Games That Earned The Absolute Worst Ratings On Metacritic

Video games can be a real potluck in terms of quality. Someone can bring a downright dazzling potato salad to your work luncheon, while someone else can show up with deviled eggs that are downright nasty. The same is true for games. One studio can release an absolute gem that captivates those who play it. On the other side of the globe, another studio can slop together something that isn't worth the disc it's printed on. This has been true for decades — ever since video games came into existence — and, believe it or not, it continues to this day.

But aren't you even a little curious about which games are the worst of the worst? Which games were so maligned by critics that they've all but disappeared from any sort of video game-related discussion altogether?

Metacritic does a great service to gamers, in that it compiles reviews from multiple outlets and averages those scores out. Over the years, some games have performed dismally with reviewers and, therefore, have extremely low Metacritic scores as a result. Below, we'll take a look at the lowest scoring video games the site currently has cataloged. By the end, you might think twice before calling that game you aren't enjoying "the worst game ever."

Remember the Xbox One's Kinect accessory? It came bundled with the machine, added an extra $100 to its price as a result, and is one of the reasons the Xbox One launch got off to a rocky start. One of the first Xbox One titles to make use of the Kinect was Fighter Within, a motion-controlled fighting game Microsoft hoped would prove the Kinect's worth. What happened, however, was quite the opposite: Fighter Within became a prime example of why gamers shouldn't buy an Xbox One.

Fighter Within managed a measly score of 23 on Metacritic, and for very good reason: it was bad. It was the kind of game that made players want to punch the Kinect instead of throwing punches at opponents. IGN gave the title a spin before writing a fairly scathing review of the experience. According to IGN, "Aside from the very basics of punching and kicking, nothing in [Fighter Within] works well, and very little works at all." Fighter Within lost in a first round knockout, and if you were unlucky enough to play it, it's one you probably want to forget.

FlatOut 3: Chaos and Destruction was an arcade racing title that came out on PC in 2011. Fans of the franchise likely hoped this latest FlatOut title would be an improvement on the formula explored in previous iterations. Unfortunately, it was far, far from that. In fact, some who reviewed the game suspected it was rushed through development quickly, and that can be plainly seen in how FlatOut 3 was received.

Once all the critic scores were tallied up, FlatOut 3: Chaos and Destruction had earned a score of 23 on Metacritic as well as the scorn of reviewers. Eurogamer was even less generous than other websites, bestowing upon FlatOut 3 a miserable score of 1 out of 10. Eurogamer's critic wrote, "If this has been in development for more than a year, I'll drink engine fluid." The review bashed the game even more, writing, "This is a tacky and technically incompetent production with no redeeming features whatsoever, devoid of fun and an insult to the name it bears. FlatOut once burned bright, but now is gone – and if there is a driving hell, this is surely it." Ouch.

Every once in a while, you see a video game title that makes use of a corny pun and causes you to cringe a little bit. Homie Rollerz may be one of those titles. Homie Rollerz is a kart racing game that came out on the Nintendo DS in 2008, and appears to put a spin on the phrase "holy rollers" by replacing the word "holy" with "Homie." The characters you can choose to race with in the game are also called "Homies." They roll on karts. It's a shame so much time was spent on the name and not on actually making the game any good.

Homie Rollerz only managed to secure a score of 23 on Metacritic, and some reviewers were absolutely ruthless in their criticism of it. Over at IGN, for example, the game was called "an absolutely worthless kart racer that has obviously been given the minimum possible effort." Homie Rollerz came and went without much fanfare, and doesn't appear to have gotten a sequel. Not every kart racer can be Mario Kart, but they can at least try to be competent. Homie Rollerz was not.

Back in 2000, a Charlie's Angels movie came out that was fairly popular. In that time, it wasn't uncommon to see licensed video games coming out around the same time as films. When that film's sequel, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, hit theaters in 2003, a mostly unrelated video game bearing the Charlie's Angels name arrived to take advantage of all the hype. That game was Charlie's Angels for the GameCube, and to say this release was thoroughly slammed by critics is an understatement.

