2024 has been a stellar year for gaming. From breathtaking open worlds to heart-stopping narratives, it’s safe to say that the industry is in a golden era. However, not every release was a masterpiece. For every Astro’s Bot and Elden Ring, there were… well, these.
So join us dear readers, as we count down these misfiring games that are best taken out to the pasture and put out their misery. Oh, plus a (dis)honorable mention that just missed the list! Without further ado, lets start the countdown.
10. Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator
Ever wonder what it’s like to drive a cab in a bustling city? Neither did we. Yet here we are, stuck in traffic, delivering virtual passengers to their destinations while trying not to fall asleep. Taxi Life promised an immersive urban experience but ended up feeling like a chore simulator. This is certainly no Simpsons: Hit and Run!
With clunky controls, terrible NPCs and highlighted gameplay including staring at red lights, you’ve got the gaming equivalent of watching paint dry. Although to be fair, Watching Paint Dry Simulator may be more fun than this one.
9. The Inquisitor
Inquisitor tried to ride the wave of dark fantasy RPGs but ended up drowning in its own gloom. Between the intriguing but poorly realized religious setting, hilariously bad facial animations and unintentionally weird gameplay, The Inquisitor is just downright boring.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the performance is shocking, with combat stuck in Alpha-testing mode. Oh, and to top it all off, the final boss fight is just outright awful.
Combine that with a bad UI and a cheeky asking price of £24 (at the time of writing), you’ve got a recipe for a forgettable experience.
8. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
This one hurts, doesn’t it? After years of hype, Rocksteady squeezed out its latest live-service disaster, Suicide Squad. Not only was it mired in controversy for the way it disrespectfully handled the Justice League, but it immediately alienated players with its repetitive combat and poor mission design.
A live-service model that no one asked for; Kill the Justice League killed any enthusiasm it might have had with a loot system that felt more like a chore than genuine fun. And fun is in short supply within this chaotic mess. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, Warner Bros also lost $200 million on this project, while updates for Suicide Squad itself will end for this project in January 2025.
7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Wrath of Mutants
Cowabunga, it was not. Wrath of Mutants tried to channel the nostalgia of our pizza-loving heroes but ended up feeling more like leftover crusts. The art style is generic, the gameplay dated and uninspired, and the length is thinner than a New York slice.
It’s a shame because the Turtles deserved better but not only is this a terribly uninspiring game, it’s also still for sale at £24.99! There are no dodge mechanics, no strategy or much in the way of variety. And the real kicker? You’ll get about an hour’s worth of gameplay too.
This one’s a perfect example of how to cynically ride the coat-tails of an IP to make extra money. And for that reason, it deserves a place on our list.
6. Funko Fusion
Hooray! If Cons the world over weren’t already infested with the generic, NFT-looking Funkos, gamers were in for a treat (or really a trick, lets be honest) this year with Funko Fusion.
What happens when you take pop culture icons, slap a Funko art style on them, and then forget to make the game fun? You get this. Boasting all the charm of stepping on a LEGO piece and stubbing your toe, Funko Fusion features shallow gameplay and genuine game-breaking bugs. In fact, the insulting asking price of £30 is so wildly off the mark, and it’s not helped that the game feels unfinished.
The devs clearly intended to launch a Lego Dimensions rival but only saw dollar signs and not the core ingredient of what makes a good game – fun. Instead, what we get here is more miserable than the cold, lifeless eyes on the plastic Funko Pops themselves.
5. Dustborn
Dustborn undoubtedly had potential. A narrative-driven adventure about a band of outcasts traveling across a dystopian America? Sign us up! But then that would require an actual audience and thought put into the game, of which this one has absolutely none of that.
Beyond the very obvious social messaging at the core, Dustborn’s characters are laughably stereotypical, poorly rendered and motivated in the most topsy turvy way that defies belief. Oh, and don’t get us started on the rhythm game too which is just awful.
That’s before even tackling the contradictions with the “ability upgrades” which range from bullying others to outright gaslighting. It’s genuinely difficult to tell if this game was made as a satire or not, but given the game wants nearly £30 of your money, even to this day, it’s not even worth a play to find out.
4. Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash
Jujutsu Kaisen was all the rage in the anime world this year so of course, Bandai Namco had to capitalize on that craze and release another fighting game, this time in the Kaisen universe. After the success of the Dragon Ball Z games, this one was surely a sure-fire hit right? Well, no.
