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Worst Games You Played on Linux in 2022
StoneColdSpider Dec 13, 2022
Yes I am going to shamelessly steal Penglings idea (with permission).......

So now we have had the best games thread.... Now we need to know the worst/most disappoitning games you played on Linux in 2022.....

As the same as Penglings list they dont have to be native linux games...... Even if for some reason you were on Windows and loaded up TeamFortress2 and then loaded up Linux within TeamFortress 2 and played a another game while in Linux while in TeamFortress 2 while on Windows that would still count......

Confused yet???..... good...... Lets go!

My list is in Alphabetical order......


Altered Beast (1988 Sega) - Arcade - Beat 'em Up

"WISE FWOM YOUW GWAVE!!"....... I really dont get the hype for this game...... Its not a good game at all..... Maybe back in 1998 it might have been??..... But it sure does not hold up well today..... Very slow movement...... Choppy animation...... Stiff controls....... Very limited attacks...... The "Beast Mode" is meh.... Some beasts are good others are rather crap..... And to think this was a pack in with the Mega Drive........ *shudders*


B.Rap Boys (1992 Kaneko) - Arcade - Beat 'em up

Unoffically reffered on these forums as "C.Rap Boys"....... This is by far the worst game I played in 2022...... This is a horrible early 90's "Rap Culture" beat 'em up arcade game..... And it fails at everything it tries...... The fighting is bad...... The controls are bad...... The storyline is woeful..... The music is well C.Rap....... It became a staple in my Weekend Players Club posts by rating other terrible games "Certified C for C.Rap Boys"........ The CIA needs to start using this game as a torture device..... It would be way more effective than waterboarding.....


Contra Force (1992 Konami) - Nintendo Entertainment System - Run and gun

Konami being cheap bastards...... The game was scheduled to be released in Japan as "Arc Hound"...... With zero ties to Contra at all....... But that was cancelled..... And instead of wasting the time the money...... Konami slapped the Contra logo on it and sold it in the US.... Its an awful game..... Amazing slow down anytime theres an enemy is on the screen..... The flicker makes the Battling Seizure Robots seem perfectly normal..... This game is really really bad...... AVOID!


Contra III: The Alien Wars (1992 Konami) - Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Run and gun

Every single bad thing from this game comes from the top down sections...... And those sections are so bad that it ruins the entire game....... Which is amazing because the top down sections in Super C work fine..... But they totally ruined them in Contra III...... The controls are bad..... And turning makes the while screen rotate...... Which is disorientating enough........ But gets really amazing when you get stuck on a spinning trap that spins the entire screen at an amazingly fast rate........ So fast that it would make a Pengling puke in 2 seconds....... The side scrolling run and gun sections are great but the top down sections are bad...... Real bad....... That is does indeed ruin the whole game.....


Ghost House (1986 Sega) - Sega Master System - Platformer

If you want a bad repedative game..... This is the game for you...... Wonder around Draculas castle with very stiff controls...... Kill enemies untill one randomly drops a key....... Then use the key to open a coffin an kill Dracula..... Do that 5 times and go onto the next level....... Which is the exact same layout just with different coloured walls....... Even the coffins are in the same place....... Repeat this multiple times to beat the game....... Yeah..... No thanks....... Installing Windows is more fun than playing this........


GunForce: Battle Fire Engulfed Terror Island (1991 Irem) - Arcade - Run and Gun

Before Metal Slug there was GunForce...... And it was not very good...... Its very bland..... Very boring..... Bland and boring enemies...... Bland and boring bosses....... Bland and boring levels....... And just so meh..... The graphics are really quite nice for 1991 but there is nothing behind them..... Its like trying to have a conversation with a really beautiful woman who has the personality of a dead ant...... Its not very rewarding...... If you want to play a good non Metal Slug arcade run and gun..... Play the sequel...... GunForce 2...... Its a really good game that plays very much like Metal Slug...... But that too came out before before Metal Slug....


