14 DAY TRIAL // People will remember gaming in 2018 just like they remember previous years; a few hits, lots of meh titles, and a quite a few flops. Here are some of the games that managed to land at the bottom of the pile.
Not all games are going to be great ones, and while developers might try their best, in most cases, some of the titles are going to be complete flops. It’s also true that a small number of those flops are going to be from established studios, but it’s not a rule.
If anything, bad design in games comes from developers that either don’t have a lot of experience or from people who don’t actually understand what people want to play. Whatever the reason, failed games are always going to exist, so we might as well use them to learn a few lessons.
10. Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn
This is a disappointing sequel to a game that wasn’t all the great in the first place. The original Shaq Fu was launched back in 1994, and it ranked then among the words. Somehow, against all the odds, developers from Big Deez Productions managed to raise enough money through crowdfunding to get a sequel going.
If their intention was not only to build a sequel but a bad sequel to a bag game, then the Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn is a success. But it’s not, it’s a game that shipped with missing functionalities, took so long to make that some platforms never got it, and various problems mired it.
9. Bravo Team for PlayStation VR
VR games are still not doing well, even if developers are trying new recipes and multiple platforms are available. Bravo Team was made by Supermassive Games, a studio that had a good track record in VR.
Unfortunately for them, Bravo Team is now considered one of the worst VR games to be released in recent years. It’s way too short, it featured mediocre gameplay, it's full of wasted opportunities, and has a myriad of various technical problems.
8. Agony
Agony promised so much and delivered so little. Player’s were going to experience Hell in an attempt to escape, and find out more about their reason of being there. The devs from the Madmind Studio let their imaginations run wild and targeted an “Adult Only” release. They had to tone down some of the more creepy stuff for the launch, but it didn’t matter.
In the end, Agony was just an FPS with stealth mechanics in which players were confined mostly to the role of voyeurs. Throwing massive amounts of gore into the mix did nothing to make the game better. Somehow, the game is still scheduled to be released on Nintendo Switch.
7. Hello Neighbor
Hello Neighbor from Dynamic Pixels has a fascinating premise. You need to sneak into your neighbor’s basement to learn his dark secret. It’s actually described as a horror game, and it’s a pretty good game on almost all platforms.
The Nintendo Switch port is a bust no matter how you look at it. Everything was downgraded to make the game work, and the result was a terrible experience for a game that was supposed to be a horror one. One of the few times when the difference is made by the platform.
6. The Culling 2
The Culling 2 was supposed to be new battle-royale type game that was meant to rival PUBG and Fortnite. It only “borrowed” from other games in the genre, but never even implemented those correctly.
Nothing was right with the game, including shooting mechanics, map design, animations, or sounds. It was bad enough for the Xaviant Games devs decided to pull it off the shelves. It’s gone, and you can’t even play it anymore. And that’s a good thing.
5. Wild West Online
An MMO in the Wild West Sounds like a great idea, and it should be a no-brainer, but the developers from WWO Partners Ltd managed to destroy the concept entirely. Released as a stable product after it spent some time in Early Access, the game failed on all fronts and added new fronts for good measure.
You can ignore the dodgy graphics, physics, and bugs, but you will have to draw the line when you’re asked to pay money for some basic features. Enough is enough!
4. The Quiet Man
The Quiet Man has a great premise and is described as “an immersive story driven cinematic action experience.” It’s a beat-em-up with live action scenes. Built on the Unreal 4 engine, by Square Enix and Human Head Studios, it had all that it needed.
It failed. Even though playing and experiencing the world as a deaf man sound intriguing, it’ not. The gameplay itself is boring, the levels are bland, and the Unreal engine is underused. Give this one a pass. Everyone else did.
3. Past Cure
The game got a lot of people excited, and it looked great, initially. In fact, Past Cure has some great graphics and cutscenes, but everything else is wrong. The most annoying aspect has to be the voice acting, which is probably done by the developers themselves.
Add the bizarre AI, the wonky level design, and the slow pace of the action, you have all the ingredients for failure. To their credit, the devs from Phantom 8 Studio did release a patch, but it was too little, too late.
2. Super Seducer: How to Talk to Girls
No matter who you put this game into words, you can’t describe better than its title. It’s a game for people that don’t know how to talk with girls, but it’s using interactive live-action videos.
Leaving aside the fact that the dialogues, reactions, and premise are all wrong, the acting itself is as bad as it gets. To make this an even weirder experience, the devs from RLR Training Inc made Super Seducer 2, which is better than the first one. It helps the fact that the new game doesn’t take itself seriously.
1. Fallout 76
There is no list of bad games for 2018 that doesn’t end with Fallout 76 as the top contender. I’m sure that there are some people out there that enjoyed the game, on some level, and the basic idea of a Fallout MMO is not bad.
But the game was rushed on all platforms, and it full of bugs and problems, despite getting patches. And then we experienced the entire debacle with the canvas bags, that was just the cherry on top. After all said and done, it turns out that an online Fallout was a mistake. Either the market is not ready, or Bethesda had it all wrong. In any case, Fallout 76 deserves to be number one.
