Some games are so bad they're GREAT.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00When it comes to video games, the worst thing you can do is release something that's forgettable.
00:04A good game? Well, sure, that's the intent.
00:06But if it goes horribly wrong, sometimes you'll catch a saving grace and the attention of the masses
00:10by producing something that's so bad people want to play it regardless.
00:14Morbid curiosity is definitely a thing after all,
00:17and if your bad video game has a unique selling point, then bully for you.
00:20You may have just made history.
00:22Not as you intended, but it's notoriety all the same.
00:25Most of the titles on this list are never going to be anyone's favourite,
00:27but they're at least worth that look of morbid curiosity.
00:31I'm CypherWhatCulture.com and these are 10 terrible video games you should play anyway.
00:36Number 10, Shadow the Hedgehog.
00:38In 2005, Sega decided to cash in on the popularity of Sonic's broody bro Shadow the Edgelord
00:43and give him his own spin-off.
00:44How would they separate it from any other Sonic game?
00:46Well, why not slap a gun into his hands and see what happens?
00:49I'm sure we can all agree that that idea was staring us in the face this whole time.
00:53Shadow the Hedgehog isn't the most broken of the Sonic games, that's for sure,
00:56but it definitely broke any semblance of sanity the series had at that point.
00:59Shadow spends his one and only titular release firing a variety of firearms,
01:03driving in tanks and cursing like an angsty teen.
01:05This one is worth playing for a couple of reasons.
01:07First of all, the game has a really cool system of morality-based objectives
01:11you can pick from on the fly in each stage.
01:13It plots out a course through the game's many stages based on these choices,
01:16meaning there are a lot of different possible playthroughs and that's genuinely impressive.
01:19Mostly though, you need to play Shadow the Hedgehog just to understand how absolutely nuts it is.
01:23If you can make it through the opening cutscene with Shadow sneering with an automatic rifle in his hands without laughing,
01:28well, you're made of sterner stuff than me.
01:30Number 9. Shaq-Fu
01:32Shaq-Fu sort of cultivated its own legend around its lack of quality.
01:36Even if it wasn't very mediocre, being released following the home debuts of Super Street Fighter 2
01:40and Mortal Kombat 2, it never stood a chance.
01:43So hated was basketball star Shaq's foray into video games that a group of players decided to do something about it
01:48and made it their goal to spread the gospel of destroying as many physical copies of the game as possible.
01:53Shaq-Fu has spent so long being included in every list of the worst games of all time
01:57that people seem to be groomed into instinctively shuddering when they hear the name.
02:00It may well be terrible, but it's not the black hole of creativity that the legend makes it sound.
02:05It has a consistent visual design and is decently well animated, so props for that.
02:08But admittedly, that doesn't save it from being slow, shallow and absolutely paling in comparison to its peers.
02:13Regardless, it's now part of the great tapestry of gaming because of its extreme reaction,
02:18so in many ways it's worth taking a look at just for that alone.
02:20Plus, if you can get your hands on a copy, you can oppose the destroy Shaq-Fu regime
02:24and preserve this odd piece of gaming history.
02:27Number 8. South Park
02:29South Park, at the height of its popularity, was a juggernaut for merchandising and tie-ins.
02:34As such, South Park needed to have a game out, and it needed to have it out fast.
02:37Using the Turok engine, of all things, South Park's first video game outing was a straightforward first-person shooter
02:43that contained much of the series' character and potty-mouth sensibility.
02:47The reality of the situation is that since it was so rushed out into public hands,
02:50South Park is ugly and limited in its scope.
02:52Levels are monotonous, as is replaying the whole thing if you die due to a lack of checkpoints,
02:57and the game has a serious lack of music and voiceover variety.
03:00On top of this, the ghastly short draw distance to try and hide its blemishes
03:03made it unbelievably boring to look at.
03:06All that said, the South Park game is as inventive as the show,
03:08and its sense of humour definitely offers a few chuckles.
03:11Whilst the campaign is forgettable, South Park did shit with multiplayer,
03:14which allows players to concentrate most on what the game did best,
03:17which was its variety of silly weaponry, from toilet plunger firearms to the cow launcher.
03:21There is definitely still fun to be had in selecting your favourite foul-mouthed kid
03:25and embarrassing your friends by pelting them with yellow snowballs.
03:28Ah, youth.
03:30Number 7. Goat Simulator
03:32This one is a little different in that the beauty of Goat Simulator is that,
03:36being a spoof of the growing sim genre, it was intentionally made a little badly.
