20 Terrible Video Games That Somehow Made Millions $$$

So, as we all know, the history of gaming is littered with cult classics

brilliant diamonds left to shine in the darkness by the general public

But you know what? This list is not about them. Instead, we're taking a look at some of gaming's most notorious overachievers

towering edifices of mediocrity, whose staggering commercial success belied the deficiencies of their design

Translation, they kinda sucked. So let's take a look at them, as I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com

and these are video games that sold millions, despite being terrible. Wii Music. The mid-to-late noughties was a golden period for rhythm games. The likes of guitar hero

and rock band saw gamers across the world strutting their stuff and living out their rockstar

fantasies in the comfort of their living rooms. Naturally, Nintendo wanted to get in on the action

in their own idiosyncratic way. Unfortunately, this particular brand of idiosyncratic genius was

less The Beatles and more John and Yoko. Wii Music suffered from two big problems. One was

its inescapable air of cheapness, from the low-tech graphics to the public domain songs

that made up the majority of its tracklist, and the other was total lack of immersion

Guitar Hero and its ilk succeeded because playing on their peripherals created a genuine sense of

engagement with the music. Wii Music, on the other hand, simply asked players to half-heartedly

swing their Wii controller around in a vague approximation of whichever instrument you were

tasked with playing. This had all of the immersion of waving a baguette at home and pretending you

were conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, with the downside being that you couldn't eat the

Wiimote afterwards. Shadow the Hedgehog There is no greater indicator of emo's power in the mid-naughties than the fact that Shadow the

Hedgehog managed to sell millions of copies. Now, Shadow the Hedgehog may not be the worst

Sonic game ever made, the glitch-filled, ity-promoting Sonic 06 definitely holds that

dubious distinction, but it's definitely located somewhere near the bottom of the Sonic barrel

As well as its posturing, try-too-hard attitude, Shadow suffers from the same bugbears that affect pretty much all of the worst Sonic games

chiefly a camera that actively avoids showing you important information and overly sensitive controls making the protagonist move like an absolute pinball

Unfortunately, Shadow also adds its own bitter twist to the toxic Sonic formula, and that is guns

The gunplay in Shadow really is utterly hopeless, as the lock-on constantly fails to distinguish between friend and foe

and the aforementioned camera problems see the player having to constantly fire at off-screen

targets. It says something that Shadow the Hedgehog never received a sequel despite selling

millions. Sega knew that they got lucky with this hedgehog's first and so far last game and wisely

quit while they were ahead. Aliens Colonial Marines Ah, yeah, just look at this footage. It tells you everything that you need to know about the state

that Aliens Colonial Marines launched in. The millions of people who had the misfortune to

purchased this game may have expected a nerve-shredding alien's experience, but what they

got were interstellar improv routines. The AI of the eponymous Xenomorphs were utterly broken

leading to scenes like the ones you're seeing here. Incredibly, the Xenomorphs wonky AI was

later discovered to be the result of a single typo in the game's code, with a renegade A

completely breaking Colonial Marines' artificial intelligence systems. Six years and millions of

dollars in development costs flushed down the drain because of a random spellcheck error

Now that was a waste of resources that even Weyland Yutani would balk at

Hey You Pikachu I mean, how far can you stretch the definition of game here

It's a question that Nintendo has often asked itself to varying degrees of success

Sometimes it leads to greatness, like the beguiling charms of Animal Crossing. And other times, well, it winds up with players yelling futile commands at a yellow rat determined to ignore them

Hey You Pikachu was a voice recognition game for the N64 that successfully rode the Pokemon hype train to the tune of around 2 million sales

which is pretty impressive for an $80 game that contained maybe two hours of content

Hey You Pikachu tasked players with instructing Pikachu to complete simple puzzles through the

microphone that came bundled with the game, which led to the vastly inflated price tag

