Games with low ratings each have their own misfortunes.

A few days ago, The Game Awards announced the full list of nominees for 2025. With 12 nominations, Light and Shadow: Expedition 33 broke the record and became one of the strongest contenders for this year's "Game of the Year".

As usual, the industry began a cyclical discussion about the "value" and "why" of the nominations. However, there is still a long time before the final awards are announced, and there is another "award" that is much less controversial.

Recently, the well-known review website Metacritic compiled an annual ranking based on the scores of new games released throughout the year, and also produced a list that is completely opposite to the "best of the year": the "worst games of the year" list .

This practice of "statistically identifying the worst games" is actually an annual tradition for M-site. In 2023, the "worst of the year" list was still a relatively obscure one, with the famous "The Lord of the Rings: Gollum" winning with a low score of 34 (or you could say it won with a high score) .

The rigor of this list lies in the fact that, to avoid some less popular games having artificially low scores due to insufficient review samples, the official team even proactively excluded games reviewed by fewer than four media outlets.

So, which games made the list of "worst of the year"? Different people may have different worst experiences, and according to M-site's statistics, this list is not simple.

（Mindeyes）

The top-ranked video is Mindeyes .

Metacritic gave Mind's Eye a score of 37, the lowest score of the year (though at least 3 points higher than The Lord of the Rings: Gollum) . However, before discussing the problems with this game, I think Mind's Eye's failure actually confirms another point, namely, "unfortunate games are all unfortunate in their own way."

For example, some games may be bombarded with negative reviews from players due to various non-game factors such as political views, inappropriate remarks, sensitive elements, optimization, and pricing.

For "Mind's Eye," the constant negative news surrounding the development team Build A Rocket Boy and the players' inappropriate expectations may be one of the important factors leading to the game's failure.

The pre-release promotion of "Mind's Eye" was inseparable from the leading figure of the development team, former GTA series producer Leslie Benzies. Although he did have brilliant achievements during his time at Rockstar and produced two classic titles in the series, San Andreas and Vice City, he had many problems with company management after starting his own business.

Even before the official release of "Mind's Eye," employees of Build A Rocket Boy anonymously posted negative comments on foreign job search websites, criticizing the studio for "excessive overtime," "incompetent leadership," and "constant internal conflicts," less than two weeks before the game's release.

Is this a rumor or something real? Although the official response was not direct, subsequent news from the company proved that the "mismanagement" claim was indeed not unfounded.

First, a week before the release of "Mind's Eye," the company's chief legal officer and chief financial officer announced their departure from the company without explanation. While personnel changes are normal for large companies, considering that "Mind's Eye" was the company's first game in nearly eight years, the departure of senior executives on the eve of the product's launch inevitably raises questions.

Just a month ago, the company was hit with another major personnel crisis. After poor sales of the game, Build A Rocket Boy underwent a large-scale layoff. In October of this year, the employees affected by the layoffs joined current employees in writing an open letter to the company's management, accusing them of "long-standing disrespect for employees and misconduct."

According to foreign media reports, the letter was jointly signed by 93 current and former employees, and it was quite frank:

"For years, your company has demanded that employees submit to every whim of the company, and anyone who disagrees has been suppressed or ostracized. We estimate that approximately 250 to 300 employees have lost their livelihoods as a result. This round of layoffs is due to your company's repeated refusal to listen to the experience of its employees over the years, which ultimately led to the release of one of the worst video games of this century."

The internal cause of "chaotic management" resulted in a game that was ultimately presented to players with extremely vague positioning and main objectives, lacking clear positive feedback. While the game did have above-average driving and shooting mechanics, aside from the numerous bugs and optimization issues at launch, it remained a very mediocre linear third-person shooter with nothing particularly noteworthy.

Unfortunately, the frequent mention of the "former GTA producer" in the game's promotion, along with the trailers shown, led many players to mistakenly believe it was an open-world game, resulting in negative reviews for "not living up to the hype." In reality, the official promotion never claimed that the game was an open-world game.

Many players on Steam's Simplified Chinese section have given negative reviews because it's "not an open world."

The only "highlight" of "Mind's Eye" is actually the "Play Arcadia" feature that the company has repeatedly promoted—which you can think of as an open map editor.

Game scene editing function

Players can use this editor to create maps and modes with different gameplay, publish them on the game's built-in public platform, and let other players experience them on their own.

Even so, this model doesn't stand out much in today's world where various games are developing their own UGC content. What's more, it wasn't even launched at the beginning; it arrived late, nearly five months after the game's release.

As we all know, the formation of a UGC model and a healthy player community requires a large user base for the game. For a game with only 20 daily active users today, it is really not easy to make a comeback using this model.

If the failure of "Mind's Eye" was due to confusion in management and the game's positioning, then another game that made it onto Metacritic's list of worst games of the year (ranked 9th) is even a game produced by Nintendo.

The reason a Nintendo game made it onto this list can be attributed to its "pricing." More accurately, it should be, "This game actually has a price?"

The new Nintendo Switch 2 console, released in the middle of this year, should have been a hot topic, but few people may know that Nintendo also released a game that served as an "instruction manual" for it – "Welcome to Switch 2".

You can think of it as Switch 2's own "little robot," just like when the PS5 was first released, Sony used the mini-game "Universe Robot Controller User Guide" to popularize the powerful vibration function of its DualSense controller. The significance of "Welcome to Switch 2" is to show players the various new operations that Nintendo can achieve on this device's controller.

