Next Generation's 1 Star Reviews: The 26 Worst Video Games of 2000

Armorines: Project SWARM (Nintendo 64 & PlayStation)

#1

“If war is hell, Armorines is some kind of hideous sub-hell. An FPS based on the Turok 2 engine, it attempts to recreate the bug-blasting freneticism of Starship Troopers, but comes closer to recreating the feeling of a blow to the head with a blunt object. Armorines is a great step backward from Turok 2. If you're desperate to kill bugs, buy a can of Raid instead.”

Blaze & Blade (PC)

#2

“Ugh. The only decent part of Blaze & Blade is the initial character creation process, which is nicely comprehensive even down to choosing a character's mode of speech. Unfortunately, then you have to start “playing” the “game,” a horrible mess of a real-time RPG that shoves even the worst bargain-bin title out of last place. On top of this, the game requires you to manually pick up experience points before they evaporate. You have to exit the game and sell items from one character to another because you can't simply trade. And would you believe the escape key is actually assigned a function (jump)? This would have been a pathetic PlayStation title even at launch. What the hell is it doing here on PC?”

Boombots (PlayStation)

#3

“Imagine Power Stone ported to PlayStation, substitute “wacky” robots, then add Claymation cut scenes that tell no story and are only vaguely related to what's going on. Finally, take everything that was good about Power Stone and put it somewhere else. That, in a nutshell, describes Boombots. Oh, and it's also frustrating as hell. The cut scenes (which probably took twice as much time and energy to produce as the actual gameplay) are typical Neverhood goofiness. Maybe you'll think they're funny, but certainly not enough to put up with everything else. Just stay away.”

Deep Fighter (Dreamcast)

#4

“Imagine that one fateful day, you learn that a comet is heading directly for Earth and will destroy the entire planet in one hour. You spend the next 60 minutes fretting over your fate, thinking of all the things you did wrong and generally fearing what lies ahead. Well, the truth is, you'd probably derive more pleasure out of that one torturous hour than you would playing Deep Fighter. A boring drag of a game that will surely lull you to sleep if you manage to keep from killing yourself first.”

Driving Emotion Type-S (PlayStation 2)

#5

“While the pairing of Square and PS2 will most certainly result in many glorious moments for games and gamers, their first offering – a sports car concept racer – will not be one of them. Control-wise, this is clearly a game to be tamed, not played. Specifically, there is a discernable “dead zone” in steering, in which the cars don't immediately react to movement of the analog stick. This creates a tendency to oversteer, and in turn makes it nigh impossible to properly compensate once you do, resulting in a constant tug of war on the analog stick that's nerve-wracking, to say the least. A pure concept racer that shows brief glimpses of technical brilliant, but is thoroughly botched by horribly awkward control and a dissatisfying lack of structure.”

Dukes of Hazzard: Racing for Home (PC)

#6

“Just a bad ol' game, never meanin' no harm, but with gameplay like this, it winds up doing plenty. It's a shame, really, because The Dukes of Hazzard could've been mindless fun. Instead, the gameplay is as uninspired as it is tiresome. The fun is practically AWOL. The A.I. cheats like mad. There's no option to use a steering wheel. Skids, turns and collisions feature cartoon-like physics bouncing you around like a rubber ball, and the General Lee can even be outrun by big brown vans. If that weren't bad enough, you can beat the game in less than ten hours. Only die-hard Duke-boy fans should even look at the box.”

Earthworm Jim 3D (Nintendo 64)

#7

“Hey Jim. Been a while – and either it's been too long, or not nearly long enough. The worst thing about Earthworm Jim 3D is that it really is a good-looking game, with bright colors, clean textures and cleaner lines, with barely a hint of the murky fuzziness that's common to so many N64 games. All the gloss, however, does little to hide the lazy control, arbitrary goals, annoying camera, and level designs that are painfully simplistic when they aren't infuriatingly obtuse. At some point you wind up asking yourself: who in their right mind would think this was fun?”

ECW: Hardcore Revolution (Nintendo 64 & Dreamcast)

#8

“Extreme Championship Wrestling is the hottest thing in the “sports entertainment” field in over a decade, whose over-the-top violence and dedication to technical skill over flash earned it a massive cult, then mainstream following. To see this amazing group of psychopaths reduced to this jobber of a wrestling game is truly sad. Shouldn't a game based on these lunatics at least get an M rating because of people being attacked with flaming chairs and thrown through stacked tables, and not just because the announcer says bitch? One of the few games that inspire active anger and hate. Just having to handle the cart with our bare fingers made us feel dirty.”

The Flintstones' Bedrock Bowling (PlayStation)

#9

“There are the games you can play for hours, and then there are the ones that you can only play for a few minutes at a time before running off to slam your head against a wall for a while to try and blot out the pain. To say that Bedrock Bowling is a misfire would be pure charity. Rather than actually make a bowling game with Flintstones characters, this has instead been designed as a kind of low-end bobsled simulation. No, we're not making this up. Stages, of which there are a grand total of 12, are named things like Lava and Flooded, which gives a good indication of the level of creativity here. So bad, we're tempted to buy up copies just to protect some unsuspecting child from picking it up.”