Unfortunately, Pikachu's limited vocabulary, meaning that he could only recognize around 200 words and the mic's limitations itself, meant that the yellow mascot was as likely to

zap you with a thunderbolt as he was to follow your commands. Combined with the game's lack of content, Hey You Pikachu was an overpriced novelty that signaled the death knell for Nintendo's foray into voice recognition gaming

Homefront A blatant attempt at jumping on the Call of Duty bandwagon, Homefront didn't just miss the mark, it stumbled, fell in front of the wagon, and got trampled to death by the horses, who then used its remains as a toilet

Homefront makes the classic mistake of any pale imitation in that it chooses the wrong things to copy from its inspiration

In this case, it means that Homefront is overtly scripted, to the point that you feel like the designers are only begrudgingly letting you play it

Every single action is narrated out loud for you by your squad of tropes

I mean, sorry, teammates, while the camera points you exactly where you need to go

and a button prompt details exactly what you have to do. It's like the developers just don't trust you

and feel the need to force you into having the exact experience that they envisioned

And the nadir comes when Homefront, and yes, this actually happens, demands that you press X to jump into a mass grave

It's exactly as crass, tone-deaf, and moronic as it sounds. And to add insult to the intelligence of the player the only QTE that this game needed was Press X to get your refund Call of Duty Ghosts And speaking of Call of Duty here the point where the franchise just went off the rails

A jumbled mess of a game, COD Ghosts had no idea what it wanted to be. The game's marketing promised

a campaign focused on guerrilla warfare and stealth, hence the ghosts of the title

as you sneaked around America to thwart the bad guys du jour. So naturally, the first mission ends

with more explosions than a Michael Bay movie, and the finale involves flying into outer space

and firing a sci-fi doomsday weapon. What? Ghost just felt like a game made in a hurry

a hodgepodge of different half-baked ideas and themes just all thrown together in the hopes that

something would stick. Take Extinction as an example, a twist on the traditional COD zombies

mode. Extinction replaced the undead with extraterrestrials for no adequate reason. It was a change for the sake of change, and COD quickly went back to the zombies in all future

installments, which rather sums up Ghost's lack of impact on the franchise. Although it sold tens

of millions and ended on a massive cliffhanger, COD's publishers have made no sign that Ghost 2

will ever be forthcoming. Resident Evil 6 Speaking of franchise low points, here's Resident Evil 6. Thinking about it, Resident Evil 6 and COD

Ghost actually have a lot in common. They're both regarded as one of the worst games in their series

they both suffer from overstuffed, messy campaigns, and they both somehow sold in the tens of millions

Playing Resident Evil 6, the first thing that strikes you is the weightlessness of the combat

Enemies take far too many bullets to go down, and there's no sense of impact in any of your weapons

Every battle feels like a childhood playfight with that one friend who refused to admit that

they were dead, usually through some sort of force field bullshit. The second thing that you'll

notice is that Resident Evil 6 would have benefited enormously from all just being cut in half. The

four campaign single player is easily two campaigns too long, and Chris and Jake's stories contain the

worst gameplay in Resident Evil history. Chris's story is a dull slog, and Jake's is so badly

designed, it will actively annoy you. A midlife crisis in video game form, Resident Evil 6 saw

Capcom embarrass itself trying to ape the trends of the time. It didn't work, and Capcom thankfully

took the series back to its roots for the rather stellar Resident Evil 7

Kinect Adventures In video games, as is the case in so much of life, timing is everything. For a golden minute

Microsoft's Kinect looked like it was going to be the next big thing in gaming, a body-tracking

device that promised a shining future of controller-free gaming, but it turned out to be a

buggy, barely responsive novelty item that was quickly discarded when the depths of its flaws

became apparent. Unfortunately, millions of people fell for the hype, resulting in the woeful

Kinect Adventures making its way onto this list. A pack-in game bundled with the Kinect itself

Kinect Adventures was clearly meant to be seen as the next Wii Sports, a minigame compilation

designed to show off the possibilities of the new hardware. Unfortunately, whatever magic pixie dust

