A disastrous failure whose technical shortcomings may one day be fixed but whose design failings, and obliviousness to its own potential, suggests a game that is irrevocably broken.

An atmospheric and often perplexing exploration game that suffers from bugs, uneven level design, and an unwavering dedication to leaving you to your own devices.

Easily the worst MMA game yet and also one of the most ineptly designed and ruthlessly un-entertaining fighting games for years.

Koei’s scraping of the Dynasty Warriors barrel breaks through the bottom and into the floor below, with a cheap, lazy sequel to an already sub-par game.

The same old Dynasty Warriors formula is reused and abused yet again, and not even giant robots can save it.

An unlikely mix of the bland, the predictable, and the surprisingly excellent – which only makes the mediocre end result all the more frustrating.

A deeply flawed attempt to make a cross between Warhammer: Vermintide and an old school scrolling beat ‘em-up, with dumb and repetitive combat that’s never fun even in co-op.

Turning Castlevania into a one-on-one fighter is a dumb idea but at least this tries to be different.

The real survival horror here is enduring the repetitive scares and gameplay all the way to the end.

The mix of influences seems like they should work very well, but the limitations will frustrate both shooter fans and Minecraft addicts.

No game could've been worth this long a wait but the sheer level of incompetence and inanity is the only way that Duke Nukem Forever impresses.

The ‘80s nostalgia is laid on so thick you could almost choke from it, in this joyless proof that too much nostalgia can be a bad thing.

If you aren't sick of zombies yet, you will be after this new attempt at a revamped Zombies Ate My Neighbors.

It looks like Cannon Fodder, and to a degree it plays like Cannon Fodder, but this bizarre sequel lacks the heart, soul, and mind of the 16-bit classic.

The co-op action can be fun, but the rest of the game is just as dull and miserable as life in occupied America is portrayed.

In terms of gameplay, it has little in common with the 37-year-old original but the fact that this is a generic and unremarkable copy of other, better games unfortunately makes this a very authentic sequel.

Bad film tie-ins are nothing new, but this seems more of a waste than usual given the subject matter.

It’s almost impressive that the bottom of the barrel has been established this early on in the Xbox One’s career, but that’s the only achievement of note for this wretchedly awful racer.

Omega Factor is a classic 2D game that everyone should play. This is a shameful, artless knock-off.

It's only a cheap pack-in title but this not only fails as a game, it's also a terrible way to show off the Wii Remote Plus/Wii Motion Plus.

Pitifully inept real-time strategy that makes almost every design and technology mistake possible.

A technical showcase for the 3DS but artistically speaking this gets almost everything wrong, from the banal action to the laughable storytelling.

A gruelling and protracted stat-management simulation, with paltry interactions and stilted dialogue that’s entirely removed from the actual process of parenting.

The least hand-crafted horror game ever, whose legion of design missteps and tepid scares make the worst of an already clichéd set-up.

It often seems like you're making more effort in the game than the developers did, with this miserable showcase for PlayStation Move.

There isn’t even a win condition, you just keep battering back identikit waves of badly drawn enemies in small, bland maps until one overwhelms you. It’s the video game equivalent of clinical depression.

Good graphics, solid controls and a large open world city - the only thing missing is a challenge that lasts more than a couple of hours.

There are number of clever concepts here, but they're left drowning in a sea of mediocre first person shooting and action movie clichés.

Fighting giant monsters should never be as dull and formulaic as this cheap and nasty attempt to remind you other better games… and anime.

Rather than fixing the issues with the PC original the console versions only seem to add more problems, as a pirate's life is made to see even more frustrating and repetitive.

There’s the endoskeleton of a good movie adaptation here, but with dire graphics, dull combat, and tedious missions this low budget shooter is very easy to resist.

A short, boring, and painfully repetitious glimpse into the life of bees that will make you wish you had a virtual can of Raid handy.

You'll be begging for mercy after just a few hours with this distressingly poor online shooter.