Mortal Kombat: Special Forces (PlayStation)

#10

“The premise is sound: Take the Mortal Kombat characters and flesh them out by putting them inr their own action/adventure games. Unfortunately, much like the awful Mythologies: Sub-Zero, Special Forces takes a promising concept and drops it, stomps it into the ground, and leaves it to rot under the sweltering sun. So, what do you do besides fight people? You wander around levels looking for keys to doors that, in all honesty, you should be able to break through wit your cybernetic bare hands. At one point you're even stopped by a flimsy door leading to a fire escape. Don't let the cheap price fool you. This isn't even worth the trip to the store.”

NBA In the Zone 2000 (Nintendo 64)

#11

“If we followed the credo of “if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all,” this review would already be over. In the Zone 2000 is simply a travesty of a basketball game. Players fatigue quite quickly and take forever to recover their stamina, so for most of the game, you'll have a team on the floor where every other player would come in third in a race with a turtle and a slug. In the Zone 2000 has absolutely no redeeming features, and should be avoided at all costs. This game manages to eke out a score of one star only because our rating system doesn't go any lower.”

Psychic Force 2012 (Dreamcast)

#12

“What can you say about Psychic Force 2012? Well, not much, except that it ain't very good. The catch here is that it copies the Dragon Ball Z series – why, we have no idea – and sets the action in an open-air arena with the two characters flying around. This means that for the most part, you have to throw fireballs and other special effects at one another, since getting close enough to actually land a physical punch is mostly an exercise in sheer frustration. In short, Psychic Force 2012 is a good example of a bad idea, done badly.”

Quarterback Club 2000 (Dreamcast)

#13

“Oh please, do NOT let this be what Dreamcast development comes down to in the near future. While Quarterback Club boasts some pretty graphics at times, it is perhaps the most trying sports game we've had to tackle in recent memory. Ultimately, while there are dozens of little points that can be picked out and ridiculed, the overall gameplay is generally about as non-fun as can be. Add in the dropped frames, mediocre sound, and sloppy controls, and there's no reason at all to make you want to pick QBC 2000 over Sega's pigskin powerhouse. Leave this one on the shelves.”

Resident Evil Survivor (PlayStation)

#14

“There's a reason this isn't called Resident Evil: Gun Survivor outside of Japan – it does not support the GunCon anymore. Thus, what was designed as a gun game becomes an absolutely horrible FPS. You can't strafe or turn around swiftly, and there is absolutely no way to move and shoot at the same time. This alone renders the game nearly unplayable, but the game adds insult to injury by taking incessant cheap shots. But wait, there's more – or, rather, less: There are no save points and your path is almost completely linear. Plus, this is a fully 3D engine, complete with pixels the size of dinner plates and textures that warp so badly it looks like a special effect. Survivor is the wrong title. The game clearly didn't make it.”

Shadow Watch (PC)

#15

“Shadow Watch belongs in 1995. Every aspect of this game reeks of something that you've played on a 486 with 8 megs of RAM. Designed as a strategy/RPG, Shadow Watch has role-playing that's kiddie-pool deep, and sleep-inducing action – it's even turn based. On the plus side, it does have a genuine comic book feel, and, um, ran without crashing. Then again, 640x480, 2D graphics won't strain your PCs these days. Unless you want to trudge through medieval technology and game play, pass right on by Shadow Watch. It belongs in the history book.”

Soul Fighter (Dreamcast)

#16

“The beat ‘em up is a genre that's here to stay. Soul Fighter is the latest engry, and much like Sega's classic Golden Axe, you must kick, punch and jump your way through countless orcs, goblins and other nasties with one of three assorted fighters. Unlike Golden Axe, however, Soul Fighter is in 3D and viewed through the eyes of what must e a wildly drunken madman. Red Orb should've included a coupon for Dramamine with the game. This is perhaps the first spinning-world simulator to run at a dizzying 60 frames per second. Now, excuse us, we have to find the toilet and vomit.”

Spawn: In the Demon's Hand (Dreamcast)

#17

“Here, in the interest of public service, are some things you would be more happy doing than playing the singularly dreadful Spawn: Sit on broken glass, eat maggots straight from a rotting weasel carcass, or catch the Ebola virus. The virtual turd pressed onto a GD-ROM, this puts the antihero Spawn and his various allies and enemies into a series of multi-roomed and tiered stages for a brutally ugly, third-person fragfest with a wide variety of exotic short- and long-range weapons. The furious explosions, camera shifts and flying bodies make this the spawn of all things migraine. Bottom line: Lack of decorum allows us only to comment that this game would more aptly be subtitled – From Capcom's Rectum.”

Spec Ops II (PC)

#18

“With sequels, the least you can reasonably expect is that it's as good as the original game. Zombie, the developer of Spec Ops II, however, bravely eschews this tired old convention and delivers a second effort that, stupefyingly, manages to be far worse than the first. Highlights include unbelievably idiotic A.I., a useless map, magically disappearing corpses and equipment, and sub-par graphics. Don't waste your money – there are much better games of this type out there.”

