(JW NOTE: If you think this list is a bit lackluster, well… so do I. But I figure if the game developers aren’t going to try to put out a good product, then I’m not going to try very hard to make their shitty product sound fun. Fuck them.)

In my research for the Top Ten Games of 2003, I discovered something both shocking and disturbing: 2003 saw the single largest migration of hideous, horrendous, unforgettably and unforgivably bad shit I think any single calendar year has ever seen.

So while we continue our celebration of all things great on our way to our eventual Top Ten Games of 2008 list, we take a quick pause to remember 2003: The absolute worst year ever.

Of course, if you want to see the contrast to our worst list, take a peek at our Top Ten Games of 2003, the latest entry in our weekly countdown to our Top Ten Games of 2008.

10.) Barbie Horse Adventures

Serious smack talk FTW/L.
The reason why this game is number ten is because, well… it’s not meant for us grown up folk. I can respect that. Five-year-olds will find just about anything entertaining, but people over the age of reason should know that games that have boring, repetitive missions, uninspired visuals, lackluster audio and annoying-but-not-game-breaking glitches.

Also, listen to the dude or chick in the video. You aren’t sure if you want to laugh at his or her trash talking Barbie or if you want to take his or her ass out behind the shed and beat him or her down with a 2×4.

9.) Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness

Angel of Darkness Ending – Spoilers Lie Ahead!
The Tomb Raider games had been going downhill for years, but even so, Lara’s debut on the PlayStation 2 was still an extremely hyped event by gamers. What they were treated to, however, was one of the buggiest, broken adventures Lady Croft has ever taken.

This game would be higher on the list if not for the fact that while the game was buggy to the point of unplayable, the bugs were not without reason. You see, every once in a while a game developer will bite off more they can chew, or be forced to rush a product early because of their impatient publishers (read: Turning Point: Fall of Liberty). No, this doesn’t excuse the developer from having game crippling bugs, but it’s important to know that not every glitch is spawned from sloth.

8.) Postal 2

System of a Down – “Psycho”
There are two camps when it comes to Postal 2. One side believes that Postal 2 was a serviceable, open-ended romp that allowed players to just let loose and go batshit crazy on whoever got in their way. The other side believes that there is no good reason for this game to exist.

I am a member of the later group.

A functional first-person shooter in its own right, the game is horribly bogged down by a million different ways that it tries to shock you solely for the sake of saying “Hey, we’re shocking!”. Unfortunately it seems that Running with Scissors, the games developer, spent more time thinking of how they could weird out the player than they did trying to make a full game. Sure, you have several missions (which include “going to work” and “meeting Gary Coleman”) that stretch the game’s single-player campaign, but once you’ve run around town smacking people in the face with a shovel for ten minutes… well, you’ve done everything there is to do.

What makes this even worse is that when you play, you can see signs of a good game hiding beneath the surface, scratching at its ceiling, trying desperately to break free. When I played through it, all I could remember thinking was that with a little more polish on the storyline, you could turn this otherwise boring and drab shooter into Falling Down: The Game.

That would’ve freaking ruled.

7.) Celebrity Deathmatch

Marilyn Manson vs. Justin Timberlake
What do you get when you put Mr. T, Tommy Lee, Dennis Rodman, N*Sync, and Miss Cleo together? The worst fighting game ever conceived.

Sure, the television series Celebrity Deathmatch is a novel and humorously executed idea that plays to some of our most base instincts (i.e. celebrities + manslaughter). However, when you try to translate that over to the video game realm you have to at least try to make it entertaining. The fighting mechanics were so simple a four-year-old with a Game Boy could compete, the graphics were choppy, there was serious hit detection issues, and the overall presentation did not do the television series one bit of justice.

6.) Charlie’s Angels

If the developers aren’t going to try with their games, I’m not going to try in my videos.
The general consensus is that Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu are pretty hot chicks. At least, this is what Hollywood tabloids tell me, and they’re never wrong. Either way, I don’t know what was lost in the translation but whoever these shaved werewolves are supposed to be, I want them out of my game.

Everything about Charlie’s Angels was atrocious. The combat was little more than you pressing that big ass green button on your GameCube controller over and over and over and over and over again until whichever nameless thug you were pounding on drops, then moving on to the next nameless thug. The level design was horrendous, with about nine QUADRILLION invisible walls guiding you down a linear path, even though the environment teases open-world. The Angels sounded nothing like the cast members (which is impressive since all three actresses from the movie voiced themselves!) and the combat sound effects were just… well, bad. So bad I can’t even think of a witty line.

