7 Worst Video Games Of 2021 (So Far)

1. Balan Wonderworld

The game so bad, the co-creator of Sonic the Hedgehog departed the games industry, Balan Wonderworld was the latest all-eyes-on release from Yuji Naka, someone who programmed the original Sonic, then went on to oversee the masterful likes of Phantasy Star Online, and the "...bleh" likes of Billy Hatcher & the Giant Egg.

Now back in a directing role for the first time in decades, Naka immediately clashed with Square Enix's higher ups, as he wanted to make a time-tested platformer, and they wanted something far more story-driven.

The result was the most ambitious project Yuji Naka had ever tried; an attempt to craft 80 separate abilities for the protagonist to use across 80 different costumes, whilst also co-writing a Balan novelisation to flesh out the lore side of this new mythology.

Sadly, with just a two year development window, these lofty goals were near impossible, and the launch of Balan was, by all accounts, a complete mess.

CG cutscenes are the only thing that comes across as finished, with the game itself hilariously making all four face buttons do the exact same thing. A bafflingly broken "reverse level-of-detail" loading glitch sees NPCs de-rez and disappear as you try to speak to them, and the game's core movement and platforming is just the fundamentals of jumping and pushing the analogue stick.

A disastrous development period, argumentative producing studio and over-confident lead creative led to 2021's first truly terrible video game.