Destiny's Child once asked, "Charlie, how your angels get down like that?" The group must have been referring to the Metacritic score for Charlie's Angels, which landed at a dismal 23. Those who played the game for professional publications were a large part of why the title scored so poorly. GameSpot wrote, "In the end, Charlie's Angels is the personification of the 'game as a marketing tool' mentality, as this game serves no meaningful purpose, except to rob you of your time and money. Do yourself a favor and just stay away." That was probably very good advice, even for fans of the Charlie's Angels films.

The first Rambo movie, First Blood, made its debut in 1982. You may have seen it, you may have not. One thing is for certain, though: even if you are the biggest fan of First Blood and all the rest of the Rambo flicks, the odds are good you weren't impressed with 2014's Rambo: The Video Game. The PlayStation 3 version of the game in particular caught a lot of heat, though if you got to experience it on your own, that might not come as a shock.

When all was said and done and the review scores were calculated, Rambo: The Video Game ended with a terrible 23 on Metacritic. That means a lot of pro game reviewers had to deal this game a lot of damage with the numbers assigned to their critiques. IGN said of Rambo: The Video Game, "the idea of slogging through an entirely scripted, arcade rail-shooter with a mouse or a joypad feels like an unmitigated waste of time for everybody involved." The Rambo movies were fun, bloody action films, but this game apparently just sucked.

You may not get a 10-second car in real life, but would you settle for a 2.5 out of 10 game instead? The Fast & Furious films have a huge fan base, and lots of people turn out to see them whenever a new entry arrives. If you had high hopes for Fast & Furious showdown when it launched in 2013, though, you were likely very disappointed with the game you ultimately played. The only thing fast about it was how quickly reviewers smacked it down.

That 2.5 out of 10 score is what Fast & Furious: Showdown ended up with on Metacritic. Coincidentally, that is also the score IGN handed the game after spending some time with it. As IGN wrote, "Awful driving physics, weak shooting, short, buggy missions, ugly tracks, and badly impersonated voice acting make Fast & Furious: Showdown the epitome of an insultingly terrible movie tie-in game. Send it to the impound lot and let's never speak of it again." If you love those Fast & Furious movies, Showdown is something you'll probably want to avoid.

Don't beat yourself up if you don't remember Drake of the 99 Dragons. There's likely a good reason you don't. It was a very forgettable game that released back in 2003 on Xbox and PC, and wasn't enjoyed by many who had the displeasure of playing it. According to those who actually dove deep into what it had to offer, Drake was half-baked — and that may be putting it nicely.

When the final tallies were counted, Drake of the 99 Dragons ended up with a score of 22 on Metacritic. That is simply dreadful. What's worse, though, is what GameSpot had to say about it before slamming down a score of 1.6 out of 10. "To simply call Drake bad would be a major understatement," GameSpot wrote. "Drake is simply an out-and-out failure in every single discernible category."

That is as definitive an anti-recommendation as you can get from a game reviewer, and judging by how few people even remember Drake of the 99 Dragons anymore, it seems a lot of gamers took the poor reviews to heart.

The first Afro Samurai was not an outstanding game by critics' standards, but its Metacritic score of 65 wasn't the worst ever received. The game's sequel, however – Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume One — would've easily flunked out of school. It's not unusual for a sequel to fall behind its predecessor in some ways, and perhaps be received a little less well as a result. But to fall as far as Afro Samurai 2 did? That's something you don't see very often.

Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume One ended up with a Metacritic score of 21, which is downright awful when you think about how many low review scores it would've had to receive to reach that point. GameSpot's review gave it a 2, which qualified it for the website's "Terrible" category. That review claimed that "everything you loved about the first Afro Samurai game is dead, and your memories are all you have." If you were looking forward to this one when it released in 2009, you're not alone if it really let you down.

