PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
Steam is great for PC gamers. A seemingly endless list of everything from AAA blockbusters to tiny indie releases, some of which use the platform to break through to the big time.
But standards dropped when Valve introduced Greenlight in 2012 and offloaded much of the curation of fringe titles to users.
The push to support indie developers with Greenlight was laudable, but it also seems to have allowed some very questionable practices to flourish, which Valve seems only now, belatedly, to be trying to stamp out. For example:
- Gaming of the voting system by less scrupulous developers
- Early Access games that over-promise or mysteriously never get finished
- 'Asset flipping' in which barely developed base materials are thrown together and flogged as if it were a proper game
- Games suddenly changing overnight with the latest patch.
As a result, keeping this article down to just 13, which you lucky people can buy on Steam, proved exceptionally hard. So please, Gabe, don't leave it until spring before you start a thorough ‘Steam clean'.
13. Infestation: Survivor Stories Classic/WarZ, £6.99/$9.99
Owners (according to Steam Spy): 1,041,642
This is a game you may well have heard of for all the wrong reasons. Originally called WarZ, perhaps to piggyback on the relative popularity and success of DayZ, the game promised what can only be described as completely non-existent features. When people who had paid good money for it complained on the WarZ Steam forum, they were (they claim) banned.
Remarkably, Valve, the laid back company that runs Steam, intervened and the game was taken down. But not for long. The developer simply tweaked a few things, removed some of its more egregious claims, changed its name and re-pimped it on Steam.
This, as you might have guessed, is yet another zombie survival horror. Except you're not just trying to survive attacks by hordes of zombies, but from other players online.
However, the mechanics are poor, and the zombies not especially challenging (except in sheer volume). Furthermore, the game in its heyday was infested with cheats, while legitimate players who complained said they were banned.
That said, setting the game to Offenbach's Can Can does offer a whole new entertaining perspective ...
Steam reviews:
"Got banned after five hours of gameplay. Submitted post on their forums for a reason why. That was years ago and I still don't know why. 10/10 best customer service."
User name: Zone
"The less than two hours of my gameplay was riddled with hackers using no clip, aim bot, super jump, super strength, unlimited health, no detection etc. I died countless times in 30 minutes from hackers shooting from more than three miles away, through walls. The mechanics in the game are poor, as well as the mêlée combat."
User name: Kitsune_Akki
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
12. Day one: Garry's Incident £1.99/$2.99
Owners: 97,652
Come on, whaddya want for a mere £2? This colourful survival game would surely entertainingly fill at least an afternoon of anyone's free time, yes? Er, kind of.
It looks OK on the surface, but the animations are awful and the AI is exceptionally poor. Batter a tribesman in the back several times and he won't bat an eyelid. Others seemingly hover in mid-air, and they won't see you anyway if you crouch. Neat trick, huh?
But stand up straight and monkeys will pop up from nowhere to fling rocks scooped up out of nothing. Instant death can occur completely without any warning or, seemingly, reason.
The game is poorly optimised, struggling to achieve 30 frames per second on even high-end graphics cards. Invisible walls will stop you in your tracks in unexpected places, while you can often walk through supposedly solid objects.
Curiously enough, even inanimate objects can be made to bleed if you shoot them.
The developer has also gained a reputation as a bit of a sensitive soul, so tread carefully if you want to leave a forthright review.
Steam reviews:
"My friend bought me this as a joke. That was the most evil thing someone has ever done to me. I'm addicted. The game is so great and the AI is just so alive, and the controls are so responsive. Absolutely bug free and glitch free. I have to say that me and my friend are no longer friends after this, because who needs friends when you have this masterpiece?"
User name: DaQuan
"As a severe alcoholic airplane pilot who mumbles to himself and sees the world at 10 frames per second, I found Day One: Garry's Incident incredibly realistic! Besides playing Day One: Garry's Incident, I enjoy button-mash ‘QT' events using the WASD keys to perform mundane tasks. Oh, gotta run - a monkey is throwing rocks at me for no reason."
User name: Scoremonger
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
11. Dinner Date £2.79/$3.99
Owners: 43,162
'Julian Luxemburg has prepared a dinner for two at his place, but things go awry when the date does not show up and he is left waiting at his dinner table. The clock's ticking, growing unbearably loud.'
And that's it. Well, not completely. You can tap the table, look at the clock, pretend to eat, but that really is about it. Imagine a badly conceived game written by Guardian readers.
Apparently, it was nominated for the Nuovo Award, which 'honours abstract, short form, and unconventional game development, which advances the medium and the way we think about games'.
No it doesn't. It's simply a waste of time, money and disk space.
Steam reviews:
"This is literally the worst game I have ever played. I like story games. There are many good examples of this style of game. This is not one. It's a monologue by a whiny, entitled nice guy. Don't be fooled by the 'mixed' reviews. The only positive reviews are people mocking the game. Do not waste your time or money."
