Best and worst ever games

[ionator]

Except for ksp, what are your best and worst games?

​I like bacon!

[LN400]

Best: Ultima Underworld, hands down. The mood, the 3D environment (back then it was a huge thing), the gameplay, game mechanics, the sense of exploration, it was a massively impressive game and still is one I wouldn't mind playing,, if I had the time.

Worst: I really don't want to remember these but Jaws Unleashed was jawdroppingly terrible. I don't want to think of it any further... Oh and this text adventure on my old C64 where they forgot to include move commands, leaving you stuck in the starting location...

[r4pt0r]

Best: Resident Evil 2, AceCombat 4 and AC:0, Halo 3 for the LAN party memories, Goldeneye64, Counter Strike: Source, Banjo-tooie

Worst: Borderlands and all of its sequels, Jurrasic: The Hunted, Superman 64

And before anyone asks, I really just dont like Borderlands in the slightest.

[MartGonzo]

Best - Batman Arkham City, GTA series, Rome Total War, Black and White, Thief 1&2, Amnesia Dark Descent, Outlast, Rollercoaster Tycoon 3, The longest Journey, Devil May Cry 3, Civilization 4.

Worst - Borderlands 2, Far Cry 4 (or any other game made by Ubisoft in the last 5 years)

[regex]

Best: Thief (the original), Thief 2, System Shock, System Shock 2, Morrowind, Oblivion (only after modding with OOO)...

Worst: There are a lot of games that I never really got into but I can't really call them the "worst". Well, maybe BF2 for the great helicopter disappointment after playing so much BF Vietnam and Desert Combat. Also, the new Thief game was terribly disappointing, I never played beyond the first few missions. As far as buggy games that prevented me from completing them (or even enjoying them), I'd have to say Oni and Star Wars Force Commander were the worst.

[Vanamonde]

Best: KSP (of course), Morrowind, Imperialism.

And of course, the ones that created genres: Civilization, Simcity.

Worst? How are we to decide worst?

The original release version of Rome: Total War wouldn't let you play anything else until you completed the tutorial, but would crash before you could finish the tutorial, and save/load was disabled in the tutorial, so every time it crashed, you'd have to play the whole tutorial over again from the beginning. I had it for a week before I got through the tutorial by dumb luck and could actually play the game. Then I found that the game had a list of serious bugs as long as your arm. Years later when they finally put out a "gold box" version, it still had dozens of quite serious glitches. Things like archers shooting at the wrong targets and hitting your own troops, and cavalry stopping pursuit for no reason and letting enemies get away. When it worked, it was a terrific game. But RTW just might be the buggiest "finished" product I've ever played.

But the worst game design I've ever tried to play was Master of Orion 3. To "help" you run your empire, it had an AI bureaucracy which would actually over-ride and un-do your own actions. There were limits on how you could spend your money. For example, when you increased a budget setting to hurry a build job, you could only select the kind of jobs that got increased funding. The AI decided which of that kind of jobs got the increased funding. You couldn't control the order in which your ships were fed into battles, so sometimes you fragile troop transports would charge the enemy ahead of your battleships. To move any ships, you had to group them into task forces. Once a task force was disbanded, all ships in it would be unavailable for several turns. But that meant that if you made a mistake and wanted to change the task force composition, your only option was to disband the whole thing, rendering ALL ships in it unavailable for several turns. I have never played anything else in which the game itself fought me harder than the enemies I was at war with.

[Red Iron Crown]

Best: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri; Civilization series; Pirates!; Simcity series-1; X-Com; Fallout; Mechwarrior series; Total Annihilation; Homeworld series.

I don't really do "worst" lists, so many bad games over the years that it's hard to single them out. Most disappointing was probably Spore or the last Simcity.

[Nikolai]

Best: Star Control II; X-Com (1994); Invisible, Inc.; Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space

Worst: Star Control 3; Left Behind: Eternal Forces

Edited June 3, 2015 by Nikolai
Changed punctuation for clarity

[Randazzo]

Best: System Shock (my introduction to PC gaming), Resident Evil 2, GUN (Controversial, apparently), BF: Vietnam, World War 2 Online/Battleground Europe

Worst: Stronghold 3

This is such a subjective thing..

[nightingale]

Best: The Elder Scrolls (Morrowind and Skyrim, mainly), Civilization (all of 'em), X-com (original UFO defense), TIE Fighter

But the worst game design I've ever tried to play was Master of Orion 3. To "help" you run your empire, it had an AI bureaucracy which would actually over-ride and un-do your own actions. There were limits on how you could spend your money. For example, when you increased a budget setting to hurry a build job, you could only select the kind of jobs that got increased funding. The AI decided which of that kind of jobs got the increased funding. You couldn't control the order in which your ships were fed into battles, so sometimes you fragile troop transports would charge the enemy ahead of your battleships. To move any ships, you had to group them into task forces. Once a task force was disbanded, all ships in it would be unavailable for several turns. But that meant that if you made a mistake and wanted to change the task force composition, your only option was to disband the whole thing, rendering ALL ships in it unavailable for several turns. I have never played anything else in which the game itself fought me harder than the enemies I was at war with.

