These Games Earned The Lowest Ratings In 2017

With 2017 in the books and a whole new year of gaming adventures lying ahead, now's a good time to look back at the games of 2017. In particular, we're going to take a look at the worst games of 2017—the ones that earned the lowest ratings from both professional critics and fans. Ratings come from Metacritic and we only included titles where at least 7 professionals reviewed the game. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the worst games of 2017, but we've chosen some of the most misbegotten games of 2017 to cover here for you. Play them at your own risk.

Horror FPS Inner Chains came out exclusively for PC in May. This indie title was made by Telepaths Tree and exists largely due to the support the studio received from fans in a Kickstarter campaign. The publishers describe Inner Chains as a game set "in a surreal, dark and deadly biomechanical world never seen before," but critics and players alike weren't very impressed with this new world. Offering mainly style in lieu of substance, Inner Chains scored a 40 with critics and a 4.5 with players.

Daniel Wilks at PC PowerPlay neatly explained the main problems with the game in his review: "Inner Chains looks good, but beneath the veneer is a mess of bad mechanics and disappointing design." 

The motorcycle combat game Road Rage was released for PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One by Maximum Games in autumn. According to promos for the game, Road Rage is supposed to be an "over-the-top, knock-down-drag-out motorcycle combat game that tests your skill on a range of badass bikes." Unfortunately, it seems that instead of being "badass," this game and its bikes was mostly just bad. And also ass. 

Road Rage scores an abysmal 26 out of 100 with critics and 2.8 out of 10 with players. One player put it pretty succinctly in their review, saying that Road Rage ultimately "looks like the PS2 threw up on the PS4."

Professional critics seemed to agree, with Ken Barnes at We Got This Covered saying that "Road Rage feels very, very much like a bad Steam game...it fails on every level." The Hardcore Gamer review went more in-depth into the game's failings: "The racing action struggles due to poor controls, while the combat rings hollow with poor weapon selection and sub-par sound effects. Glitches and other technical problems muddy the experience further."

The six-chapter horror-themed puzzle game Dying: Reborn debuted from Oasis Games for PS4, PS Vita, and Xbox One. According to the official PlayStation description of the game, Dying: Reborn is a "a twisted story" offering "classic puzzle-solving gameplay" that will appeal especially to fans of the Saw movie franchise. Apparently, what they meant by the Saw reference is that most players would probably rather cut off a limb than finish playing this game.

On Metacritic, Dying Reborn scored 38 with critics and a surprisingly high 5.9 with users. The VR-compatible game fell flat with most reviewers—Steven McGehee at Digital Chumps said he "wasn't compelled by the story, the characters, or the atmosphere," and resorted to using a walkthrough guide because "I just was not finding the experience worth my time and effort." The COGconnected review claimed that for an escape-room game that had the potential to really shine with VR, "the end result feels like a cruel joke."

Set during World War I, Verdun is a squad-based multiplayer shooter released for Xbox One in March, a port of a 2015 PC game (which had been ported to the PS4 in 2016). According to developers M2H and Blackmill Games, Verdun's "merciless trench warfare offers a unique battlefield experience, immersing you and your squad in intense battles of attack and defense." However, while the game's 2015 Steam release was generally well-received, the Xbox One port hasn't performed very well at all. Critics gave it a 46, easily the worst score of all three versions, while players were a bit more forgiving with a rating of 6.0.

It seems that the biggest problems with the Xbox One version of Verdun lie in the poor performance of the game on a console. According to Gaming Nexus, "rampant server issues, poor performance, badly designed UI and a non-existent player base have crippled what should have been a really interesting change of pace for console shooters." XboxAddict summed it up perfectly: "Do yourself a favor, VerDON'T buy this game."

Released in July for Nintendo Switch (and February for pretty much every other major platform) the horror/survival action-adventure game Vaccine claims to offer "a new approach on Survival Horrors inspired by those of the '90s." The basic premise of the game is that you must search a randomly-generated house for a vaccine to save your infected friend before time runs out. However, your friend will relapse if you don't discover the secret of the house—which will in turn force you to find the vaccine again in a new randomly generated map. Sounds like a fun take on Resident Evil for 2017, right? Not quite.

Vaccine scored only a 44 with critics and a 6.1 with players. James Mitchell at Vooks had nothing positive to say, calling Vaccine "tone-deaf to the games it's trying to emulate and misses the mark in almost every department." 

Developer Poisoft has the distinction of creating the worst game of 2017 with their Switch action title Vroom in the Night Sky. Released on April 5th, Vroom's official description explains the premise of the game: "There are various night skies in this world, and it is the work of Magical Girls to collect Stardusts there. You become the Magical Girl Luna, ride a magical bike, fly around the night sky and collect Stardusts! The features of this game are Fantastic feeling, Speedy feeling, and Realistic feeling using HD Vibration." With a clear and coherent description like that, how could anyone resist? Needless to say, the critics pounced.

Vroom in the Night Sky scored an incredibly low 17 out of 100 with critics and 3.5 out of 10 with players. Nintendo Life says "Vroom in the Night Sky offers so little content and such poor communication that it is hard to think of any reasons to recommend this to anyone." Paul Murphy at Switch Player slammed the game, saying "The most amazing thing about Vroom in the Night Sky is that it was actually greenlit at all. It's ludicrous that someone at Nintendo thought it would be a good title for the launch line up over some more notable games." Apparently Nintendo decided to stop promoting the game, because they even removed it from their website in December 2017.