My Top 8 WORST Games of 2017!

My Top 8 WORST Games of 2017!

          2017 was a great year for video games…for the most part. While we saw plenty of success stories across the board, we also saw a lot of the uglier parts of the industry rearing their heads this year. Microtransactions, loot boxes and review policies were in full effect as the scummier developers took the low road often. We also saw several games that were badly designed, underwhelming, or just plain annoying. And today I’ll be revisiting 8 of my least favourites!

          As a reminder, I don’t go out of my way to play terrible games. They usually find me. But I skipped out on most of some of the more notorious games released this year (for example, you won’t be seeing Battlefront II on this list as I decided it wasn’t worth my time to play it), so if there’s a game missing it’s either that I fortunately missed out on it or I enjoyed it more than you did.

          With that being said, let’s once again pay homage to the bottom of the barrel!

8. Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite

          Taken at face value Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite isn’t too bad. It’s pretty boring and shallow compared to the far superior Tekken 7, but I’ve played worse fighters. But when you start comparing the game to its direct predecessor Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, things start to get messy.

          The game features only 30 playable characters, a low number when compared to Ultimate 3’s 50. This is likely because in an effort to more closely resemble the popular Marvel Cinematic Universe movies characters from X-Men and Fantastic Four are nowhere to be found. But instead of removing those characters and call it a day, why didn’t Capcom just add in new heroes and villains from the movies? I would’ve loved to try out Ant-Man, Loki or Star-Lord, but they’re nowhere to be found.

          But hey, just a week after release they added new characters available for only $5.99!

          It doesn’t help that the game looks ugly as anything. Instead of the colourful comic-book inspired design of the previous games in the franchise, Infinite appears to be trying to resemble the Marvel Mannequin Universe. The more realistic human characters look like they were crafted out of the finest PlayDoh available, and the hair looks more like a furry texture pasted onto a brown polygon. Don’t even get me started on how bad Rocket Raccoon looks.

          As far as gameplay goes it’s not too bad, but there is no reason why you should buy this $60 game over Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 for half the price. They’re both available on PS4, so if you wanna duke it out as your favourite superheroes, make sure you buy the right game.

7. Puyo Puyo Tetris

          And now it’s time for an annual tradition: the game I hated that everyone else seemed to love! Last year it was Dragon Quest Builders, and this year it’s Puyo Puyo Tetris.

          What initially looked like a crossover between the two properties quickly established itself instead as a Puyo Puyo game that uses Tetris as an extra gimmick. This wouldn’t be too bad, but you’d be forgiven if you forgot that Tetris was even a component of the game with how little they use it here. Most of the time is given up to playing Puyo Puyo levels, which are slow, tedious, and not at all fun. I’m sure they have an audience, but that audience isn’t me.

          But what really kills the game for me is the voice acting. Every single time you clear a line the character you’re playing as will pipe in with a “Yes!” “Solved it!” or something along those lines. The big problem is that each character only has 1 quote for each amount of lines you clear, so as you make your way through each level you’ll be hearing a non-stop barrage of “YES! YES! YES! YES! YES!” over and over again. The only way I could continue playing this game after the first hour was with the TV muted.

          There’s also no Marathon mode available here for Puyo Puyo or Tetris, limiting single-player replayability after you’ve finished the main story. Unless you can convince a friend to play with you, you’ll never touch the game again.

6. Yooka-Laylee

          Talk about a disappointment. This “retro Rare-vival” was Kickstarted as a spiritual successor to the Banjo-Kazooie games on the N64, helmed by the same development crew. To echo my review for the game, the developers clearly were trying to remind you of how great their games were in the late 90’s, and I feel they accomplished that with me. In my entire time playing Yooka-Laylee I found I’d rather be playing Banjo than this worse homage to it.

          I think someone forgot to tell the developers at Playtonic Games that video games progressed after the N64, because this game could’ve been made in 1998 and you’d never be able to tell the difference. The controls and camera are wonky as anything, the NPCs stand around lifelessly repeating the same single animation over and over again, and the graphics would look moderately passable on the GameCube.

          Just like the good ol’ days!

          But I can forgive lackluster presentation if the core gameplay is good, but sadly Yooka-Laylee plays more like a series of missteps. Collecting objects to further your quest feels more like a chore than an objective, the puzzles range from boring to confusing to full-on rage inducing, and the hub world is legitimately the worst I’ve ever seen. The winding maze of twisting hallways, rooms and pipes left me so lost I wound up consulting the internet for help finding Level 2.

          The game was ported to Switch a few weeks back to basically no fanfare whatsoever, so it looks like the only thing Yooka and Laylee will be collecting anytime soon is dust.

5. Knack 2

          This poor game never stood a chance. The sequel to the much maligned Knack, a PS4 launch title that found its way onto many Worst Games of 2013 lists, Knack 2 was laughed at and ridiculed right out of the gates. While this sequel fared better critically than its predecessor, it’s still not a good game by any means.

          Remember those really bad bargain bin platformer games with licensed characters that your grandma would get you for Christmas when you were a kid? Knack 2 feels like one of those. Visually the game looks like one of those direct-to-DVD Disney knockoffs that try to fool parents into getting them for their kids instead of the real thing (Ratatoing anyone?). The human characters all have thousand yard stares the entire game, giving the whole thing an unintentional creepy feel, like one of those cheap horror games on Steam where you’re being chased by statues or whatever.

