Game Hall of Shame

Welcome to my personal Video Game Hall of Shame.

I rarely write nasty or bad reviews, but some games just fail on so many levels there is no redeeming them.  A game has to be truly lousy — it basically has to make me actually angry — to earn a spot on this page.

Most of these games are long dead, but they still leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Black Mirror (2017)

A reasonably promising reprisal of a classic point-and-click adventure game is marred by story problems and, more importantly, a drunk camera operator that should be toppled and kicked to death.

Here’s the complete, frustrated review.

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The Evil Within

Tired horror trope after tired horror trope strung together in a nonsensical narrative and wrapped up neatly and idiotically at the end. Gratuitous gore, cat scares, and a terrible story don’t make a good survival horror game — I don’t care whose name is attached to it. Skip this one.

Read the full, angry review.

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Older games / Archives

Final Fantasy XIV
Final Fantasy XIV is practically hostile to its players. It dumps you in the middle of a befuddling world with little or no guidance—which might be workable if the game’s interface and controls weren’t equally befuddling.  If there is a good game in there somewhere, you must be a truly dedicated, die-hard Final Fantasy fan to find it. And be prepared to fight tooth and nail for it. If that’s you, get therapy.

Homefront
An ambitious shooter that starts promisingly enough but quickly degenerates into a ho-hum, poorly paced shooter that never lives up to its very nice graphics. The action is mediocre, the “stealth” mission is a joke, and you spend most of the game with a single objective: follow one of your AI team mates. Even worse: the entirety of the single-player game can be finished in 4-5 hours and finishes with a fizzle. At best a bargain bin pickup when you’ve got nothing better to play.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days
Kane & Lynch 2 wears out its welcome within an hour or two of its repetitive, tiresome shooting and dialog. The dialog might make a good basis for a drinking game, actually. Almost ironically, right near the very end of the game, Lynch (whom you play through most of the game) utters, “Doesn’t this ever end?” That was pretty much our sentiment, too.

King’s Quest: The Silver Lining Part 1
King’s Quest: The Silver Lining is a fan-based effort at reviving the iconic King’s Quest franchise. The complete game will be distributed in 5 parts (and we haven’t reviewed part 2 yet). But Part 1 consists mostly of non-interactive cut scenes, pointless dialog, little or no puzzle solving, and some pretty shoddy voice acting. It’s fan made, and it shows.

Legendary
Legendary is a great idea for a game: battling massive, mythological monsters running amok in a huge city. Unfortunately, the action never rises to its potential, and the game quickly becomes a quagmire of poor shooting and shockingly uninteresting action. The idea for the game is far better than the game itself.

Raven Squad: Hidden Dagger
Raven Squad is a First Person Shooter mixed with a Real Time Strategy game. It fails at both. The shooting is ho-hum and uninspired, and a sack of hammers would be more useful than your team mates. Hammers can’t die, and you can throw them at your enemies.

Ship Simulator Extremes
Freeform sailing and exploration in nearly any type of sailing vessel could be the foundation for a good game. Ship Simulator Extremes is not that game—it’s barely a game at all, actually—and it is extreme, as in extremely boring and buggy. You maneuver ships slowly, then sail them from point A to point B—and you’ll probably be checking your watch (or cell phone) a lot while doing it.

Twin Sector
Twin Sector wants to be like Portal, except instead of creating portals you use telekinetic gloves to push and pull things in your environment to solve puzzles. Unfortunately, the game is poorly localized, poorly voice-acted, and the controls are frustrating–as is the checkpoint-based save game system you’ll be cursing as you die over and over. It’s heart is in the right place, but it falls far, far short of its aspirations.