Introduction
2018 was certainly a year filled with creativity and spectacle galore. These games have none of that. Hi, I’m MightyNifty and welcome to my list of the top 10 WORST games of 2018.
Before we get started I just want to remind you all that I didn’t get to play everything that came out this year, so let’s take a moment to keep in our hearts and minds those games that I’ve heard probably would have made this list, but just managed to escape: Fallout 76, The Quiet Man, Radical Heights, and We Happy Few.
Dishonorable Mentions:
This year I was lucky enough to play a ton of new games, but that also means I played a lot of disappointments. Here are those I played that didn’t quite make the list, but still deserve a bit of ribbing for their flaws.
With those out of the way it’s time to get into the real list. And the sooner we get started the sooner we can try to forget these games ever existed. First up?
Ironsight is a free-to-play Call of Duty clone, which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing, but in this case it just didn’t work out. Laggy online, lack of any kind of overall goals, and just an amateurish presentation leave this as a mediocre copycat more than a solid alternative to the mega-franchise.
It is evident that the developers sincerely tried to make this game a reality, the lack of polish and control issues make this a game I can’t really recommend to anybody, but I hope the developers use their skills and passion to move on to bigger and better projects in the future.
Dicks. Tee hee. Very funny. Welcome to Genital Jousting. Look, I don’t mind a game that’s based in childish humor if the gameplay is good, but this game just isn’t. The single player is just a walking simulator with the ramblings of a freshman philosophy major playing in the background.
The online mode is more of an arcade mini game fest with a low player count, poorly designed games, and a general lack of purpose. I can see what this game was going for, but it fell so far off the mark that for the first time in my life I can honestly say that these dicks left me disappointed. ...Don’t take that out of context.
This next game is incredibly forgettable… Eh? Ehhh? No? Alright fine it’s Forgotton Anne. I reviewed this one a while back with the lovely folks over at Black Sheep Vidya. Ratter and I were both drawn to the game because of its gorgeous Ghibli-esque art style and wonderfully animated trailer.
After playing the game I felt bad. We were both so excited to give it a try that I thought I might have missed something, but to my surprise when I messaged her about it she immediately responded with similar disappointment, so at least I know I’m not alone.
The full review is out and you can take a look if you’d like to learn more, but overall the game animates at a poor framerate, the controls are awful, the story is boring... it’s just a huge disappointment.
This game is an example of what happens when only one division of a team has the talent necessary to make something special while the others fall behind. I know I said it as a joke earlier, but Forgotton Anne is best left forgotten.
...THEY SPELLED THE FUCKING TITLE WRONG!!!!
Huh, I didn’t know melatonin came in software form! The prize for most boring game of the year goes to Konami’s latest failure- Metal Gear Survive. Luckily (or maybe unluckily) I was able to snag this game for a measly 7.50, but even at that price the time I wasted playing this game made the entire experience a net negative.
In this game you do exactly as the title says- you survive. After watching about 30 minutes of cutscenes that make no sense and have none of the charm, camp, or entertainment value of the Metal Gear cutscenes from Kojima’s days you’re dumped into an empty world and told to run around collecting food, water, and killing zombies.
The main issues with this game are the unwavering tedium and mind-bogglingly poor design choices. The need to keep your character fed and hydrated is neat in concept, but it’s just so irritating when combined with the stamina meter, requiring you to spend a ton of time running around hunting in this empty, ugly dimension for far longer than you’d ever want to.
The enemy AI can be exploited easily, the controls feel incredibly stiff and slow, the upgrade system has skills that should have been part of the base moveset, you can’t unlock a water purifier until far too late in the game, and this is how you collect items from dead creatures. Let’s take a quick look and you’ll see a snippet of why this game easily deserves its spot on this list.
(montage of collecting ore from zombies)
I had a review for the first Super Seducer come out earlier this year. It stands as the lowest reviewed game I have on my channel. Richard LaRuina’s game about teaching men how to pick up women is creepy, poorly made, and for the most part, terrible at giving actual dating advice. And the same can be said for its sequel, Super Seducer 2.
Since it’s pretty similar to the first game I won’t go into too much detail, but Super Seducer 2 initially surprised me. The first couple of levels have some real, genuine dating advice and even got me to chuckle at the intentionally ridiculous moments, but as time went on it became evident that the game was just more of the same with a bigger budget.
The levels with Mahmud in particular feel really creepy as this elderly man attempts to woo women in their twenties with strategies presented involving subtlety displaying your wealth or using other people’s pictures on Tinder. It’s just so scummy.