User name: Anastriel
"... 302 hours. Maybe she's infected with a deadly contagious disease and has been quarantined for public safety. Probably a good thing she hasn't showed up if that's the case. In other news, the day/night cycle of this game is really unrealistic."
User name: George Bossington
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
10. Airport Simulator 2014 £6.99/9.99 Owners: 73,984
'The daily life of a large airport is perfectly presented,' according to the blurb. So it's just like going to work (if you work at an airport) only even more boring and without the getting paid bit.
It literally involves driving vehicles from their parking spot to the planes, and then back again. Oh, and lots and lots of waiting, in real time, for stuff to happen.
It seems as if German studio United Independent Entertainment Gmbh took the simulator genre a little too literally. The good news is that the developers made a 2015 version of Airport Simulator. The bad news is that it's almost as bad.
Indeed, the company seems to be behind a string of particularly awful simulation games (such as Skyscraper Simulator. Steam rating: 'very negative'. It must have been equally badly received by paying customers.
Maybe it's popular in Germany.
Steam reviews:
"Quite possibly the worst game I've ever played. Consists entirely - and I mean entirely - of driving ground vehicles from their parking spots to the airplanes and back (or, if you've upgraded them so that they're controlled by an AI with less intelligence than your average toddler) watching ground vehicles go from their parking spots and to the airplanes and back."
User name: Zarquoninja
"This game is absolutely terrible. There's not a lot to do besides waiting and the graphics looks like they were made 10 years ago."
User name: Donsig
"Have you ever said to yourself: ‘Man, I want to see just how the behind-the-scenes at an airport works?' Well, then you're in luck. Hours of endless work are now available at the low low price of $10. Seriously, this is a true simulation, this is not a game by any means. You will not be speed-running this game, you will not be looking for ways to accomplish the tasks faster, because you can't. The game works on very long timers and, no matter what, you can't rush the next objective."
User name: Vivian James
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
9. Get Rich or Die Gaming £1.99/$2.99 Owners: 7,862
This is literally some kid's High School project that somehow ended up on Steam and, for reasons best known to the sainted Gabe, somehow hasn't been flushed down the digital gutter.
'A young man, Wilson Cooper, is playing video games at home, something his dad forbids him to do,' reads the blurb.
'His dad unexpectedly returns home early to find Wilson in the midst of a game. Dad is so furious, he kicks Wilson out of the house and leaves him on the streets of a ghetto. It is at this exact point you take control of Wilson Cooper, and guide him to riches.'
So far, so bad.
The graphics range from horrible to appalling, the control is dire, the voice acting (delivered through what appears to be a faulty microphone) is worse and the script worse still.
Mercifully it is quite short, but it will probably crash before you get to the end.
Steam reviews:
"This is an extremely low effort point and click game. It's not retro-styled, the developer was even lazier than that. At best, one could optimistically say the developer released a 'satirical interactive artwork', but this is simply too kind."
User name: Obey the Fist!
"This game is painful, physically painful. The audio seems to be recorded on a laptop. After about five minutes the game crashed. It's not even the size of a video file."
User name: Norse Tagard
"The graphics resolution is 720p, quality ranges from bad Flash drawings to beaten-to-death-with-effects photographs. There are 18 backgrounds and 16 characters, but you'll only get to see about half of these because the game crashes as soon as you sell something to the baker. The voiceovers have amateur quality as well. It's a very incomplete amateur game. Don't pay money for this."
User name: Mendel
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
8. The Graveyard £3.99/$4.99 Owners: 27,878
Now this really is taking the mick big time. Walk the old lady s-l-o-w-l-y in a straight line down the graveyard to the bench, sit her down, then wait and listen to a maudlin song that makes The Smiths sound like Black Lace.
Twenty or so minutes later you walk the old lady out the graveyard, or you can leave her to quietly expire. That's it.
The developers describe it as a "simulation" but, to be fair, don't pretend that it's something that it isn't.
'The Graveyard is a very short computer game. You play an old lady who visits a graveyard. You walk around, sit on a bench and listen to a song. It's more like an explorable painting than an actual game. An experiment with poetry and storytelling, but without words.'
Or, indeed, gameplay or anything interesting. On the positive side, if you liked Dinner Date you'll probably love this. Weirdo.
Steam reviews:
"I am dumbfounded someone is charging $5 for what is nothing more than a concept or demo. A little enraged, too. And very embarrassed it's in my Steam library."
User name: Shalun
"These guys are seriously charging $5 for this garbage? When you look at this store page, you're not watching a trailer. That's a full walkthrough, because that's literally all you can do. You walk in a straight line, sit on a bench, listen to a song with subtitles on, and walk the f**k out. Game over."
