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15 Notoriously Bad Video Games That Everyone Played

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Terrible but irresistible.

Nazarii Verbitskiy

Gaming - September 30th 2026, 22:00 GMT+2

Grand Theft Auto The Trilogy The Definitive Edition — 15. Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition (2021)
Character models in Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition came out looking like wax figures left near a heater. Rockstar promised a clean remaster of three classics and instead shipped rain effects that blocked the screen and textures that popped in seconds late. Long-time fans went hunting for the original releases within days of launch. That reaction alone tells you how badly the update missed its mark. | © Rockstar Games

Pac Man — 14. Pac-Man — Atari 2600 (1982)
Nobody asked for a Pac-Man that flickered, moved sluggishly, and barely resembled the arcade cabinet everyone lined up for. Atari built enormous hype around the home version anyway, printing millions of cartridges before a single review hit shelves. The ghosts glitched, the maze colors clashed, and the whole thing felt rushed into stores. Sales were massive at first, but so were the returns once people actually played it. | © Atari

Cropped Resident Evil 6 — 13. Resident Evil 6 (2012)
Six campaigns worth of story sat inside Resident Evil 6, and somehow none of them remembered what made the series tense in the first place. Capcom leaned hard into explosions, quick-time events, and co-op shooting, chasing the audience that Gears of War had built. Longtime horror fans felt like they were playing a different franchise wearing a familiar name. The game still moved units by the truckload, which only made the divide louder. | © Capcom

Sim City — 12. SimCity (2013)
Always-online was the promise, and it broke almost immediately. SimCity's 2013 relaunch required a constant server connection even for solo play, and those servers buckled under launch traffic within hours. People who paid full price sat staring at error screens instead of building their first city. EA eventually apologized and handed out free games, which says plenty about how badly opening week went. | © Electronic Arts

Mass Effect Andromeda — 11. Mass Effect: Andromeda (2017)
A face doing three different things at once became the defining image of Mass Effect: Andromeda. BioWare spent years building toward a new galaxy and a new cast, and instead the launch conversation centered on stiff jaws and dead-eyed stares in cutscenes. Combat and exploration held up fine underneath all that mockery, but nobody was talking about combat. The original trilogy had set a bar this sequel simply couldn't clear. | © Electronic Arts

Cropped Enter the Matrix 2003 Powerade — 10. Enter the Matrix (2003)
Five million copies of Enter the Matrix sold on the strength of one thing: the Wachowskis actually filmed new footage for it. That goodwill evaporated fast once players got their hands on the combat, which felt stiff next to anything the movies promised. Driving sections dragged, camera angles fought the player constantly, and the whole thing felt rushed out to meet a release date. Riding a franchise's coattails only works if the game underneath can hold its own weight. | © Atari

Cropped John Tanner Driv3r — 9. Driv3r (2004)
Bugs weren't the only problem in Driv3r, but they were the loudest. Getting stuck on-foot missions with tank-like controls turned Miami into an obstacle course nobody wanted to run. Reviewers dinged Atari's Driver franchise for chasing Grand Theft Auto without matching its polish. Millions of copies moved anyway, on hype alone, before the internet caught up to what was actually inside the box. | © Atari

Aliens Colonial Marines — 8. Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013)
Picture the trailers for Aliens: Colonial Marines, then picture what actually loaded on release day. Enemies walked into walls, animations stuttered, and the xenomorphs that were supposed to feel terrifying just stood there confused. Sega and Gearbox had years of goodwill from the Aliens name and burned through most of it in one launch week. The gap between preview footage and final product became the whole story. | © Sega

Sonic the Hedgehog — 7. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)
Loading screens shouldn't be the most memorable part of a Sonic game, yet here we are. Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) buried its speed under broken physics, a bizarre human romance subplot, and glitches that could crash the entire experience. Sega rushed it out for the character's fifteenth anniversary, and it showed in nearly every frame. Nostalgia sold copies, but nothing on screen matched what fans were hoping to see. | © Sega

E T the Extra Terrestrial — 6. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Nobody remembers Atari's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial fondly, and there's a reason the story became legend. A five-week development window produced a game where players spent most of their time falling into pits, over and over, with barely any indication of what to do next. Steven Spielberg's movie was a cultural phenomenon, and Atari rushed a cash-in to match it before the holidays ended. Unsold cartridges reportedly got buried in a New Mexico landfill, which tells you everything about how badly this one missed. | © Atari

Fallout 76 — 5. Fallout 76 (2018)
Bethesda took a franchise built on solitary wandering and made everyone log in together. Fallout 76 shipped without human NPCs, then piled on server bugs and a duplication glitch that broke its own economy. A canvas bag sold as premium merch instead of the promised material, which somehow became bigger news than the patch notes. Years of fixes later, the launch is still the version people remember first. | © Bethesda Softworks

Superman 64 — 4. Superman 64 (1999)
Kryptonite fog rolls through every level of Superman 64, and that fog was reportedly there to hide how little the N64 could render. Flying through rings became the actual gameplay loop instead of an occasional challenge. Titan Games had months, not years, to build something worthy of the character, and it shows in every stiff turn and busted camera angle. Few licensed games have ever made their hero feel this powerless. | © Titan Games / Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

No Mans Sky — 3. No Man's Sky (2016)
Eighteen quintillion planets sounded like a number designed to break the internet, and it did exactly that. No Man's Sky promised multiplayer encounters and rich ecosystems, then launched with empty worlds and barely any of what its own trailers showed. Hello Games founder Sean Murray went quiet online for months as refund requests piled up. What followed was a rebuild so thorough it became its own separate story from the original release. | © Hello Games / PlayStation

Duke Nukem Forever — 2. Duke Nukem Forever (2011)
Fourteen years is a long time to wait for a punchline. Duke Nukem Forever spent that stretch bouncing between studios and engines before finally landing in 2011 looking like a relic on arrival. Its jokes about pop culture referenced things nobody cared about anymore, and its shooting mechanics felt borrowed from a decade earlier. The anticipation had outlived the game itself. | © 2K Games

Cyberpunk 2077 — 1. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)
Sony pulled a major release off its own storefront, and that alone tells you where Cyberpunk 2077 stood at launch. Character models clipped through walls on base PS4 and Xbox One hardware that CD Projekt Red had promised would run it fine. Refunds got processed directly by platform holders instead of the usual channels, an almost unheard of response. Night City eventually got fixed, but the game people bought in December 2020 wasn't the one being sold to them. | © CD Projekt Red / PlayStation, Xbox

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Some games got savaged by critics and still sold millions, because there's something magnetic about a trainwreck you have to experience yourself. Here are 15 notoriously bad video games that everyone played anyway.

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Some games got savaged by critics and still sold millions, because there's something magnetic about a trainwreck you have to experience yourself. Here are 15 notoriously bad video games that everyone played anyway.