The Ring: Terror's Realm (Dreamcast)

#19

“The Ring is the kind of game that looks best in the dark, with the lights turned off, the radio turned on full blast, and quickly frankly, the Dreamcast turned off. It's the sort of abject failure that should make mediocre game developers feel good about themselves because they didn't make it. The combat is stiff and awkward, and navigating through the poorly designed menu system is so slow and tedious that you're actually better off wandering around than going through the chore of consulting the map. By the time we slogged our way to the obligatory boss monsters, we couldn't wait for it to end.”

Toy Story 2 (Dreamcast)

#20

“The path to infinite disappointment and beyond leads straight through the heart of the cutesy little third-person 3D platformer Toy Story 2. Jumpy, jerky and seven kinds of flawed, this sad story clearly reeks, and the heady odor of shoddy PlayStation-to-Dreamcast port should be enough to choke even the airtight space helmet wearing hero Buzz Lightyear. Endless platforms await, as do hordes of toy robots to blast, and any appeal held by the characters or license is pretty much totally wrecked by the cliched play. Terrible draw-in, ultra-sensitive controls and graphics that are barely better than the PlayStation version further damn this to the Isle of Misfit Toys. Call this Story a hack job.”

Ultimate Sky Surfer (PlayStation 2)

#21

“It must be said that the guys at Idea Factory tried very hard to make a sky surfing into an interesting video game. They tried and failed. The character models are actually pretty impress – looking not unlike Tekken fighters in terms of quality. However, this also reveals one of the game's fundamental flaws: There just isn't that much to do. Almost all of the maneuvers involve spinning around or flipping. Since there's no terrain, stunts are limited. Game modes are pitifully sparse, too. In the end, Sky Surfer feels more like a sub-game from Pilotwings than a full-fledged piece of software. This is a game so dull and listless that it almost defines the concept of duff launch software.”

Vampire Hunter D (PlayStation)

#22

“Based on a classic horror anime, Vampire Hunter D is truly horrifying – just not in a good way. From the first-generation PlayStation graphics to the equally primitive gameplay and control, this gives every impression of having been resurrected, rotted and shambling, from some charnel house of dead games. In fact, the control is so stiff and imprecise that simply running around – let alone fighting enemies – gets annoying. Being fans of the anime, we really wanted to like the game. But even fans should avoid this at all costs.”

Warpath: Jurassic Park (PlayStation)

#23

“Every once in a while, we have to wonder if publishers and developers actually play the games they're releasing. Ostensibly a fighting game, Warpath takes the premise of dinos duking it out and runs with it. The problem is, it doesn't actually run very far. This isn't a fighting game, it's just a pointless button-mashing exercise. History has shown that the Jurassic Park license spells doom for any game it touches, and Warpath is no exception. If you want a fighting game featuring dinosaurs, go dig up a copy of Primal Rage. It was much better than Warpath will ever be.”

Wild Wild West (PC)

#24

“One thing we don't need more of from Hollywood is another loud, over-budgeted cartoon like Wild Wild West. One thing we need even less is a game based on a loud, over-budgeted cartoon. Movie tie-ins traditionally make lousy games, and to no one's surprise, they still do. Unfortunately, the poor puzzle-solving sequences are only eclipsed by the dreadful action scenes. Your basic goal is to gather bizarre items and put them together to solve even more bizarre problems. And the action scenes involve equipping a gun, pointing the mouse at an enemy and right-clicking. It's about that exciting. Well, it is better than a rattlesnake in your shoe.”

World Series Baseball 2K1 (Dreamcast)

#25

“The best way to describe World Series Baseball 2K1 is to say it's the Phantom Menace of the baseball gaming world. Much like the latest entry in the Star Wars series of films, we were forced to endure years of excruciating anticipation, only to be given a final product that shone in the special effects department, but was a major letdown overall. Major sin number 1: You can't control your fielders directly. Sure, this won't bother those who normally turn on auto fielding anyway, but to offer absolutely no choice in the matter is pretty inexcusable. While the graphics are about the best of any baseball game ever to grace our TV screens, the gameplay and feature list haven't moved much beyond the 8-bit console stage. As a matter of fact, we seem to recall being able to control fielders as far back as the Atari 2600 days. There's no excuse for this None.”

WWF Attitude (Dreamcast)

#26

“A hastily ported PlayStation title, what was a half-hearted attempt to represent the chaos and over-the-top antics of the WWF on PSX is an embarrassment on Dreamcast. Although the graphics are hi-res now, the wrestlers still move and act like robots, displaying neither joy at a win nor pain from a powerbomb. The roster, fairly current when the original came out in August, is now hopelessly out of date. Sable, who has since left and sued the WWF, is featured prominently in the opening move, and the presence of superstars like Dr. Death, who has since been fire, and Owen Hart, who was killed in a tragic accident this summer, just seem awkward. WWF Attitude is a pathetic port – the only reason this game gets one star is that the jewel case was reusable.”