Just for Fun- The Five Worst Games I've Ever Played

I've been gaming since I was just a five year old child, and in that long and illustrious time playing games, I've played some truly fantastic games. I've played games that have changed my perspective in life, games that have entertained me for hours on end, and even games that changed my life for the better! League of Legends, EVO: The Search for Eden, Final Fantasy Tactics, The Crooked Man, these are but a few of the best games I've ever played. But, I also played some pretty damn bad games in my time. This is a short list of the five WORST games I've had the misfortune to play.

5- Depression Quest: The long, sordid history behind this game, as well as its most infamous creator, has been documented so well that it's pointless for me to even give it a mention. The horridness of this game almost speaks for itself; it's debatable if it's even a game, looking (and feeling) more like a Facebook quiz than anything! But that's not why this 'game' has landed on my number 5 spot.

The real reason why this game is so terrible is that it's about depression, but it ignores the many reasons WHY depression is so dangerous and destructive. The game TRIES to show the player what it's like to live with depression, but it fails utterly in this endeavor by: 

1. Limiting the amount of choices available to the player. The player cannot make the character do simple things like cook for him/herself, clean for him/herself, or do anything but mope around and maybe try to go to therapy later in the game. By doing so, it paints people suffering depression come off as mopey instead of sick. Believe it or not, self care is a great way to help fight off depression, because it keeps you occupied and helps keep away the suicidal thoughts.
2. The game offers NO alternatives to dealing with depression beyond taking pills and going to therapy. There are several alternatives to battling depression, many of which are much friendlier to your wallet. They include: change in diet, breaking routine, exercise, volunteer work, the list goes on.
3. The player character might be of indeterminate gender, but he/she is clearly in a good place economically speaking. He/she has his/her own apartment, has a significant other who is understanding and actively tries to help the player character out, has a job, has many friends, a family that keeps tabs on him/her, etc. While this could be a reminder that depression could happen to anyone, it also makes it hard to sympathize with the player character, because he/she is simply too privileged for many players to actually care about. By trying to show that depression can hit anyone, the game forgets the Golden Rule of narratives: the Receptor (that's us) MUST CARE about the actors (the characters). Why should we care that someone who has a loving SO, a job, their own apartment, Internet, and a loving family also happens to have depression? 
4. The player character cannot commit suicide. Like it or not, depressed people commit suicide because their DISEASE, and yes depression is a disease, changes their inner workings to the point that suicidal thoughts don't just pop up, they are rationalized. THIS is what makes depression so dangerous, and why it should be taken seriously.

The game failed to entertain and educate. Oh, but a future blog will be dedicated to tearing this 'game' a new one. For now, I continue my list with...

4- Pragaras: This game represents half of everything wrong with 'art games'. It tries to act like it's telling the world something deep and meaningful, but it ends up just preaching the same old messages we hear constantly: war is bad, pollution is bad, abortion is bad, so on and so forth. How does the game present this message? In the background, with some animations and some narration in Romanian. Nothing tied to the gameplay, just literally the background. The game is also too simplistic in nature; you control a character, and he goes either left or right. Sure, it has a few puzzles, and honestly that's what keeps it from being further up on my list. But the rest of the game is still a colossal piece of shit. I've talked about Pragaras in more detail here: http://vidgameanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/04/on-art-games.html

3- The Rocketeer: This SNES game is one of those games that haunts me to this very day. When I was a kid, I rented this game one weekend, thinking it'd be a fun beat-em up where I could fly. Sure, MAYBE the rest of the game was like that, but the first level...the first level! I had to race two planes with a yellow one, TWICE. This wouldn't be so bad...if I ever got the plane off the ground! It was impossible for me! I had no idea how to control the damn thing! I spent like the whole weekend just trying to figure out how the hell I was supposed to control the damn plane, and I never managed to do so. One of the worst games I had ever played, for sure!

2- HUGPUNX: I played this game about a month ago or so, when writing my rebuttal of 9 Things Straight White Guys Won't Understand About Gaming by Dan Golding. I played it in hopes of understanding what HUGPUNX was, because Golding name dropped the game. I had hoped the game would be something I could enjoy, or at least tolerate. Instead, I was bored to tears. That is NEVER good when it comes to video games, especially for someone who loves them as much as me.

And the number one worst game I ever played is...

1- Yume Nikki: Unlike the rest of the games on this list, let me state that Yume Nikki is brilliant. It is a game that perfectly captures the weirdness of dreaming, where every little scene, every screen, every effect and event demands your undivided attention. It is a playable nightmare, there is no other way to describe it. Everything about it, from the pointlessness of its minigame NASU, to the ugliness of its many zones, to the bizarre character designs, captures the oddities of dreaming.

But that's why I hate it. It's precisely BECAUSE it's like such a fever dream that I found myself unable to play it. Lord knows I tried, but after half an hour I had to stop. I only ever do that whenever I'm too freaked out by something, and those instances are few and far between. I managed to watch Gozu. I sat through Mulholland Drive and managed to follow the plot. Yume Nikki, however, is too much for me. The game played ME more than I played IT. I got freaked out, and I never made it very far before I uninstalled it from my computer.

I want to love Yume Nikki, I really do. In fact, I often go to the Wiki, reading up on the game, its many characters, and so on. But I can't play Yume Nikki, because it freaks me out on a psychological level. I have limits, and that's one of them. Yume Nikki is one of those few games I CAN'T play.