OMGJeremy

The Fifty Worst Games We’ve Ever Played Pt.4: Sonic Is Going To Make You His Bitch

Oh man. It’s all starting to come together now. 30-40 are some real assholes. You won’t find us standing anywhere close to this group at a club. This week’s group of games is definitely more like those unwashed guys that stand around, hitting on any girl they think isn’t wearing any underwear. A collection so filthy that even the hobos know not to ask for change from them. So while we try to walk by them without them asking to hang out, let’s at least take a few minutes to examine just why they’re so bad. You know, so we don’t make the same mistakes. Or at the very least figure out why such great potential can be wasted away.

NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (Wii) -- Billy

If you’ve played a lot of games on the Wii, then you know they sometimes really struggle to incorporate motion controls into a game that doesn’t really need them. That fact makes it even more disappointing that they managed to stink up the motion controls for a game that could actually benefit from them and make for a pretty awesome experience. Even NiGHTS on the Saturn was able to get across the wonder of flight in a pretty solid way, but all the Wii version makes you feel is the wonder of frantically trying to wave your character along while you try not to flip your shit in frustration. Bad graphics that make being immersed in the world absolutely impossible, 80’s Saturday morning cartoon voice acting, and horrible music that loops so much that I cut the game off six months ago and it’s still playing in my mind all plague this title. You also spend half the time playing as two children in terrible platforming stages, or watching teeth-clinchingly horrible cutscenes involving them. Don’t bother looking for fun when they are on the screen, you simply will not find it. Or really anything else associated with this game.

Twisted Metal 3 (PS) -- Billy

This third entry in one of my favorite franchises is considered the worst in the series by many, and in my humble opinion just completely sucks the big one. 989 Studios took the rights to TM, but all they managed to make were some WRONGS. Gone were the great controls that gave you the ability to actually go wherever the hell you wanted to go and aim where you wanted to aim in previous games. Also gone were the wide-open, sprawling environments. In their place were stages that seemed so badly designed and cramped that defensive strategies just flew out the window. The game also tried to add a more realistic physics model to the vehicles, but mostly just ended up with you flipped over upside down at the slightest touch of other cars. The graphics were slightly improved, but I’ll take paper-thin buildings and jaggies if it means I can have a great experience like I did with TM2. Oh yeah, I hope you like listening to Rob Zombie and Pitchshifter nonstop.

Sonic and the Secret Rings (Wii) -- Jeremy P

It’s hard to believe that there are still people that like Sonic more than Mario. Sure, his Genesis days were mostly some of the finest platforming ever, but since then the series has degenerated with each new release. Sonic was about solid 2d platforming, but fast and with tight controls. To me, Sonic has never really felt right in 3d. I’ll give Sega credit, they got really close with the original Sonic Adventures on the Dreamcast, but somehow Sega has managed to tweak an almost perfect game with some camera issues and turned it into this. By the time Sonic and the Secret Rings was released, well honestly it was pretty much nothing like a Sonic game.

First off, it’s not really a series of levels anymore. It’s more of a series of maps with a whole bunch of little missions like “Kill 10 enemies in a minute” or “Win this race — oh your opponent can fly… sure sucks that you can’t.” If you beat these annoying missions well enough, you’ll earn a medal! If you earn enough medals, you’ll unlock essentially the full version of the level, which is what we should have been given from the get-go. Then let’s add in one of the worst control schemes in the history of gaming — hold your wii remote in front of you sideways, like a harmonica. Now, tilt the remote towards and away from you to speed up and slow down. It’s like trying to control Sonic with one of those wooden labyrinth games, except that you still have to shake the remote a bunch to jump and slam into things. The end result is probably the hardest game that I’ve beaten in the last 10 years, but only because it’s inherently a broken mess. Most of the Sonic games of the last two console generations have been abortions (we could technically put 10+ Sonic games on this list alone), but only this one actually caused me to consider quitting gaming forever.

Deadly Towers (NES) -- Billy

Most of the games on this list I have played extensively and have finished up, no matter how shitty. This is not one of those games. I don’t blame myself for not being able to finish it, but I blame the simple fact that I have had this game for over 20 years and I still have no clue where to go / what to do / what the whole point is. This game is absolutely atrocious. The graphics only serve to add insult to injury, as not only are you confused as shit and steadily building up Grown Man Rage, but you have to look at some of the most drab graphics known to the NES while you do it. If any video-game ever made you feel like you should cut off your console and read a nice book instead, this was the one.

