement is near impossible. I don’t have an uber rig at the time, but had never had a problem with any other online game. For about a week this remained the case and I eventually gave up on the lag on it. I’ve since revisited it and the world was fairly well done for its time, but I’d long since moved on. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/87 "2008-03-27T18:32:32Z")
[QUOTE=DKW] No list of horrible comptuer games is complete without a mention of the unholy nightmare that was **Defender of the Crown** , which had the rare distinction of being grossly oversimplictic and absolutely impossible. How? By ratcheting the BS up to eleven _thousand_. A disaster happening to you, and only you (“Raided, lose half your gold!” “Sheriff ambushed, lose half your taxes!” “Seeds of dissent thing, lose half your castle troops!” “Huge soccer riot, lose a territory!” ), and a better than 50/50 chance of losing a territory…EVERY. DAMN. TURN. And money issues. Did I mention money issues? As in, constantly running out of, mainly due to getting robbed all the time? My question to anyone who spent however many years it took to win this: 1. How? 2. And more importantly, why? [/QUOTE] I beat it many times back in my Commodore 64 days. As I recall, the answer to the money issue was raiding your enemies often. Take their gold, build forts in your outlying territories (greatly reduces the chance of losing a territory), joust a few times to build prestige, and eventually rescue a princess. Marry her, and you get all her patron’s land. That takes care of money issues in a hurry. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2008, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/88 "2008-03-27T19:04:00Z")
[QUOTE=Scumpup] I don’t remember the name of it. It was a text-based game. You dicked around endlessly getting a ship loaded with supplies, then you went out to sea to deep sea dive a wreck for some treasure. There were some bunks blocking your path on the wreck. If you moved them upright, they’d fall on you and trap you and you’d die. There was a halberd or something in the wreck as well, but neither I nor my brother ever figured out how to use it properly on the bunks. Oh…and we also never figured out how to get back up to our own ship. Many of the text-based games sucked because the real game was figuring out the exact way to phrase the command, rather than figuring out the situation. [/QUOTE] For a minute I thought you were talking smack about [Sea Rogue](http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=947), only one of the finest games of all time. Had you been, I would have had to demand satisfaction. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![DKW](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dkw/32/3118_2.png) [@DKW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DKW)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/89 "2008-03-28T07:19:08Z")
Max Torque - Ah yes, raids, thank you. Glad you mentioned the one part of the game that wasn’t at least 98% dumb luck. Not much to it, really, attack and defend, that’s about it, but I can easily imagine a really dedicated player (not me, not in a million years) getting good at it. At any rate, it had to be a helluva lot more satisfying than jousting (complete crapshoot, and as often as not it doesn’t matter where the bloody hell you aim), field battles (pick a strategy and _sit back and do nothing_), or castle battles (dink around with a catapult for a bit, then pick a strategy and _sit back and do nothing_). Seriously, though, what the hell? One good strategy and nearly everything on autopilot? This is the level of gameplay I’d expect from a board game or a college project, not a commercial computer title. On a tangential note, my vote for the biggest computer game letdown ever…Populous. “Be a god! A god! A god! Power! Almighty! God!” Right…I’ve seen _magical girls_ with more impressive abilities than what I have here. And the most maddening thing is the sheer, ludicrous _randomness_ of everything. From randomly land-altering earthquakes to random patches of swamp to random volcano rocks. And the people! The people! Ye gods, I don’t know _how_ many times some moron completely ignored a wide-open plain in favor of some tiny peninsula or charged at a vastly more powerful enemy. Never mind the fact that moving people around…just _moving people around_, dangit…required lots of dithering with a “Papal Magnet” and a “leader” (and of course you only have one of each at a time). Which made eliminating the enemy force…oh, did I mention that’s the objective of _every single world_…all the more frustrating. Still…it was _beatable_. Even the most difficult worlds could eventually be taken with the right strategy. And with experience, it was easy to lure the enemy AI into traps that insured that it could not win. And there’s no time limit, and, I’ll admit, a certain vicarious thrill in throwing up acres upon acres of land. So not a great game, but it had _some_ fun value and wasn’t a complete loss. Which puts it ahead of quite a few others, believe you me. ---
