The 20 WORST Open World Video Games
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00:00 couldn't. I can't. Felicia, I don't know what to say. Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're
00:09 taking a look at the 20 worst open world games. Open world games can be fun and all, but when
00:22 you have massive stinkers like these ones, you only prove the cynics right. Cynics like me.
00:29 What open world game made you jump back to reality? Did it make our list? Let us know
00:34 down in the comments. Before we begin, we publish new videos all week long, so be sure to subscribe
00:39 to Mojo Plays and ring the bell to be notified about our latest videos. Superman Returns
00:46 Some would argue that this movie license game is not as bad as most make it out to be.
00:58 I am unfortunately one of those people. I don't know why. But yes, there are some very small
01:05 redeeming qualities that some might find make the game more enjoyable, at least enjoyable enough.
01:11 That does not forgive the abysmal controls though. Superman controls as horrendously as he did in
01:17 the infamous Nintendo 64 game. On top of that, defending Metropolis was about as demanding as
01:23 babysitting a screaming child. It is constantly under threat, so much of your time will be spent
01:30 averting the umpteenth crisis for the worst organized city in fiction. Unless you like
01:35 watching over a continuously helpless society, Superman Returns is a hard pass.
01:41 Dynasty Warriors 9
01:50 We know how Koei Tecmo's Warriors games are supposed to be played. Traverse a large map,
02:01 and use a small handful of characters to lead armies and fend off hordes of enemies.
02:06 So Dynasty Warriors 9 should be fairly massive, right? Well, right, but not to the degree that
02:14 this went. Not only did it make it an unnecessary jump from big maps to open world, Koei Tecmo
02:20 didn't even bother to fill the world with anything. Making the game more insufferable
02:25 were the uninspired missions that all felt exactly the same, and the frustratingly stupid AI.
02:32 The Warriors games are great for the most part, but 9 was just uncalled for.
02:43 Spider-Man 3
02:45 The only reason anyone would want to check out Spider-Man 3's video game adaptation
02:56 would be for that hilarious "I don't want to die" quick-time failure. To play the game itself
03:02 is borderline torment. Sure, the cutscenes and character models are laughably appalling,
03:08 that "so bad it's good" quality, but does that warrant suffering through clunky web-swinging
03:14 and poor optimization? Given that Beanox, Vicarious Visions, and Treyarch were behind
03:19 the game, someone across the three studios or even higher up would have realized something
03:24 went haywire, wouldn't they? Apparently not. Drift Threer
03:34 The lack of self-respect on display is evident from the dumb title alone.
03:44 Look, the first two Driver games were pretty solid games for the PS1, but where Drift Threer
03:49 went wrong was in controls and AI. Players were really expected to meet an obscene level of
03:54 difficulty while driving vehicles that handled as well as blocks of grease sliding over oil.
04:00 Believe what you will about the Payola scandal that occurred around launch,
04:04 but regardless of what really went down, Drift Threer still wasn't worth the ducats.
04:09 Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Breakpoint
04:25 If you just want to pick off the dumbest militia to ever exist, then sure, go play Breakpoint.
04:31 But if you want an open-world game that will test your FPS skills and immerse you in an exotic world,
04:36 there are other places to look. Breakpoint was simply a complete waste of time as it
04:41 forced you to traverse across scattered locations with no rhyme or reason. You go around, take out
04:47 dudes, loot for better guns and armor, rinse and repeat. It is a mindless cycle that Ubisoft had
04:53 the audacity to support for nearly three years before completely abandoning it. Oh, and you know,
04:59 like most Ubisoft games, it was buggy as hell. Not much of a surprise.
05:05 Homefront The Revolution
05:08 While the first Homefront provided a decent experience into alternate history where Korea
05:16 invades and takes over the United States, its sequel had no such saving grace. Even with an
05:23 interesting premise, it was not enough for anyone to overlook the incompetent AI as enemies and
05:29 NPCs would frequently run into walls, and the poor framerate made some sections nauseating to play.
05:36 And do we even need to get into how clumsy and off the gunplay can get? There just wasn't any
05:42 reason to play this. Not at launch, not after the patches, and certainly not now.