Haunted Castle (1988 Konami) - Arcade - Platformer

Did you know Konami made a Castlevania arcade game???..... No??..... Well there is a good reason this game is forgotten and not talked about...... This is inferior in every way to every other castlevania game...... Very slow gameplay..... Choppy animation...... Dull level design...... Boring bosses....... The only good thing about this game is that it came be beaten in under 20 minutes..... If you want to play a Castlevania game..... Play any on the NES/SNES and MD...... Avoid this one!!!


Silent Debuggers (1991 NEC) - NES PC Engine - Survival horror

This game was such a disappointment...... The premise its self is good and the visuals are really nice for the PC Engine..... But the gameplay is dreadful...... Some very abd design flaws in this game that could have been solved by properly using the difficulty settings....... Real time limit....... Resources constantly under attack....... And once they are gone they are gone for good....... To play this game you need to be in two places at once...... Really great idea on paper....... But really poorly executed......


Smash T.V. (1990 Williams) - Arcade - Arena Shooter

Another disappointing game....... Its great fun for around 10 minutes and then you realise there is nothing more to this game and it drags on for another hour or so....... Boring enemies...... And bosses that arnt cool or interesting...... There is no reason to play this for more than 10 or so minutes..... After that time you have seen everything the game has to offer......


Sonic the Hedgehog (1991 Sega) - Sega Mega Drive - Platformer

Much like Smash T.V. after Green Hill Zone there is nothing to see....... Sega knew what they were doing by starting with Green Hill Zone...... Its a great zone and really shows the game off well...... And after that its all crap..... Sonic goes from a really nice fast paced action platformer to a slow precision platformer...... And Sonics movement is not desgined for precision platforming...... If you play this just play Green Hill Zone and stop...... Its by far the best part of the entire game......


Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (1996 Nintendo) - Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Role Playing Game

If I learnt one thing from this game its that I dont like Square (SquareEnix) RPGs....... This game was designed to get people like me into RPGs and it did not work for me...... Playing for hours at a time and feeling like I have not accomplished anything is not the gameplay I am looking for....... Make me feel like ive done something..... Anything..... Throw me a frickin bone here!


Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (1995 Nintendo) - Super Nintendo Entertainment System - Platformer

Did not enjoy this at all...... I could not find a single good thing to say about it..... Other than it has an ending...... Thank god...... I did not like the crayola looking graphics...... Crying Mario was super annoying....... Yoshi transforming into other objects liek helicopters was a really weird mechanic that doesnt fit in with the rest of the game..... I would much rather play the original Super Mario World over this piece of crap......


Top Hunter: Roddy & Cathy (1994 SNK) - Arcade - Beat 'em up - Neo Geo

This commits the biggest sin any game can make...... ITS BORING...... FLAT OUT BORING....... It might look nice and all but the game play is so damn boring I nearly quit and didnt finish it..... And its only a 40 minute game..... But it felt like hours....... Im sure if you want to be bored out of your mind there are far more better ways to do it..... Like doing homework.... Talking to the beautiful woman who has the personality of a dead ant...... Or even watching paint dry....... This could be the worst game ever on the Neo Geo......

And that is my unlucky 13 worst/most disappointing games i played on Linux in 2022.....

So what are yours?
Pengling Dec 13, 2022
I've only played a few games this year that I didn't enjoy, and to be fair to them I'd describe all three of them more as flawed than outright terrible. But still, here they are;

Bomberman World (PlayStation)
Played using RetroPie

This one's not so much bad as it is just a bit poor when compared to its Saturn and Nintendo 64 contemporaries, but it still disappointed me quite a bit, hence its inclusion here. Bomberman World is rather soulless compared to a lot of the rest of the series, with awful voice-acting in both the UK and US versions (*especially* the UK version, a translation that is merely functional and has no charm or humour, and a surprisingly bland soundtrack (which is highly unusual for this series). I couldn't help but get the feeling that a game with well-known 2D roots like this might not have been welcome on the system that it was released for, so perhaps that's why this one didn't bring its A-game?

