Worst Game Ever?

[The_herd]

Interesting to read how game this game actually is. The sad thing is people are actually going to buy the game at Wal-Mart or someplace similar just by looking at the box.

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/b...ml?tag=mp_2to9

Bad games are released all the time, and some are worse than others. This is nothing new. However, it really takes a special kind of awful to be considered one of the worst games ever made. So when this special kind of awful makes an appearance, it's truly something to behold. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is one of those rare pieces of work. Not only is it almost completely broken and blatantly unfinished in nearly every way, but even if it weren't, there's so little of an actual game to be found here that it would still be terrible. Big Rigs is a game so astoundingly bad that it manages to transcend nearly every boundary put forth by some of gaming's absolute worst of the worst and easily makes it into that dubiously extraordinary category of being one of the most atrocious games ever published.

Big Rigs' first and most grievous issue lies in its gameplay. Specifically, there isn't any.

In theory, Big Rigs is supposed to be a racing game based on big trucks that speed through various US trucking routes in some kind of effort to deliver cargo before the competition gets there first--or else the truck gets busted by the law. At least, this is what the back of the game's box would have you believe. Let us make it very clear that these statements are all horrible, horrible lies. There is no coherent goal in Big Rigs. There is no cargo to be delivered. There are no police chases. In fact, there really isn't anything much in the game.

The basic idea in the actual game is that you pick one from four vaguely different trucks and then one from five vaguely different levels. You then compete against another truck in a simple checkpoint race. That's it. However, Big Rigs can't even get this basic concept right. The supposedly computer-controlled truck you're supposed to be racing against in the game never actually moves. It's right there next to you at the beginning of a race, but it has no purpose in the game. This is to say, actually, that none of the game's races have a purpose because there's no competition and no time limit. You win every single time. So unless you especially like seeing a winning-screen over and over again that reads "You're Winner!", there is absolutely no point in playing Big Rigs.

But let's assume for a moment that the AI trucks actually worked, and you could get a race going. Even if this were the case, the game still wouldn't be worth playing in the slightest. Big Rigs' controls essentially involve hitting the arrow keys of the keyboard in the desired direction and nothing more. The game provides no support for peripheral controllers of any kind, and there isn't even an option to edit the default keyboard controls in any manner. Your truck also handles pretty horribly. There are no physics here. You accelerate much too quickly to even be minutely realistic (especially when going in reverse, which lets you go from around 0 to 60mph in about five seconds, continue accelerating infinitely faster, and stop on a dime the second you let up on the keyboard), you can travel over the most rugged of terrain without any problems (including nearly vertical mountains), and you can turn in ways that cause you to jerk around in some pretty ridiculous manners.

Of course, the controls would only matter if you actually had to worry about running into things or crashing your truck, which, actually, is a nonissue. You see, you can clip your truck right through every object on a race course in Big Rigs, from the biggest of houses and walls, right down to the smallest of lampposts. Furthermore, bridges evidently don't actually exist, despite the fact that you can see them--driving over any of them results in you sinking right through them. It is also quite possible to simply drive right off of the literal end of a level when playing. Considering the fact that you can drive over these tall, seemingly insurmountable mountains (at least, insurmountable for an actual diesel-powered truck), and there are no level boundaries, eventually you can just drive off into literal nothingness and can hang out there as long as you please.


Please do not play this game. We cannot stress this enough.

The graphical problems don't stop there, either. Big Rigs is easily one of the worst-looking PC game released in years. The truck models are amazingly terrible, with incredibly archaic-looking designs and brake lights that actually float off of the truck models. The four different environments all look bad, too, what with their incredibly nasty-looking textures, their ugly and meaningless set pieces, and their aforementioned clipping problems. Also, the reason we state that there are only four environments in the game, instead of the five we previously cited, is because we could only get four of them to actually work. When trying to load the fifth environment, the game simply quit and returned us to the desktop on all of the computers that we tried. As for the game's sound design, there isn't any. There are literally no sound effects in Big Rigs. The only sounds that present themselves at all are a few unpleasant, looping techno tracks, and on a midrange PC, we couldn't even get them to play.

Just how bad is Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing? It's as bad as your mind will allow you to comprehend. It is so disturbingly bad that even its budget price tag seems like a slap in the face. It really makes you wonder if the company that put out this dreck even took so much as a half minute to glance at the game that it was releasing. The game's readme file does assert that the game was thoroughly tested on various PCs, but the end result seems to suggest otherwise. The fact is, even if you tried, you couldn't play Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing the way it was seemingly intended to be played, and even if you could, you wouldn't want to.

By Alex Navarro, GameSpot [POSTED: 01/14/04 05:45 PM]

[Sloan]

It will have to be pretty bad to beat the worst game of all time, Superman64: http://www.gamespot.com/n64/adventure/superman64/

[The_herd]

I don't know. Did you see the screens for it?

