The Worst of the 360 in 2007

I reviewed some of the best highlights of my first year with the Xbox 360 a couple weeks ago. It's now time to look back on some of the moments that I truly regret experiencing and perhaps make a resolution for the new year to never play another crappy game again.

So in no particular order, here's my round up of bad moments in gaming for 2007.


Ridge Racer 6
I suppose only an Xbox 360 neophyte would have ever think this game would be an appropriate substitute for PGR 3. That's exactly what happened when I ran to Future Shop one day to find myself a car racing fix and all I could pick from was Ridge Racer 6 and some other lowly racing launch title. I convinced myself into thinking the $30 price tag on RR 6 made it okay to take a chance on it. What's even worse is, for the first couple of days I actually got myself to believe I was playing a fun, arcade racer. The graphics, music, announcer and car handling physics may have been complete crap, but I somehow enjoyed the experience while it lasted. Sadly, this was not an isolated incident of gaming delusion.

Perfect Dark Zero
PDZ was supposed to be another "risk-free" purchase. The game had already been released as apart of the Platinum Hits series and the price reduced to a reasonable $35. Having never played the first Perfect Dark on the N64, I nevertheless knew enough about the franchise to at least expect a solid first-person shooter experience. The online co-op play was a big enough selling point to push me over the edge and plunk down my loose change for this stinker.

I know that Rare is a respected games developer but there is no excusing their shoddy work on Perfect Dark Zero. For a game to be released in 2005, I was shocked by how little it had refined or improved upon the more than 10-year old FPS genre. From top to bottom, everything about this game was poorly conceived, from the bubblegum sci-fi aesthetics all the way to the downright terrible game play mechanics. Even very basic attributes, like the field of vision, was calibrated incorrectly. The game's depth of field made everything in the game world feel like it was too close and claustrophobic. Even the aiming crosshairs were not done right, for crying out loud. The reticule looked like it was stenciled in with a child's crayon and was literally the size of the moon. And whoever was responsible for the design decision to paint flashing waypoint arrows on the ground really should be fired from Rare and disbarred from working on a game ever again.

The list of transgressions continues, but I think I've said enough. I always have it in my mind to resell this game to EB or over eBay but I doubt if there's any amount of money I could even pay someone to take this game off my hands.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
I'll start by saying that I never bought this game. It came bundled with my Halo 3 preorder, so I've absolved myself of the responsibility and embarrassment of owning this game. However, I am guilty of sacrificing an hour of life to playing this atrocity of a movie license. The play controls are bad, the graphics are even worse and the level design is practically non-existent. Perhaps the only redeeming feature of this game is that I was able to eke out a lousy achievement during my sole, torturous play through of the first few levels.