Despite falling short of the great heights reached by its predecessor, 2019 was still a solid year for gaming.Disco Elysium,Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, andDevil May Cry 5are just three of the many fantastic titles that dropped during the year. Whether looking for lengthy RPGs (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), engrossing visual novels (Steins;Gate Elite), or mesmerizing VR showcases (Asgard’s Wrath), 2019 has something for everyone.
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Also, like any other year, 2019 produced its fair share of awfulness. Titles that are only worth trying out as a joke. Out of the hundreds of games released in 2019, here are the ten titles with the worst aggregate scores onMetacritic!
Ports or remakes will not be considered, which is the only reason the Nintendo Switch’sBlades of TimeandThief Of Thieves: Season Oneare not on this list.
10Monster Jam Steel Titans (47)
When it comes to gaming, the Monster Jam license does not have the greatest track record. While far from a lost cause,Monster Jam Steel Titansis held back by aninconsistent engine and a barren open-worldthat only serves to stretch the time between the relatively fun events.
Fans of Monster Jam may find something to enjoy inSteel Titans, as it does a decent job of replicating the thrilling action of its real-life counterpart and the campaign does hold potential. Unfortunately, the game’s shortcomings overshadow its strengths.
9Narcos: Rise Of The Cartels (45)
Sticking with licensed games,Narcos: Rise of the Cartelsis obviously based on Netflix’s popular crime drama. To give credit where credit is due, Kuju Entertainment deserves props for resisting the urge to create another generic first-person shooter, asRise of the Cartelsopts to copy a page fromXCOM’s book rather thanCall of Duty.
Bizarrely enough, the strategy game is far worse on PC than consoles, although the latter versions are hardly anything to write home about. Due to being polished and visually competent,Rise of the Cartelsis not infuriatingly bad. That said, the turn-based tactical shooter is not fun to play and fails to capture the nuance of its source material.
8Generation Zero (45)
Be itMad MaxorJust Cause 2, Avalanche Studios can be relied upon to deliver entertaining basic gameplay loop set in huge but often shallow open-worlds. In many ways,Generation Zerois the studio’s most ambitious project yet. Set in the 1980s, players are dropped into an alternate reality where massive robots have seized control of parts of Sweden, forcing a small human resistance to go into hiding in an effort to survive.
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Generation Zerohas a great sense of atmosphere and is comfortably Avalanche Studio’s prettiest game. Unfortunately, the game is let down in other areas. The map is too big for its own good and does a poor job of directing players towards objectives, while the focus on co-op gameplay means solo players are generally at a disadvantage against the overpowered AI.
7Submersed (44)
IfJawsproved anything, a fake shark does not have to be particularly convincing to put the fear of the ocean into a whole generation. In a more recent (and relevant) example,Subnauticamanages to make underwater traversal a consistently intense and horrifying activity.
Submersedis like a mix ofJawsandSubnautica, just without any of the strengths found in either property. The game is primarily played underwater, as the player tries to complete missions while avoiding supposedly intelligent sharks. Along with being (mercifully) short,Submersedcannot come up with anything creative to do with its premise, opting to rely on jump scares to try and get a reaction.
6WWE 2K20 (43)
Here it is! 2019’s most infamous video game blunder, one that has basically become a meme. 2K’s WWE series has been losing steam for quite a while, even if2K19was one of the better entries. Due to reins being handed over to Visual Concepts just two months prior to its release, making it the first game to not be handled by Yuke’s,WWE 2K20launched in anunfinished and frankly broken state.
Going through all of the game’s issues requires a list of its own, so let’s just say thatWWE 2K20was bad enough to promptSony to hand out refunds.
5FIFA 20: Legacy Edition (43)
FIFAhas been treading water for a couple of years, with each iteration only tweaking a few things and primarily depending on an updated roster to ship copies. Even if the PS4 and Xbox One versions are not without their issues, they are masterpieces compared toFIFA 20on the Nintendo Switch.
Legacy Editionmeans that a roster update is the only thing that has changed fromFIFA 19. Yes, EA essentially published the same game twice and charged $49.99 for it. It is also worth noting thatFIFAon Nintendo Switch has been using an outdated engine for a number of years, so the base game is already inferior to other versions.
4Dollhouse (41)
First-personsurvival horrorgames have started to overstay their welcome. If executed well, the genre can craft nightmarish scenarios capable of crawling underneath someone’s skin. Sadly, most games of this mold lack the subtlety, restraint, or talent to maintain a sense of dread for longer than ten minutes.
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Dollhousetakes place within the mind of its protagonist, a detective suffering from amnesia who has to collect tapes to piece together her memory. Hunted by a shadow figure and mannequins, Marie’s mind is a twisted and occasionally spooky place.Dollhouse’s most damning fault is its lack of variety in level design and goals, although the unresponsive controls do not help matters.
3Contra: Rogue Corps (40)
Eight years after Arc System Works’Hard Corps: Uprisingand ten after the lastContragame to feature the franchise’s name in its title,Rogue Corpsis a disappointment of disheartening proportions. Rather than a traditional 2D run and gun game,Rogue Corpsis an isometric shooter that constantly halts the waves of bullets by forcing guns to cool down after a short period of prolonged shooting.
Think about that for a second. This is aContragame that encourages players to avoid shootingtoomuch.Rogue Corpsis also ugly as sin and mind-numbingly boring to play, the latter being a criticism that should never even be associated withContra.
2Left Alive (37)
Left Aliveis a weird one. Unlike the other games on this list, there is a significant discrepancy betweenLeft Alive’s critical and user score on Metacritic. Developed by Ilinx and published by Square Enix,Left Alivetakes place in theFront Missionuniverse, the franchise’s first entry since 2010’s underwhelmingEvolved.
Left Aliveis advertised as a stealth game, but it does try to diversify the gameplay to some extent. Technical shortcomings hold this one back, while the stealth mechanics are a bit too basic to serve as the foundation for an entire game. The AI is unpredictable, in that, sometimes they can see through walls and other times they can barely see two meters in front of them.
1Eternity: The Last Unicorn (36)
Ranking as the worst game of 2019,Eternity: The Last Unicornsuffers mainly from a lack of polish and one terrible creative decision that ruins what could have been a decent throwback to old school action-RPGs.
The combat is clumsy and unsatisfying, the graphics would have failed to impress on the PS3, and the Norse mythology-inspired storyline contains little in the way of surprises. Any potential is wasted by a fixed camera that seems to actively try to get in the player’s way.