The classic, "You're winner" sign after completing a race.

The fact that you win EVERY race because the other truck doesn't move when the race starts.

The fact that there is ZERO clipping in the game, even bridges, you sink right through them. You can drive through anything, up vertical mountains, and off the track.

[The_herd]

Dola

Not taking anything away from the Superman game. I had the displeasure of renting the game when it came out. Played it for 5 minutes, returned it to Blockbuster, went home shocked that a game could be that bad.

[Desnudo]

The two reader reviews for the truck game are hilarious.

[The_herd]

Originally Posted by Desnudo

The two reader reviews for the truck game are hilarious.

I read those earlier today, they are pretty funny and worth reading.

[pjstp20]

The 10 Review is absolutly hillarious.

[hukarez]

How about that P.N. 03 game for the GC?

[sterlingice]

Check out the Superman 64 review on IGN. It's the game that all other awful games are measured by now. Then again, way back in the NES days, there were some just awful things put to silicon that would never get published today.

Imagine if all developers explained their game's visual limitations in storyline. "No, no -- those are not jumpy framerates you are seeing. Superman is merely drunk, which also blurs his vision considerably."

Strangely, he seems to be neither faster than a speeding bullet nor more powerful than a locomotive. Actually, the sluggish polygonal mutant Titus has created moves more like a hovering couch.

"Hello! I pressed the damn Z button. Is he going to do anything?" The answer, more often than not, is no.

After three or four rounds of Superman soul searching, I snatched the controller away from him like you would snatch a bottle of liquor from an alcoholic friend. Having already sworn off of the Superman game, I can only concur that this is one of the most frustrating videogame experiences in the history of the world.

Woo-hoo! Review finished. Let us never speak of this game again.

Gamespot is just as kind and makes you wonder if the two rival sites had a "let's see who can come up with the best review for this awful title" contest.

The only Superman compliment I can find to say is that flying beats walking. If I've been in any way unclear up to this point, let me state it simply: This is easily the worst game I've ever played. To steal a line outright from a film review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, it serves no purpose other than to firmly establish the bottom of the barrel.

Well, Matt Cassamania over at IGN is much more vocal about his hatred of the game. Then again, I'm probably a bit biased- he's one of my favorite reviewers as he seems to like what I like in a game so it's good to use his reviews for reference when I'm considering getting a game.

SI

[hukarez]

I can seemingly understand some of IGN's game reviews to a certain extent...though, their boards are hideous. Then again, so are some of the ones at the GameFAQs website.

I haven't checked reviews on games for quite awhile, though I used to check out IGN's opinion on a few games here and there. So long as a review is well explained in the sense that the reviewer is able to rationalize his/her distaste towards one aspect of this and that...I'll always take it into account.

Though, I do have to admit, when they reviewed the WWE RAW and RAW 2 games for the XBOX; while every other game review website out there provided awful ratings...I begin to wonder sometimes.

[hukarez]

On another note; not to deviant too much from the whole "worst game ever" bit...does anyone know who the hell Derek Smart is? From what I gather on some boards, he doesn't seem to be a "well-liked" guy or what not. Something about being too ambitious or the like? I'm not too sure. I haven't really been around on boards that long enough to figure out what the story is about that fellow.

[TazFTW]

The evil that is Derek Smart. http://www.gamespy.com/articles/sept...d/index8.shtml

The biggest jerk in the gaming industry.

[SirFozzie]

I've run afoul of several flamewars in usenet over his attitude and intelligence (he's almost as smart as he thinks he is, but he's not THAT smart, and he hates to let any one speak afoul of him)

[Poli]

Umm, ever play Survivor?

[hukarez]

Originally Posted by TazFTW

The evil that is Derek Smart. http://www.gamespy.com/articles/sept...d/index8.shtml

The biggest jerk in the gaming industry.

Oy vey...just found this myself:

http://www.3000ad.com/ubb/ultimatebb...;f=27;t=000045

[hukarez]

Originally Posted by ardent enthusiast

Umm, ever play Survivor?

There's no actual 'action' elements involved in that game, are there? If there is...we've got a problem then.

[mckerney]

Originally Posted by TazFTW

The biggest jerk in the gaming industry.

Perhaps one of the worst (and slowest) programers, but he did go on to make Battles Cruiser 3000 A.D. playable and actually what some people found enjoyable, releasing it free on the internet.

[Sun Tzu]

Daikatana

[Fritz]

how a game could be worse than SUperpower and still run, I don't know. They should have shipped it in a pair of Huggies.

[hukarez]

I'll also toss in that 'Pools of Radiance' re-make into the mix.