It's the year 2000 and no, it's not the new millennium yet. This is the year when John Travolta wore ugly dreadlocks in Battlefield Earth, MTV Cribs rudely invaded celebrity homes and the Baha Men bravely asked, Who Let the Dogs Out? But we're not here to get back Gruffy, mash Scruffy, you flea-infested mongrel, because today we're counting down Electronic Gaming Monthly's Worst Reviewed Games of 2000. Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof!
Sammy Sosa Softball Slam
#5
If you've been watching EGM's best reviewed lists, then you already know that sports games are having a bit of a moment. It started with a game here and there breaking onto the list, but the floodgates broke and in 2000 there were two sports simulators that managed to crack the top 10. (Three, if you count Gran Turismo 2.) But if sports games are going to start dominating the best reviewed charts, then it only seems fair that a few bad ones show up on the worst lists. And that brings us to Sammy Sosa Softball, a sports game that left the editors thoroughly confused.
Kraig sums it up perfectly: "This game is one of those bad ideas that ranks alongside his and her toilets -- except those bad ideas have an excuse for sticking." Dan Leahy complained that "everything about this game is sub-par. The graphics harken back to the first-generation PlayStation days. Player models are terrible, but hey, it doesn't stop there. Nope, they threw in really sucky animation and horrid, laggy camera angles to boot." The fact that the throwing and catching was more of a side note to the rest of the problems is telling. With all these problems, Sammy Sosa Softball averages a steroid-filled 1.8 out of 10.
PGA European Tour
#4
Speaking of bad sports simulators, here comes PGA European Tour on the Nintendo 64. Not to be confused with Electronic Arts' popular and well-liked PGA Tour series, this Infogrames clunker failed to get the basics right. It looked bad, was hard to play and had crummy audio, or, as Dan so elegantly puts it, "Like John Daly after a three-day bender, this game misses the cut by a long shot."
Dean isn't sure what to make about the presentation: "There's something strange about the graphics in this game. Yeah, they're ugly, but ugly in a way I've never seen before. During any kind of movement, the golfers and greens seem to modulate at a high frequency. Or, it looks like you're seeing everything through heat vapors." And don't forget, he's the critic that gave the game the highest score. Joe gave it a 1 and noted that "if Mario Golf is the Pebble Beach of N64 golf titles, then European Tour is the strip of grass running between north- and south-bound lanes on a busy expressway." Yikes. With all three editors hating it, this tour is marooned with an average of 1.8 out of 10.
Grudge Warriors
#3
You can look at Grudge Warriors a couple different ways. On one hand, it was a car combat game released years after most people had moved on from the genre. But you could also look at it as an experiment. Released at a retail price of just $10, this budget game from Take-Two was a reaction to Sony dropping PlayStation licensing fees. That's an interesting footnote to history, but when an unorthodox business strategy is the most interesting thing you can say about a game, then it's easy to see why it would show up on a worst reviewed list.
Like a lot of low-scoring games covered by EGM, Grudge Warriors only received a single review. Andrew noted the bargain bin discount, but concluded that the low price didn't make up for the numerous problems. "Looking like a pre-first-generation PlayStation game, Grudge Warriors is among the worst of any vehicular combat -- nay, any game for any genre -- I've had the misfortune of playing. Everything about the combat engine is uninspired (i.e., a rip-off), especially the weapons (which you can randomly run out of, thanks to a bug). If they cleaned up the graphics and tightened up the control, Grudge Warriors may have achieved mediocrity. Unfortunately, everything about this title screams 'apathy.'" EGM wasn't fooled by the ten-dollar asking price and gave this long-forgotten turd a 1.5 out of 10.
Mortal Kombat: Special Forces
#2
With the arcade era coming to a close and fighting games going through a transition, Mortal Kombat was at a crossroads in the year 2000. The same fighting franchise that dominated the market only a few years ago was struggling to stay relevant, something that wasn't helped by the mixed reaction to Mortal Kombat 4. They would eventually reinvent the series with 2002's Deadly Alliance, but first they needed to figure out what not to do with the insufferable spin-off Mortal Kombat: Special Forces on PlayStation.
"What the hell happened here?" asks Mark, the only person to review this game. "I swear this game looked better over a year ago at E3. What happened to being able to play as Sonya and not just Jax? The graphics -- blocky models and warping, pixelated textures -- remind me of 4-year+-old first-generation titles like Loaded. Actually, scratch that, Loaded looked better." He also complained about the combat, which he called "krap," and basic combo moves. "Punch. That's it. Punch, and punch and punch some more -- just keep mindlessly tapping it." With an average of 1.5 out of 10, this probably should have been the final nail in Mortal Kombat's coffin. Thankfully, the franchise proved to be a lot more resilient than anybody expected.
The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling
#1
I've spent a lot of time talking about how Electronic Gaming Monthly started to give out significantly higher scores around the turn of the millennium. The same is true on the other end of the scale. Before issue 135, EGM's lowest scoring game was Deadly Arts with an average of 1.75 out of 10. And before that it was 1995's Blue Lightning CD, which scored an atrocious 2.25. In fact, twelve of the fifteen worst reviewed games before 2000 were released in either 1998 or 1999, showing a willingness to use every inch of the grading scale.
When it comes to The Flintstones: Bedrock Bowling, the problem was with the lie right in the title. "Calling this 'bowling' is incredibly misleading," starts Chris, with the lone review. "There's no traditional bowling, something that's not clear from the packaging. The only thing tying it to bowling is that you have to knock over single pins placed around each 'lane.' Lanes are like tracks, turning the game into a sad knock-off of those levels in Mario 64 where you slid on your butt collecting coins." He also complained that the "graphics are very plain, there's a lot of pop-up, and there aren't any cameos from the show. If we hadn't previewed this game 10 months ago, I would've guessed it'd' been crapped out in a month." With a score of 0.5, Bedrock Bowling isn't just the worst reviewed game of the year, but the lowest scoring game in EGM's history. And it's not even close.
