Top 10 Worst Video Games of 2021

“Crazy Taxi” has been dormant for so long at this point that we’re begging for someone to just straight up copy it. Well, in comes “Taxi Chaos”, a self-proclaimed spiritual successor from a non-SEGA studio that was given the company’s blessing. However, maybe that blessing was not so well-deserved. “Taxi Chaos” admittedly nails the controls and even implements a neat boost mechanic when picking up passengers or pulling off quick turns, but you’ll hear the same few lines of dialogue over and over and over again.

A “Pokémon” MOBA sounds excellent on paper and, like “12 Minutes”, should have been easy [and honest] money to make. Only one problem: this was made by Tencent, the Chinese studio that has become infamous for its aggressive studio acquisitions and even more infamous for its egregious monetization practices. Just how bad has it gotten in “Pokémon Unite”? Well, roughly “forty dollars for a fancy Absol” bad, and right when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, the ways you can earn premium currency are an absolute slog. The progression system is much, much worse with the grind. Guess it was too much to ask for a fair and honorable economy.

Back when we were assembling our Top 10 Worst Games of 2021 So Far, we marked “Destruction All-Stars” remarkably high. So, why is it so low now? Well, surprisingly, the game has improved in its mechanics and controls. What HASN’T been fixed, however, is the greedy business model. Again, why is the single-player stuff locked behind premium currency? Why are the campaigns bloated with monotonous game modes instead of letting us get in the groove of the main modes we see in the multiplayer component? Why are the lobbies mostly filled with bots that hardly even try to win? ...Oh yeah, because everyone left “Destruction All-Stars” in its burning scrapyard.

Once more, another great idea has come and gone after falling on its face in the worst way possible. “Arkham’s Horror: Mother’s Embrace” is a turn-based strategy RPG much in the same vein as “XCOM” and “Empire of Sin” albeit an overly simplified one riddled with bugs and glitches. Even if it was polished up some more, there isn’t much to engage with; the mysteries are anything but mysterious as they’re incredibly easy to solve, and the narrative in general fails to achieve the same interest as the board game it’s adapted from. You’re better off playing other Lovecraftian-themed games.

Two questions - why hasn’t anyone done a “werewolf power fantasy” type game, and how did Cyanide Studios mess it up this badly? We can certainly see some of the ideas at play here, but it’s gone about in the worst ways. Even if the stealth wasn’t broken and the gameplay wasn’t so insanely tedious, the AI is busted beyond comprehension. What hurts even more about this is that Cyanide Studios has belted out some solid titles. Not blockbusters, but “Call of Cthulhu” was well-made for what it was. So...what happened here?

Oh, look, it’s time for our token pick for “which crappy mobile game is the worst out of all the crappy mobile games?”, and for this year, it’s “Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!” Don’t get us wrong - we’d play an endless runner centered on our macho marsupial, too, but how in the ever-loving Wumpa Hell did we get to material-gathering and extensive cooldown timers? It’s so manipulative and egregious with its monetization and cooldowns that it almost competes with EA’s notorious “Dungeon Keeper” game. It may not be as horrendous as “wait 72 hours for a wall to open”, but “wait a day to make a Wumpa flask” isn’t too enticing either.

Is it really all that surprising to see “Harvest Moon” on yet another one of our “Worst Whatever” lists? “Harvest Moon” has been playing catch-up for the last decade or so, and witnessing it try to maintain the status quo has become somewhat embarrassing. Much like recent titles, “One World” does its damn hardest to replicate not what “Harvest Moon” did back in the day, but what “STARDEW VALLEY” achieved back in 2015!! You’re trying to copy the very game you inspired because you failed to evolve and keep up with your fanbase!? All this goes without mentioning the barebones world, bland environments, and total lack of anything remotely interesting. We gotta stop kidding ourselves - “Harvest Moon” is dead.

Good god, where do we begin with “Balan Wonderworld”? We could spend ages talking about the awkward motion-capture animation, the clearly rushed development, and the unbearably basic level design. The biggest problem, though, is the obscene lack of depth. Let us put it this way - on console, there are SIX BUTTONS that do the exact same thing!! Oh, and for some reason jumping and using costume abilities are BOTH tied to those same six buttons! It’s such a baffling product of a game that we did an entire video about it over on MojoPlays.

There were a handful of cheap garbage bins that released on Switch this year, and of them all, “Popeye” was the one that had us asking, “Who is this for!?” A 3D remake of the 1982 arcade game, “Popeye” tasks you with collecting hearts or letters while avoiding Brutus. The difference here, though, is that the game is terrible on nearly every front. The music is annoyingly repetitive, the gameplay is a snorefest, and the animations do nothing to bring the personality we expect from the Sailor Man. Even if you were to sell this game at a few bucks as opposed to its thirteen-dollar price tag, it’d still be overpriced.

“Metal Gear Survive”. “Contra: Rogue Corps”. Pachinko machines. These are just some of the ways Konami has fallen from grace, and their newest entry? “Pro Evolution Soccer”--I MEAN, “eFootball 2022”! Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached new heights in “godforsaken sports games with bugs and glitches galore”. This is on “WWE 2K20” levels of awful, and it is hilarious. Limbs clipping into bodies, wonky ball physics, random mouthing to nothing in particular. We were ready, man. Konami has been ready to come back with full force. On the contrary, they are not, and it certainly shows here. If the YouTube compilations weren’t a bad sign already, Lionel Messi’s face on the cover was a striking alarm. Poor guy.