03:40Developer Coffee Stain Studios had no qualms allowing physics glitches and such to get through the code
03:45to provide the kind of entertainment that we all get from watching a game world appear to fall apart.
03:49Nothing about Goat Simulator should be right.
03:51There's no story, no set objective, nothing of the sort.
03:54Its physics don't make sense, its presentation is a mess,
03:57and yet, it was destined to go viral.
03:59On the great face of video gaming, with all of its glorious AAA successes,
04:02Goat Simulator is the cheeky pimple that cropped up overnight.
04:05Want to become the world's best skateboarding goat?
04:07Would you rather ingest sugar cubes and get psychedelic?
04:10Perhaps you're more into sneaking up on people and pushing them to their doom.
04:13All of these and so much more are at your fingertips in the game's ridiculous open world.
04:17It was never going to win any fancy schmancy awards,
04:19but Goat Simulator reminds us that all video games don't always have to be cinematic or high art.
04:24Sometimes it's just enough that they make us smile,
04:26and terrorising a town as a demonic goat sounds like something that could make just about anyone smile.
04:31Number 6, Pepsi Man.
04:33The guys down at Pepsi headquarters back in 1999 must have had a very wonderful idealised view of things.
04:39With their mascot, superhero Pepsi Man, all crises can be averted.
04:43One such crisis is stopping a riot breaking out because of angry consumers upset about a late Pepsi delivery,
04:49even though, come to think of it,
04:50that Pepsi Man's gameplay shows cans of the drink just lying around all over the roads in various real-life cities.
04:56Well, that seems like an accident waiting to happen.
04:57Pepsi Man is a cheap, licensed product designed more to sell you fizzy drinks than to blow you away with its deep gameplay.
05:02As such, don't expect more than alternating level to level between running away and running towards the camera,
05:07and trying your hardest to avoid obstacles that come out of absolutely nowhere.
05:11Also, don't think too hard about the fact that the citizens of this world have built an entire city called Pepsi City
05:16as a shrine to their beloved soft drink.
05:18The gameplay may be boring, but it's also ridiculous that it's pretty hard to hate.
05:21It's debatable whether Pepsi Man's live-action cutscenes and strange portrayal of American culture is meant to be funny,
05:26but there's definitely laughs to be had at the lunacy of it all.
05:30Number 5, Resident Evil Gaiden.
05:33Did you know that at one stage, Resident Evil was being ported to the Game Boy Color?
05:37That project didn't ever finish, because the task at hand was too great for the hardware,
05:40but it didn't stop Capcom from wanting to drop their horror series into the hugely popular handheld gaming space.
05:45Resident Evil Gaiden is often pointed and laughed at from a distance, and perhaps quite rightfully so.
05:50It's a strange mix of top-down exploration, and of all things, a first-person timing-based battle system
05:55that's got more in common with the likes of Undertale than modern Resi.
05:59The music is tinny, the plot is nonsense, and the game has a god-awful save system
06:03that chooses for you when to save your progress.
06:05But it has this undeniable charm to it as well.
06:08The fixed-camera Resident Evil formula of the time was never going to work on a Game Boy,
06:12so props to Studio M4 for coming up with a different approach.
06:15Better yet, it's one that surprisingly manages to retain some classic Resi staples
06:19in trying to run past enemies to conserve your limited ammo,
06:22and backtracking to areas with your new key.
06:24That's about where the similarities to the core series end,
06:27but very few gaming franchises that are still going strong today have curios quite like Resident Evil Gaiden.
06:32Number 4, 50 Cent's Blood on the Sand.
06:3650 Cent Bulletproof was an absolute travesty of an action title that not only did nothing we hadn't seen before,
06:41but it barely got the essentials correct either.
06:44So how exactly Mr. Curtis Jackson got a sequel is beyond belief.
06:4750 Cent's Blood on the Sand is, again, an almost completely generic affair
06:51that uses all the most popular tricks in gaming of the time.
06:53Vehicular combat, a ton of guns, chest-high walls, and of course, slow-motion bullet-time action.
06:59Its storyline was no less shallow than its gameplay either, essentially boiling down to
07:03That bitch has got my money. Charming.
07:05The most offensive thing about Blood on the Sand, however, it's actually rather fun.
07:09It's pompous and stupid, but there is joy to be had in the ridiculousness of playing as 50 Cent
07:14slow-mo mowing down terraces in the Middle East.
07:16These kinds of cover-based shooters were a dime a dozen for a long time,
07:19but only one of them allows you to activate gangster fire,
07:22team with a G unit, and listen to original music that 50 Cent had written just for the game.
