You know how the laws of nature go: for every action, there is a reaction. For every fantastic game released in 2021, there was something so bad that brought us back down to Earth, reminding us of the bad year we’ve just had to face through. Paying homage to the best games released in a year is easy; we do that to remind ourselves of the good titles released over the past few months, giving them an extra but well-deserved minute under the spotlight. Remembering the worst games of 2021 is equally as important, as we really want for these mistakes to be avoided in the next few years. Welcome to WayTooManyGames’ Top 20 Worst Games of 2021.

 

Before we begin, we think it’s fair to inform you of some of the games that WON’T be included in this list, either because we didn’t think they were as bad as other outlets thought they were, or because they just weren’t bad enough to be eligible for our Top 20 Worst Games of 2021. These games include: Balan Wonderworld, Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Earth Blood, Of Bird and Cage, and Taxi Chaos.

 

Let’s get this out of the way as quickly as possible, shall we? Without further ado, we are (dis)pleased to list the twenty worst games reviewed by WayTooManyGames in 2021.

 

20 – WarioWare: Get It Together!

I loathe WarioWare: Get It Together. I utterly despise it. It isn’t the worst game I’ve played in 2021, but no other title has made me feel as irritated as this one. I used to love the WarioWare games for their wackiness and creativity. Lo and behold, Nintendo decided to turn it into something cheap and formulaic, just so they could sell a Switch exclusive back in September. – Leo Faria

 

19 – Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot: The First Cases

I was particularly disappointed by Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot: The First Cases because in many ways it’s not a bad game. The story and characters were interesting, which was the only reason why I pushed through it. However, the deduction system is one of the worst I’ve ever encountered, with many of the logical connections not accepted in lieu of more obscure ones. The majority of the time, attempting to make correct deductions was an agonizingly frustrating process of trying to connect every single possible connection with one another until the game said you were right. – Heidi Hawes

 

18 – Hell Pages

Oh yeah, this came out earlier this year. Probably one of the most forgettable games I’ve played ever since the foundation of this site. And considering this is a bullet hell shooter set in hell, you can only imagine how bland it is in order to make me completely forget about its existence. – Leo Faria

 

17 – Necromunda: Hired Gun

It takes some herculean effort to make a Doom clone set in the Warhammer 40K universe feel so clunky and disappointing. Necromunda: Hired Gun should have been a massive hit, a dumb, loud and entertaining shooter, but it was forced out in the wild in an embarrassingly unfinished state. At least the metal soundtrack was good, I guess… – Leo Faria

 

16 – Yuoni

If you can’t make your horror game feel scary or, at the very least, unsettling, don’t even bother. Yuoni isn’t even that bad conceptually, but it felt as scary as playing a Lego video game. – Leo Faria

 

15 – Street Outlaws 2: Winner Takes All

Of course, we had to have a bad licensed game in this list. Street Outlaws 2: Winner Takes All is the embodiment of everything wrong with licensed gaming: bland, rushed, unappealing even to its target demographic, and of course, overpriced. Why would I want to pay so much money on a game about driving on a straight line if I can do that (and a LOT more) in Forza? – Leo Faria

 

14 – Adios

I’ve seen a few people praise Adios to the point of considering it one of the best games of 2021. My reaction to that: how? Not only was this game beyond glitchy and unoptimized, running at 15fps at best, but its story was told in an excruciatingly boring manner. It had ONE good scene near the end of its short runtime, but that alone wasn’t enough to make up for how terrible my experience with it was. – Leo Faria

 

13 – eFootball 2022

Konami… how? Why? Freaking WHY?? Why did you have to turn the best footballing simulator franchise in the industry into what’s essentially the most hilarious (and tragic) punching bag of 2021? What the hell were you guys thinking?? – Leo Faria

 

