Metacritic Reveals "The Worst Video Games Of 2023"

No Skull Island: Rise of Kong?

It sucks for Gargoyles as it's my favorite childhood show of all time. The remaster really should have more done to it. I would have sacrificed the hand drawn graphics, for more up to date game mechanics.

Disney wants to re-surge the franchise, but isn't putting a lot of effort to garner interests. I'm not even looking forward to the live action adaption, giving who the director is.

I feels sorry for those people who are fans of that Gargoyles remake, the original Genesis game was a decent game but that remake was just pure garbage. Terrible hit box detections, bad graphics, unresponsive controls and the game is a tad too short lasting only 50 minutes long. Price is not worth it, perhaps the only saving graces are the rewind feature and the revert to using the old graphics otherwise it was a very shoddy remake. They could had easily added more contents to the game but choose not to, I could see why many fans are not happy with that remake unlike the DuckTales Remastered and Castle of Illusion remakes both which are not on Switch.

Gargoyles Remastered was good enough for me!

@Kirbo100 @Ooyah Skull Island: Rise of Kong has 8 critic reviews across all platforms on Metacritic. I assume because PC (most reviewed) only had 5 it didn't count, even though it does have more than the 7 total reviews stated above.

2 were for Xbox Series and 1 was for PS5, none for Nintendo Switch, PS4 or Xbox One.

If it did count it would be the worst game on the list at a score of 23.

@Kirbo100 Apparently a tower sized ape can hide from this list! I'm surprised as well. Though it has to be said that maybe a lot of websites opted to not even review a lot of garbage that was released this year. I always feel that these lists are incomplete.

Reviews are always subjective. Besides, without bad games there wouldn't be good games.

So a game that is soooooo broken and buggy only has a 3/10 on metacritic?

All metacritic is good for is getting an idea on what the public think. The amount of garbage on the Switch, I feel like they have escaped the wrath of embarrasment.

Wow flashback 2 went down poorly

To qualify for MetaCritic's best or worst of the year list, a game has to have at least 7 reviews from a platform, not from all platforms combined. That's why the Kong one and Walking Dead: Destinies are missing.

Missed that Loop8 was so poorly reviewed everywhere. Didn’t get the best write-up on this site, but sounded like it still had enough about it to recommend it. Flashback 2 is also a shame - though the original always had more style than substance.

I've only heard of 4 or 5 of them tbh. I heard Loop8 wasn't that bad by one reliable reviewer, just really boring. I remember Gargoyles the tv show, shame about the game. Gollum was a trainwreck, wow.

So the 9th and 10th worst games of all year were basically average being pretty much a 5/10.

No King Kong? I thought it was horrendous enough for a top ten placement at least.

Edit: Thanks to the comment section for explaining what happened (need to start reading first, then commenting second, lol)

Only 10 below average (<50/100) quality games in a whole year. Truly one of the best years ever.

I'm glad to see Web of Wyrd got such low reviews. I'm so angry that they wasted the license, Mignola's writing, and a very good representation of the art style, on a generic and boring roguelike brawler. Hellboy should play closer to a mix of Zelda, Shadow Of The Collossus, The Sinking City, and God Of War II. I would throw piles of money at a good Hellboy game, but it seems unlikely to happen.

How is Kong not on this list? Lmao!

I was sort of considering buying Loop8 since I saw it at a store not too long ago for really cheap. Thankfully I didn't buy it. Everything about it looks and sounds interesting. But when you actually think about how stupid a dating sim turn based RPG roguelike sounds, it clicks.

Ooooo, I haven’t played any of these!

Please note when a game isn’t on the list, it’s probably because it simply doesn’t have enough professional reviews. Otherwise, lots of shovelware would dominate this list, like, I dunno, AAA clock ultra premium deluxe edition

@Kirbo100 @Snatcher It has only 5 reviews for the PC version. But it's at a 23 metascore.

@Zeroo 50 is not average on Metacritic. The average of all scores is more in the 70s range.

The walking dead destinies and the day before are also worse games

Shouldn't call of duty be a regular on this list?

