8 TERRIBLE Video Game Box Arts That Made You Avoid AMAZING Games

While great games can be sold on the strength of their gameplay, story, and graphics, nothing is ultimately more important than marketing and how a game is superficially presented to players.

And what's more superficial than cover art? It needs to offer a broad overview of the game's story, characters, aesthetic, and gameplay style, in turn doing everything it can to capture your precious money on launch day.

Great cover art can instantly rouse interest in a game we might have otherwise never given a second glance, and as we've all seen, sometimes brilliant cover art can distract players from a game that's actually quite terrible.

But what about the opposite situation, where a brilliant game has such unfathomably awful box art that it swears you off playing the game altogether?

It's certainly rarer that this happens, because when a game is just That Damn Good, there's naturally the assumption that it also has the marketing resources to develop some swish cover art to boot.

But these terrific games all served up utter nauseating slop for their box art and called it a day...

Batman: Arkham Asylum's infamous Game of the Year Edition box art is so cluttered and busy that it deals debilitating mental chip damage to anyone who stares at it for more than about three seconds.

While the original cover art simply shows the Dark Knight standing atop the Gotham streets, the Game of the Year Edition inexplicably zooms in on said image and crams the area with garish, chunky text, from a Gamesmaster review quote to reminders that this release includes extra challenge maps and, yes, 3D glasses, because that was a thing for a hot minute in the early 2010s.

The irony is that despite the Game of the Year branding implying a certain level of excellence here, the ultra-tacky cover design makes it feel like anything but a prestige release.

Rocksteady didn't even learn their lesson from the vocal fan outcry, though, as the Game of the Year edition for follow-up Arkham City was even worse, packed with so many in-your-face critical pull quotes that it legit looks like a magazine advert for the game.

At least by the time Arkham City's GOTY came out, we all knew what the deal was - brilliant game, utter dogwater box art.