User name: Hugh G. Rekshun
"It was all very tragic. By all accounts, grandma went to the cemetery, sat down on a park bench to rest her aching bones, and while listening to a terrible song about the deaths of many other people played by somebody she never really saw, she died. Presumably the terrible song actually did her in."
User name: [slckr]robilar5500
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
7. Uriel's Chasm £3.99/$4.99 Owners: 232,637
This is one of those games that's almost impossible to describe, so I'll leave it to the developers to do so instead: 'The unlicensed Bible game that should have been buried in a desert is back and this time it's taking no prisoners on its metaphysical "psychosis quest" into the very nature of God and death. Narrated by award winning no-wave high priestess Jarboe.'
Sold? Well, it kicks off with an appalling Asteroids-style game in which a girl reads random Bible quotes at you and then steadily gets worse. Let's just leave it there, shall we?
Steam reviews:
"This game costs much more than $5. You will also pay with your soul, your sanity, the feeling that you will ever make a valid purchase ever again, possibly a few pints of blood from crying when you ran out of tears."
User name: Trump Lester
"I regret getting this game. It's just a cluster of events poorly programmed and throwing Bible quotes at you which are barely, if at all, relevant to the game. I'm a Christian and this game makes me hate my own religion."
User name: Shadok
"I would rather puke in my hands and clap three times than ever see this in my library again."
User name: Tystarchius
"Please, kill me."
User name: CiB0rG
6. Uriel's Chasm 2 £3.99/$4.99 Owners: 58,863
The one game that could possibly be worse than Uriel's Chasm is ... the sequel to Uriel's Chasm.
Appalling graphics that couldn't even be labelled ‘retro', terrible gameplay and a storyline that barely makes sense. It's just like the first game, only worse.
Astonishingly, the 'studio' behind both games has made other, almost equally terrible, titles. Rail Slave Games - remember the name and avoid it all costs.
As a mercy, we've put them both on one page.
Steam reviews:
"One of the least anticipated game releases of the year has arrived! From the developer of some of the worst Steam titles available, the sequel that absolutely nobody demanded is here! This sequel has everything you hated about the original, and more! To be fair, at this point I am fairly certain the developer is just trolling us."
User name: GaNoo
"The worst game ever got the worst sequel ever. I don't understand why this ♥♥♥♥ is on steam. Who clicked ‘Yes' on Greenlight? Awful people."
User name: GamePoy
"Played this for five minutes and so far I'm getting the impression that the developers are on acid."
User name: The Antwonette Starqweisha
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
5. Spacebase DF-9 £6.99/$9.99 Owners: 179,240
One of the perils of buying random games on Steam is that many are unfinished ‘abandonware'.
Good ideas turned sour, presumably left on the shelf in the hope that some bored sap with a rainy afternoon to fill will cross the developers' palms with silver.
Spacebase DF-9 is one of these, an Early Access game full of promise that the developers never finished.
Instead, they abandoned the game, moved on to other, seemingly more lucrative, projects and left it to the modding community to finish it off as if they were doing gamers some kind of favour. No kidding.
Or, to quote PC Gamer: "Not only did they release the full source code for their Early Access game Spacebase DF-9, but they left hundreds of planned features incomplete, giving modders the exciting challenge of finishing the game themselves."
Steam reviews:
"Double Fine didn't finish making this game and just handed it over to the community to finish after Alpha 6."
User name: [EDU] Pagetohs
"Avoid game - was left unfinished by developers and funders were thrown under the bus."
User name: Maxson
"I purchased this game when it was still in Early Access for the full price (was $25 when I bought it). Developers promised a lot of things, new features, customisation, and a vast amount of gameplay. Unfortunately, none of these promises were delivered."
User name: Maximum Sloth
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
4. Flat Out 3: Chaos & Destruction £24.99/$29.99 Owners: 173,526
One of the two big mysteries of this game is how on Earth it got to be number three in the series when it is so utterly bad.
Well, apparently, the developer that made this one wasn't behind numbers one, two or U ltimate Carnage, which were all OK. Unfortunately, the developers behind Flat Out 3 don't seem to have ever driven a car.
A lack of convincing physics might have been acceptable in the days of the Sinclair Spectrum classic Chequered Flag, but not today.
Head-on collisions might not even leave a scratch, but lightly dust another car and yours is a write-off. Then there's the static zombies (!) and the gaps in the maps that represent gaping chasms that can't be jumped across.
The second of those two big mysteries is the price. Charging just shy of 25 of Her Majesty's fine English pounds for this atrocity must surely count as treasonous.
Steam reviews:
"ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE! Even the first game offers a better experience than this pile of explosive rhino faeces. Jesus crusty mother of ripped contraceptives, I think I got a bad case of BURN THAT IN HELL."
