2023 was a year filled with amazing game titles that had the gaming sphere abuzz for months, but it’s also plagued by the worst scum that could accumulate at the bottom of the barrel. Here are our picks for the worst games that came out in 2023.
Criteria and Standards
I’ll be looking at the absolute worst 2023 has to offer. Hence, I have to filter out some of the silt to get to the dregs at the bottom. I'm looking for the most deplorable, poorly executed, non-substantial, and scandalous games we can get our hands on. Below are the three criteria upon which these games will be judged, explained in detail so we know just how abhorrent they are. Keep in mind that a high score in any criteria is a measure of how bad it is in that regard.
Along the way will be a few "Dishonorable Mentions" for games that sucked in one criteria but did well enough with the other ones to avoid being among the worst. Without further ado, let’s run amok, shall we?
Criteria #1: Poor Execution
Perhaps the most crucial criterion among all games is how it is executed. While great ideas are nice to have and visionaries of gaming are all the rage, none of it matters if you can’t make a good game out of them. This criterion measures how well an idea was executed, good or bad.
Factors that could make a game poorly executed can include its release time, the disparity between its hype and its delivery, and its general "clunkiness". The best comparison I can come up with would be the whole "No Man’s Sky" fiasco from back when.
Criteria #2: Non-substance
This criterion is reserved for games that could barely be called games for their lack of content, which is generally referred to as its "emptiness." To clarify, this doesn’t mean that games with little content overall would automatically qualify, as this would give simple games the boot despite not deserving it. This is for titles that should have more content but don’t.
This could be because of undelivered promises, the game’s genre generally having more content than what it has, obscene amounts of the game’s content being behind a paywall, or there simply isn’t much to play.
Criteria #3: Negative Impact
Ah, this is what I like to call the "Spiciness" criterion. This criterion measures how much the game shook the gaming sphere in a negative way. This is a more nebulous criterion that can include anything else the game did negatively that wasn’t already mentioned by the other criteria.
Possible factors can include a game’s price, its developer’s recent actions, the drama surrounding any of its facets, or just how badly a game treated its players. With this in mind, you’re only gonna see the big-ticket disappointments of 2023, none of the lesser-known ones with low Metacritic scores.
Top 5 Worst Games of 2023
5. Skull Island: Rise of Kong
Coming strong right out of the gate is a mostly innocent, if not a little funny-looking, entry from the minds over GameMill, Skull Island: Rise of Kong. I’m not going to bully the little guy too much, the internet’s already torn it a new one, but some things need to be said about this game.
The game was executed poorly, but it’s clear that there wasn’t much substance to be executed anyway. Many would describe this game to be something of an undercooked mess, but honestly speaking, more time in the oven wouldn’t have done this game any good. God-awful visuals, horribly simple and repetitive gameplay, and an audacious asking price of nearly $40 all sentenced this game to be mocked into nothingness. At the very least, it’s an inoffensive, if a little squirrelly-looking, game that you don’t need to worry yourself about.
4. Redfall
By all accounts, this game was set to succeed. Made by the developers of Deathloop and Dishonoured and defined by the vastly successful Looter-Shooter genre, Redfall had every opportunity to skyrocket…but didn’t. It truly boggles the mind how such a game could flop, but the Steam analytics don’t lie; nobody’s playing this game. In the same vein as Starfield, Redfall was a disappointment rather than a truly awful game. Unlike Starfield, however, it wasn’t overhyped; it was just below average from the get-go.
Bland missions, a weak storyline, and unengaging combat drive massive stakes into this game’s heart. What’s more is that Arkane was slow to patch the holes in this game’s execution, making it bleed players like a stuck Nosferatu. There’s no saving this game, not when nobody’s even bothering to boot it up anymore.
3. Overwatch 2
Greed. Oh boy, what else is there to say about Overwatch 2? This game is greed manifest, and it shows with every microtransaction it dangles in your face. There was so much at stake for this game—so many promises, so many expectations, all dashed to pieces in the name of greed. But let’s take it down a notch and talk about the game apart from its blatant hunger for your wallet.
