The Simulation genre is an interesting one in the gaming industry, in one title you can be managing businesses and farms to navigating a fictional character through life in another. Simulation games can be incredibly deep and a lot of fun, or they can be unplayable garbage.
From incredibly buggy titles, to blatant cash grabs, and great ideas that failed in execution, here is a list of the ten simulation games from this decade that Metacritic considers the worst and what the critics had to say about them.
10 X Rebirth (Metascore 33)
The X series is known for its complex games with a mountainous sandbox that you can build your intergalactic empire in. Unfortunately, X Rebirth was so focused on what it could do that it failed to consider what it needed to do.
Critics complained about numerous bugs, slow pacing, and poorly designed features. Granted the X games were never meant to be action packed affairs that could be completed in an afternoon, but when the game has a bug that prevents you from playing altogether, that’s unacceptable even for dedicated fans.
9 Professional Farmer 2017 (Metascore 33)
The general consensus from critics was that Professional Farmer 2017 was incredibly boring and hardly playable. Even the nicest critics felt it was an utter waste of time and would convince gamers to abandon farming simulators altogether.
Perhaps the greatest fault of the game was that it was too realistic, growing cycles were too slow, progress crawled along at a snail’s pace, and there were far too many loading screens. Some gamers felt becoming a real-life farmer would have been more entertaining than this game was. It also didn’t help that it was competing with the well-made and more interesting Farming Simulator series.
8 Copter Crisis (Metascore 31)
Made for the Nintendo Wii, Copter Crisis puts players in the cockpit of a rescue helicopter sent to assist in evacuations, remote rescues, and delivering supplies to people in need. It sounded fun on paper, but the actual game was abysmal according to critics.
The visuals were nothing special and it felt like you were doing the same thing over and over again. Some critics felt it was a great idea that was poorly executed, and others felt it was quickly cobbled together to capitalize on the hype of the Wii.
7 Air Conflicts: Vietnam Ultimate Edition (Metascore 30)
Players step into the role of a combat pilot in the middle of the Vietnam War. The game was a remake of an older title that developers wanted to release for the Playstation 4 and according to critics, they shouldn’t have bothered.
The graphics were ugly for the PS4, the controls were awful, and everything felt very choppy and half finished. The end result felt like a cash grab for many and a terrible homage to the more successful PC version of the game released a year prior. If anything it felt more like a lazy port than a modernized remake.
6 Wander (Metascore 28)
Wander is an interesting title in that critics enjoyed the first 20 minutes of the game and then hated everything that came after. Players are tasked with exploring a mysterious world, but that’s pretty much it, there wasn’t much to do, the world itself wasn’t that interesting after a while, and it felt pointless very quickly.
Some felt it was a demo or prototype that was stretched out into a full-length game and sold at full length prices without adding very much. It was a great game in the beginning, it just ended up being too long and too expensive for critics.
5 Road Rage (Metascore 26)
Road Rage is a motorcycle racing/combat game that could have been really fun and exciting, but didn’t get anyone’s motor running according to critics. The races were repetitive and the audio convinced many to turn the sound off entirely.
There were also numerous bugs that had you crash through the walls of the environment, clipping into objects, and lacked any way to reset back onto the track when it happened. The only real positive any critics had to give was that there were a lot of nice customization options, but this hardly matters in a game all about racing and fighting.
4 Motorcycle Club (Metascore 26)
The concept of Motorcycle Club is cool, you manage your own motorcycle club and race the bikes for fame and glory. Unfortunately the game itself was a half handed mess that critics absolutely did not enjoy. Many felt the game was unfinished and needed a few more months in production.
The AI was absurd, the controls were clunky, and the sounds of the motorcycle engines were grating and choppy. Even if you could muscle through these initial issues there wasn’t much game to this game and many critics felt it wasn’t worth playing, let alone buying.
3 Hanna Montana: The Movie (Metascore 25)
Released shortly after the movie, Hanna Montana: The Movie had players jumping into the shoes of the famous singer to perform songs via rhythm/music gameplay. No doubt there were fans who enjoyed the Disney game’s catchy songs, but critics thought it was garbage.
For many it was a half-baked game meant to cash in on the movie’s hype. The songs were well done and the minigames at the fair were supposedly fun, but the main gameplay was awful, the graphics were bad, and the dialogue was cringier than the movie.
2 Enjoy Your Massage (Metascore 21)
Game developers were excited by the Wii’s potential and wanted to explore a variety of scenarios that would be fun with the motion controls. Some thing’s worked, but Enjoy Your Massage wasn’t one of them for critics.
The game was only a few minutes long, but in that few minutes gamers felt awkward as they used the Wii controllers to massage the backs of NPCs in creepy fashion. The dialogue wasn’t much better with each character cheerfully spitting out their need for a massage like they were setting the premise of a low budget porno flick. It was awkward and no one seemed to like it.
1 Blood Beach (Metascore 18)
Yet another Wii title that hit the trashcan for critics, Blood Beach is the worst rated simulation game for this decade on Metacritic. The premise sounds promising with players fighting off waves of enemies with a variety of weapons, but the actual game was just bad.
Critics complained that the game was incredibly repetitive and mindless, offering no real strategy or challenge. The graphics were sloppy, the sound design was low quality, and there seemed to be no attempt at realism. When critics feel that $10 is a rip-off for a game you know it’s going to be bad.