Anime fighting games are a dime a dozen, and Cursed Clash stands out for all the wrong reasons. The game is bland, boring and with incredibly dated graphics. If that’s not enough, the devs had the audacity to basically copy and paste shots from the anime into the game.
The fighting is uninspired, and while there are a good variety of characters to choose from, the same can’t be said for players sticking with this one. Oh, and if that wasn’t enough, within the maelstrom of bad press, the devs had the absolute brass balls to release DLC for this. Instead of, y’know, fixing the game?
3. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown
Holy crap, if there’s one game here that very easily could have taken the top crown for worst game of the year, it’s this. Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown is just not a good racing game. The driving itself, to be fair, is arcadey at best but everything else is unwieldly and poorly optimised.
In fact, the biggest issue with this game stems from the AI. Not only is the AI broken, but during some of the longer races, it becomes an absolute chore to watch the AI finish and complete impossible times that just should not be humanely possible.
Test Drive fans waited years for this one, but patience is certainly not rewarded. In fact, the race rewards are so poor that the game goes the mobile route and punishes you for taking part in successive races. Add to that the inability to upgrade, no difficulty slider and a laughably barren world, you’ll be left wondering if you accidentally downloaded an alpha build rather than a fully-fledged game.
2. Skull and Bones
The pirate game that just wouldn’t sink—or release. After countless delays, Skull and Bones finally sailed into the gaming world… and promptly capsized. Ah yes, the proper AAAA experience that Ubisoft has been touting. Get ready for repetitive combat, uninspired missions and yet another live-service model leaving players feeling nickel-and-dimed. It’s actually quite impressive how Ubisoft managed to turn the dream of a pirate’s life into a corporate nightmare but here we are.
If that wasn’t enough, Skull and Bones feels unfinished, and while the ship to ship combat is pretty compelling, it’s hard to shake the feeling that this plays out like a mobile game rather than a “AAAA experience”. Given this is the same studio that released the excellent Black Flag back in the day, the only flag Ubisoft should be raising here is the white one, as a sign of surrender for getting this one so badly wrong.
Dishonorable Mention: Star Wars: Outlaws
On the subject of Ubisoft, I can already hear the collective gasps of outrage. How dare a Star Wars game end up in a “worst of” list? Well, let’s just say Outlaws looks pretty but hides an ugly core. While the premise of playing as an outlaw in the galaxy far, far away is an exciting one, the execution here is more Jar Jar than Vader. The open world is flat, empty and devoid of life, with a laughable physic system that prevents you from even boarding another speeder or making an impact on the world around you.
The stealth mechanics are broken beyond repair, with CCTV cameras failing to pick up on your presence when you pass, and enemies unable to find you if you’re jumping around in tall grass. Add to this the inability to actually roleplay as a mercenary, despite y’know, Outlaws literally being in the title, and this whole experience leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And not even the good type of bad from buying a drink at the bar, which is also something you can’t do in this game.
While the others on this list are far worse than this one, all in all Outlaws feels more like Star Wars: The Phantom Letdown.
1. Concord
And the crown for the worst game of 2024 goes to… Concord! Because of course it did. PlayStation’s much-hyped (quieten those chuckles in the back!) live-service shooter came and went faster than you could say “The Acolyte season 2 campaign”. The servers were barren, the gameplay uninspired, and the player retention rate? Well, when both Suicide Squad and Skull and Bones manage better numbers, you know you’ve messed up.
In fact, the game was dead before it even had a chance to fly. Or, well, fall gracefully anyway. With years of development, at least $400 million thrown at this and refunds given out to the tiny, niche audience that bought into it, Concord was not just the worst game of 2024, it was an absolute embarrassment. With glowing praise and hype across media outlets, it left the gaming industry with egg on its face for backing this one so heavily when it inevitably crashed and burned.
But hey, look on the bright side guys, we all have Fairgame$ to look forward to in 2025 right?… Right?
Final Thoughts
So there we have it, our list of the 10 worst games of 2024. While these games missed the mark, let’s not forget the high bar set by other 2024 hits. Sometimes, the bad makes us appreciate the good even more and boy, were there some proper stinkers this year!
Here’s hoping 2025 brings more masterpieces and fewer misfires. Until then, happy gaming—just maybe not with these titles!