The real kicker here is the petty reaction to negative reviewers on YouTube, with scenes of him blowing up a YouTube convention, or intentionally misunderstanding what his critics have said in an honestly sad attempt to validate his massive ego. At first it seems like these scenes are in jest, but as the game goes on, it just proves time and time again how insecure and small of a man Richard LaRuina is.
Up next we have EA’s first foray into their EA Originals program. Feh, or fee, or iron or whatever you want to call it is a game that initially seemed promising with a cool polygonal art style and unique concept of using communication between animals to help save the forest, but now that I’ve played it the one word I’d use to describe this game is empty.
The visuals become dull over time, there are boring story segments that make little to no sense, but the biggest offense here is the gameplay. Run from one place to another, do some mediocre platforming with wonky controls, and try to make your way through a world that’s both too big and too vacant to be entertaining. There was an attempt made, but for my money, iron isn’t a game I can can recommend to anyone.
Speaking of which, Shape of the world is the next game on the list and ho-lee-shit it is just a nightmare to play through. With a walking speed slower than wading through a sea of molasses and absolutely nothing to do, this is the prime example of a game with poor design choices from start to finish.
Take everything I said about Fe and turn it down to negative eleven and you have this game. I understand it’s supposed to be relaxing, but it’s just boring. And as someone who enjoys ASMR from time to time trust me, there’s a difference.
Combine that with the fact that this game is apparently the only thing that can give me a queasy stomach aside from moldy food and not only can I not recommend it, but I advise you to stays as far away from Shape of the World as possible.
This one hurts. Ever since seeing the tech demo of characters shooting one another and having their limbs grow in accordance with the limbs they shot I was hooked. I couldn’t wait to see what kind of imaginative game came out of this concept. Unfortunately we got Morphie’s Law.
It’s a multiplayer shooter with laggy as hell servers, awful map and game design, and piss poor controls. Everything that could go wrong did, resulting in one of the biggest disappointments of the year. There really isn’t much more to say other than I hope that the developers can one day either fix their games or sell this idea to a studio that can.
Ughhhh I can’t even deal with this studio anymore! After reviewing games on this channel for almost three years, there is no developer that I’ve come to be more disappointed in that TreeFall Studios. And this year was no different with the release of Pitterpot.
Hands -down their best game yet, Pitterpot is still a terrible game. Unfinished, buggy, and most importantly uninspired, it fails on nearly every level as a 3D platformer. Every single game from this studio has been laughably untested and insultingly sold to the public.
No one should ever give this studio their money and I feel dirty having done it three times. Each time hoping that Eli Brewer can put the past behind him and produce a quality product and each time left feeling disappointed and pissed off.
Given the things I’ve heard about his management style and what he’s said about my reviews, I’ve given up on getting through to him and I’ve given up hopes on him ever making a halfway decent game. It’s evident that rather than blame the lack of quality control he believe I have something against him or his studio, and with Pitterpot’s awful controls and lack of quality assurance I can now say that I do.
But despite all of that every time this quote unquote “studio” releases a game I’ve been sure to put whatever biases I may have aside to review it fairly. Maybe they’ll turn things around, but after three chances, my hope for this studio and it’s owner has completely run out.
So what beats out a studio that’s left me three times scorned? This motherfucker who managed to make my top the worst games list twice in one year! Super Seducer is EASILY the worst game of 2018.
Watch my review if you want the full story, but in essence, Super Seducer is a how-to guide to being a creepy, sleazy playboy with misogyny, disrespect, and a lack of self-awareness being the only things that you need to become the next Richard LaRuina.
It’s just a complete mess from the menus to the gameplay to the bafflingly abysmal editing, and that’s in addition to the pathetic tactics at play here. While the second game has a few sections of genuinely good advice, this game is just an awful experience from start to finish and unlike with TreeFall, I have no intentions of purchasing a single other game from RLR Studios ever again.
Conclusion
Honestly, 2018 wasn’t all that bad. These games were the exceptions more than the rule, but with how much love and effort is put into other releases this year, I feel it’s necessary to shine a light on the greedy, lazy, or otherwise uninspired developers and show that we as consumers aren’t gonna put up with their tactics anymore.
That said If you want to check out my list of the best games 2018 had to offer, click this link in the corner of your screen or in the description below and let me know in the comments what your least favorite game of the year is or what games you expect to bomb in 2019. I hope you enjoyed the video, I’ll see you all on my 3-year channel anniversary for the Jak and Daxter retrospective and as always, have a mighty nifty 2019!
And here’s a list of every 2018 game I played for perspective: