One cannot overstate the importance of the first Sony PlayStation. Not only was it a majorly successful console that created four follow-up consoles (plus a few handhelds), but it changed the landscape of video games. With 3D technology becoming the norm, the PlayStation was one of the faces of this jump towards the next phase of gaming. It made a huge impact, and when all was said and done, they graced us with nearly 8,000 games on easily scratchable CDs.
They can’t all be winners, though. While the console is remembered for Final Fantasy VII, Tekken 3, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Metal Gear Solid, and Gwimbly III: Gwimbly’s Revenge, there are those games that made you feel like you wasted a rental, or worse, wasted $50 because you took a gamble on a purchase. Let’s take a look at the bottom of the barrel.
15. Twisted Metal III
This one’s a personal grudge. One of the discouraging things in a game franchise is when they have to start from scratch. Great sequels tend to be built on the foundation of their predecessors, so when the engine must be scrapped for whatever reason, so much progress is tossed away. That’s the case for Twisted Metal III. Singletrac made a true classic with Twisted Metal 2: World Tour, but Sony decided to hand the series off to 989 Studios. 989 was tasked with building a sequel from the ground up in only eight months.
That gave us a sequel that was a depressing step down in everything except the rocking Rob Zombie intro cutscene. There are a lot of problems with this game, such as it replacing the gritty comic book aesthetic with cartoony CGI visuals and nonsensical dad joke endings. The gameplay is simply annoying. The physics are so floaty that it’s so easy to end up flipped over, making you miss the tight controls of the previous game. Some of the stages are just generic open areas with no actual creativity thrown in there.
14. WCW Backstage Assault
World Championship Wrestling in 2000 was 366 days of a once-successful company not knowing its head from its own ass. Yes, it was a leap year. As the company circled the drain, its final video game was also its most questionable. As the story goes, EA released a game a year earlier called WCW Mayhem. While it was average at best, it was the first wrestling game to feature the ability to brawl backstage. When the focus groups were asked about the game, they admitted that while the wrestling itself was just there, it was pretty cool that you could brawl backstage. Oh boy, did the suits learn the wrong lesson from those results.
And so, we got WCW Backstage Assault, a game that is ONLY backstage brawling. No rings, no crowds, nothing. Just La Parka and Sid Vicious fighting in a parking lot. The gameplay from Mayhem hasn’t been improved, and the game is now far more limited at this point due to the silly gimmick. I guess there is some enjoyment you can get out of beating Vince Russo with a urinal, but otherwise, it’s the perfect final game for WCW.
13. Austin Powers Pinball
In 2001, KISS Pinball was released. It retailed for a mere $10, and many would say they were overcharged for it. The game featured only two virtual pinball tables, both of which felt completely lifeless. The big crime of the game was that it featured no actual KISS music, instead falling back on limited KISS imagery. As someone who has nothing but apathy for KISS, it’s something I can at least shrug off. After all, at least the game has generic rock music and sound effects that go with that. It could be worse.
Worse would be 2002’s Austin Powers Pinball. Again at $10, this is little more than a reskinning of KISS Pinball but with Austin Powers. There are only two pinball tables based on the first two Austin Powers movies. Goldmember did come out a few months before the game’s release, and with it came the feeling that we were all just done with Austin Powers at that point. Generic guitar noises are one thing, but I don’t need my shitty pinball game throwing low-quality sound clips of Mike Myers yelling, “DO I MAKE YOU HORNY, BABY?! YEAH!”
12. Fantastic Four
Probe Entertainment had a hand in the Batman Forever beat ‘em up, which had it has its problems but was such an over-the-top, in-your-face, these-flashing-lights-are-probably-not-healthy thing that it’s hard not to smile at its earnest stupidity. A year later, Probe would give us Fantastic Four, which just lacked the energy of its thematic predecessor. Not that it isn’t a weird bird, as the CGI graphics and 2D gameplay makes it feel like it’s animated in Flash. But the whole thing is just boring and repetitive.
In this four-player brawler, you can select any of the main Fantastic Four as well as former fill-in member, She-Hulk. Would it have killed you guys to throw in silk shirt Luke Cage or Ghost Rider? Anyway, a handful of stages are stretched out into tedious lengths to pad out the playtime as you make your way to Latveria to take on Dr. Doom. All the while, funky jazz music plays nonstop and in no way fits with the fighting going on in the game. Bah! The Monarch of Latveria deserves better than such janky nonsense! RICHAAAARDS!!
11. Simpsons Wrestling
The Simpsons and wrestling were two things that were crazy popular in the late ’90s. By the time somebody decided to mix them together (not counting that time Bret Hart bought Mr. Burns’ mansion), it was March of 2001. The Simpsons had been in a downswing and the Attitude Era was days away from ending with WrestleMania X-Seven. It only makes sense that Simpsons Wrestling would be a gigantic mess that could never live up to the amazing cover image of Groundskeeper Willie holding a horrified Homer over his head.