07:27Oh, it did do one thing, Unique. You can get extra points from taunting your opponents with profanity
07:32after they die, and these can be traded in for new swear words.
07:35You know what? I take it all back. This is a surefire 10 out of 10.
07:38Number 3. Survival Evolved
07:41The survival genre is at its best when it can get its hooks into you
07:44and 100 hours fly by without you realising it.
07:47Who amongst us hasn't suddenly had the, oh, it's 3am moment when we played Minecraft?
07:51Survival Evolved takes the relatively calming and straightforward nature of Minecraft
07:55and throws it out to sea. Its realistic demands and deep mechanics require gamers
07:59to play carefully and plan ahead as they attempt to survive a world that is currently populated
08:03by over 150 different, largely dangerous, and often prehistoric creatures.
08:08Ark is not an easy game to get into. It doesn't embrace new players from a gameplay perspective,
08:12nor the fact that the game is absolutely busted. All the classics are here,
08:16unreliable AI pathfinding, awful collision detection, and horrendous lag.
08:20At this stage, the bugs are so deeply embedded into the game that most of them are never coming out.
08:24The reason you should play it? Well, Ark is a damn fine cooperative experience,
08:28whether you're fighting against the dinosaurs or the game itself.
08:30After all, misery breeds company, and whilst some of the bugs are frustrating,
08:34many weird occurrences offer unique gameplay experiences.
08:37Remember that time I climbed a saber-toothed tiger into the sky?
08:40It's not something you can say about many games.
08:43Number 2. Darkened Sky
08:44Darkened Sky is about as average a game as you can get.
08:48A 2002 third-person adventure title that stars hero Sky,
08:52exploring a fantastical setting looking to restore magic, light, and rainbows to her world.
08:57Its action is bland, its puzzles are horribly cryptic, and its platforming is painful.
09:02Still, it's got a very kooky sense of humour.
09:04Lead characters often quip sarcastically between each other,
09:07and the fourth wall is broken so many times that it might as well not be there.
09:10Any other reason to play it?
09:11Well, with most video games that are licensed, like the aforementioned Pepsi Man,
09:14you know pretty much immediately, but Darkened Sky, the rogue that it is,
09:18doesn't have the company logos emblazoned on the box,
09:20nor does it really hurry to reveal the truth that it is in fact a licensed product.
09:24In one of gaming's most surreal moments,
09:26Darkened Sky goes from a relatively blasé action-adventure into a total headscrew,
09:30when Sky bends down to pick a skittle up off the ground.
09:33Yes, a skittle.
09:34The dark secret of Darkened Sky is the moment you realise
09:37that the magic system in the game is all based on brightly coloured candy.
09:41It doesn't make Darkened Sky any more an exciting gameplay experience,
09:44but I can't think of any other games where your spells are powered by sweets,
09:47so it's got that going for it.
09:49And number one, Big Rigs, Over-the-Road Racing.
09:52If you can think of it, you can probably do it in Big Rigs,
09:55as long as it contains driving through every obstacle in the game unharmed,
09:59accelerating up totally vertical cliff faces without slowing down,
10:02and even sinking into the ground.
10:03For whatever reason, Game Mill appears to have decided that pre-alpha
10:07was good enough for this 2003 PC racing title,
10:10and sent it out into the world to find its own way.
10:12What it found was anger, befuddlement,
10:14and the title of one of the worst games of all time.
10:17Still, many gamers were so stunned by the thing that they couldn't help but love it.
10:21Considering your one opponent doesn't leave the start line,
10:24it's hard to play Big Rigs as intended,
10:25even when trying to ignore the glitches.
10:28Thus, the only fun to be had is driving through buildings,
10:30falling through bridges, and speeding over mountainsides.
10:33If there was ever a crown made for so bad it's good,
10:36then Big Rigs deserves that, the throne and the scepter.
10:39You can't help but feel sorry for the thing rushed out of the door before it was done,
10:43scared, confused, and ugly.
10:45I almost feel bad for calling it terrible,
10:46as what we have barely constitutes a game.
10:49Whatever you call it,
10:49you absolutely need to experience Big Rigs over-the-road racing at least once.
10:54And that's the list.
10:56Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below,
10:59and any other video games that you can think of that count as terrible,
11:02but are still worth playing for whatever reason.
11:04Make sure to like and share this video,
11:06subscribe to the channel for more,
11:07and hit the notification bell.
11:09I've been Si from WhatCulture,
11:10and have a good week.
11:11I'll see you next time.