Overwatch 2’s execution isn’t the best, as it underperformed with—or outright didn’t deliver—many of its promised game modes and features upon release. What we got was something substantial that was locked behind a paywall but still sported Blizzard’s usual character design and gameplay polish. This game’s negative impact was resounding, especially after Blizzard made the first game unavailable, forcing players to partake in the new, transaction-ridden product. Callous as it is, at least there was something, unlike the other games higher on this list.
2. Lord of the Rings: Gollum
This game is what I would call an honest attempt that went extremely poorly. Unburdened by scandalous studio decisions and a blatant hunger for revenue, this game had some semblance of humanity in it (kinda like Smeagol). Unfortunately, it just wasn’t a good game, and honestly so. Many are quick to assign this the title of worst game of the year, but at least it’s bad for the right reasons.
Execution-wise, this game was incredibly dull. Pointless stealth mechanics, equally aimless decision-making, unclear victory conditions, and an eyesore of an art style all make this game less desirable than a date with Gollum himself. There’s substance, as you’d expect from a game set in Middle-Earth, but the incongruence between the lore and the gameplay is so vast that you’d sooner trek to Mordor and back than span it. This game caused such an uproar for its poor quality that one can’t help but feel sorry for it. Unfortunately, that doesn’t save it from being one of the worst entries that 2023 could offer.
Dishonorable Mentions
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Memes from The Game Awards aside, this game is a low-effort, recycled mess that was predicted by the age-old joke that Activision recycles games. Apart from being a logistical nightmare born from a Modern Warfare 2 expansion turned full release, the game hinged too much on the nostalgia of the old COD lobbies of yore. It’s just a rehashed set of assets cobbled together into a playable and admittedly fun, but uninspired game.
Cities: Skylines 2
This game wasn’t bad at all and was set up to be the city-builder giant for the year. Unfortunately, it bit off more than it could chew and suffered massive performance issues that had to be fixed in the coming months. Overambition was its biggest enemy and it did not create strong enough foundations to handle the weight of its ventures. Simply put, maybe it wasn’t as well-built as Paradox intended it to be.
Atomic Heart
This isn’t our dishonor, comrade; it’s just yours. Atomic Heart is probably the most stunning and unyieldingly beautiful game I’ve had the displeasure of experiencing in early 2023. Despite its unique premise and iconic aesthetics, this game was…boring. Combat was unfun, puzzles were unfair, and the protagonist only gets more and more unlikeable as the game progresses. It is a shame to see a game hyped for years go to waste, but at least it isn’t bad enough to be hated.
Starfield
What an upset, and from the great Todd Howard himself too! Appropriately so, Starfield might be this year’s "No Man’s Sky" because the difference between the hype and the outcome could be measured in lightyears. It’s a good game in most respects, though its absence from the The Game Awards should tell you that it was the biggest disappointment of the year. Here's hoping that this isn't indicative of Bethesda's performance from here on out, as we still have Hammerfell to look forward to.
1. The Day Before
You all saw this coming, of course. I had half a mind to not include this in the list because calling it a "game" is generous at best and dishonest at worst. I’ve yet to see a game crumble this quickly and take its developer’s studio along with it. Although there’s reason to suggest that this was by design, that’s neither here nor there.
There’s nothing I can say about this game that hasn’t been said already, but not everyone understands just how bad The Day Before was as a game and as a precedent for this kind of occurrence. As a game, it was a non-entity. Recycled assets, empty world, meaningless gameplay; this game had it all - or rather none of it - and executed its nothingness to perfection.
In addition to all the nothing it was, it left behind such a negative impact on the gaming sphere that it can be likened to a black hole. Sweeping refunds, studio executives gone into hiding, Steam listing vanished; and just like that, it was gone the day after. You’re not gonna find a worse game this year than one that was barely a game at the start and nonexistent right after.