Oh man, MoO3 was the first game where I religiously followed the forums right up to release date. I wanted to like that game so badly, but finally had to admit that it was an unplayable mess.

Otherwise, worst: New Alpha Centauri Civilization: Beyond Earth. Maybe it's been patched to be better, but when I last played it the game was pretty much "build trade routes to win". Also, Conquest of the New World - build up your settlement and have the natives insta-kill it when you lose the silly battle minigame.

[Ethanadams]

best mirrors edge or sonic 06 along with half life and portal.

worst? ANY EA SPORTS GAME

[Cydonian Monk]

Best?

Worst?

Worst based on what? Best based on what?

Worst is easy and a hard at the same time: Beowulf (for XBox360), Jurassic Park (for Sega CD), ET (for Atari), though I'm not convinced ET qualifies as a game. Yes, all three are movie tie-ins. The first two aren't technically bad (in terms of game engine, graphics, etc, for when and for what they were released), but they were lacking in many, many ways. The third is legend.

Best? Solitaire (for PC, for iPhone, for decks of cards, etc). It's portable, consistent, infinitely replayable. And I've put more hours into it than anything else I've played in my life.

Best? Really hard to say. As long as it doesn't crash, has a reasonble interface, and gives me a few hours of enjoyment it hits the pretty good category. Civilization (1,2,5), RR Tycoon (1,3), Emperor of the Fading Suns, Star Control 2, Darklands, Fable 2, Slaves to Armok God of Blood Chapter 2.... The list could go on forever.

Best? A game that's stable, coherent, and delivers pure gaming nirvana?

I don't think it exists.

Edited June 4, 2015 by Cydonian Monk

[Ace_Of_Spades]

Best: Warthunder, Euro Truck Simulator.

Worst: any other Simulators or Wii games, ETC..

[Plume & Akakak]

Best experiences I had, for "recent" games, were on Fez, Minecraft, Machinarium, Botanicula. I liked the dry and touching Lifeless Planet a lot.

And Spore, and Startopia.

Other (older) favorites are here.

Nothing I'm willing to call "worst".

Edited June 3, 2015 by Plume & Akakak

[Endersmens]

Best games: Skyrim, Forza Horizon 2, Simcity 2000 (the only one I've played XD), and my all time favorite game, Lego Racers 2

Worst games: There are some pretty bad wii and Nintendo DS games out there, I've played many of them.

[CelticCossack51]

Best games: World Conqueror 2 & 3, European War 3, Glory of Generals (man, I do love EasyTech games for some reason), Minecraft, Driver 3 (for it's superior police AI in Nice), and Star Wars Battlefront 2.

Worst games: NHL 15 and NHL Slapshot (Don't worry, I still enjoy the other NHL games, It's just EA)

[SemiaCloud]

Best: Ultima Underworld, hands down. The mood, the 3D environment (back then it was a huge thing), the gameplay, game mechanics, the sense of exploration, it was a massively impressive game and still is one I wouldn't mind playing,, if I had the time.

Worst: I really don't want to remember these but Jaws Unleashed was jawdroppingly terrible. I don't want to think of it any further... Oh and this text adventure on my old C64 where they forgot to include move commands, leaving you stuck in the starting location...

Nice pun.

My best: KSP, Civ beyond earth, civ 5, civ 4, simcity 4, Cities: Skylines, Sims 4, SPORE, Buzz aldrin's space program manager.

Worst: Simcity 5

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Best: Red Baron II/3D, with Age Of Empires II in a close 2nd.

Worst: Well, out of the ones I actually bought (as opposed to followed closely but didn't buy out of worry or just pure luck), Planetary Annihilation. What a let down that was. Hyped as THE greatest RTS in the history of human kind with the best devs you can hope for, ended up to be mediocre at best with devs that give a rat's behind about anything.

[A35K]

Best: KSP, Flight Sim X (is this considered a game or a sim?), Cities: Skylines, Just Cause 2.

Worst: Everything

[megatiger78]

best: lego universe, failed because of poor buying options only, Planetary annihilation, released too early but you can smash planets and is still being worked on, SimCity 5, it actually works now, and I got the complete edition. minecraft. star citizen, ED, and NMS coming up, once I get ED and SC/NMS come out (NMS on PC).

worst: any clone games (cities-skylines, anything voxel-based survival after minecraft that is not original, etc.)

[joppiesaus]

The worst game I've recently played is Pizza Dude.

Pizza Dude.

Here's the description from the website:

The "Pizzadude" family is in panic! Uncle Francesco left Kevin and Kimberly because he

cannot pay his bills anymore. Their poor uncle is ashamed of himself! There is only one

chance to get their fat Uncle Francesco back - earn loads of money, within 24 hours, with the

pizza restaurant! Earning money requires a lot of work. After taking an order by phone, they

have to prepare the order in the kitchen, by preparing all the pizza-ingredients (cheese,

pepperoni, tomato, ananas, onions, etc, etc) as well as some extra orders (fries, soda, salad).

