Top 10 Worst Strategy Games

Oh Kane, what happened? We were all for the Brotherhood of Nod, why did it have to end like this? Serving as the conclusion to the Tiberium Saga, the game was originally meant to be released as an online-game for a very a narrow market, only to be forcibly converted as the last entry in the series in order to boost sales. Well, let’s start things off with the doozy: there’s no base building! WHAT THE HELL EA? Then there’s an entire levelling and save system that requires a constant internet connection – WHAT THE HELL EA?!?!. Instead of improving on what made the franchise so great, this particularly reworking fell very short. Kane deserved better! Man, I know Kane’s supposed to be immortal, but that actor doesn’t age either!

This is the RTS that tried to go up against Halo Wars, and spectacularly failed. While praise has to be given to the innovation of the narrative with two factions going to war in a post-apocalyptic world, there just wasn’t enough development given to everything else. With less than helpful controls and a camera that is definitely not on your side, the frustration you’ll feel when you take on the Echelon or the Sai removes appreciation for the fairly decent landscapes, rendering and unique aspects they’re trying to bring to the table. Unfortunately this one just ended up getting washed away to superior entries of the genre.

Do not let the title fool you, this game does not share any of the thrills and wonder that you’ll find in George RR Martin’s book series or HBO’s masterful adaption. Taking place over a thousand year period that eventually leads to the War of the 5 Kings, players choose to fight for one of many Houses, including Stark and Lannister, and battle their way through Westoros until they capture the Iron Throne. Except that instead of thrilling battles and devious tactics, emphasis is placed on capturing nodes via a “rock-paper-scissors” mechanic, along with poorly designed campaign missions that essentially become games of Hide and go seek. Needless to say winter has already come for this title.

If you’re dying to play a squad based strategy game with and old school feel to it, we recommend you try out Commando, because this is certainly not up to par. Primitive in design and execution, the game is divided into twenty levels over four areas, where players will find themselves battling what might be one of the worst mafias in video games period. Only a few of its classes are effective, but even then the only mechanics you’ll be using is running and shooting. Looting bodies, manual reloading, even jumping has all been taken away, leading to a bland experience lacking the grit and tension you would expect in a game that revolves around hostage situations and assassinations.

You wanna talk about ethics in Videogame journalism? Well apparently, PC gamer reviewed this stinker with an unreleased beta copy and were told that certain features would be added and certain bugs removed in the final. So they gave it a 93. Anyway, that was a lie, and bugs that made it into the final version included the game suddenly ending due to transporting players to the wrong star systems, all the colonists suddenly dying, and leaving mechanics such as recycling resources open to be exploited. Even if you disregard the issues, it’s just plain unfinished. 93% my eye…

Swashbucklers have not had it easy in the gaming community as of late, and this entry certainly didn’t help their case. While the vibrant visuals certainly make you feel like you’re traversing the seven seas, it suffers from repetitive gameplay of the most basic kind. Rapid clicking will easily do away with rival pirates on the ground and enemy fleets on the ocean, and from there it’s a simple case of rinse and repeat. Even though you upgrade your ships and build your crew, the lack of any real threat to your clicking onslaught only creates a sense of boredom. All the bad pirate jokes in the world can’t save this game from mediocrity.

With so much awesomeness and variety in the lore, creating an epic and thrilling RTS strategy packed with futuristic, hardcore combat should have been a cakewalk. That is not the case with Storm of Vengeance, which managed to squander the opportunity by turning it into lane-based, tower defence game unworthy to carry the Warhammer 40,000 title. The compactness, lack of AI and similarity to other intellectual properties earned huge backlash from fans of the source material and gamers in general. No wonder it was making the rounds on so many Worst Games of 2014 lists. I guess now’s a good time to mention that this was developed by the same gang behind Ride to Hell: Retribution. Eeeesh, 0 and 2 guys.

In case you were wondering, yes, this is also based on the series of the books that led to that horrendous Nicholas Cage film. In this Christian RTS, players must battle against the Antichrist by going around and converting enemies to the ways of Jesus. Aside from the technical missteps that include less than decent graphics and unbalanced AI, this game was subjected to a whole slew of controversy. The “convert or kill” mechanic can is basically tasteless on its face, and that’s not even taking a deep dive into some of the more shady bits of the design. As you’d expect, it frustrated fans of the genre as well as evangelical societies – Christian Groups, of all people, were leading the charge to get this one boycotted. When your Christian Game is found to be not very Christian and not fun, you’ve basically done nothing.

Now we’re reaching the bottom of the barrel. This online multiplayer was supposed to be a hybrid of a real time strategy and a third person shooter, open to sixty four players on a single server, with sea, land and air units available for instant combat. That was what it was supposed to be. Instead what players got was an unfinished mess of a game absent of any tutorial with bugs so severe that it often broke the game after only seconds of loading it up. The graphics were incredibly poor, but due to the frequent glitches you’d be lucky to get a glance before it crashed. Due to its broken state, this RTS was doomed to fail from the start.

Before we reveal our number one pick, here are a few dishonourable mentions.

“Beasts and Bumpkins” (1997)

“Stronghold 3” (2011)

“COPS 2170: The Power of Law” (2005)

When does a parody go too far? When you end up with a game like this. Originally meant to be a satire of World War II strategy games, it’s quick to throw out Soviet-based jokes, but is lacking anything even close to resembling an RTS game. Seriously what is even going on? Levels can range from embarrassingly easy to extremely tedious, the flawed AI may not even respond to your unit commands, not to mention the muddy visuals, invisible screen boundaries, the 6 minutes of pointless Aerobics cut scenes … yes … this is actually part of the game. Ironic that a game that pokes fun at strategy titles would end up having no redeeming value as a parody.

Do you agree with our list? Which strategy game do you think is the worst? With new top tens published every, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.