User name: DemolisherOFAsphalt98
"The biggest issue with the game is one that writes the whole experience off: the physics are horrible. Cars don't FEEL right. Their acceleration, turning and collision feel simply horrible. You can really tell a different developer made this title."
User name: The Spooky Gentleman
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
3. Citadels £10.99/$14.99 Owners: 40,111
Citadels is one of those games that looks great, at least in the Steam store. Unfortunately that's as good as it gets. Conceptually the idea is excellent, if a little derivative: a vast army is gathering to attack King Arthur and you must build a fortress to keep them out.
The real-time strategy game promised 'epic battles with realistic destruction' and, er, 'legendary characters', but was so bug-ridden on release that it was pretty much unplayable. Indeed, it still is bug-ridden. The developers have given up but, for reasons best known to publisher THQ Nordic, it's still available on Steam.
Why?
Steam reviews:
"Absolutely unplayable in its current state. Nearly every aspect from UI to AI is fundamentally flawed and bugged. Patches were promised and never delivered."
User name: SSgt Winters (Oregon)
"Citadels most closely resembles a stripped down Age of Empires title. Everything from base building, combat and resource gathering are implemented poorly. There is no strategy involved at all because combat boils down to spamming units. You can literally spam the most basic military unit available and win every time. The utter lack of military units available leaves no room for strategy, tactics or planning at all."
User name: Spoonoop
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
2. Time Ramesside (A New Reckoning) £3.99/$4.99 Owners: 43,349
It takes some skill and hard work by a gifted developer to have a game categorised as 'very negative' under the Steam reviews system, but Panzer Gaming Studios has done it with Time Ramesside. Apparently, Steam users have only themselves to blame for voting for it in the Greenlight community.
The less said about the storyline, the better. This is yet another Unity Engine game that suffers from excessive motion blur, terrible depth of field, poor controls, bad graphics, bad sound, bad everything.
Panzer Gaming is also responsible for the more recent X-17 and would appear to be learning from experience. The reviews for X-17 are classified only as 'mostly negative', which represents real progress. Well done, chaps.
Steam reviews:
"This is the reason why Steam needs to rework it's Greenlight feature so things like this don't slip through the cracks. Controls are terrible and clunky, the option menus constantly bug with random letters being misplaced. Overall, it's just a bad experience. I got the game for free and still want a refund."
User name: Phearmei
"This game has to be one of the worst developed projects I have ever seen. Listing all the bugs would be pages of repetition. Every update, the game changes for the worse. Stay as far away from this as you can, even if it makes a bundle somewhere - save your hard drive space."
User name: Criggie
"I got this game for free in some bundle, but somehow I still feel ripped off."
User name: SugarPope
PC Games on Steam: 13 of the worst
Should Greenlight actually have been called red light? 13 stinkers that will make you wish you'd lost your wallet instead
1. The Slaughtering Grounds 79p/$1 Owners: 212,522
Aw, c'mon. Just 79p. How can anyone kick a game that costs so little? Very easily, as it happens, when it is as bad as The Slaughtering Grounds from what would appear to be one of the least popular developers on Steam with an impressive string of unpopular games under its belt.
Developed using Unity, bought-in models and even graphics that some reviewers had suggested might have been filched from Google Images, the game features shonky physics, poor graphics, low frame-rates, some very odd effects, zombies that noiselessly maim and kill, bad AI, and so on.
None of this would be quite so bad were it not for the (euphemism alert) uncompromising attitude of the developers towards criticism, however constructive.
In which case we'll just leave it there.
STOP PRESS
Just as this feature was being loaded into Incisive Media's excellent content management system the news arrived that Digital Homicide had been told to go do one by Valve Software after the company sued 100 players who had left not entirely complimentary reviews of the company's games.
Digital Homicide is seeking $18m in damages, a mere $180,000 each, on top of the $15m it tried to squeeze out of British game reviewer Jim Sterling for being mean to the firm in an online review.
Steam reviews:
"This game is probably one of the worst games I've ever played. All you do is run around and shoot zombies. You can see from the pictures that they poorly cut textures on the screen. The frame rate is low, the gameplay is repetitive and the unlockables make no difference. Not to mention the dev is a whiny ♥♥♥♥♥. I actually thought this game was satire at first, but nope [it's] 100 per cent serious."
User name deleted
"Don't buy this: it's buggy, unfinished and looks like zero effort was put in. Mod teams have done better jobs than this. Quite surprised this is being sold, it's in an alpha stage. Best moment: I had a laugh when I saw a plane flying sideways."
User name: Tofke
"The perfect gift for someone you never want to talk to again."
User name: Malachite (Azarokkusu)
So, are we right or are we wrong? What have we missed, and what have we unfairly included? Flame the author with your opinions in the usual receptacle below.