There have been plenty of good zombie games over the years. People really dug The Walking Dead games from Telltale, for instance. Gamers held the Left 4 Dead titles in high regard. Long story short, there is no shortage of good zombie games you can play if you really have a hankering to survive and perhaps wipe out some of the undead. Back in 2012, though, gamers were presented with Infestation: Survivor Stories (a.k.a. The War Z). In a world with plenty of suitable zombie experiences to enjoy, this was not one of them.

The game landed with a thud, scoring an abysmal 20 on Metacritic. True to its genre, it was essentially a game that was dead, yet still managed to come out. As IGN wrote, "The War Z misses the mark at almost everything it does. It's rife with bugs and other tech issues, and the large amount of guns has turned it into a place where meaningful player interactions rarely occur." It's safe to say this is one zombie title you won't want to see reanimated anytime soon.

Deal or No Deal host Howie Mandel is a notable germaphobe, which just begs the question: how did he feel about seeing his face plastered all over the Deal or No Deal video game? This 2007 release hoped to take advantage of the hit game show, dropping on both PC and Nintendo DS so you could play at home or on the go. It was flat-out garbage, though, which makes it likely that Mr. Mandel himself didn't even want to touch it.

You could say the Deal or No Deal game had many suitcases to choose from, each with a different Metacritic score. Unfortunately, it ended up with the one that contained the number "20" in it. IGN wrote in its review, "This game never should have come into existence to begin with. Deal or No Deal is not a game show that translates well to video game form." Fortunately, Deal or No Deal appears to be off the air, so you probably won't have to see this show revisited as a game.

A good survival horror game can put you on the edge of your seat as you creep the hallways, fearful of whatever might lurk around the corner. For gamers in 2012, though, one particular title was scary to play because it was so positively bad. That game was Alone in the Dark: Illumination, a release that disappointed tons of horror fans upon its release. For those who'd never experienced such a poorly-made game before, this chapter of Alone in the Dark was, well, illuminating.

Alone in the Dark: Illumination ultimately received a Metacritic score of 19, a truly sorry display. Some larger outlets apparently didn't even touch it for review purposes, perhaps because they saw the writing on the wall. Metro did give the game a look and expressed disbelief that "such an offensively awful game was ever released in the first place." The horror genre contains some very well done games, but Alone in the Dark: Illumination is not on that list.

You may be wondering: what is a SPOG? It is apparently connected to "pogs," those small discs kids used to collect back in the '90s. A SPOG is a kind of vehicle built around something that looks like a pog. That might not be the question you'd be asking if you ever played SPOGS Racing, though. Instead, you might ask: "Why did this terrible game come out? What is this nonsense?" SPOGS Racing was that big a disappointment.

When SPOGS Racing dropped in 2008 on the Wii, it's not as though there weren't good racing games in the world from which to drawn inspiration. Still, the game failed pretty spectacularly, earning a Metacritic score of 18. IGN went so far as to call it "WiiShovelWare," writing that "SPOGS Racing is ugly, boring, and sports some of the worst racing AI ever." 

Perhaps you could have built your own SPOG out of an actual pog, rolled it down a hill, and still had more fun than you would've while playing SPOGS Racing.

If you owned an NES back in the day, you might remember Double Dragon. It was a pretty popular title. If you played some co-op with a friend, that could've been one of the titles you teamed up in. A lot of people likely have fond memories of the original Double Dragon, and maybe even other entries that followed. The remake of Double Dragon 2, however, did its best to ruin those memories. It was an absolute travesty.

When it released in 2013, Double Dragon 2: Wander of the Dragons became a good example of how not to do a remake, and the review scores proved it. It could only manage a 17 on Metacritic, which is just astoundingly low for a remake of a game that already came out and was beloved. Game Informer was downright brutal in its review of Double Dragon 2: Wander of the Dragons, saying it had "absolutely no redeeming qualities." It's safe to say that, if you wanted a taste of fun nostalgia from the 8-bit days, this remake of Double Dragon 2 wouldn't have been a good source.