12 – Neptunia Virtual Stars

Neptunia Virtual Stars was made to be a love letter to ten years of the Neptunia series. Instead, this game came off as one of the sloppiest in the series, mixed with a touch of pandering by including popular VTubers and built upon the idea that fans should simply love the game for the name and names in it. It didn’t take long to really grasp how shallow Virtual Stars was, and hours later it never built up any more real personality. – Aaron Price

 

11 – Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance

What do you get when you mix the most generic fantasy RPG with stiff, unreliable controls and an appallingly bad framerate? You get the highly forgettable Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance. Steer clear of this one. – Heidi Hawes

 

10 – Open Country

It’s really frustrating when a game has a lot of promise and good ideas behind it, but major technical issues completely hold it back. Open Country had a lot of what I was looking for in a hunting and survival game, but the flaws heavily outweighed what it was trying to do right. I’d love to see Fun Labs learn from this one and get the chance to do a sequel with a lot more polish. – Jordan Hawes

 

9 – Where the Heart Leads

Every so often there is a game where I have to check the reviews a couple times over, simply because I can’t understand what I am missing. How did this vibe with everyone else and not me? Critically, this game was a hit for a lot of places. Personally, I don’t get it. It is heartfelt, deep, and emotional, but is wrapped up in so much exposition that even the game understood this and removed that obstacle. I went from playing, to making the dialog automatic and resting the controller for the fifteen minute discussions, to finally just walking out of the room while the character talked amongst themselves. I wanted to play it, but I eventually succumbed to a game that didn’t even want the same. – Todd Eggleston

 

8 – Damn Dolls

Damn Dolls is one of those rare games where you see the trailer and have to play it just to see if it’s really that bad. Spoiler alert: it’s worse than the trailer lets on. Between it never telling you where to go or what to do, having abysmal controls, hilariously bad graphics, and one of the worst sound designs I’ve ever encountered, Damn Dolls is almost charming in its incompetence. – Heidi Hawes

 

7 – Evil Inside

What happens when you take PT and remove all the scares? You get Evil Inside, a hilariously bad horror game that will do absolutely nothing to scare you. Two hours of absolute tedium and that’s about it. – Kyle Nicol

 

6 – Hed the Pig

I tried to come up with something smart or funny to describe how bad Hed the Pig is, but I guess this screenshot summarises everything better than I’d be able to. – Leo Faria

 

5 – Outbreak: Endless Nightmares

Outbreak: Endless Nightmares is a horror game in the fact that it’s a nightmare to play. The developers couldn’t decide if they wanted to make it first-person, third-person, or fixed cameras to pay homage to Resident Evil‘s long history. As a result, nothing in Outbreak: Endless Nightmares is fleshed out. Mix that with terrible gunplay and a confusing structure and there’s nothing to left to enjoy. – Kyle Nicol

 

4 – Popeye

Leave it to the people who had the audacity of charging ten bucks for a calculator app on the Switch to release a “remake” of the classic Popeye arcade game that manages to feel more dated, clunky, and archaic than a literal forty year old piece of software. – Leo Faria

 

3 – Taishogun: The Rise of Emperor

Gilson B. Pontes, the enigmatic auteur behind some of the worst games in the history of the medium, has finally managed to craft the best game in his entire career. It is still one of the worst games in the history of the medium. – Leo Faria

 

2 – Tape Recovery Simulator 96K

The best part about this game is my desktop background. Part inscrutable simulation, part digital abuse, this is a game for people who think bullying in schools is okay because “I lived through it.” Only play if you miss the days of being an alcoholic in order to do your job. – Oliver Shellding

 

1 – Spectrewoods

The award for “worst game of 2021” goes to Spectrewoods, but it could easily go to a subsection of games that have been flooding the PSN Storefront as of late: stupidly cheap pieces of disgracefully crafted software aimed at people desperate to increase their platinum trophy count by any means necessary. Even if it means playing something so shockingly bad and puzzling to the senses, it could be mistaken for an experimental David Lynch short. – Leo Faria