**Author:** ![ArrMatey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/arrmatey/32/3522_2.png) [@ArrMatey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArrMatey)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/90 "2008-03-28T15:09:12Z")
[QUOTE=Lord Il Palazzo] The worst PC game I’ve ever played is **Majesty**. The premise is that you’re a king in a magical land. This means that to get anything done, you have to order/pay someone else to do it. Thus, when a giant spider saunters into one of your towns, you can’t do anything directly. You can just put a bounty on it and home someone decent from the local guild is hard up for some cash. [/QUOTE] It did lead to one of the most amusing moments I’ve had in a RTS game, however. I’d typed in the cheat codes to give myself scads of cash, and I was playing the scenario in which a wizard demands that either 1) you recover his stolen tome, or 2) you pay him a ridiculous sum of money (Or 3- Hi, Opal!). I had given myself the requisite monies, but had decided to see if I could find the book anyway. After a while of searching, I locate the theives’ dens, in which the book resides. I immediately place an overwhelmingly huge bounty on the dens, more money than any one action should have assigned to it. I almost fall down laughing as the unfriendly thieves begin to attack _their own headquarters_ in chase of the loot! They recovered the book for me. Darn nice of them, really. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/91 "2008-03-28T17:13:09Z")
[QUOTE=MichaelQReilly] For a minute I thought you were talking smack about [Sea Rogue](http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=947), only one of the finest games of all time. Had you been, I would have had to demand satisfaction. 🙂 [/QUOTE] Nah, the game I’m thinking of was entirely text-based and had no graphics whatsoever. It was from the mid 80’s and released for the TI/Commodore/Atari lines of early home computers. It might have been [Cutthroats](http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=1:29027). While digging around trying to find the name of the diving game, I found that there was also a text-based game called Nine Princes in Amber. Apparently it was enhanced by static 2-D graphics. Anybody ever play it? My deeply cycnical nature says it couldn’t have been anything but sucktastic. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2008, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/92 "2008-03-28T17:24:18Z")
The oft cited worst game ever made, [Big Rigs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB1zWEhgrLs) ---
**Author:** ![Darkhold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@Darkhold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darkhold)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/93 "2008-03-29T06:22:07Z")
[QUOTE=ArrMatey!] I almost fall down laughing as the unfriendly thieves begin to attack _their own headquarters_ in chase of the loot! They recovered the book for me. Darn nice of them, really. [/QUOTE] I love **Majesty** and used to fire it up about every two months and play through the both it and its expansion pack. As you pointed out thieves and elves had low willpower so the right bounty can make them turn on their own places. ---
**Author:** ![gravitycrash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@gravitycrash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gravitycrash)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/94 "2008-03-29T14:48:25Z")
[QUOTE=Jayn\_Newell] That wouldn’t be the Cabella’s game line, would it? I played one of the first ones, and while it wasn’t horrible, it was fairly boring. I just needed something to do for an hour after school anyways (The game was my father’s–he had it installed on his computer at work) and was a decent time killer. I got a bit fed up with it after getting fined for shooting an animal that _I had a license for_. Apparently while you may own several different hunting permits, it’s only possible to have one on you at any one time, and I was looking for something else that day :dubious: However, my vote goes for **Black & White**. I liked that the user interface was purely mouse-based, since I didn’t want to memorize a lot of buttons). That is, I liked it until I started to use it. Parts of it wasn’t bad, but trying to navigate the landscape was hell. And it was hard at times to tell what my creature was up to–once I thought it was smashing a building, but it was actually gathering lumber. Don’t get me started on trying to convert cities that are out of your area of influence, and barely in range to cast miracles on before your power fades. I got to the second level, uninstalled the game, and sold it to a friend. [/QUOTE] I have to second Black and White. What a crappy game. I got so sick of babysitting the village people that I started slapping around my creature just because I could. Hopefully you didn’t sell this game at full price to your friend Jayn. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2008, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/95 "2008-03-29T16:42:19Z")
[QUOTE=Sitnam] The oft cited worst game ever made, [Big Rigs](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mB1zWEhgrLs) [/QUOTE] Intrigued by that review when it appeared, I sought out and found a copy of that game. While the review is very funny, it contains no hyperbole. \*Big Rigs \* is utterly and completely broken—so badly that it doesn’t really qualify as a “game”, but rather a horribly designed, incomplete game interface that someone completely gave up on and attempted to sell anyway. ---
**Author:** ![jhinman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/779978/32.png) [@jhinman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jhinman)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2008, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668/96 "2008-03-30T03:47:47Z")
[QUOTE=Projammer] Ah, the hours I spent on C=64 Elite. I could take out bands of pirate when they were still single pixels on the screen and dock at full throttle. No Blue Danube for me! [/QUOTE] Me and my brother reffered to this as high speed stunt docking. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-computer-game-youve-ever-played/439668.md?page=4)