Here at GAMINGbible, we really prefer to celebrate the best that gaming has to offer than dwell upon where it goes wrong. And when it comes to the PlayStation 4, we're looking at a console that's enjoyed a healthy bounty of brilliant exclusives since its launch in 2013 - exclusives that we'll all still be playing when the PlayStation 5 is firmly wired in beneath our telly boxes.
Nevertheless, no console is perfect. And the PlayStation 4, as it's now reached its twilight and the PS5 encroaches to steal its spot as Sony's lead platform, has sure been home to some stinkers. We'll always have places in our hearts for God of War, Bloodborne, Marvel's Spider-Man and more - but these ones? Not so much. According to the review aggregator website Metacritic, which compiles journalist-written reviews from around the world, these are the worst 10 games ever released for the PlayStation 4.
(And yes, we have one of these lists for the Xbox One, too. If you're brave enough.)
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10th Worst:
Dawn of Fear
Metascore: 33/100
Dawn of Fear is a love letter to Resident Evil-style survival horror gone spectacularly wrong. Completely predictable with its scares - which are pretty limp anyway - patchy of performance and hopelessly bug-ridden on release, this 2016 effort can't hold a flickering candle to its old-school inspirations.
9th Worst:
Weeping Doll
Metascore: 32/100
More a short VR experience than a full game, Weeping Doll is done and dusted inside an hour. But its brief running time isn't why it's bad - this horror effort relies on players finding creepy dolls just the most terrifying things in the world, but then forgets to make its version of them the slightest bit scary. Its puzzles are undemanding, and the whole thing feels like a demo dressed up as a retail release to give PSVR early adopters something to muck about with... and immediately forget.
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8th Worst:
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5
Metascore: 32/100
Bail after bail after bail: the video game. I feel this one's been dragged through the mud enough over the years, and with the remastered Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 out now, there's no need to ever think about this disaster again.
7th Worst:
Dino Dini's Kick Off Revival
Metascore: 31/100
The Kick Off series was a pretty big deal for football fans in the late 1980s - at least until Sensible Soccer rather stole its thunder. But in the era of FIFA and Pro Evo, not even the nostalgia factor could save this turd of a comeback. Broken, buggy, and just no fun whatsoever, the best thing that could be said for Kick Off Revival is that it had people like me hankering for a decent version of Sensible Soccer on modern consoles. Please?
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6th Worst:
Ghostbusters
Metascore: 30
A twin-stick shooter tie-in to 2016's Ghostbusters movie, but not featuring the same characters, this colourful spook 'em up didn't look too bad on paper - but to play the thing was to be bored rigid. It's an echo of a calibre of game that we thought we were clear of - the quick-buck blockbuster-movie cash-in, where the brand does all the heavy lifting and the game just has to exist. Ghostbusters barely even manages that. Just the worst kind of cynical crap that needs to stay dead.
5th Worst:
Air Conflicts: Vietnam Ultimate Edition
Metascore: 30
Cheap but definitely not cheerful, this update of a flight/combat sim made for the previous generation of consoles is a mess of shonky controls (these might be old planes, but that's no excuse for it all feeling so creaky), bland visuals and excitement-free 'action'. On release in 2014 it could be argued that flight sim fans didn't have much to choose from - but games like Ace Combat 7 have since made Air Conflicts utterly redundant.
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4th Worst:
The Quiet Man
Metascore: 28/100
Whatever Square Enix thought they were getting with The Quiet Man, the end product surely couldn't have been it. Questionable design decisions like withholding parts of the dialogue to stay in the character of the protagonist might have looked like bold directions, but in practice the only effect on the player is immense frustration. Stir disastrously executed combat and a cringeworthy story into the mix and this has to be one of the highest-profile foul-ups of the PS4 library.
3rd Worst:
Basement Crawl
Metascore: 27/100
What if Bomberman, but scary? Is a question no gamer has ever wanted an answer to - and yet here we have Basement Crawl, aiming to do so anyway. Critics called it unfinished on release, and a Metacritic user score of just 2.8 shows you that it's not exactly improved since. A weird one this, too, as it's from Bloober Team, a studio with some genuinely decent releases to its name, like the cyberpunk creep 'em up Observer. I guess we've all got some skeletons in our closets.
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2nd Worst:
Road Rage
Metascore: 26/100
Does the thought of open-world motorcycle combat float your boat? Well, get ready to see Road Rage sink that enthusiasm to the bottom of the sea. If you're nostalgic for Road Rash and think this will scratch a similar itch in the 21st century, think again. Awful driving controls, atrocious physics, hit-and-mostly-miss combat and idiotic AI add up to one of the most wretched games released for any console, let alone the PS4. Crash it into a skip and watch it burn.
The Absolute Worst:
Afro Samurai 2: Revenge of Kuma Volume 1
Metascore: 21/100
The original Afro Samurai game of 2009 was something of a cult classic on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 - but this follow-up of 2015 is an abysmal button-masher where hitboxes have minds of their own and the frame rate has a tendency to flatline. Not playing as the Afro Samurai himself but companion Kuma is fine, but the bear-headed hero isn't any fun to be around. Assuming you can keep up with him to find out, that is, as the camera does all it can to throw you off your rhythm and completely lose track of where enemies are. The game's planned parts two and three were cancelled by publishers Versus Evil, and nowadays Volume 1 isn't available on either PSN or Steam after its hugely negative response. And nothing of value was lost.
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Featured Image Credit: Square Enix, ActivisionTopics: Feature, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, list, PlayStation, Square Enix, Activision, PlayStation 4