05:47 Destroy All Humans Path of the Furon
06:07 Hoo, we're getting into personal vendetta territory here. Some might point to Big Willy Unleashed as
06:14 the downfall of Destroy All Humans, but the real reason we stopped seeing Crypto and Pox
06:19 was because of this pile of garbage. Path of the Furon was totally unacceptable given the quality
06:26 we had seen in the first two games. While the transition into the 70s made sense for the
06:30 franchise, what didn't make sense were the mundane mission structures, the awful dialogue constantly
06:37 reused by NPCs, and the outright disgusting number of glitches that would frequently force
06:43 players to have to reload the game again and again and again and again and again. Loyalists
06:49 quickly abandoned the Furon Empire after this travesty. We're just glad the franchise's future
06:54 looks a lot brighter these days thanks to those two stellar remakes. Conan Exiles
07:04 Spoiler alert, Exiles has almost nothing to do with the Barbarian and instead opts to appease
07:09 the hardcore survival game fans. We'd forgive the change in genre had the combat not been so clunky,
07:15 but if we're supposed to become mighty warriors, why doesn't this game feel satisfying when it
07:21 comes to fighting? Plus, the barren world here makes it seem like Conan Exiles was far from
07:27 finished when it launched. Who knows, maybe Funcom will make a sequel now that they have that
07:32 questionable ten cent money. Big Bobby Car, The Big Race
07:42 Honestly, who would expect an open world game based on the Big Bobby Car toyline,
07:54 let alone a good one? Perhaps little kids might not care about the game's lifelessness,
07:59 for us though, it was a snoozefest. One would think a game centered on "The Big Race" would
08:06 focus on a lot of racing. Makes sense, right? Alas, that is a very, very small fraction of the game.
08:14 Most of it is spent hunting collectibles in a world filled with just about nothing. Nothing
08:20 outside of the small town, just weird empty valleys and a couple caves and a farm. Yeah,
08:29 that's what makes an open world, right? Oh, and also the NPCs, they're all living Bobby Cars
08:35 that talk like they're chewing cud. It's… disturbing. And to think that they wanted 30
08:42 bucks for an empty driving game that is 90% wandering for collectibles and 10% everything
08:48 else. Can we move on? This game is giving me some trauma. Metal Gear Survive
08:57 "Data acquired from memory board. I will analyze it."
09:02 Metal Gear seems to be primed for decades of just remasters and ports, but for a second,
09:09 the future seemed grim. Konami loses the MGS mastermind after Phantom Pain,
09:14 and what do they do after his exit? They try to make the franchise a co-op zombie survival.
09:20 Uninspired, void of personality, outright boring, there is nothing that perfectly describes how
09:27 awful Metal Gear Survive truly was. But if you do want something that summarizes its sheer greed,
09:35 then how about this? Monetized save files. Yeah, that was a thing.
09:46 Dead Island Riptide "I'm hearing this! If you are,
09:51 the engines are on fire!" The first Dead Island was one of the biggest disappointments in gaming
09:57 on account of an emotional trailer advertising a zombie survival game that had no ambition
10:02 whatsoever. So maybe a sequel would improve things? Sure, in just art style. Dead Island
10:10 Riptide was practically the first game completely recycled with a slight visual touch-up. There
10:16 wasn't much different about it, and even the change in visuals weren't enough to pretty things up.
10:21 Admittedly, it wasn't as awful as Escape Dead Island, but for open world games,
10:27 you could do a lot better.
10:29 Gotham Knights
10:42 One would expect WB Montreal to learn from Rocksteady's more refined Batman Arkham games.
10:48 To make a good superhero game of any caliber, you need good combat, good storytelling,
10:54 and a good balance between investigating crime, stealth, and fighting. Gotham Knights got none of
11:00 that right, as WB Montreal was like "hey, we want our own Destiny 2," and they essentially made a
11:06 looter shooter with more currencies than they really needed. Fight random thugs to collect
11:11 evidence points, randomly scan objects for any shred of lore, enemies that scream out the cringiest
11:19 dialogue, heroes that are totally clueless to anything, and clearly have no skills. This isn't
11:27 an open world superhero game, this may as well have been cosplayers trying to be crime fighters.
11:32 Which actually, that would have been a more interesting game than this.
11:35 Infestation Survivor Stories, aka The War Z
11:39 Oh yeah, we're going back to the early cesspool days of Steam, Steam Greenlight,
11:54 back when plagiarism was running rampant as people stole code and assets just to repackage
11:59 as a completely different named game, or straight up built a game and copied visuals in every aspect.
12:05 That basically was what happened with The War Z. The game launched as a means to copy the more
12:10 popular DayZ. The only difference was that The War Z was way more buggy, way more broken,
12:16 and way more unplayable. The backlash only piled up as the game's executive producer was caught
12:22 using homophobic slurs, trying to herd customers off of the game, and the game's developers were
12:27 frequently dismissing complaints and criticisms over its business practices. It wasn't until 2016
12:34 when Infestation was taken offline. See ya!
12:38 Redfall
12:47 Redfall
12:48 You know, if it wasn't for the pedigree behind Arkane Studios, maybe Redfall wouldn't have been
13:02 more than a blip on the radar. Thing is, is that as we mentioned, this was made by Arkane,
13:09 the studio behind the Dishonored series and 2017's Prey. So who in their right mind saw Redfall
13:17 and thought, "Yeah, this empty world of dumb, clueless, glitching vampires is acceptable to
13:22 ship to customers"? Xbox has already been frustrating to deal with as a customer due
13:26 to the severe lack of first party releases. For a game that served as a show-closer for the
13:32 platform's E3 back in 2021 and was even delayed to "bring the game to life", this was just simply
13:40 unacceptable from a AAA first party studio, and it only put more pressure on Starfield
13:46 in the months leading up to its launch.