The difference lies in the fact that Sony subsequently developed a serious game specifically around the "Little Robot" IP. In contrast, *Welcome to Switch 2* immediately sparked considerable controversy, receiving a Metacritic score of only 54.

The fundamental reason for this difference is actually the "fee" – the Switch 2 Welcome Tour is priced at $9.99, while the "little robot" that comes with the PS5 as an instruction manual is free.

If you disregard the price and consider it purely as an "instruction manual," "Welcome to Switch 2" is actually quite well-made. It turns the Switch 2 device itself into a game stage, allowing players to freely explore this "giant NS2" and its various internal parts. Each important component has an officially designed mini-game and function introduction.

The problem is that it is indeed a fairly simple "mini-game" with almost zero gameplay, coupled with a device manual presented in the form of pictures and text. Naturally, many players will be unwilling to pay $10 for such an introductory software.

A mini-game showcasing the mouse functionality of the NS2 controller.

However, maintaining the price of first-party software has always been Nintendo's business strategy, and it's not a precedent set by the Switch 2. Back in the Wii U and Switch era, some feature-demonstration and utility software, such as "Wii U Panorama View" and "Labo VR," also required players to pay extra.

The Wii U Panorama View, used to showcase the Wii U's panoramic view feature, was criticized by many for requiring a paid subscription.

For many years, Nintendo's first-party software, no matter how small, has rarely been "free," and it has even been very cautious about "discounting" it. As early as ten years ago, during Satoru Iwata's time, he had a critical comment on the then-emerging "Free-to-play" model:

“I don’t like using the term ‘F2P’. I’ve gradually realized that this term contains a certain degree of deception towards players. Calling it a free game is more like calling it ‘free to start’.”

However, although this instruction manual-style game received poor reviews from the media, it did not indirectly affect the sales of the NS2. Most players either did not know that the game existed at all or chose not to buy it. With the influence of other first-party blockbusters being released one after another for the NS2, "an instruction manual that is supposed to make money" was naturally not worth mentioning.

（Tamagotchi plaza）

According to the list listed by Megvii, the second worst game after Heart's Eye is Tamagotchi Plaza , a game developed for the NS2 based on the popular virtual pet IP Tamagotchi.

The game only received a score of 43. The reason why foreign media gave it a low score was not because it had too many quality or design bugs or problems, but because it was "too childish" .

The main gameplay involves brushing the teeth of these virtual pets.

Changing clothes:

Serving tea:

There are also water-pouring games, basically just these incredibly simple little games:

In fact, the game's content is just as some reviews have pointed out: "I played for two hours before I realized that the beginning was the entirety of the game."

Although the game received the second-lowest score this year, considering that the media editors who participated in the review were likely all over 6 years old, if the developers claim that the game is specifically designed for children and is slightly childish for adults, but is actually just right for younger players, there doesn't seem to be much to refute. (After all, Tamagotchi's target audience is children.)

Interestingly, while the Tamagotchi in the game is very childish, the latest generation of Tamagotchi has developed quite complex gameplay in its original form, the "electronic pet machine".

For example, the new model "Tamagotchi Paradise" launched in July this year has a breeding system that is refined to support customization at the "cell and gene level". Moreover, according to the official promotional text, scaling from the cell level to the universe level can be achieved by using the knob on the right side of the device.

It allows for detailed adjustments to each pet's appearance down to the cellular level, and also expands the exploration space to different universes, enabling interaction with Tamagotchis on different planets. It spans from the mustard seed to the universe, which is quite ambitious.

A pet's eyes and skin color are inherited from its parents, and through continuous mating and evolution, more than 50,000 combinations can be produced.

If such complex gameplay is possible in a pocket-sized device, why did the more powerful NS2 take a simplified approach?

One detail worth noting is that although Tamagotchi Happy Town on the NS2 received unanimous negative reviews from media around the world, it was actually the first Tamagotchi video game to be released outside of Japan in 18 years.

In addition, this IP has also added a lot of strategic moves this year to try to expand into the European and American markets. It has not only reached a commercial partnership with the American professional women's soccer club Angel City FC, becoming its first toy brand sponsor, but also launched a team-linked pet machine.

They also collaborated with the European and American board game brand KessCo to launch a "Tamagoto" themed children's board game, demonstrating their success across multiple fields:

From this perspective, although Tamagotchi Happy Town on the NS2 received poor reviews, perhaps the greater significance of this game lies in further expanding the brand awareness of the IP through console games and boosting sales of its main product, the electronic pet machine. Unfortunately, this significance is completely irrelevant to the average player.

Conclusion

The reason I paid attention to this "worst of the year" list is that after the TGA nominations were announced, the player community continued to debate the "game of the year," and the discussion had long since extended from the initial "quality" to more complex issues such as ideology, the distribution of discourse power, and political correctness.

Since the criteria for judging a "good game" are no longer singular (and may never have been unified) , the evaluation of a "bad game" has also moved beyond pure quality judgment. Team background, product positioning, and target market are all factors that determine a game's quality. Being considered "bad" is often not because of a single "poor" aspect, but rather because of the disconnect between the product's vision and reality.

In other words, "bad" is not an absolute value, but a gap – this kind of media rating system is actually difficult to be compatible with all scenarios, and it is amplified in the positive review list, but also reflected in the negative review.

From this perspective, M-site's list does indeed reveal a variety of reasons why games are labeled "bad." Therefore, the significance of the "Worst Games of the Year" list is not merely to provide players with amusement, but to remind us that through these imperfect works, we can often see another side of the game industry more clearly.