But perhaps the most tragic thing here is that despite a critical drubbing for each game this series has made exactly the same mistakes every time.

One of the most ineffective reboots of recent history, with a game that seems purposefully designed to undermine the unique qualities of the Scribblenauts series.

The X-Men don't have a great history in video games but this is possibly their worst outing yet and offensively poor value for money even for fans.

The best visual representation of Hellboy outside of the comic books, but an absolutely terrible video game, whose shallowness and lack of variety is matched only by its constant repetition.

Another unspeakably bad platformer that beyond its more general faults seems to purposefully misunderstand the appeal of the entire Sonic franchise.

As miserable a waste of a good licence as we've ever seen and the most bug-ridden and unimaginative download of the year so far.

A very disappointing comeback for the creator of PaRappa The Rapper, that shows none of his earlier style.

The Guinness Book of Records has but one contender for the least value-for-money video game ever made.

A failed attempt to expand the coin-op, with a fog of unnecessary extras keeping you from the good stuff.

Ambitious, unpolished, and very demanding – in short an impressively authentic update of the '80s classic and an action strategy hybrid almost without compare in the current generation.

It’s a sad state for dinosaurs in video games when this shoddily-constructed, and almost irredeemably shallow, shooter is almost the only sign of a T-Rex we’ve had all year.

Elite Squad is a blandly generic gacha game, with tedious, tactics-free, but mercifully brief gun battles tacked onto the front end.

A tired and outdated fighter and another failed attempt by SNK to update one of its classic franchises.

The intentions are good, but cute graphics and some clever ideas can’t stop this ‘feel-good FPS’ from being anything but a downer.

A missed opportunity for an exciting take on medieval history, that’s inferior to Kingdom Come: Deliverance in every respect.

Ghost Recon re-imagined as the most boring Time Crisis clone imaginable, with a mix of genre and franchise that should never have happened.

A new low for Nintendo and for Animal Crossing, in what is the least amount of fun you can have with an amiibo without needing urgent medical attention afterwards.

Praey For The Gods attempts to do far too much with obviously limited resources and the end result is a buggy, frustrating chore that at no point comes to close to doing anything as well as Shadow Of The Colossus, let alone bettering it. Like a bad pub tribute band, its only real accomplishment is making you appreciate the original even more.

Considerably worse than the thoroughly unremarkable original, this is a horror game but not quite in the way it was intended.

A Fisher Price version of Earth Defense Force could have been fun, but this doesn't even try to offer any lasting entertainment, let alone value for money.

Incompetent, outdated and hopelessly misconceived - but other than that a great fighter for the Wii.

Its sights are set on being a brave new kind of shooter, but this misses every target but its own feet.

All of it is just awful, and if it wasn’t for the name the game would’ve passed by completely without notice. So in that sense the use of the license served its purpose, because if this hadn’t been called Reservoir Dogs we wouldn’t have known to warn you about it. Although it has inspired us to go and watch the film again, so there is that in its favour…

Impossibly tedious Dynasty Warriors clone that offers up not one ounce of entertainment for enduring its soul-shatteringly dull world and combat.

Offensively awful as both a tribute to Bond and as a first person shooter, with every ounce of personality and imagination stripped from an already malformed skeleton.

This inept WiiWare download won't relieve you of any stress, just £5.60 and the will to live.

An allegory of the video games industry featuring consoles as characters should've been comedy gold, but if this were a games machine it'd be the Atari Jaguar.

A shockingly poor attempt to make a VR military shooter, that barely seems to work in any aspect and unwittingly exposes just how limited VR gaming can be.

A tragic failure that attempts to revive the wonder of NiGHTS and Sonic The Hedgehog, but falls victim to publisher melding and terrible controls.

One of Platinum’s worst games so far, with dull and repetitive action that doesn’t do the heroes in a half-shell any justice at all.

The final slice of downloadable content is just as shallow in its gameplay and ambition as before.

Embarrassingly poor Japanese role-player that manages the impossible task of playing worse than it looks.