13:47 The Amazing Spider-Man 2
14:01 There are plenty of awful Spider-Man games, about three for every good Spidey game.
14:06 Spider-Man 3 will always be a bad choice, but if you want one that is absolutely,
14:11 unfathomably bad, this is it. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had some of the same problems like
14:17 bad voice acting, character models, and web-swinging controls. The biggest crime, on the other hand,
14:23 was optimization. This game runs about as well as a goblin glider left out in the middle of a
14:28 hurricane. Inconsistent frame rates, stuttering, and bugs and glitches galore. You know the whole
14:34 shebang. Doesn't matter what version you played, it was garbage all the same.
14:38 Waifu Impact
14:54 Behold! The creepiest anime girls you have ever seen, mixed together with a half-assed
14:59 designed island with gold stars to collect, gunplay lacking any unique mechanics or impact,
15:05 and a soundtrack that makes nails on a chalkboard sound like Beethoven's Fifth. How do I know this?
15:10 Because I played the game, I bought it myself, and I platinum'd it twice.
15:14 This so-called open-world experience is just… it's sheer shovelware. Shovelware at its very
15:22 core. But somehow, it pushed its way to infamy thanks to the scantily clad waifus,
15:28 each looking more dead inside than the last, and way more dead than I felt when I finished playing
15:35 these. Save yourself the trouble, go spend your five bucks elsewhere. Road Rage
15:40 An open-world game centered on vehicular combat sounds like an awesome concept. Road Rage,
15:52 was not the one to show it. There is absolutely no life in this game in any way, shape, or form.
15:58 Not in the level design, not in the combat, and certainly not in the controls. Vehicular combat
16:04 games do have a place in modern gaming, but Road Rage isn't going to sell anybody on that vision.
16:09 If only some flaming clown head would appear and do something about this mess,
16:15 left behind this pile of trash.
16:18 Raven's Cry
16:20 Raven's Cry, aka Vendetta, Curse of the Raven's Cry.
16:30 A pirate-themed open-world game? You're better off playing Sea of Thieves, because Raven's Cry
16:43 does not fit the bill. In fact, it deserves to be marooned, and never remembered, again.
16:49 Of course, it does all of the things wrong, just as our other entries have. Barren world,
16:54 broken condition, obviously unfinished, the whole nine yards. But arguably the biggest offense
17:00 is the utterly tasteless writing. Yes, pirates were vile, indespicable beings in history,
17:07 but the way Raven's Cry leans into racist and sexist stereotypes does more harm than it does
17:13 educate, commentate, or anything of the sort relating to the time period. Even after the
17:19 relaunch, or pathetic rebrand, whatever you want to call it, the now-called Vendetta,
17:23 Curse of the Raven's Cry is still abysmal, and, for some reason, still on the Steam Store.
17:36 Crackdown 3
17:37 Xbox and Sumo Digital really screwed the pooch with this one. Crackdown 3 was going to be this
17:48 explosive new entry in a long-dormant franchise, with Terry Crews in a leading role. Then the
17:54 delays happened, and after years of constantly getting pushed back, the game came and made a big,
18:01 rancid stink. Crackdown 3 could barely handle any of the stuff it was doing between physics,
18:08 destructible environments, explosions, everything. As for Terry Crews, you only get to see him in his
18:13 role for like, the first ten minutes, and then he's killed off. Clearly, no one learned from
18:19 the innovations and mistakes of previous open world games, and Crackdown 3 certainly suffered
18:24 for it. Day 1, Gary's Incident
18:34 It was the Steam Trash to end all Steam Trash. Day 1, Gary's Incident received massive backlash
18:41 sparked by the late TotalBiscuit. In a YouTube video, TotalBiscuit showcased Day 1 in its abhorrent
18:47 state, highlighting an inconsistent framerate, pop-ins, failure to load in proper save states
18:52 resulting in hard-locking from missions, shoddy character animations, and more. Day 1 wouldn't
18:58 have gotten as much attention had developer Wild Games not issued a copyright claim,
19:03 causing the video to be taken down while also provoking TotalBiscuit and various other YouTubers
19:08 to continuously call them out for days to weeks to months. It just wasn't enough to admit a bad game
19:15 was made, we needed to go and try to censor criticism. In the end, Wild Games Studios seemed
19:21 to have disappeared as all of their games are no longer on Steam and their website leads to just
19:27 a Dynadot copyright page. Check out these other great clips from Mojo Plays,
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19:37 [Music]