9 Amazing Levels Trapped In Terrible Video Games
Even Duke Nukem Forever had a saving grace.
While one man’s trash is another’s treasure so we can never definitively say which games are excellent and which are terrible, there are certainly games that most of us can agree are disappointing at best and hot garbage at worst.
Those are the games you’ll be encountering on this list which, for a variety of reasons, made the ‘seriously, don’t bother’ lists of gamers around the world when they launched to whatever the opposite of critical acclaim is. Whether they let down their franchises, had crap stories, poorly optimised controls, boring mechanics, or decided for some reason to take the NPCs out of a post-apocalyptic RPG series known for its deeply affecting human stories, these games all generated a lot of well-earned hate.
Of course, few things in life are all bad and despite being largely disappointing, each of these games did have an impressive level that if we could somehow remove it from the rest of the experience, would be totally worth playing on its own.
Inevitably some of you guys won’t think all these games are terrible but that’s alright, you can let me know if there are any good bits of games you did find terrible in that comment box.
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9. Mission 5 - The Raven - Aliens: Colonial Marines
Starting off strong with a game I’m pretty sure most of you will agree is terrible before I upset some of you later with my more divisive picks, we’ve got Aliens: Colonial Marines, largely agreed to be one of the worst games ever made.
But this is a seven hour game, surely not all of it is a trashfire, right? Well, as long as you like stealth you hit the nail on the head with that one. One of the most disappointing things about most Alien-inspired video game endeavours is that they just don’t replicate the tension and fear present in the films. This was a criticism levied at Aliens: Colonial Marines and for the most part it was well-deserved, except for Mission 5: The Raven, where it actually goes full Alien: Isolation in the best possible way. You lose your weapons and are instructed to try and escape, moving through flooded rooms and air vents while a massive Xenomorph bursts out of the ceiling at random intervals. In the flooded area you’re told you need to move slowly and put away your torch so as to not awaken any of the dormant aliens around you while avoiding the ones roaming the area. This is one of the only times you feel genuinely vulnerable and it absolutely works, stripping away almost all of the ambient sound and letting you simmer in terror.
It’s genuinely spooky and while this flash of brilliance doesn’t last long, the worst thing about it is that it shows what Colonial Marines could have been.