The Xbox One has seen a lot of really fun titles become available as ports and there have been a number of great exclusive titles over the last few years as game developers tap into the capabilities of Microsoft's latest console. But there have also been a lot of stinkers.
Some were fun games that were just poorly optimized to the Xbox One to the point of being almost unplayable, others were tied to the garbage fire that was the Kinect, and some were just awful games. Here are the worst games released for the Xbox One according to Metacritic.
10 Project Root (Metascore 38)
Project Root is a bullet-hell game that pays homage to many of the classic top down shooters while also providing modern graphics and a more open world concept. To it’s credit it delivered on those things, but it was riddled with problems.
Players reported that the controls were finnicky, the levels were boring, and the difficulty of the enemy was uneven. Some liked it for it’s challenging grind, but many fans were turned off by the lack of excitement or anything meaningful to do other than shoot endless enemies that all looked the same.
9 NBA Live 14 (Metascore 36)
Sports-based games are usually hit or miss with gamers and NBA Live 14 was definitely a miss. For $60 gamers were subjected to awful graphics, choppy gameplay, and zero originality in a basketball game.
It didn’t help that this already abysmal game was competing with the well built NBA 2K14 that had good graphics and solid gameplay. Some fans thought the new dribbling mechanics were interesting, but it came across to many as if EA sacrificed everything else to introduce that mostly meaningless feature.
8 7 Days To Die (Metascore 35)
The release of 7 Days To Die on the Xbox One was a tragic event. When it first released on the PC in 2013 it was a great game that had the fun concept of spending seven days to build up defenses, gather resources, and then defend against an endless wave of undead until you eventually succumbed to the mindless masses.
The Xbox One release came three years later and was badly ported for the Xbox One controllers. Players felt the graphics were outdated, which they were, and the controls were impossible to work with. It’s the perfect example of a great game that dropped the ball when porting to another device.
7 Past Cure (Metascore 34)
Critics and users alike agree that Past Cure works fine in the sense that the controls are good and the game engine is solid. But what makes it a bad game is poor execution and strange pacing.
The graphics were lacking, the game design was all over the place, and the story made little sense for many players. It’s the kind of game that sounds great on paper, but ended up mangled in production and upon release. At least it works properly.
6 Agony (Metascore 34)
Agony was a heavily hyped game prior to release, fans were excited to dive into the depths of hell as a tortured soul using the powers of possession to gain power and influence to achieve their end. Unfortunately the game failed to live up to the hype or even deliver a fun horror survival experience.
The end result was largely a demonic game of hide and seek with poor enemy AI. Many gamers felt the developers leaned on the premise and over sexualization of the demons to sell copies rather than delivering a solid game with good content.
5 Gene Rain (Metascore 32)
Part of Gene Rain’s failures can be attributed to the fact that the game developers were brand new and inexperienced when it came to making games. It seemed like a project that was more than they could chew and ended up being a game that wasn’t fully realized or developed properly.
The story didn’t make sense, the voice acting was atrocious, and the cover-shooting gameplay just wasn’t there. For the players who suffered through the bad acting and the buggy gameplay they were upset to find it was only four hours long anyway.
4 Giana Sisters: Dream Runners (Metascore 32)
In the wake of successful platformer/racing games like SpeedRunners, Giana Sister: Dream Runners tried to capitalize on that trend with better graphics and quirky characters. Unfortunately, the end result was a buggy game that looked bad, had shoddy controls, and felt like a blatant ripoff of previous games.
As a result many gamers feel the game was a cash grab that failed to introduce anything interesting. Even for those that stuck with it for the eight hour singleplayer mode failed to stay interested for long which made multiplayer a nonstarter.
3 Ghostbusters (Metascore 32)
Ghostbusters was a game that players and critics really wanted to enjoy, but didn’t seem capable of bringing themselves around to calling it a fun or interesting game. It seems the game developers were largely hoping to cash in on the recently released film remake and threw together the bare bones of a game.
There’s hardly any storyline to speak of and the gameplay became repetitive very quickly. The $50 price tag also felt pretty steep for a game that didn’t have a lot of content.
2 Soda Drinker Pro (Metascore 30)
The game Soda Drinker Pro was a simple game that has the player drink a soda as they explore the world around them. It’s a simple premise that other games like Grass Simulator tapped into for moderate success, but for many critics Soda Drinker Pro was a cash grab in a genre already littered with cash grabs that at least made attempts at being interesting.
It apparently took a single day to make and takes about an hour and a half to beat. For some that would be an interesting, albeit quirky game to play for free but not one to spend money on. Critics have largely panned it, but there is a small cult following who swear it’s a good game.
1 Fighter Within (Metascore 23)
The worst game for the Xbox One according to Metacritic is the Fighter Within. It’s a fighting game that utilizes the Kinect 2.0 to have players control their characters using their bodies. Unfortunately, the Kinect 2.0 had enough bugs on its own and the Fighter Within added a number of its own to the mix.
What sounds great in concept ended up being a buggy mess that had fighters failing to respond to body motions or doing something entirely different from what the player was trying to do. The graphics were good, but that couldn’t save it from being one of the worst games of the decade.