A slightly embarrassing attempt to recall the early days of 3D platforming, with a central gimmick that never really captures the imagination and clunky controls and gameplay.

Harry's film tie-in career ends with an inappropriately bland third person shooter, that is severely lacking in any kind of magic.

Somewhere between a non-interactive VR experience and a half-baked licensed game, the latest Stranger Things VR experience has neither a coherent storyline nor proper action.

The gameplay alone is overfamilar enough but the appalling value for money and dearth of content makes this the worst Ridge Racer for years.

An excruciatingly underdeveloped take on the life of a paramedic in a fictitious American city, ruined by rote action, terrible AI, and lifeless mini-games.

Staggeringly inept on almost every level, with crimes against game design, and good taste, that cannot be forgiven solely by the low budget.

Not so much a video game as a shameful attempt to convince children to spend their parents’ money on expensive microtransactions.

The potential for an exciting period strategy game is clear but that only makes the buggy mess of unbalanced combat and simplistic tactical decisions all the more frustrating.

Ultra violent and desperate to shock, but this is far too boring and repetitive a game to either love or hate.

An acceptable enough lightgun game, but a poor Ape Escape title. More importantly it's still no reason to own a PlayStation Move.

LucasArts may have turned a page lately, but it's still got its cheap and nasty tie-in days bookmarked.

Not just the worst game of the year but such a wretched failure of an action game that it’s in the running for the worst of the generation.

The whole idea was probably doomed from the start but this is a disappointingly slipshod effort, with a story campaign that somehow feels more old-fashioned than the decades-old movie it’s based on.

It's no picnic being a psychopathic teddy bear in this shallow and repetitive 12-rated murder sim.

A terrible backwards step for Transformers games, and a movie tie-in so cynical it tries to cut corners by ripping off its own predecessors.

Making Mad Dog McCree look like Dead Space: Extraction is quite some feat in this awful lightgun game.

The 3DS did not need two Ridge Racer style arcade racers for its launch, least of all one as badly made as this tiresome wannabe.

It looks like Ice Age 4, it sounds like Ice Age 4, and it plays like the frozen carcass of a 5,000 year old mammoth.

Good ideas and good intentions only go so far when the game itself is as incompetently made and balanced as this seriously flawed shooter.

After several patches and months of waiting this may, possibly, become a halfway decent wresting game, but at launch this is the gaming equivalent of Doink the Clown.

No matter what you think of the new movies no franchise deserves a tie-in as timidly generic as this, with painfully bland action and low-tech, not sci-fi, presentation.

A shamefully poor tie-in, even by normal standards, that totally ignores the potential of the license.

Dungeon Keeper is not a video game, not any more. Instead it’s just a virtual beggar, constantly demanding your spare change and offering nothing in return.

A Celtic take on God Of War sounds like a great idea, especially with these graphics, but Bloodforge's only triumph is making its inspiration look even better by comparison.

The worst Contra game ever made and an object lesson in how not to revive a classic franchise, especially as there are multiple unofficial homages that are far superior.

Namco Bandai unleash the God Of Bore, with gameplay and graphics that definitely belong in another age.

Playing as a powerful, rage-filled werewolf should be the perfect set-up for a great video game but Earthblood misses so many obvious opportunities it’s as if the game itself is cursed.

Only the smallest of improvements on the original game and still a shameful waste of the license.

There’s a kernel of an interesting idea here but it’s so grossly underdeveloped that not even the involvement of Neil Gaiman, and a respected developer, can save it.

Time Crisis with Transformers, but not any sense of pace, excitement or fun.

Stamina, the single currency required to progress, arrives in minuscule volumes, making cash payments the only viable route to making headway in this offensively dull and exploitative perversion of a much loved series.

Not only the worst game Platinum has ever made but one of the worst live service titles of any kind, with an especially disgusting attitude towards microtransactions.

Ugly, amateurish and badly made arena-based shooter that relies on a co-op mode nobody will ever play.