List of video games notable for negative reception
Wikimedia list article
Certain video games often gain negative reception from reviewers perceiving them as having low-quality or outdated graphics, glitches, poor controls for gameplay, or irredeemable game design faults. Such games are identified through overall low review scores including low aggregate scores on sites such as Metacritic, frequent appearances on "worst games of all time" lists from various publications, or otherwise carrying a lasting reputation for low quality in analysis by video game journalists.
Criteria
The list is not comprehensive, but represents the most prominent examples of games principally recognized for their enduring negative reception, or in the case of titles such as Final Fantasy XIV, No Man's Sky, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Cyberpunk 2077, at their original launch before they were reworked to be improved with content updates through patches. The list mostly omits licensed tie-in games for films or television shows, which are generally accepted by the industry as shovelware and not expected to have high production values as they are typically produced by non-AAA development studios. With certain exceptions, the list also omits controversial video games whose negative reception revolves around the controversies they started and is not related to the quality of the game itself, including those that were subject to review bombing by users for non-gameplay related issues. For similar reasons, the list mostly omits indie games, which are developed by smaller teams that typically lack the resources for full quality control of their product, as well as mobile gaming, of which there are countless developers with the ability to self-publish on app stores and frequent copycats of more successful games driven by unpopular microtransactions, as well as extensive use of stock game assets with little to no original artwork used.
Some games that are recognized as notably bad games are also those with poor sales which have impacted the developer and publisher of the games. These are included at List of commercial failures in video and arcade games, though not all games on that list are necessarily considered bad games.
General classes
Kusoge
Kusoge is a Japanese term applied to video games, roughly translated as "crap game". It emerged in Japan in the mid-1980s in describing games such as Spelunker, Ikki, Takeshi's Challenge, and Hoshi Wo Miru Hito, games which were panned for bad gameplay design and difficulty.
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