Ghostbusters NES -- Jeremy

Got this as a random present as a kid. It was a good call, as I was pretty hardcore into Ghostbusters as the time. Sadly though, they could have never known that the NES game is bad enough to make any kid hate anything involved with Ghostbusters for a very long time. The entire game is just one incomprehensible scene after another, focusing you driving around a city, going to various houses that are haunted, and then busting some ghosts. On its own, that sounds like a pretty solid game. What I saw on the screen at the time was not. In fact, it took me months to even figure out why I was doing any of that stuff, and to what ends. If I was smart, I would have just left well enough alone. Instead, I eventually got past the city and into the hotel, where I was met with the most impossible stage ever seen in a game. You literally had to climb twenty flights of stairs by jamming on the A and B buttons, while avoiding ghosts that would kill you with a couple of touches. And if the ghosts kill you (and they will), it’s right back to the beginning of the game. It is simply impossible. The perfect icing to this childhood destroying shitcake.

NBA Jam Extreme (PS) -- Billy

Grab a BIG SLAM Mountain Dew and rip open some Doritos, we are going back to that point in time where marketing guys assumed labeling something as “EXTREME” would guarantee success. This entry in the NBA Jam franchise has the distinction of being the first Jam title that was absolutely no fun at all. The same basic formula was followed, but this game had some problems. This game is an absolute treasure for folks who love staring at loading screens, because this bastard packs in some loooooong load times. Gone is the side-to-side scrolling view and in its place is the standard generic view that most basketball titles carried in those days. Player models are also stripped away of the personality and individuality they had in previous games, and instead became cookie-cutter “next-gen” models that fall almost as flat as a Twisted Metal 3 building. Throw in the fact that the game itself seems to move much slower, and you have all the tools necessary to shit on a great series.

Daikatana (PC) -- Billy

You really never question whether or not a game will be bad when it is put out by someone who is considered a founding father of whatever particular genre it may be. So you can only imagine that when talk came up of John Romero (co-founder of id Software and one of the main guys behind Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, etc) going to work on a new FPS title, that folks just skipped the whole skepticism thing and went straight to catching a stroke. Unfortunately the game that would fall into our laps (after a few years of development hell) was ugly, out-dated, and the exact opposite of fun. Everything from the controls, to the unimpressive graphics, to the goddamned computer-controlled stereotyped characters you had to babysit seemed to just all pile up in an effort to make sure you laid down and cried over the years you spent waiting for John Romero to make you his bitch. It was actually even ported to the Nintendo 64, so a game that already had horrible sound and graphics gets pushed onto a console that has to limit the graphics even more. This was done by pretty much just blurring the shit out of everything, and throwing a layer of fog over the levels. I wish I could throw a layer of fog over the part of my brain that still remembers this shit-fest.

Bayou Billy (NES) -- Jeremy

I’ll probably be car bombed for adding this, but honestly, this game is just awful. I will certainly not speak ill of the name, or the concept. Who could? Being some superhero swamp redneck fighting the mob for your redneck swamp girl is still one of the best things ever dreamed up by any developer. Problem is that the game itself is just a mind-numbingly hard beat-em-up. The worst offender being the constant cheap hits you take that you have no ability to dodge. Quickly depleting whatever lives you had managed to save up throughout the game. And if you do die, then it’s right back to the start of the level. Which in itself isn’t bad, but the stages are so insufferably long and hard that the game quickly turns into anything but fun. Konami also threw in some shooting gallery-like stages, and even driving stages to add some variety to the game, but were mostly just as infuriating as the regular stages. Sorry, Bayou Billy. I have only seething rage for you. No matter how many crocodiles you choke to death.

Castlevania Judgement (Wii) -- Jeremy

Wow, I think this is only the third Wii game we’ve featured on here. Mostly because we aren’t counting any of the seemingly millions of shovelware games that plague the system. Castlevania Judgement, however, is actually a real game made by a real developer. But don’t let the name fool you, as this is only Castlevania in title only. What we have here is a game that decided to forgo all the amazing games built up over the years on the Nintendo DS, and instead decided to make, yep, you guessed it, a fighting game. And yes, it is completely terrible. Playing like some bastard child of Soul Calibur, you pick characters that may or may not have anything to do with Castlevania, and then proceed to flail the Wiimote around until your on-screen character decides to respond. The stages make the unresponsiveness even better, since many are littered with traps that can instantly kill you. So you can watch in delight and glory as your character finishes his waggle combo right off the side of the stage. Konami should be ashamed.

Jurassic Park (3DO) -- Jeremy

Talk about disappointment, Hyped up for over a year as being the game that will finally bridge the gap between movies and games once and for all. The final game ended up only being able to bridge shit to the toilet. There is no real game here, and is instead a collection of short minigames. Most of them being old arcade knock-offs, while the rest seem to be the remnants of whatever Jurassic Park 3DO was supposed to be at one point. The most interesting being a FPS where you were running through halls, trying to escape from velociraptors. While it looked neat, this was nothing more than a barely fleshed out tech demo masquerading as a full priced game. JP 3DO paled in comparison to the vastly superior SNES and Genesis games.

Okay, let’s get the hell out of here. The longer you hang around this crowd, the more chance you have of needing to take a shower when you get home. But there’s even more next week. So be sure to use the industrial strength body wash. It’s only getting more stank from here.