Join today to claim your daily loot

How Many of the Worst Metacritic Games Have You Played?

1-15

Ignacio Weil

Gaming - August 4th 2026, 23:30 GMT+2

15. Duke Nukem Forever (2011) — Metacritic Score: 49/100 (Xbox 360)

Duke Nukem spent so long in development that his comeback arrived as a playable archaeology dig: corridor shooting from one era, regenerating health and a two-weapon limit from another, plus jokes that had curdled in storage. Scattered flashes of interactivity and old-school swagger could not disguise mushy gunplay, endless loading or detours through turrets, driving and platforming. After fourteen years of hype, the real shock was not that the king had lost his crown—it was how ordinary his disaster felt. | © 2K Games

Cropped The Grand Theft Auto Trilogy Remaster — 14. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition (2021) — Metacritic Score: 46/100 (Switch)

Rockstar’s remastered trilogy should have been an easy victory lap for *Grand Theft Auto III*, *Vice City* and *San Andreas*. Instead, the Switch edition served up smeared detail, erratic performance, broken rain, bizarre character faces and bugs capable of turning familiar streets into slapstick. Updates repaired plenty after launch, an important caveat for anyone playing today, but the Metascore records the package critics first received: three landmarks of open-world gaming squeezed into a “Definitive Edition” that initially felt anything but definitive. | © Rockstar Games

Aliens Colonial Marines — 13. Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013) — Metacritic Score: 43/100 (PS3)

*Aliens: Colonial Marines* did not merely miss its target; it carried years of expectations and a famous preview demo that made the finished release look especially bedraggled. The xenomorphs behaved less like perfect organisms than confused theme-park performers, wandering into gunfire while marines repeated themselves through drab corridors. A misspelled “tether” command later discovered in the configuration files became the perfect emblem for its AI troubles. Co-op supplied a little pulse-rifle fun, but not enough to save this bug hunt. | © SEGA

Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 — 12. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) — Metacritic Score: 43/100 (PS3)

Sonic’s first major HD adventure aimed for operatic scale, then tripped over its own shoelaces at nearly every checkpoint. Momentum vanished against tiny bumps, the camera picked fights with the player, loading screens interrupted short conversations, and glitches could launch the hedgehog beyond the level geometry. Its three campaigns and terrific soundtrack hint at a grander game trapped underneath; history remembers the collapsing physics, Silver’s endlessly quoted boss fight and Princess Elise kissing Sonic back to life. Fair enough, really. | © SEGA

The Lord of the Rings Gollum — 11. The Lord of the Rings: Gollum (2023) — Metacritic Score: 33/100 (PS5)

Poor Gollum finally got to headline a game, only to spend most of it crawling through brown tunnels, following NPCs and failing brittle stealth sequences. The decisions between Sméagol and Gollum promised psychological tension, yet their consequences rarely justified the theatrical internal arguments. Awkward climbing, unreliable checkpoints and severe technical problems did the rest, turning a fascinating Tolkien character into an escort for his own misery. The fallout extended beyond reviews: Daedalic subsequently ended its internal game-development operation and shifted its focus to publishing. | © Daedalic Entertainment

Call of Duty Black Ops Declassified cropped processed by imagy — 10. Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified (2012) — Metacritic Score: 33/100 (PS Vita)

A dual-stick handheld *Call of Duty* sounded like the showcase Sony’s Vita needed. What players received was a chain of ten bite-sized “Operations,” many over within minutes, stitched together without the cinematic momentum of *Call of Duty: Black Ops* and made harsher by the absence of mid-mission checkpoints. Enemies forgot how cover worked, touch controls felt grafted on, multiplayer struggled to compensate and Zombies was nowhere to be found. With the campaign finishable in roughly an hour, *Black Ops Declassified* felt less like covert intelligence and more like a hurried memo. | © Activision

Tony Hawks Pro Skater 5 2015 — 9. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 (2015) — Metacritic Score: 32/100 (PS4)

Fans had waited for a numbered *Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater* sequel, and the fifth entry repaid that patience with skaters clipping through ramps, launching into ragdolls and occasionally disappearing beneath the park. Its familiar score attacks still carried a faint echo of the series’ compulsive rhythm, but repetitive objectives, laggy online hubs and unreliable physics kept breaking the flow. A hefty launch update became part of the story, as did an abrupt visual overhaul shortly before release. The Birdman deserved a comeback; this played like someone waxed the wheels. | © Activision

The Walking Dead Survival Instinct 2013 — 8. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (2013) — Metacritic Score: 32/100 (Xbox 360)

Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker returned as Daryl and Merle Dixon, giving *Survival Instinct* a television connection stronger than almost anything happening on screen. Choosing routes, rationing fuel and deciding which survivors could ride along suggested a scrappy road-trip survival game; once boots hit the ground, those ideas collapsed into recycled locations, stiff stealth and zombies dispatched with numbing repetition. The brothers’ journey to Atlanta had the ingredients for an intriguing lost chapter of *The Walking Dead*, yet the apocalypse rarely felt more dangerous than the production budget. | © Activision

Cropped Minds Eye — 7. MindsEye (2025) — Metacritic Score: 29/100 (PS5)