The Nintendo Switch has a lot of great titles available for it, but there's a whole lot of garbage on the platform, too. Nintendo has seemingly taken a more hands-off approach to store curation with the Switch, and that has resulted in a lot of what people call "shovelware" — simple, cheap games that are usually not very good. Vroom in the Night Sky, which released shortly after the Switch launched, would likely qualify as shovelware to those who've played it. Not only is it a game you probably shouldn't buy, it's one you might not want to play even if someone paid you.

Vroom in the Night Sky may be one of the worst-rated games on the Switch with its insanely low Metacritic score of 17. If the numbers don't bear that out, though, the feelings of some critics certainly might. Over at Eurogamer, the reviewer wrote, "Vroom in the Night Sky is not only the worst game on the Nintendo Switch, but easily one of the worst games I've ever had the displeasure of reviewing." Unless you are a true glutton for punishment when it comes to Switch games, this is one you might want to stay away from.

The Leisure Suit Larry games have always been more geared toward adults. There's a whole lot of innuendo to be found, and they typically cover some subject matter that isn't necessarily suitable for kids. With that said, there is one entry in the franchise that should especially be avoided by all ages. But it's not because the game is overly naughty — it's because it's just that awful a release. In fact, no human should play this one.

Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust couldn't be more aptly named. It was truly a bust when it released in 2009, only scraping together a score of 17 on Metacritic once all the reviews were considered. IGN explained its very low score for the title by writing, "The lowest rating numbers here at IGN are reserved for games with nearly no redeeming qualities or interesting ideas, with next to nothing enjoyable to offer players, and which under no circumstances should be purchased by anyone. Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust is, without a doubt, one of those games." If you managed to miss this one when it came out, consider yourself lucky.

Have you ever seen a game get a review score so low it took your breath away? You might want to sit down before learning about Yaris, a 2007 title that — no joke — was centered around racing and destroying enemies in a Toyota Yaris. Yes, this was apparently just as much an advertisement as it was a video game. If you are assuming that didn't translate into a satisfying experience that people were raving about, you're absolutely right.

Yaris raced its way to a Metacritic score of 17, which is already embarrassing enough. But GamesRadar actually saw fit to skewer it even more, stamping an embarrassing 0.5 stars out of 5 on it. As GamesRadar put it, "[W]ith Yaris, Toyota may have set sales of the vehicle back by a few years." The game was reportedly free, but even that was too high a price for the steaming pile known as Yaris.

You have to hand it to Ride to Hell: Retribution: the name was certainly intriguing. It seemed to promise a real action-packed adventure full of high octane thrills, and you could imagine a game that didn't tell the greatest story, but would've be a lot of fun to play. That couldn't have been further from the truth, though — at least, according to reviewers. The "ride to hell" wasn't the journey players took within the game, but the experience they had while playing it.

A look at Metacritic reveals the disappointing reality about Ride to Hell: Retribution, which could only scrape together a score of 16. The folks at GameSpot rendered an even worse verdict: a 1 out of 10. In the GameSpot review, the outlet called it "hellish torture software" and "unapologetically, aggressively horrid." Those are harsh words for Ride to Hell: Retribution, but given how it was received across the board, one could argue they were probably deserved.

Only one game can be the absolute worst game on Metacritic — a game so amazingly, stupendously inept and unfun that most reviewers were being generous by not slapping a big fat "zero" on it. At first glance, you might be surprised a game targeted toward group enjoyment could fail so spectacularly at offering it. With a name like Family Party: 30 Great Games Obstacle Arcade, wouldn't you expect to smile at least once while playing it?

Sadly, this Family Party title was anything but. It scored an absolutely humiliating 11 on Metacritic: the lowest score on record at the time of this writing. A poor soul at Game Revolution had to review this game, awarding it a 0 out of 10. The reviewer reported, "All thirty games are awful. They later added, "I swear if I could punch a game, I would punch this. Hard." 

Basically, if you broke this out at a party when it released in 2012, you officially became the host of the worst party ever.