Nintendo used on the Wii Sports title was clearly in short supply with this one

Like the aforementioned Hey You Pikachu, Kinect Adventures is less a game and more of a showcase

for a semi-functioning piece of tech. Two hours of limb-flailing let most gamers see everything

this title had to offer, at which point the game itself began gathering dust alongside the Kinect

Grand Theft Auto The Trilogy So in 2020, we saw CD Projekt Red's infamous RPG, aka Cyberpunk 2077, become the biggest

piñata of the video games industry. And November 2021 saw gaming outlets far and wide absolutely

batter Take-Two's disastrous revival of the PS2-era Grand Theft Autos. And with good reason. Far from being the definitive additions promised in the title

the remasters made each game actively worse. Characters were given hideously ugly redesigns

iconic songs from the soundtracks were cut for licensing reasons, and the game's remastered

weather effects were legitimately worse than the 2004 originals. And that's not even mentioning the

bizarre glitches or the genuinely insulting Switch port. And yet, despite all of that

Take-Two reported that the remasters exceeded sales projections, with up to 10 million copies

reportedly having been sold. Now, the GTA games themselves have always held a dim view on humanity

and if that many people willfully parted money for this dumpster fire of a collection

then you can see why. FIFA Legacy Editions So here's a true story. If you look up FIFA 22 on Nintendo eShop, there is only one picture

available in the preview gallery, which begs the question, what are EA trying to hide? Is it the

mannequin-like character models, the lack of modes, or the fact that EA have been releasing the exact

same game for five years? And that's not hyperbole, by the way. The FIFA Legacy Editions use the same

engine that powered FIFA 2017, with only the team rosters and outfits changing every year

While other consoles get engine updates and new modes every year, Switch players get a reskin

version of a five-year-old game. The FIFA Legacy Editions are endemic of everything wrong with the

game's industry, a cynical, effort-free cash grab that nevertheless makes millions every year

The only way that the Legacy Editions could be more insulting is if EA started bundling them

with NFT showing their shareholders laughing at you all the way to the bank

GoldenEye Rogue Agent GoldenEye Rogue Agent just about manages to scrape into this list, with 1 million copies

sold across all formats, which is appropriate because just scraping by seems to have been the overriding ethos behind its creation From 1999 to 2005 EA released one James Bond game a year Given that rate of production it was inevitable Quality control would drop at some point and with Rogue

Agent, it plummeted like Sean Bean at the end of the movie this game takes its title from

From the decision to name it after the most beloved 007 game of all time, to the bland

identikit levels populated by braindead henchmen, Rogue Agent bears all the hallmarks of a game

churned out to make a quick profit. EA's tenure with the Bond franchise did occasionally lead to

magic, everything or nothing is still an absolute joy to blast through, but there's no doubt that

the company's decision to milk the 007 brand produced as much trash as treasure, with rogue

agent sitting squarely at the top of the landfill. Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. Sonic 06 is the one where

Sonic's corpse is brought back to life after being kissed by a human princess. Right, entry over

moving on? Okay, fine, let's do it properly. In a franchise that has seen its fair share of

clunkers in the last 18 years, Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic Forces, Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric

it's almost impressive that the 2006 entry is still seen as the absolute nadir of the series

Needless to say, that reputation is fully deserved, as Sonic 2006 is utterly abysmal at everything it

attempts. The storyline is overstuffed, overwrought nonsense involving gods, time travel and

interspecies necrophilia. The camera and glitchy controls actively conspire to send you falling to

your doom at least once a level and loading screens are absurdly prolific and ridiculously long

Incredibly, Sonic 2006 came out hot on the heels of the equally dreadful Shadow the Hedgehog

which was released only a year prior. Not many series could survive a devastating one-two punch

to their reputation. Maybe that princess kiss really was magic. Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness

