Ah, the annual tradition of gaming schadenfreude — the Metacritic Top 10 Worst Games list is here, and boy, it’s a doozy! 🎮 From broken promises to outright disasters, this year’s lineup includes gems like «Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown» and «Silent Hill: The Short Message». But in a shocking twist, the infamous «Dragon Age: The Veilguard» — a game so “Woke” it practically comes with a pronoun selector as its main menu — is nowhere to be found. What gives, Metacritic? Did someone bribe the critics with virtue-signaling NFTs? 🤔
Let’s not mince words: 2024 was a banner year for gaming catastrophes. Jujutsu Kaisen’s «Cursed Clash» topped the Metacritic loser board with a laughable 44 points. Dubbed «the worst anime game in history» (a feat in itself, given the competition), it managed to offend fans, critics, and possibly Shonen Jump’s accountants. Meanwhile, «Silent Hill: The Short Message» offered a “free” horror experience — emphasis on free, because you’d have to pay me to play it again. Bugs, bland storytelling, and a player retention rate shorter than a TikTok trend doomed it, despite racking up over three million downloads. 📉
But what really has gamers scratching their heads (and possibly other body parts) is the glaring absence of «Dragon Age: The Veilguard» from this list. For a game universally panned as a virtual pamphlet on leftist propaganda, its escape from critical ridicule feels… orchestrated. Critics called it a «bold exploration of diversity» (translation: everyone is queer, nobody is happy), while players called it «a bold exploration of the refund button». With a 3.8/10 user score, it didn’t just miss the mark — it missed the entire target and accidentally shot itself in the foot. 🏳️🌈💀
So why wasn’t it included? Our sources at Metacritic suggest publishers have found a sneaky way to turn their failures into marketing gold. «It’s all a scam,» an anonymous critic whispered to us between sips of overpriced oat milk latte. Apparently, studios intentionally submit buggy, unplayable builds to critics just to land on these «worst-of» lists. «The backlash drives curiosity,» they added. In other words, bad press is good press — unless, of course, your game is «Dragon Age: The Veilguard», in which case, any press is a reminder of its failure. 😂
For those who’ve yet to experience «The Veilguard’s» “magic,” imagine an RPG where the main quest revolves around attending activist rallies instead of slaying dragons. The protagonist’s customizable gender options reportedly take longer to load than the game’s actual plot, and the dialogue? Let’s just say it makes «Mass Effect: Andromeda» look like Shakespeare. But hey, at least you get to ride a nonbinary unicorn named Justice. 🦄✨
Meanwhile, the rest of the Metacritic losers club is a parade of mediocrity and misguided ambition. «Taxi Life: A City Driving Simulator» delivered all the thrills of sitting in traffic on a Monday morning. «Looney Tunes: Wacky World of Sports» somehow made Bugs Bunny unfunny, and «TMNT Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants» turned everyone’s favorite pizza-loving reptiles into cardboard cutouts with laggy hitboxes. 🍕🚕🐢
But here’s the kicker: players aren’t buying the excuse that «The Veilguard» is a misunderstood masterpiece. Reddit threads, YouTube rants, and Twitter memes have dubbed it «The Game That Woke Itself to Death». Even the subreddit r/DragonAge turned against it, with one top-voted comment reading, «This isn’t Dragon Age. It’s Tumblr Simulator 2024.» Yikes. 🙈
In conclusion, Metacritic’s Top 10 Worst Games list is both a cautionary tale and a comedy of errors. While some games earned their place with bugs, blandness, and broken promises, others (we’re looking at you, «The Veilguard») escaped judgment, possibly due to critics fearing a backlash louder than a dragon’s roar. And as for the players? They’ve spoken loud and clear: no amount of «inclusive storytelling» can save a game if it’s just plain bad. 🎤
Pixel P. Snarkbyte, widely regarded as the “Shakespeare of Sh*tposts,” is a video game expert with a unique knack for turning pixels into punchlines.
Born in the small town of Respawn, Pennsylvania, Pixel grew up mashing buttons on an ancient NES controller, firmly believing that “blowing into the cartridge” was a sacred ritual passed down through generations.
Pixel P. Snarkbyte: proving that life, much like a buggy open-world game, is better with a little lag-induced chaos.
