The Game Awards
The anti-The Game Awards: The 10 worst games of the year according to Metacritic
Stay away from them: the worst games of 2023 according to the critical consensus site.
Baldur’s Gate 3, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Alan Wake 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2... Will 2023 be one of the best years in video game history? Maybe we shouldn’t be so categorical, but it would certainly be in a top 5 with releases as powerful as these and those that will make headlines in the coming days thanks to The Game Awards. For years, we have thought of this gala as the Oscars of video games, but? But what about the Razzies, the awards for the worst movies of the year? Well, let’s see which 10 video games would be candidates for the most infamous list.
The 10 Worst Games of 2023
One of the most viral games of the last months was Skull Island: Rise of Kong, which with an average score of 23 is the worst game of the year, although it must be said that it does not appear in Metacritic’s top 10 list because it is based on only 5 reviews. However, between these reviews and some screenshots and trailers is enough to get an idea that it is not exaggerated at all, because there is nowhere to take it. A license with potential that was almost never exploited and that was able to surpass another license like The Lord of the Rings: Gollum... on the low.
However, before we get to Daedalic’s game, we have to talk about the one that officially appears as the worst on Metacritic, which is none other than the very recent Flashback 2. It is clear that it is dangerous to venture into developing a sequel to a 16-bit myth like Flashback, and you have to be very clear about things, something that seems not to have been the case with Microids, a publisher that is beginning to “specialize” in mediocre products.
And after Greyhill Incident, one of the many first-person survival horror games that appear throughout the year, some of which, by force and pure statistics, must go wrong, we arrived at The Lord of the Rings: Gollum. It is true that we could see it coming, and all the delays of the game, together with the bad aspect it got with each new preview, did not bode well. In fact, there was no room for surprises, and the game with Gollum was a disaster. We can’t finish without talking about an honorable mention like The Walking Dead Destinies, with a terrible 29 on Metacritic, although based on only 4 reviews.
Beyond that, we find games from which we could not expect much more, but it is worth talking about the games that appear beyond this top 10, because there are games that we could call outright disappointments, and in which we find very strong names. This is the case of the PC version of The Last of Us Part I (59), whose optimization problems earned it a bad review. A different case is that of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 (60), whose mediocre campaign and conservative multiplayer put it in this unusual place for the series.
Other a priori strong names that did not receive the expected critical reception were Redfall (56), Forspoken (64), NBA 2K24 (68) or Payday 3 (67).