          The gameplay isn’t much better either. The combat is incredibly brainless, as you walk up to enemies and mash the square button until you win. But even then the game is quick to offer invincibility power-ups to you the second you walk into a combat area fairly frequently. I was playing on Normal difficulty and I still found this game to be a complete breeze.

          This is one of those games clearly aimed at kids who still can’t tell a good game from a bad one, but speaking as someone who was a kid at one point in time I’d much rather play a platformer like Super Mario Odyssey or Crash Bandicoot: The N-Sane Trilogy than this cakewalk. I think Sony should just let this franchise go.

4. Prey

          I’m typically a patient person while gaming. I never lost my cool while playing Cuphead, despite being stuck on the Aviary Action level for days. Even the ultra-tough Darker Side of the Moon in Super Mario Odyssey wasn’t enough to make me lose it.

          But Prey? Prey broke me.

          While I’ve definitely heard others had a much more enjoyable experience with this game, my playthrough was complete misery from start to finish. The game was advertised by Bethesda as having a “play your way” mechanic, where you could build a character with whatever attributes you wanted and still be able to beat the game. I quickly discovered this was a blatant lie, however. Knowing this was a horror game going in I decided to put as many skill points as I could into stealth and lockpicking to try and avoid enemies. The only problem was that most if not all the enemies were placed in long, narrow hallways with no way around them except for strong-arming your way through like Rambo. My build was rendered worthless when I ultimately arrived at a boss fight and had no way to defeat him as my character was about as strong as a baby wielding a wet spaghetti noodle.

          I once got so angry at this game that I legitimately needed to leave the house and take a walk to cool down after a particularly merciless session. So, in consideration that this game was sold on a false promise as well as the fact that this was yet another game Bethesda used their bogus review policy on where the embargo wasn’t broken until after the game hit store shelves, Prey walks away with this year’s Sean Murray Award for Most Anti-Consumer Game of the Year. Maybe if I’d played Battlefront II I would’ve given it to them, but I didn’t, so here we are.

3. Lego Worlds

          This was a weird one. You’d think at this point Traveller’s Tales would know how to make a working Lego game, but with this and 2015’s Lego Jurassic World it’s clear to me that they’re still working out the bugs.

This game was obscenely glitchy to the point that adding in a second player legitimately broke the game. Our tools suddenly became inaccessible, the sound effects got insanely loud, and the camera began to swing wildly in all directions. It wasn’t very fun.

Hilariously, while this was clearly meant as an attempt to ape games like Minecraft and LittleBigPlanet, it wound up feeling more like a Lego-ized version of No Man’s Sky. The entire campaign that I played was nothing more than landing on a planet, doing some mundane tasks to gather resources, and then leaving said planet to do the whole thing again. How fun.

Also my playthrough ended early because a glitch caused an objective to not spawn in the world because this was a finished product that cost $30 at launch.

2. MicroMachines World Series

          If there was ever an example of a game being made just so the publisher could have a reason to keep a licensed name to itself, it would be MicroMachines World Series. This is a multiplayer racing game released in 2017 that doesn’t have a local multiplayer mode. Seriously. You can only play singleplayer or online, but I’m almost certain you’ll have a tough time finding anyone to play with you. I played this in launch month and even then the game had to add a bunch of computers to fill my online races.

          Despite the visual design telling me that this game takes place on a desk of some sort, the controls made it feel more like the surface of Antarctica. The cars slide around like their wheels have been soaked in butter, and making sharp turns is nearly impossible. At one point the game wanted me and some other players to jump a ramp, but none of us had the momentum to make the gap because of how hard it was to just drive in a straight line.

          It’s so laughably terrible that I almost want to recommend it…almost. But since there’s no local multiplayer mode, there’s absolutely no reason to pick this one up. Just watch some funny dog videos instead. You’ll enjoy it more.

1. Troll and I

          Honestly, there was no contest this year. I knew going in that Troll and I would run away with the grand title of Worst Game of 2017.

          It’s simply mindblowing how this game gets literally everything wrong. The story is wrong. The gameplay is wrong. The voice acting is wrong. The graphics are wrong. It’s just...kinda impressive, actually.

          The game is supposed to be set in Scandinavia in the 1950’s, but it looks more like Middle-earth. Your main character hunts boar with spears and sticks, and everyone dresses like they just got home from their job at the local pioneer village. The rest of the presentation is equally hilarious: I’ve seen better character models on the N64, and the voice acting is clearly just developer family members called in to help cut costs. Also, the forest is full of ghosts. It’s never explained why these mysterious ripple effects are hanging in the air, so I just assume they’re the ghosts of everyone who died playing this game.

          The gameplay is, unsurprisingly, atrocious. Early on you have to go through a lengthy string of quick time events to jump over some logs…even though a cutscene that played just before this part shows that the main character can’t jump over a log to save his mom. Okay then. Anyways, it’s complete luck if the quick time event will work or not. I would press the button in perfect time (if the button prompt decided to appear at all, which it often didn’t, resulting in failure), but main character guy would miss the jump and I’d have to start the whole thing over again.

          Everything about this game at launch was so hilariously awful, except for one thing: the price. While it’s dropped down now (although anything above $2 is asking too much for this game), it cost a full retail price of $60 at launch. That’s flat-out robbery, and the publishers should be ashamed of themselves for it. So, for being one of the most broken, buggy, and overpriced games I have ever experienced in my 21 years of gaming, Troll and I easily walks away as 2017’s worst game.

          Ah, that was fun. If you want something a bit more positive, be sure to check out my Top 10 Best Games of2017!