Poor core design. While Sonic Team survived producing disaster after disaster, one bad game was all it took for Tomb Raider's original developers

to collapse like a poorly built house of cards. To be fair to Core, they realised that the Tomb Raider formula

had become increasingly stale over the past five entries, and so Angel of Darkness was meant to be a new direction for the franchise as a whole

but said new direction came perilously close to turning the franchise away from the promised land

and straight to the island of irrelevancy. Putting it kindly, Angel of Darkness was a brave failure

None of the new features worked, the RPG mechanics were half-baked, the controls were an unsatisfying halfway house between the D-pad-focused classic games

and modern ogue stick controls, and the stealth mechanics would have been risable in the early 90s, never mind 2003

Despite selling just under 3 million copies, Angel of Darkness's critical pasting meant that the franchise was passed on to Crystal Dynamics

who provided some impressive course correction with their own highly underrated Tomb Raider trilogy

Core design, meanwhile, were quietly shuttered a few years later. Medal of Honor Warfighter

EA's series of World War II-focused FPS games were hugely popular in the early noughties

with Frontline and Rising Sun combining to sell upwards of 15 million units

Unfortunately, in 2007, a Call of Duty-shaped bomb fell from the sky

and obliterated gamers' interest in EA's franchise. EA fought back with 2010's Medal of Honor, a modern warfare-based reboot

that shamelessly pilfered from Activision's juggernaut franchise. Medal of Honor's copying from Call of Duty's homework may have been brazen

but it clearly worked as the reboot sold around 5 million copies. Unfortunately, EA failed to make Lightning Strike twice with the follow-up

Warfighter was a rushed mess of a game. The shooting felt weak and unsatisfying

The campaign was comfortably the worst in franchise history and the game released with a boatload of technical glitches

such as enemies and allies alike flickering in and out of sight like predators with wonky camouflage

Despite this, Warfighter still managed to sell 3 million copies across all formats

Unfortunately for it, and the series at large, Call of Duty Black Ops 2 sold 31 million copies. EA saw the writing on the wall and admitted defeat

quietly closing the door on what had once been one of their biggest money makers

WWE 2K15. No, we're not including 2K20 and there's a very good reason for that. As while the game will

forever be remembered as one of the biggest disappointments in gaming history, its publishers

have tactfully acknowledged that fact by refusing to release sales data for it. They have however

released sales for WWE 2K15, which means we know that 3 million WWE fans experienced one of the

biggest backward steps in franchise history. After the truly excellent 2K14, expectations were high

for what was being billed as the first truly next-gen entry in the WWE 2K series. Sadly

all that effort was spent on making sure the wrestler's baby oil glistened just right

meant that the work in a lot of other areas was left undone. A staggering amount of content from

the previous year's entry was left on the cutting room floor. The roster size had shrunk alarmingly

from 83 wrestlers to 60. Entire match types went missing, custom-made stories were out and

inexplicably you couldn't create female wrestlers anymore meaning you were stuck with the whopping

eight female talents that released on disc. Anthem. This one takes a bit of research because

EA have never officially revealed Anthem's sales data but thanks to the fine folks at Superdata

research its public knowledge that Anthem made million in digital revenue in its launch month only 3 million of which came from in purchases As such you can reasonably intuit that Anthem sold well over a million copies Furthermore by actually playing it

you can also ascertain that Anthem was lucky to sell over 10,000 copies, let alone a million. For a game about bombing around lush

sci-fi vistas in Iron Man-style power armor, Anthem is unspeakably dull. Once you've spent the dozen or so hours it takes to

polish off the campaign, all you're left with is a ceaseless, joyless grind of bashing overly

familiar enemies in increasingly boring locations. The fact that you can apply the previous sentence

to any number of live service failures over the years, such as Avengers, Babylon's Fall

Godfall, shows why Anthem failed. It was yet another mediocre entry in an overstuffed market

and soon found itself occupying one more casket in an increasingly packed graveyard

Need for speed payback. Goodness me, EA have shown up rather a lot on this list, haven't they

