eGamer Awards 2012: The Worst Game

This year, just like any year, gives us some bad games. But the ones we collect in this award, are the absolute worst of the worst. The games that you’d rather scoop your own eyeballs out with a spoon and wrap them around your head instead of playing them. Maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, maybe not, but either way let’s take a look at the worst games of this year. First, of course, is the rundown.

 

There is really no explanation required for this award, and you probably don’t need us tell you how distasteful the nature of it really is. Still, it’s no holds barred for us, and we feel the need to acknowledge the games that shocked us purely because of how bad they really were. Unlike the most disappointing game award, this one is truly given to the downright worst game of the year. In order to be a nominee, a game has to go above and beyond just being bad, and into shocking territory. One of the largest factors, putting aside the actual quality of the game, is how the game in question can, in no way, justify paying for it. If a game makes us have nightmares about merely putting its disc into our consoles, or makes us die a little inside each time we put down our controllers after a gaming session, has no redeeming qualities or ultimately is just so bad we can’t stand to play it, then it’s definitely a nominee for this award. Since there are a great many games that could go into the nominees list, we usually opt for the more memorable and noticeable ones for us that took things to a whole new level of bad, and then we extract our vengeance on them. This is what the worst game award is all about. Although, for the record, it’s really minus the part about revenge, and more so about acknowledgment.

 

Blackwater

Blackwater was a game that did nothing right. It was just so boring and badly executed on Kinect that we struggled to play it and hated the fact that we had to keep going in order to review it. The fact that it was priced so highly was blatantly insulting. Actually, we wouldn’t feel as though we’re exaggerating if we called it theft. It was an experience that gave us nothing of value. It was plagued by technical and design shortcomings, and controlled awkwardly at best, and it was just an example both of how not to use Kinect and how not to make an on-rails shooter. A rip off, a waste of time, and a horrible game.

 

007 Legends

007 Legends was an abomination of a game that had nothing to do with the source material it blatantly insulted. It had so little to do with James Bond it was mind-boggling, and clearly tried to get some of Call of Duty’s glory. It was a shining example of how not to make a shooter, or a game really, and it was just a waste of time and money. The game was dreadfully boring and was repetitive, shallow and felt like a chore to get through, the gameplay felt like a cheap rip-off of Call of Duty, it lost virtually all appeal after minutes and it was just so bland to play with absolutely no highlights to speak of. This was a seriously trash game, and if we didn’t have to play this for review, we would have stopped after five minutes.

 

Resident Evil 6

Resident Evil 6 wasn’t just a big letdown to both its fans and newcomers, it was also a bad game. It suffered from an identity crises, seemingly unable to figure out whether it wanted to be a shooter or a survival horror game, and ended up making a mess of both. This game felt like two steps backwards for entire series, and leaves us wondering if it possibly still even has a future. It was boring to play, suffered from messy gameplay mechanics and puzzling design choices, and was ultimately just something we struggled to enjoy. Maybe Resident Evil is better off dead after this game.

 

Star Wars Kinect

Seriously, we’d put this game here for Dancing Darth Vader alone. Yeah it’s funny, sure, but it’s a mockery of what we considered plain awesome. Some say that it was actually the best part of the game, and that just speaks volumes of what a horrible misfire this title was. It had some enjoyable bits, but for the most part it fell flat, was incoherent and not that entertaining, and it just wasn’t the visionary Star Wars Kinect experience we were hoping for. It suffered from unresponsive controls, a complete lack of depth and it was a very short-lived gaming experience, and in the end it was just a shallow and lacking tech demo that added nothing of value to Kinect’s library. This was a game we wanted to just forget.

 

Yakuza: Dead Souls

Yakuza Dead Souls was frankly a game we felt you had no business playing. Just walk away, we said. Sure, it wasn’t the worst thing you could play, but it definitely didn’t deserve to be played at all. With its frequent and unnecessary loading times, hideous gunplay, complete lack of originality, direction change we didn’t want, lack of variety, irritating frame-rate chugs, bad camera and boring gameplay, Yakuza Dead Souls didn’t have anything to redeem itself with at all. It tried to blend Yakuza in all its gangsterism and swagger with a straight-up zombie shooter, and it failed spectacularly in every way. It just looked poor, played even worse and was seriously a haunting memory we need to be rid of.

 

Here’s where we usually do the breakdown of why the other titles didn’t win, but here it’s obvious. Our loser is far worse than anything we could have imagined this year. And that’s it.

 

The LOSER of eGamer’s Worst Game Award of 2012 is.. (click to reveal)