Ecco the Dolphin (Mega Drive)
Played using RetroPie

This was a game that I never finished when I was a kid, so I decided to revisit it this year and finally lay that unfinished business to rest. Ecco is, by the developers' own admission, incredibly unreasonable because they were concerned about game-rentals back in the day. However, where some titles were made only a little bit tougher, this one took the rental-dissuading difficulty-level to ludicrous heights and applied it to a title that I already felt could've had its levels trimmed down to half the amount, resulting in a game that I just couldn't enjoy very much. It got a lot of praise back in the day, but having slogged all the way through it I'm guessing that many reviewers either used cheats (the game even has a quite extensive cheat-menu built in, and I certainly wouldn't blame them for using it!), or bought into the notion that "Games are art now because somebody made a game with a dolphin in it." in the hope that this idea would magically "legitimise" the medium. Perhaps it's just not my sort of game anyway, and all of those other factors simply made it worse! A pity, because Ecco as a character is nice, the movement and physics are fun, and there's nothing wrong with the concept at all.

Sonic The Hedgehog 2 (Game Gear)
Played using 351ELEC on Anbernic RG351MP

The weakest of the 8-bit Sonic games (a small group of games which are otherwise interesting and fun) - I really wouldn't recommend this title. Though it starts out with a super-easy first boss (you have to spot a particular tile on a slope, stand there, and jump repeatedly without actually touching the boss) it has a bizarrely high level of difficulty-through-bad-design throughout the rest of the game, with lots of expecting you to already know where essential items are, terrain that may or may not be solid and you won't know until you fall through it or bounce off of it (they're Schroedinger's Platforms!), one-shot chances at getting items that affect the ending or else you're locked into the bad-ending for that run (also involving the aforementioned Shroedinger's Platforms at times), high-speed forced trial-and-error, and leaps of faith which are made worse by the Game Gear's cropped viewport, which allows you to see less of the game than in the Master System version - though that version still has problems itself. There are better installments on the Game Gear, particularly the first and the third - play those instead.

Last edited by Pengling on 13 December 2022 at 1:41 am UTC
Grogan Dec 13, 2022
Well, you and I would like different games but the very, very worst game I purchased in 2022 was "Amnesia: Rebirth"

I bought that game when it came out in 2020, and it was utter garbage. Graphics artifacts, freezing and crashing. So I sent it back with prejudice. I didn't feel good about it, sending back a Linux game. I was disappointed.

Fast forward to Nov. 2022. I really enjoyed Soma (from the same people) and previous Amnesia titles, and wanted to give this game another try. I figured surely by now they'll have fixed it. I bought it on GoG so I'd have more control over my environment if the Linux port didn't work. Moreover it was causing hard lockups requiring a hard boot.

The Windows version had the exact same problems, only going through more layers of abstraction, I was able to get out of it without a hard boot. I know bad OpenGL programming when I see it, that game will NEVER work on any hardware I have, or ever will have (maybe it works with Nvidia?), on any OS. I took the files upstairs and tried it on a Windows 7 computer too and it didn't work correctly. I was sad to take a refund from GoG. That's the first time ever that I've had to return a game bought on GoG.

Maybe that's not the best example for your thread, because it's not about game play. Though this game is pretty bad with stopping you at every move with a little cut scene. It's pretty insulting, what I've ever played of it.

------------------------------

As for gameplay, a recent stinkaroo for me was "A Plague Tale: Requiem" which works very, very well for me. I purchased it on GoG and set it up in Lutris, using my system wine-tkg (currently wine-tkg 7.22 with vkd3d-proton 2.7)

However, I hate it! The whole game is sneaking and misery with a weak character that can only use a rock sling (which doesn't work on helmeted enemies) and alchemical gimmicks to deal with enemies, no enjoyment at all. Arbitrary game difficulty. Dumb science too, like using "saltpeter + sulphur" to extinguish fires. I have a background in chemistry and that hurts.

Unlikely situations too... as if people are going to chop children with axes just for trespassing etc. It's a bloody stupid game.

I played through to the third chapter, thinking it was going to get better, but it's the same sneaking and tedium. They say it has a nice story, but I'm not terribly taken in by it. It's ruined by the miserable game play, and I'm playing it in "Narrative" mode, which is not supposed to have combat difficulty.

I mean, I can do it, but it's more of a chore than going to work.
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