It's equal parts disturbing and impressive that one company can produce so much crap while raking in so much money

The fourth and final EA game on this list, Need for Speed Payback, represents an interesting contrast to Medal of Honor Warfighter

Like Warfighter, Payback represents the absolute worst of its respective franchise. Like Warfighter, Payback sold upwards of three million copies

Unlike Warfighter, Payback didn't represent the end of its franchise as Need for Speed games are still going strong to this day

with last year's Need for Speed Unbound being something of a serious highlight. When it's on form, it's arguably the greatest arcade racing series in the world

and it didn't deserve to go under because of one bad game. Having said that, Payback was a really bad game

Payback unsuccessfully married the series High Octane Racing with one of the blandest open worlds ever created

and further self-sabotaged with the introduction of insidious microtransactions. Both additions, somewhat ironically, slowed the game's pacing to a crawl

and ensured that Payback was best left in the franchise's rearview mirror

Pac-Man for Atari 2600. In the olden days, reviewers used the phrase arcade perfect to describe a home console game

that almost perfectly replicated its arcade version. Pac-Man on the Atari was very much the opposite end of that scale

Just looking at it tells you what's wrong automatically. Even non-gamers have a pretty good idea of what Pac-Man is supposed to look like

It's pretty much the we have Pac-Man at home meme, and unsurprisingly, it plays as terribly as it looks

Such was the Atari version of Pac-Man's all-encompassing ineptitude that it, along with the legendarily terrible licensed E.T. game, is often blamed for the

video game market's infamous crash in 1983. Over 8 million people bought Pac-Man on the Atari and

it's all too easy to imagine every one of those 8 million thinking, well I'm not making that mistake

again, before swearing off video games for good and finding something else to do with their time

Some games may have gotten their franchise cancelled, but Pac-Man is one of very few that

almost caused the death of the entire industry in North America. We play. Sometime with the

product, it's not about what you do, but how you market it. And in the case of Wii Play

it was less how you market it and more what you bundle it with. Wii Play sold close to a whopping

30 million units, not because of its quality, but because it came bundled with the Wiimote

the controller for Nintendo's hugely successful Wii console. Given that the Wii was at its best

when you had as many friends and family members together as possible, all swinging Wiimotes

you can see why Wii Play sold so well. A free game to go with a much needed extra controller

how bad could it be? Sadly and predictably the answer to that question is very bad indeed

Wii Play wound up being a total waste of both the plastic it was printed on and of the five minutes

Nintendo apparently spent developing it. A collection of half-baked mini-games that would

be shamed by even the most basic free app store download, Wii Play unfortunately acted as a

precursor to the tidal wave of shovelware that would eventually consume the Wii. And to be fair

on that front Nintendo had only themselves to blame if one of their own games was a half-baked

mess like we play, they were hardly in a position to complain when other developers delivered titles

of similar quality. Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. I personally had a good time with Pokemon Scarlet

and Violet and it may be the least objectively terrible game on this list, but I wouldn't put

that quote on the box. Regardless of the core gameplay loop, Nintendo shouldn't have released

these games in the condition they were in at launch as it buried any other conversation about

the game. 22 million people and counting picked up the latest monster collecting adventure and

booted up the game to find a level of polish that didn't reflect Pokemon's standing as one of the

biggest media franchises in the world. Fans forgave Pokemon Legends Arceus for its shaky performance

because it tried something new with the Pokemon formula, but Scarlet and Violet, both mainline

entries in the franchise, should never have been allowed to tarnish the brand to the extent that

they did upon their release. Such is the power of Pokemon that tens of millions of gamers have

willingly parted with their cash to spend more time in its one-of-a-kind world, even when said

world as a habit of popping in and out of existence or slowing down to a crawl at a moment's notice

There are a good number of things Nintendo and Game Freak can do to fix the Pokemon franchise

and in fact we put them all into a handy video for you. Click this to stay with us here at

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