Shame about Flashback 2, the original was a classic that I fondly remember.

Flashback 2 being trashed is not surprising. Paul Cuisset the original creator has been on a downward trajectory ever since the original. The 2013 remake got similarly bad reviews, and so did Amy, another creation of his.

such a bummer loop 8 wasnt good, I remember it was pretty high on my list for games to buy before reviews started to roll out.

Surprised to see loop8 there, picked it up physical recently when it was one a decent sale on Amazon, the premise is interesting enough that I want to try at least one run through.

One does not simply become the worst game of the year…

I've got to hand it to them, they found ten games worse than Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

Well, Nintendolife said Gargoyles was “Not Bad”…

I would like to play the game first and then decide I don’t believe all the reviews all the time, everyone has different tastes in gaming what I like another person will not like..be we can all agree that Cyberpunk and Redfall are a mess…how’s that for a contradiction😉

Damn, Flashback 2 was on there? Ouch.

I'm stubbornly convinced Loop8 is just misunderstood, but I get it.

The GameMill licensed games (and most tie-in licensed games in general) are worse than most of the games on this list, but that's because GameMill puts literally 0 effort and budget into those licensed games.

On the other hand, a game like Gollum or Quantum Error was developed with somewhat strong or moderate expectations of being a blockbuster title but ended up totally and utterly failing.

So much disappointment. Was looking forward to golem, hell boy, and gargoyles. Oh well. Less for the backlog

Gollum, Hellboy, Gargoyles… my sweet, sweet children what have they done to you all?

How did Kong escape this?

Who wants to make a fanmade version of this list, for the things that escaped?
Edit: by fanmade I mean hatermade

What a wild list, no CoD but Loop8? The game is not perfect by any means, it's mediocre but it doesnt deserve such smearing

@RetroGamer5491 don't tempt me!

Still feeling sorry for the Gollum developers :/ And we're not going to see the Switch version anymore, are we?

Flashback 2, didn't expect it to fare so badly. Had they released the Switch version alongside the others I'd have bought it, now likely not.

Gutted about Flashback 2, shouldn't have got my hopes up I guess but it was top of my anticipated list.
Sounds like a lot of the problem with it is bugs, not gonna hold out too much hope of the Switch version launching in a vastly fixed state compared to the others, but maybe it'll get there in the end (do Microids have a track record of fixing bugs?). Apparently beyond bugs the gameplay isn't that great either, but maybe it'll eventually be worth plodding through for weird nostalgia purposes. Or something.

@FishyS Metacritc much like Rotten Tomatoes is a poor indicator. Too many people rely on these sites as an extreme spectrum for ratings.

Case and point the Mario movie. People see the 59% RT score and go wild. It much easy to see a simple score and go ballistic than to actually read through reviews and break down everything.

These two sites are awful imo.

@FishyS When it comes to the Mario movie, I was mainly pointing out people see 59% and instantly think critics having out it for the film.

When you break down and read the reviews at most critics gave it a mild pass. It's not as bad as users were making out to be, but just that 59% alone was enough to set off hardcore fans.

It makes critics out to be way worse than actually taking to time digest and read what they are saying.

WOO! LET'S GO, GOLLUM! TOPPING CHARTS! HE WON THE ARGUMENT!!

My worst games this year were Infinity Strash and Atomic Heart. I spent $70 on Atomic Heart...

Damn, looks like not enough people reviewed the Avatar: Quest for Balance game either (in addition to Skull Island)

So glad other people have platinumed those games for my personal entertainment so I don't have to touch any of them with a thirty nine and a half foot pole

@JJtheTexan It was The Walking Dead's destiny to be on this list... What happened?!

I played and finished LOTR Gollum this year on Series X. It wasn't that bad. It actually had good moments, some nice puzzles and the graphics were alright.
What annoyed me most, was that climbing and stealth mechanics were too dominant and besides that, the Series X version had some real lighting issues. Some sections were a pain thanks to that.
All in all, I would give it a 6-7/10.