10 Worst No. 3's In Gaming History
When three is the tragic number.
Last year, WhatCulture indulged in a fond remembrance of our favourite threequels. The article allowed us to look back on some of our greatest gaming memories, and reminded us why we fell in love with this hobby in the first place.
Writing this article, by way of contrast, acted as a potent reminder of how easily love can slip into hate.
Each game on this list occupies a special place in the pantheon of video game failures. Some are unworthy follow-ups to genuine classics; some derailed their franchises for years; and a special few are so spectacularly awful they led to the immediate extinction of once-promising IP.
From sociopaths to superheroes, beat-em-ups to epic strategy and outer space to city streets, these ten games prove that when it comes to incompetence, there truly is no barrier. Like Hell's own Baskin-Robbins, there's enough failure here to dissatisfy any customer. (By the by, if you do wind up down there, try the Soul Unsettled Ribbon - it lets you briefly experience the lives of your more successful high school classmates, before crushing you with an eternity of your failures).
But enough talk of existential dairy products. We have mounds of gaming sewage to wade through, and the first stop on our craptastic voyage is....
10. Doom 3
The kindest thing you can say about Doom 3 is that it handily filled in the DON'T column for future Doom developers. For example:
DON'T slow down the pace of the action to the point where Omar Sharif's Bridge is a more exciting alternative.
DON'T give the job of redesigning Doom's iconic bestiary to someone whose paint palette only contains the colour brown.
DON'T copy-paste the same gunmetal grey corridors over and over again. When people talk about Doom games being "metal", they aren't being literal.
DON'T reconfigure the weapon audio to the point where every gun sounds like a discount K-mart version of its Doom I & II equivalent. (If you've ever wanted to know what a farting light bulb would sound like, try firing Doom 3's plasma rifle).
Suffice it to say, 2016's excellent Doom reboot succeeded largely by going in the exact opposite direction of its prequel. So thank you, Doom 3, for being a necessary dead end in the road map of gaming evolution. Please enjoy your retirement alongside the Virtual Boy and those moldering Kinects.