To its credit, the audio stuff is good, including the voice acting (repetitive as it is). It’s just that the whole game is a wonky, shallow experience. It’s not even much of a wrestling game. It’s more like an arena fighting game built on a platformer engine. Just jumping on heads and spamming attacks with no sense of strategy or balance. Whoever picks Flanders practically has it in the bag. Stupid Sony Flanders.
10. Hooters Road Trip
Hoplite Research put together a PC racing game called Free Wheelin’ USA, but when they were putting together the PlayStation port, they somehow got the Hooters license interested in it. Like the first human being to mix chocolate with peanut butter, they realized that nothing goes together quite like car racing and voluptuous chain restaurant waitresses pretending to be excited. “Hey, can we interest you in virtually driving a car across various landscapes? What if we were to sweeten the deal by throwing in a bunch of grainy FMVs of models in Hooters outfits welcoming you to their restaurant?”
And that’s all it is. Awkward videos of waitresses congratulating you on your racing skills as you, I guess, drive from one Hooters location to another. It’s a divorced dad’s dream come true. This would be forgivable if the driving was any good, but it’s amazing how dangerously loose the steering is. It’s hard to go straight at all, and just nudging to the side causes you to go flying in that direction. Probably should wipe the wing sauce off your hands.
9. The Fifth Element
Coming out a year after the movie it’s based on, The Fifth Element should have worked on paper. The film just feels like it’s a prime setting for a video game with its futuristic cities, gnarly character designs, colorful sci-fi action, and the idea of Tiny “Zeus” Lister being elected president. In fact, the game is smart enough to know that both protagonists should be playable and lend to different styles of gameplay. Bruce Willis’ Korben Dallas gets access to firepower while Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo focuses on hand-to-hand combat and acrobatics.
Unfortunately, the game falls so flat. Everything about it is dull and sluggish. Its occasional attempts at following the movie’s narrative feel incoherent. The controls and platforming are atrocious, while the enemy AI is laughably inept. They will usually just stand there and wait for you to shoot them dead. Or maybe they’re just starstruck because, holy shit, it’s Bruce Willis! The game feels too long (they have you complete most levels as both characters to pad it out) and there’s just so little fun to be found in there.
8. Santa Claus Saves the Earth
Unfortunately, this is in no way related to the equally batshit Santa Conquers the Martians or The Night Dracula Saved the World. Instead, we have a platformer where you play as Santa Claus, which isn’t the worst idea out there. People love that guy, right? Too bad the game itself is so unfortunately put together. Released by Telegames in 2002, it came out for both the PlayStation and the Game Boy Advance. Now, at least the graphics make sense for something on the GBA. It’s not good, but it at least feels like it fits the hardware.
On the PlayStation, Santa Claus Saves the Earth is a confusing mess. It’s meant to copy the 2.5D style of Donkey Kong Country, but everything is an eyesore, the music is awful, the hit detection is questionable, and Santa’s gameplay feels off on every step. Not only is his offense nearly useless (his main weapon is him awkwardly flailing his bag of toys), but he jumps and falls so weirdly. The physics of it are all over the place. The level design also leaves a lot to be desired. At least people were only going to be tricked into playing this garbage one month of the year.
7. Mortal Kombat: Special Forces
For a few years, Midway wanted to expand on the Mortal Kombat universe by doing some non-fighting games. The idea had potential and it eventually gave us Shaolin Monks. Unfortunately, it also gave us the worst Mortal Kombat game of all time that isn’t Mortal Kombat Advance. Special Forces’ problems could mostly be explained by its disastrous development. Initially, the game was going to have much more going for it, including the ability to play as both Jax and Sonya. Series co-creator John Tobias headed the project, but eventually felt disillusioned and left, followed by a handful of other developers.
Rather than let it die, Midway insisted that it needed to be patched together by a skeleton crew and thrown out onto shelves. It just needed to be some level of playable. Levels were cut, gameplay variety was taken out, and Sonya (who had already been featured on the cover of PlayStation Magazine) was removed with zero mention of her in-game. What was left was a repetitive and broken game based around Jax searching generic buildings for key cards. Sometimes death is better.
6. Criticom
After games like Virtua Fighter and Tekken showed that one-on-one fighters could indeed thrive on the 3D plane, publishers came out of the woodwork to jump onto what was at the time a novelty. Early on in PlayStation’s lifecycle was Criticom from Kronos Digital Entertainment. Looking at screenshots, you might be fooled into thinking it was worth playing. Good-looking character models with a nice sci-fi warrior aesthetic. Then you start playing the damn thing and it all falls apart.
