8. WWF In Your House
As you may have noticed, the pattern seems to be that most of the worst games in the WWE back catalogue happened when they tried to do something other than the simulations they were comfortable with. Despite this game actually taking place inside a wrestling ring, "In Your House," was a further example of misplaced experimentation. This time the problem was that they jumped on another game's bandwagon to lure a new audience to theirs. Using a style blatantly stolen from the Mortal Kombat series, WWE attempted to turn their games into more of a beat 'em up than a wrestling simulation. "In Your House," wasn't the first game to try this approach as Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game did it first. In Your House just failed to improve on anything that game did, instead somehow managing to be a worse game than its predecessor. Each wrestler was an over the top version of themselves, complete with ridiculous special moves and "home" arenas that were supposed to represent their personality. While some made sense, like Bret Hart's being the Family Dungeon, others were just plain odd, The Ultimate Warrior seemingly taking up residence at a dude ranch. With a new game of course, came new moves and while they kept with the tradition of being ridiculous, some were more stupid than anything. For example, Vader took the time to take his whole mask off and hit you with it, while Goldust could use his DEVASTATING feather boa. It tried its best to bring the fun of a beat em up to the WWE universe but was rarely successful. Again, fans of beat em ups were unlikely to be impressed, while those seeking a wrestling game definitely didn't get what they wanted. It was worth playing once for the sheer novelty of seeing the WWE stars in a fighting game scenario but it grew tiresome quickly. Most inexcusable was the fact that it failed to improve upon the already questionable WrestleMania game that came before it. The Mortal Kombat style was thankfully dropped and the series returned to its wrestling roots.