Umm…was that the one that would fuck up people’s Windows? Or was that Pools of Radiance?
-Joe
I came in to nominate MOO3. I see I’m far too late.
Never had the pleasure myself, but the awesome Game Players magazine named their 0.0 rating after Cosmic Race.
One of the worst for me was The Journeyman Project. As linear as a slide show, and about as interactive, too. Even Myst at least had some interesting bits to toy with; in TJP, you might as well be on rails. And, the performance was so snail-crawlingly awful, there was one part of the game that was literally impossible to get through (a maze you have to navigate with limited oxygen, or something) unless you knew the way through beforehand, because one wrong turn would cause such a delay that you’d run out of air.
I’m not sure how someone got the go ahead to make Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde but the finished product was pretty awful. You started out as Jekyll and had to make your way through different levels without raising your anger gauge too high. Instead of taking damage, your anger meter fills up.
Did I mention that every one has it out for you? Or that you walk slightly faster than an arthritic turtle going uphill against a headwind? Or that your only weapon is a useless cane that reaches about two pixels and should by some miracle of the IPU, you manage to hit something with it, your target is only momentarily stunned or forced to change direction?
Ahem, if you get too angry (and you will), you turn into Hyde and do a reverse of the levels with forced scrolling. These parts are by far the best and almost manage to be fun. You kill enemies to lower your anger and turn back into Jekyll. The catch is that if Hyde progresses farther in his reverse levels than Jekyll does, it’s game over. In other words, the best part of the game is the one that you have to avoid if you want to progress.
Which is ironic as one of its sequels, Journeyman 3: Legacy of time, is one of my favourite games.
You forgot that its creator, Derek Smart, was incredibly obnoxious and the flame wars that raged about that game went on for years.
Let me repeat that. Years.
You guys might think a pit thread or great debate that goes on for a few weeks is bad you should have seen the USENET threads about that game.
TJP was part of that pre-rendred puzzle game craze that started with Myst and followed up with The 7th Guest. Everyone thought they could get rich by loading up one of the then new-fangled CD-ROM’s with multimedia content and shoving it out there. Needless to say it didn’t work.
I don’t know if I could pick out a worst given the thousands of computer games I’ve played. If I pick one as the most hurtful it has to be Ultima IX: Ascension. All the retooling, all of conceptual problems; it took the last remaining shreds of what people loved about Ultima and flushed it in the pursuit of an audience that just wasn’t there. There’s quite a few games from that period where they took a popular series, took out the stuff that people enjoyed, and replaced it with crap in the hopes of attracting a wider audience and all of them are justly reviled (King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity is another good example), but I think Ascension is the king of those.
No question about it. Hands down.
John Deere American Farmer. Okay, I live in farm country, have a John Deere tractor, and just bought this game as a joke, but still…
I sent my odd little 2D farmer out to till his field, and he took off around the world in a westward direction to get to a point several hundred feet to his east, and nothing I did would make him stop. Nothing. After I tried every possible resolution, I was laughing almost too hard to shut down the machine.
In the world of serious computer games, though, my vote would be for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Gad, what a disappointment. Technically it was not as bad as many of those listed here, but factoring in the level of gameplay and attention to detail we had every right to expect for this title, Oblivion was a complete debacle.
BC3K is the game I’d vote for worst, as well. I picked it up for ten bucks in the bargain bin… and after I’d installed it and tried to play it, I wanted my money back. The interface can best be described as “user hostile”.
Several years later, I got into an argument with DS… and, over the course of it, he tried to get me fired from my job.
The sad thing is that he’s now very likely to show up in this thread- he’s remarkably easy to summon.
I know a lot of people actually like them (and I don’t remember the exact titles) but a friend of mine had a Bass fishing game and some hunting game…and they were ALSO memorably bad. The bass fishing game especially was excruciating…I mean, catching virtual bass? Selecting virtual lures?? The hunting game was just as bad, though I concede that maybe because I don’t actually like hunting (or fishing for that matter).
-XT
Well, if he does we 3 will drag his butt off to the pit. That game was drek. I actually paid full price for it and had been avidly awaiting it’s release for years (and yeah, I remember some of the USENET flame wars that raged on about this thing for years).
-XT
I owned E.T.
That paled in comparison to Custer’s Revenge, which I did in fact play once. Blech.
If expectations tied to previous titles in a series are an acceptable criterion, Heroes of Might and Magic IV would be the pinnacle of suck. The first three were among the best turn-based strategy games ever. The fourth mangled it in virtually every respect.
I knew I didn’t have a hope of being first to mention MOO3 in this thread, but I believe it deserves as many repeated mentions as possible.
This is the only game I’ve ever listed on eBay within 24 hours of purchase.
Balance of Power. I had it for my old Dell 386SX. I simply could not figure out how to play it. Tried three times for about 10 minutes each, then gave up. Basically, you’re the U.S. and the enemy is the U.S.S.R. It’s the Cold War and you’re supposed to increase some kind of score while preventing nuclear war.
The graphics were in greyscale. Greyscale! Dude, even DOS had figured out a 256-color palette by then.
Of course, I was about 10 years old, so maybe it would make more sense now that I’m an adult. 
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.
Would you mind elaborating a bit more? I have Oblivion and I found it addictive as hell. Beautiful graphics, hundreds of hours of quests… it’s impossible to get bored.
What about it didn’t you like?
Edit: Upon further thought, I can understand that the storyline was weak, there were no cutscenes, and for a game so big, 8 kinds of armor and 6 kinds of weapons is pathetic. It’s still fun, though… 
:eek:
but…I love Oblivion! Are we playing the same game?