This is one of those rare fighting games that tries to be unique by changing up how to do special moves. In this case, a lot of moves are based on holding down buttons, including several at a time. The problem is that this not only leaves you open to attack, but the controls are frustratingly unresponsive and delayed. If you are lucky enough not to be beaten down and are lucky enough to pull off your move, you’re probably going to whiff it completely by the time you do it. It’s a sloppy affair and considering you have to fight through the entire roster several times over just to get your character’s ending, your willpower is going to be pushed to the brink.
5. Rascal
Rascal was almost a good game. Hell, I’ll even say that Rascal could have been a great game! Graphically, it looks pretty decent, with character designs thought up by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. The level design is full of personality. As a 3D platformer, it easily could have been a total gem of a release. The problem was that executive meddling hit it like a Falcon Punch. This poor game never stood a chance.
The crux of the problems was that the publisher insisted that the game have tank controls (much like Tomb Raider and Resident Evil) because those games were popular and successful. Succumbing to those notes caused camera issues that seemed impossible to fix. That meant a game where you could barely see anything around you a lot of the time and controls made dodging enemies and platforming successfully into a mind-breaking chore.
4. Spawn: The Eternal
In the wise words of Ron Swanson, “Never half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing.” That’s the basic feel of Spawn: The Eternal: the PlayStation game that was meant to coincide with the live-action movie’s release but was hit by a delay. There are good ideas buried in this one, but it needed far more time in the oven. Essentially, you play as the Grimdark Image Comics hero (as well as his predecessors from different eras) as you go around fighting bad guys. It’s simple, but it’s the gameplay that makes it so head-scratching. Much of the game is an over-the-shoulder adventure based on exploration, but the moment you come across an enemy, it abruptly becomes a one-on-one fighting game.
The Eternal tries to tie two genres together, but neither one works. The adventure stuff is incredibly dull and tedious. The fighting game stuff is half-baked and too simplistic. An expanded moveset for both Spawn and his enemies could have made this worth checking out, but it’s overly basic. It’s fitting that our hero is an undead soldier because Spawn: The Eternal just has so little life in it.
3. Bubsy 3D
This one makes me feel bad. It’s one thing to make a knockoff of another game and fall short. It’s another thing when you were making an original work that happened to be coming out around the time of something similar but way better. Bubsy 3D was never going to be a good game, but it could have been seen as a promising first step for the 3D platformer genre. However, it came out five months after Super Mario 64 and two months after Crash Bandicoot. Yes, this was a Bugs Life/Antz situation and Eidetic never had a chance.
What we’re left with is a platformer that’s not fun to look at, not fun to listen to (ugh, those one-liners), and definitely not fun to control. There are attempts to throw personality into the bland visuals, but it just doesn’t go far enough to offset it. Mixing the tank controls with the rough camera angles makes the whole thing disorienting and a depressing bronze medal to what Mario and Crash were up to at the time. It feels like it was so close, yet way too far away. I’d say Bubsy deserved better but come on…it’s Bubsy.
2. Hellboy: Asylum Seeker
Back in 2000, Cryo Studios released the PC game Hellboy: Dogs of the Night. It was not very good, but these things happen. They tried to make a game, it failed, and they should have cut their losses and moved on. A PlayStation port was worked on, but it was decided not to release it. Fair enough, especially since Cryo Studios went under in the aftermath. Instead of simply making a new Hellboy game to tie into the 2003 movie, though, it was decided to just rename the PlayStation port Hellboy: Asylum Seeker and throw it out there.
It’s one of those superhero games where the developers forget that you’re a superhero, like when Superman can get stabbed to death by a street thug. Hellboy goes around solving puzzles in a tiresome survival horror setting aided only by the most mundane fighting skills. Need to fight a monster? Just hold down the punch button so he can keep doing a couple of jabs with his normal hand before finally unleashing his giant red fist. Not that the move does all that much in the first place, mind you. It’s a bland experience that happens to be uglier and buggier than the original.
1. The Crow: City of Angels
Hey, check it out! A game based on The Crow…’s sequel. Full disclosure, I saw Crow: City of Angels in theaters and I honestly do not remember anything about it. Wish I could say the same for its video game adaptation. It’s so terrible that you have to imagine someone at Acclaim looking at it and letting out the world’s biggest sigh before agreeing to release it to the public. Not only is this the worst PlayStation game ever made, but it’s also the worst beat ‘em up ever made.
You play as Eric—er, *checks notes* Ashe Corven as you avenge your death via the powers granted by a mystical crow. Instead of the nigh invincibility from the movie, Ashe has the otherworldly power of bad hit detection. As he wanders through rejected Resident Evil locations and meets random goons who greet him with, “Hey, clown face!” he lets loose a very basic set of choppy attacks while praying to God that at least some of them do some kind of damage. Spam that roundhouse kick and hope for the best, because you’re going to be doing this again, and again, and again in a game that has absolutely nothing to offer.
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