Leslie Benzies’ return to big-budget action brought a near-future desert city, a neural-implant mystery and blockbuster ambitions visible in nearly every cutscene. *MindsEye* could not keep that spectacle intact once control passed to the player: crashes, frame-rate drops, vacant enemy behavior, clumsy driving and repetitive missions dominated the conversation. Build a Rocket Boy issued rapid hotfixes, but patches could only address part of a campaign whose underlying design already felt oddly rigid. This lavish sci-fi thriller frequently behaved like its own malfunctioning technology demonstration. | © Build a Rocket Boy

Dragon Ball Evolution 2009 Game — 6. Dragon Ball: Evolution (2009) — Metacritic Score: 28/100 (PSP)

Dimps knew how to make a sharp *Dragon Ball* fighter on PSP, which makes this movie tie-in’s limpness harder to excuse. *Dragon Ball: Evolution* borrowed the bones of the *Shin Budokai* games but shrank the roster, flattened the challenge and dressed everything in the live-action film’s bargain-bin interpretation of Goku’s world. Matches could often be won through basic button-mashing, while the thin story mode rushed past any chance to add personality. It is the rare adaptation that makes its already infamous source material seem comparatively eventful. | © Bandai Namco Entertainment

E Football 2022 2021 — 5. eFootball 2022 (2021) — Metacritic Score: 25/100 (PC)

Konami retired the *PES* name and pitched *eFootball* as a free-to-play platform that would expand over time. Its launch build resembled a public test, offering only nine authentic teams for offline exhibition alongside meager content, unstable play, rubbery physics and facial animations that became memes before tactics had much chance to matter. The publisher apologized and spent subsequent updates rebuilding the experience, so the current game is not identical to the one critics scored. First impressions still count—and this rebrand entered the stadium with its kit on backwards. | © Konami

Rambo The Video Game 2014 — 4. Rambo: The Video Game (2014) — Metacritic Score: 23/100 (PS3)

Rambo sounds tailor-made for a power fantasy: hand the player a machine gun, point toward an army and let the headband do the rest. Teyon’s adaptation reduced the first three films to an on-rails shooting gallery, padded with awkward quick-time events and a cover system that made John Rambo feel strangely stationary. Archival dialogue from Sylvester Stallone and Richard Crenna only sharpened the cut-rate mood, especially beside crude character models and repetitive targets. This was less one-man war than one long session at a broken arcade cabinet. | © Reef Entertainment

Skull Island Rise of Kong 2023 — 3. Skull Island: Rise of Kong (2023) — Metacritic Score: 23/100 (PC)

Kong may be cinema’s mightiest ape, but *Rise of Kong* struggled to make him look capable of climbing a waist-high ledge. Flat lighting, unfinished animation and a notoriously shabby cutscene went viral, while the game underneath offered button-mashing combat, empty spaces and objectives with all the majesty of a grocery list. Reports that IguanaBee had roughly a year to build it explain much about the result, although they cannot make playing it more enjoyable. Even the jungle seemed embarrassed to be there. | © GameMill Entertainment

Ride to Hell Retribution 2013 — 2. Ride to Hell: Retribution (2013) — Metacritic Score: 13/100 (PS3)

*Ride to Hell: Retribution* began life as an ambitious open-world biker game, disappeared into development limbo and resurfaced as a linear pileup of cover shooting, brawling, driving and quick-time events. None of those pieces survived the collision: AI malfunctioned, motorcycles handled like shopping carts, cuts between scenes felt accidental and the writing treated women with jaw-dropping contempt. Its brokenness can be darkly funny in clips, but playing Jake Conway’s revenge story is mostly a test of patience. Gaming’s outlaw fantasy had become evidence at the scene. | © Deep Silver

Big Rigs Over the Road Racing 2003 — 1. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (2003) — Metacritic Score: 6/100 (PC)

*Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing* wins last place by barely participating in its own race. The original release offered no collision detection, no moving opponent, no police or cargo despite the box copy, and a reverse gear that accelerated toward absurd speeds before stopping instantly when released. Drive through buildings, climb any slope, cross the void beyond the map—it scarcely matters, because victory is guaranteed and celebrated by “YOU’RE WINNER!” Its long-standing 8 later fell to 6 when another critic review joined the tally, proving this wreck can still find new ways to lose. | © GameMill Publishing

1-15

Metacritic scores are meant to help us avoid bad purchases, but a spectacular gaming disaster can be harder to resist than another perfectly competent 7/10. Maybe you bought Sonic ’06 at launch, endured The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, or opened Big Rigs simply to confirm that yes, it really was that broken. Count how many of the worst-rated games in Metacritic history you have played—and decide whether the final number is an achievement or a quiet cry for help.

Facebook X Reddit WhatsApp Copy URL

Metacritic scores are meant to help us avoid bad purchases, but a spectacular gaming disaster can be harder to resist than another perfectly competent 7/10. Maybe you bought Sonic ’06 at launch, endured The Lord of the Rings: Gollum, or opened Big Rigs simply to confirm that yes, it really was that broken. Count how many of the worst-rated games in Metacritic history you have played—and decide whether the final number is an achievement or a quiet cry for help.