Racing games can be a lot of fun as you compete against friends or the computer to place first, beat an old time, or to simply survive long enough to reach the finish line. But the simple premise of having players race to the end requires a lot of moving parts to make it a fun and interesting game.
The following games were ones that failed this task according to Metacritic. Whether it was clunky controls, boring tracks, horrific audio, or a blatant cash grab these are what Metacritic considers far from the best racing games of the last decade.
10 Rock ‘N Racing Off Road DX (Metascore 29)
Released for the Xbone One Rock ‘N Racing Off Road DX promised players fun races against their friends in various modes while jamming out to Rock & Roll music. While it did provide the music, it didn’t provide much else according to critics.
With controls that felt too tight one minute and too loose the next, atrocious AI, and boring tracks, this was a game that felt like it did the absolute minimum to live up to its marketing. What bothered critics the most was that after an hour of playing through the various modes, there wasn’t anything to do. So while it wasn’t the worst, it certainly wasn’t the best racing game.
9 Bigfoot: Collision Course (Metascore 26)
Bigfoot: Collision Course sounds like an awesome premise with players racing around and crushing vehicles with the Bigfoot monster truck for the Nintendo DS. While critics admitted there was something to the mindless car crushing fun, there wasn’t much to it.
There were a total of 17 races that you could compete in and they could all be reasonably be beaten within two hours. After that it was simply a matter of loading up the first track and doing it all over again. If you borrowed this game from a friend for an afternoon it was fun, but it was a rip-off if you were the one who paid for it.
8 Motorcycle Club (Metascore 26)
Motorcycle Club has featured on a number of worst games lists and for good reason. It was an awful game for the Playstation 4 that had a lot of potential. Charged with creating and managing your own motorcycle club critics claimed players were subjected to bad controls, poor AI, and more grinding than fun racing.
Perhaps the most unanimous complaint was that the audio quality for the motorcycle engines was awful. Many felt like they were racing around on lawnmowers rather than shiny racing motorcycles. It was a game that had a great idea but failed in execution.
7 Monochrome Racing (Metascore 25)
Released for the Nintendo Wii, Monochrome Racing was a topdown racing game that emphasized the use of colors. Color was littered through the designs, color is what made you go faster and be strong enough to win the race. It sounded like a fun gimmick, but once again there wasn’t enough game to this game for critics.
The best praise critics could muster was that it was enough mindless fun for a little while, but not enough to justify a purchase.
6 Flatout 3: Chaos & Destruction (Metascore 23)
Banking on the concept of mass destruction while racing, Flatout 3: Chaos & Destruction tried to keep the train rolling but ended up getting stuck at the station. Critics panned it for horrible physics that would often lead to glitches, bad controls, AI that was too challenging, and lack of features.
The game had dropped its popular career mode and the modes that were available were either too boring or so chaotic that players had trouble finishing the race.
5 Energy Hook (Metascore 22)
Described as a hybrid of the Tony Hawk skateboarding games and web slinging Spider-Man, Energy Hook was supposed to be a fun parkour-style experience that failed to gain traction for the Playstation 4.
The controls and camera made it hard to navigate the levels, the gameplay got old really quickly, and the graphics weren’t the eye candy they should have been. Some felt the swinging mechanics were fun, but most agreed that watching the animations and lurching camera wasn’t.
4 Fast & Furious: Showdown (Metascore 21)
Fast & Furious: Showdown was a game that both critics and gamers seemed to agree was a horrible game. No doubt banking on the popularity of the franchise Showdown felt like a blatant cash grab and made little effort to hide it.
The graphics were terrible for a Playstation 3 title about cars, the controls were chonky, the missions were bland and basic, and there was little to do in this game. Very few players felt it was worth wasting time on and lamented that the fun franchise had fallen to such a low point.
3 Jett Tallfin (Metascore 21)
Jet Tallfin seemed like a quirky and interesting game that offered fun underwater racing with a couple of laughs. The problem was the critics weren’t laughing or having any fun. A few critics felt that the world was pretty with interesting level design and nice graphics, but when it actually came time to race it was unplayable.
The controls felt very stiff and the camera even touchier making it difficult to navigate without feeling nauseous. Other critics felt it was a low budget Mario Kart rip-off that had framerate issues and weak AI.
2 Motorbike (Metascore 17)
Create your own tracks, share them, and race them was the premise behind Motorbike. Critics felt that it delivered on allowing you to create your own cool tracks but getting on a bike and trying to race them was a different story.
The background was awful, the sounds and music was irritating, and navigating the courses with poor controls was hard on the poorly designed tracks. One critic advised players to save the $15 and spend it on the similar but much better designed Urban Trial Freestyle.
1 Ride To Hell Retribution (Metascore 13)
The racing game that Metacritic considers the absolute worst to come out this last decade was Ride To Hell Retribution for the Playstation 3. You were supposed to be able to ride alongside your very own biker gang in the 1960s with free roam environments, a variety of motorcycles, brawling other racers from the backs of bikes, all while listening to 60s Rock & Roll.
But both critics and players universally agreed that it was an awful game. The controls were practically unusable, the graphics were all over the place, the sound effects were either bad or outright missing, and the gameplay was atrocious to the point of making it a struggle to finish the race, let alone win or knock out other racers.