Worst Games of 2010

"Do not envy our kind," is what I keep telling awestruck people when they hear that I play games for a living. For every awesome game, there is ten times as many of the boring kind. For every ten of those, there is at least one that makes sniffing glue at the local railway station sound like a more rewarding career choice; because the drug induced grogginess makes one oblivious to the suffering. And that is one luxury the reviewers forced to play low rent shovelware cannot afford. Unlike those who play games solely for entertainment, we don't have the liberty of choice. We can't just switch off the console and head over to the returns section. So without much ado, here is a list of the worst games of 2010, and may their souls rest in pieces!

Quantum Theory

The term 'humankind ' is a gross misnomer. There is nothing kind about us humans. We are cruel in the way we make T-Rexes, white sharks, grizzly bears, the bubonic plague and Ekta Kapoor look benevolent. I say this because it is the human race that has unleashed unmitigated horrors like the mustard gas, ricin and VX nerve agents, the vacuum bomb and, of course, Quantum Theory upon the world. Yes, Quantum Theory, because it ranks right up there with the most horrid games ever to taint the game industry.

Fortunately, as I was busy pretending to work, my colleague Roydon Cerejo took one for the team and decided to review this game. Okay, I can't lie anymore. The truth actually was that he got suckered in by the shiny trailers on the website and therefore called first dibs on the game. And boy what a bad idea that was! There's nothing much to talk about the game except the fact that it is atrocious in every imaginable aspect. You should, in fact, honor Roydon's sacrifice and read the review to witness the magnitude of its catastrophe. It has been, by far, the least rated title we have reviewed, and for a good reason.

Although I did not play it, I made sure to witness Roydon suffer through the ordeal. It was all funny for the first few minutes, but as the hours passed, I saw his very soul being devoured by the game's repetitiveness and the lack of any character. Quantum Theory's utter dearth of substance or any redeeming quality is like a void - one with its own gravitational field that sucks the last vestiges of happiness out of anyone who's foolish enough to subject themselves to it. Hour after hour, I helplessly saw my colleague drained of his sanity. We had to up his usual dosage of Valium and remove all sharp objects out of the test labs.

I can't possibly fathom anyone putting down Rs. 2,500 for the PS3 title. I can think of a billion more pleasant and productive endeavors that one can undertake instead of playing this abhorrent excuse for a game. The only reason why you see him still push in the articles is because we removed all the ceiling fans and padded the walls. So next time you read the reviews or decide to flame the comments section as usual, please spare a though for all the sacrifices we make for you guys.
Farming Simulator 2011

There is a reason why kids invariably choose doctor, engineer, fireman or film actor, and not pig farming as career choices. You see, dreams and fantasies are supposed to be infinitely cooler than reality, because ten years down the line, a good number of the same kids will be flipping burgers for a living, and no one wants to be reminded of that.

Games, much in the same way, are nothing but fantasy worlds, where you want to do all the cool shit that you don't get to do in real life - like running over the elderly with The Red Eagle, chainsawing and bayoneting Germans or causing a 20 car Bugatti Veyron pileup worth $35 million at the fifth corner of Nurburgring Nordschleife.

Technically speaking, I am a farmer by the strictest definition of law, so I'm well equipped to give a verdict on the game. With all my farming know-how, I can vouch for the fact that this game indeed is a farming simulator in spirit and execution. It is in fact too realistic, which also means it's just as dreadfully boring. I don't know what the developers and publishers were thinking when they gave this one a go ahead. One can't possibly expect to actually put down hard earned money for this tripe. There are a number of things that I would pick up over this game - and that includes herpes, because at least it is fun catching it.

Michael Jackson: The Experience

Make no mistake; I really like Michael Jackson. You have to admit the fact that the guy gave us a great music legacy. That is, at least till the point he went psycho with the plastic surgeries, by when he was too preoccupied attending trials, to be bothered coming up with good music. Even then, the legacy he left behind is too massive to be affected by the weirdness of his latter life. However, Ubisoft's shameless posthumous monetisation, Michael Jackson: The Experience, is just flogging the dead horse.

It's a thankless experience with no redeeming quality. To call it homage to Michael would be a travesty. With damningly bad controls, a lack of career mode and a worthless solo mode, it's clear that Ubisoft had no intention of putting any effort in this cheap cash in. The game is so atrociously bad that if you wind his corpse with copper and hook a magnet and battery to it, you'd generate enough electricity to light up Neverland Ranch again. That's how vigorously Mr. Jackson would be spinning in his grave.

Prison Break: The Conspiracy

There are reasons why movie adaptations do not work, and Prison Break: The Conspiracy isn't even adapted from a movie. It's based on a TV series that jumped the shark and subsequently fizzled out after the very first season. The game tick all those reasons and then some more for the most excruciatingly painful experience. If the developers were a bit more truthful, they would have named it Prison Rape instead, because that is exactly as fun as the game can possibly get. The gaming community was unanimous in deploring this aberration, with many advocating picking up the soap instead of this game.

As ingenious as the first season of the series was, Prison Break: The Conspiracy is the exact opposite with its unimaginative gameplay, bad controls, retarded AI and a very restrictive linear plot that allows no scope for anything remotely interesting. The game takes the prison part too seriously, and the environments are accordingly drab to the point of making you suicidal. I know the point of games is to be realistic, but a bit common sense is enough to tell which part of reality to showcase in a game and when to resort to artistic license. This virtue is lost upon the developers, which results in a terminally retarded, repetitive and boring snore-fest that is Prison Break: The Conspiracy.



Frogger Returns

I like to think of myself as an old school gamer. In fact, Planescape: Torment and the original Fallout still are my all-time favourite games. That means I'm not averse to HD remakes of old school classics. However, not everything that is old school deserves a remake. Not every game has the gameplay depth of, let's say, a Tetris or Araknoid. Some of the classics were only popular because there weren't many other titles with gameplay and graphics flair of the aforementioned gems. Frogger Returns is a clear example of why not all classics should be remade. The game is just too simplistic to hold player interest.

However, that didn't stop developer Hijinx Games to remake Frogger in 2010. The worst part is that the remake added nothing extra to the classic. The only notable change to the game - the isometric camera angle made things worse by making it impossible to judge incoming cars. The flawed collision detection didn't help matters, making the game just too excruciatingly frustrating to appeal to anyone even with the strongest sense of nostalgia.

Frogger Returns makes me wonder what the folks at Hijinx Games were smoking, when they thought it would be a good idea to release it over Nintendo Wii, DS and PlayStation platforms.