After finishing the pizza one of them has to drive in Kevin's supercharged quad to the

customer: and here the difficult part starts! If a pizza is delivered too late, a customer will not

pay for his pizza. Because of this "golden rule", all pizza customers will try to make your

delivery as hard as possible. Their loose (wild) dogs and many other obstacles will make you

use your jump and run action to the max. Can you make a pizza and deliver it within time?

Prove it!

Seems weird. But let's run it. It can't be that bad, right?

You get a screen with two people who don't really look like people.

You click "new game", you get a blackscreen. Apparently, it's the character selection. Select a character by just clicking randomly.

You get to see the game. Or at least, the intro. It's very long and very boring and you can't skip it, but that's not really a problem, because then you look at the textures that are made out of cardboard.

It's a city with a pizza restaurant.

The game starts. The phone rings. You pick up the phone, the phone hangs itself up, you then make a pizza, which you have infinite time for.

How do you do that? Well, just pressing space at the ingredients you need. The chicken is cut with a chainsaw, oddly.

Then you made the pizza, and then suddenly an timer appears, and you need to get to the client within the time. You do that by food and by quad.

Oh, and did I mention if you accidentally bump a little you immediately crash and that the timer is always at a super low time which is almost impossible to beat? Well no money for me today.

Well guess what, the game is over! You need to restart, go trough the whole intro again and then do it all over again but then with an different impossible mission! Every time, there are impossible goals. 20 seconds for a house a few blocks away, 2 minutes to get to somewhere in the air.

So what I did, is I never picked up the phone. It keeps ringing, but I don't care. I just drive around and study the whole environment. Oh, and you can get money instead by just picking them up while you're riding. On the money, you see some guys face with the text "tyrannosaurus rex".

That's how bad it is. It's so bad, it's funny.

[Superfluous J]

For those asking for clarification, I think the idea is it's based on your opinion.

Best: (roughly in reverse order of when I played them) Saints Row 2, 3, and 4. FTL. Just Cause 2. Mass Effect 1 and 2 (and 3 up to the end). Counterstrike (back when it was a mod). Tony Hawk 3. Mario Kart 64. GTA Vice City. MTG: Duels of the Planeswalkers (the first one). Road Rash. Stars!. The Lost Vikings. Doom 2. Elite. Lode Runner. Adventure.

Worst: (also roughly in reverse order) Windward. Borderlands. Crackdown 2. Oblivion. Phantasmagoria. Atari 2600 Superman.

[GeneCash]

I fell in love with the original HALO because it had an actual story behind it other than "shoot dem alienz!" I also liked ODST because of the voice actors from Firefly and the fact it was toned down in difficulty so I had a chance to play it. I also liked the visuals.

After I got banned in HALO Reach by XBL because my ....ty ISP couldn't keep a connection up long enough to finish games and the fact the latest consoles must always have a 'net connection even for single player, I gave up on consoles.

I loved Descent III too. Played the hell out of that. Holy cow. At least 5 or 6 times.

I liked the first American McGee's Alice because of the dark bizarro literally insane story.

Nowadays I do play some Minecraft when I'm really bored, but pretty much everything else sucks, IMHO. This is probably because I don't have the twitch reflexes the current games want.

[AcidSludge]

Best: Hm. My greatest time sinks were Sensible World of Soccer, the Championship Manager/Football Manager-Series and Frontier: Elite II. Especially FE2 - I even skipped school days to play that game back then. And I found

strangely addictive.

The I want my money back's are:

The FIFA Football Managers (programmers who apparently never seen or participated in a soccer match created colorful bugfests, and I'm a wally for buying TWO issues of that digital turd'les)

Regina Halmichs Boxmanager (30 minutes from unboxing to uninstalling, if I had paid more than 1€ on a flea market for this it would have me make questioning my whole life)

Sniper Elite V2 (cringeworthy "story", three or four everrepeating voice samples for enemy soldiers, more script trigger than I've ever seen before or after, and an AI seemingly based on a dead amoeba which lived in a mixture of vodka and crystal meth, genuinely the worst game I ever experienced)

I'm surprised to see Borderlands on a few "Worsts" here, because I thought I was the only one who find that game lacklusting. I played (I think) the second one on a free steam weekend or something for a few hours, and I couldn't understand why that game series is so massively successful.

[LN400]

*snip*

Worst: (also roughly in reverse order) *snip* Oblivion *snip*

Oh dear.... I tried so hard to like that game. I really did. I loved Morrowind and Daggerfall and gave O a good go but I just couldn't like it one bit. Stripped down to below minimum. The number of skills were cut down to a Mario Bro's level, the variations of genuine characters went from whatever you want to be (in Daggerfall) to fighter, thief or mage? The leveling system is attrocious where it becomes close to utterly pointless to level up at all. Magic is crippled to a backyard amateur illusion talent competition thing. All in all a bloated beast that pretty much killed my interests in TES after Morrowind.