And then there was the plotline, which deviated away from the movie and had the Angels trying to stop a “master thief” from (no joke) stealing all of the national landmarks.

I remember renting this game when it first came out to review for another website I wrote for, and taking it back an hour later after having to reload four times because I kept getting stuck in a damn doorway.

5.) Gods and Generals

The trailer for the movie Gods and Generals, because it’s actually not bad.
Gods and Generals is a Civil War-era First-Person Shooter based on the history film Gods and Generals, which itself is based on the book Gods and Generals. You still follow? Good. I think Andrew Park’s GameSpot review summed up everything wrong with this game far better than I ever could:

Outdated graphics, bad sound, lousy control, horrible technical performance, nonfunctional computer AI, terrible weapons–the game has about every problem you could possibly think of. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine that Gods and Generals could be much worse than it is.

People have been saying for a long time that game makers should focus on something besides WWII and the future for first-person shooters, and every once in a while some dingleberry who doesn’t realize that in the 1860s the majority of the United States Military used muskets will suggest a Civil War game.

Well, here you go – AND it’s based on a four-hour biographical drama.

4.) RoboCop

Gameplay Demo of RoboCop.
Let’s get one thing straight: Titus Software is, was, and forever will be known as the absolute worst video game developer of all time. Let’s take a quick look at the some of the “quality” games that Titus had their hands in, shall we?

First, let’s get two games out of the way right now – our dual winners for “Worst Game of 1999”, Superman and Xena: Warrior Princess: The Talisman of Fate. On top of that you have Top Gun: Combat Zones, Hercules: The Legendary Series and Dick Tracy. However, there is one game for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 that (thankfully) is always overlooked.

I speak, of course, of RoboCop.

When RoboCop was released in 2003, there was a fair amount of fanfare with it. After all, it was a new RoboCop game, and 2003 was at the beginning of this 1980s resurgence that has been going through pop culture. However, to the unlucky bastards like me who bought this game before reading the reviews, we quickly realized that instead of the ultra-awesome blood, guts and gore from the original RoboCop, we were given the kid-friendly life lessons of RoboCop 3. Well, not really. But it was just as bad.

Sure, firing the MGC M93R-AP felt awesome… for about five minutes. Then I couldn’t tell the enemies from the environments, the audio would drive me to smoking (a habit I still practice today), and towards the end the game would start to lock up. Not crash, mind you. Not even freeze since I could still access the pause screen. It would just… stop. To this day it’s still the weirdest God damn glitch I’ve ever encountered.

3.) Drake of the 99 Dragons

See? I told you it sucked.
The idea of a zombie assassin sounds awesome, doesn’t it? It’s too bad that Majesco found ways to mess this one up on seemingly every level.

For starters, there was absolutely no comprehensible story. I know, I know, he’s a zombie assassin, but still. It should go to show you just how bad the plot was when the fact that, even considering that you’re playing as an undead assassin, the story was unintelligible. When you combine this with terrible visuals, horrid audio and controls that were downright broken (your aiming and camera controls were on the same analog stick), and you had yourself one of the worst Xbox games ever.

However, while some consider this to be the worst console game ever released, I beg to differ. That title belongs to the Golden Mullet himself…

2.) Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis

Adam Sessler’s classic review of Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis.
While I openly admit that the mullet is expertly animated, there was nothing else redeeming about Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis. Nevermind that Aquaman himself is a terrible superhero to base a game around (hell, even Marvel knew to make Namor a minor character in Marvel Ultimate Alliance), but the game itself was simply terrible. A broken camera and broken controls only sealed Aquaman’s fate as being the worst superhero game of all time – yes, even worse than Superman 64.

At least Superman is a cool hero.

1.) Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

Without question: The worst game ever put on disc
You dare to doubt the suck that emanates that Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing exudes? You think me mad for putting this over Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis? Okay, hot shot. Consider this, then: Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing has a Metacritic score of 8.

8

8

Out of 100.

The controls are shit, the graphics are shit, the development team was eight people, there was absolutely zero hit detection, and the game will crash almost constantly. You hit the Escape key? Crash. The Num Lock key? Crash. The Tab key? You switch to your opponent’s truck, and then it crashes. Oh, and when the game doesn’t crash, you can drive off the map, and no, I don’t mean you can leave the course and explore the countryside. I mean you can drive off the game, floating through empty fucking space.

Let me make this as clear as possible: Do not play this game. No matter what. I thought I’d be a smartass and play the game on my own because I thought “Oh, it can’t be as bad as Morgan Webb makes it out to be”. I was wrong. I was terribly wrong!

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