Judging the best and worst of the year is always a subjective endeavor. And while the best generally come to some sort of consensus among gamers, worst is trickier to agree on. The reason being the majority of gamers do not seek out the worst games (just as they don’t seek out the worst films or other art). I am a bit of an anomoly because I’m fascinated by bad things, specifically what makes them bad but even so, there is only so much time and expendible income. I did play some bad games this year though and here are the worst of the bunch for me.
Crime Boss: Rockay City
Crime Boss looked terrible from the first time it was showcased and the only reason it got any real spotlight was because of the insane cast it sports. Michael Madsen, Kim Basinger, Michael Rooker, Danny Trejo, Danny Glover, Vanilla Ice, and Chuck Norris all have rolls in this game and Madsen and Rooker seem to be having a blast with the project but everyone else is just in a different realm but the best is Chuck Norris. The way Norris delivers his lines, like someone awkwardly asked him to read nonsense off of a napkin, is amazing. The gameplay isn’t much better either as it’s a weird mix of Payday, medicore FPS action missions, and a roguelite. The stealth is horrid and the shooting below par. It’s just bad but it’s such a special kind of bad that I enjoyed the seven hours I put into it.
Wild Hearts
I struggled putting this here, especially below Crime Boss because the core concept of Wild Hearts, is pretty solid. Wild Hearts is in essence, Monster Hunter with a Fortnite like building mechanic that lets you conjur magical barriers and offensive contraptions. The gameplay is fairly polished and it looks quite good. So why is it here on this list of the worst of 2023? Well, it is designed very much around playing with other people and for at least the first month after the game’s release it was impossible to play with other people. EA was asking $70 for this game and once you get past the tutorial either you needed to grind the same three monsters over and over and over or just not play it because it would not allow you to play with other hunters and in the off chance it did luckily get you into a hunt with others, the connection and lag was so bad that it became impossible to play and inevitbly your fellow hunters would drop and you’d get stomped by the enemy you were hunting together. It was an absolutely shitty experience and didn’t even have Chuck Norris delivering the flattest line reads imaginable. Maybe one day I’ll teturn to it but this game made me so mad, I’m not prepared mentally to try it again.
Smurfs Kart
Smurfs Kart is a bit of a cheat here, it initially came out on Switch in 2022 but it took until August for it to hit PS5 and Series X, which is when I finally played it. Smurfs Kart looks and plays fine, I guess, but its just so agressively boring and devoid of additional content that Smurfs Kart kinda just flops into this list. It’s not as entertaining as Crime Boss and it can be completed in less time than it takes to play the Wild Hearts prologue so it’s sitting here with little explanation. That’s a testament to how dull it is.
Dreamworks All-Star Kart Racing
Dreamworks All-Star Kart Racing is the third attempt to try to get a kart racer with Dreamworks stars like Shrek and Alex the Lion to take off. And the third time is not the charm here. Game Mill produced this one and I understand the disgust around them but the developer they had working on this did produce the acceptable Nickelodeon Kart Racing series. Dreamworks All-Star is not it though. It’s slow (a terrible crime for a kart racer to commit), has bad pickups and powerups, and the most repetitive dialog this side of a 1990s sports game. My kids and I play a new kart racer every year on Christmas Day and while we’ve had fun with bad kart racers in the past this one did nothing for them and I ended up playing most of it myself as they went to do other things around the house.
emoji Kart Racer
Did you know emoji is a brand? I didn’t until I fell down the emoji: The Iconic Brand ownership hole while researching for my review of this game. Ultimately, the game is slow, handles stiffly, and has some insanely unpredictable physics. It just isn’t fun, which is what a kart racer needs to be and this was the worst of the many kart racers I played this year.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
Gollum is such a weird game. The premise alone is batty. Who thought that playing a stealth platformer as Gollum was what Lord of the Rings fans were asking for? And even if there was a player base for such a game, it’s PS3/360 level visuals and constant bugs don’t help its cause. There are a number of game breaking bugs in the game and while I was able to finish it, I had to jump through some hoops to do so (like having to play the final chapter on an Xbox One because it would crash on Chapter 9 on a Series X and S but the bug didn’t appear on an original XB1. Anyway, it’s weirdly designed and awkward (like the binary morality system for Gollum/Smeagol), looks awful, and plays even worse. And the game sadly killed Daedalic Entertainment’s development wing, which I don’t think any of the other games did to their developers so without a doubt The Lord of the Rings: Gollum is the worst thing I played this year.
That is it from me, what were some of the worst you played this year?
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