With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing many of us to stay at home, it’s hard to deny that one of the biggest winners of the year has been the gaming industry. Does that mean every title that came out this year has been a 10/10 production though? – In a word, no!
To cap off and say good riddance to one part of 2020, therefore, let me run through what I personally consider to be the 5 worst gaming releases of the year!
Oh, and it probably should be noted, this list is not in any particular order! – I view all bad games equally!
Let me start by making a couple of points blatantly clear. 1 – Cyberpunk 2077 has problems, regardless of which version you play. 2 – Despite the media hysteria, the worst of these are undoubtedly found on the console versions and especially the Xbox One and PS4 ports.
I do, therefore, and in some hope of perhaps finding some middle ground between the two camps, say that these particular releases of Cyberpunk 2077 are some of the worst examples of AAA-gaming seen in 2020. – They look awful, yet still manage to drop frames regularly, and, quite frankly, with even CD Projekt Red admitting they’re both pretty crap, this isn’t a subject of speculation any more. It’s a confirmed fact!
Yes, there’s every chance they’ll get better with patches, but in my (not so) humble opinion, this game should never have released for those consoles! – You can check out the video below courtesy of ‘Darius‘ to get an idea of what I’m talking about here.
Let me make this abundantly clear though. I do not throw the Xbox Series X/S, PS5, or PC versions into this! – Yes, they too have problems, but by and large, they do meet the remit, but admittedly perhaps not everyone’s expectations.
Coming as a game that was essentially bundled in for free with the Resident Evil 3 remake (possibly as a means of halting criticism over the game’s exceptionally short campaign), there was a lot of anticipation surrounding Resident Evil Resistance. A team-based co-op game? Mechanics relatively similar to Left 4 Dead and Dead by Daylight? Set in the Resident Evil universe? – How could this possibly fail?!
Well, it did. In fact, Resident Evil Resistance outright stunk! And one of the biggest problems was the fact that it relied so heavily on P2P connections which, ultimately just led to laggy and borderline unplayable situations. I seriously once had to spend about 20 minutes trying to find a lobby that didn’t have nuclear grade latency warnings and, even when I did finally get a match… Well, let’s just say that Resident Evil Resistance didn’t come even remotely close to living up to the hype, let alone the potential.
I played about 5-8 games, and then I uninstalled it and have never felt compelled to try it again since. Maybe it’s better now, but somehow I doubt it.
The original XIII, released in 2003, quickly gained a cult following for its decent story, responsive gameplay, and, above all, the fact that with it’s cell-shaded aesthetic, while it might not have been graphically glorious, it at least managed to look uniquely different to the slew of other first-person-shooters we were getting mobbed with at the time. – Put simply, this encapsulated everything that the 2020 remake was not.
This not only is one of the worst games I encountered in 2020 but if I was to make a list, this would undoubtedly also be one of the biggest gaming disappointments too! – It was so hard to get wrong, yet, like many remakes, they still somehow managed to contrive to find a way!
Trust me, if you want to try this game out, play the original! – It’s vastly cheaper and, in my opinion, despite being 17-years older, the far more superior of the two!
It breaks my heart to add this game to the list because having played the original Warcraft 3 back in the days of my old Intel Celeron 500 (IIRC), this was easily among some of my most beloved gaming classics. With the ‘remake’ released earlier this year, however, many long-term critics of Blizzard were finally given all the ammunition they needed to start firing legitimate shots at just how cynical and money-grabbing the developer’s practices had become.
One of the biggest criticisms of the game was the fact that when compared to the exceptionally glossy trailers, the final product had clearly been massively cut down. – The phrase ‘bait and switch’ was thrown around and, quite frankly, I think it was well deserved.
In fairness, Warcraft 3: Reforged isn’t bad. When you do, however, compare just how little they managed to progress this so-called ‘remake’ from the original… Well, there are no other words for it. Blizzard did this simply to cash in on nostalgia and, like an idiot, I bought into it!
Check out the video from IGN below to see just how much we gamers were screwed here!
The Outer Worlds is a fantastic game, with a pretty colossally huge exception being the Nintendo Switch port. It looks bad, plays worse (with consistently dropped framerates – and I’m talking single digits at times), missing or incorrectly loaded assets. I could go on but put simply, this game is an absolute dumpster fire. – Maybe patches have fixed it now, but quite frankly, if they have, I don’t care at this point!
But Mike, I hear you say, this was released on the Nintendo Switch, it’s not as powerful as the PS4, Xbox One, or PC, so why are you being so hard on it?
Well, if you are asking that question, then I’d simply point you towards The Witcher 3 on the Nintendo Switch. Despite there clearly being system limitations, that version both looks and plays amazingly well! – In fact, it’s something of a triumph that they managed to port the game so incredibly well and, yes, it may have set the bar a bit too high for everyone else, but it at least proved what the Switch’s rather humble hardware was capable of in the right hands. And those hands were clearly not involved in The Outer Worlds for the Nintendo Switch.
This could’ve been another triumph for the plucky little console and instead, well, it’s just a joke. And not a funny one either!
Picking my five worst games of the year is never an easy task. I mean, while I don’t mind ruffling feathers, I do try to pick what I honestly believe has been pretty terrible. I’m not controversial without at least attempting to back it up wherever possible.
So, what I’m getting at is, you may not agree with my list here. But, let’s face it, I’ve picked a decent selection of stinkers here!
If you enjoyed Mikes Rant, you can check out more via the link here – Alternatively, for more of his Christmas-related rantiness, check out the link here! They’ll be a new rant (nearly) every day between Christmas and New Year!
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