As mentioned in our Gaming Respawn’s Game of the Year 2024 piece, this year has been quite mixed with regards to game releases. There were a number of good to great games, but there was certainly a sizable number of real stinkers put out there as well. There were so many bombs dropped, in fact, that a few of our contributors here found it quite challenging to sift through the bad games they forced themselves through and narrow their choices down to just one title that flopped harder than the rest. The higher than usual number of choices available for this particular “honor” is what drove us to start our very first piece on this site for what we will call Gaming Respawn’s Flop of the Year (FOTY). Please join us on our first of likely many more of these pieces and find out which games sucked hard enough to earn our ire.
Bryan Applegate
Skull and Bones
My pick for Gaming Respawn’s Flop of the Year is Ubisoft’s Skull and Bones. The art direction is the only good thing about it. The gameplay was slow. It was too intricate for my tastes. In addition, they tried every trick in the book to get this game to succeed as a “AAAA” title. It went as far as letting you play for a few hours for free and even offered a 50% price cut. You have to rely on NPCs to raid ships, forts, etc. Your main custom character can’t do it themselves, which sucks!
Another issue I have is the reliance on multiplayer (and the corresponding online subscription based on what console it’s played on) for the Loot Hunts. Before that though, players need to get a Treasure Map. Pirate ships are limited in terms of unique customization options, which doesn’t help opposing ships stand out in multiplayer. For these reasons, and for the fact it’s still active, unlike Concord, I declare this to be my pick for Gaming Respawn Flop of the Year.
Will Worrall
Outer Terror
Picking a Flop of the Year has been almost as challenging as picking a GOTY for 2024. Not because there haven’t been a decent number of flops to choose from, but mostly because I’m not sure any of these games are deserving of the drubbing that an FOTY implies.
In the end, I have to hand it to Outer Terror, not because it particularly feels deserving of being taken down a peg or two, but just because I had such an unpleasant experience with it that I felt the need to score it only 3 out of 10 when I reviewed the game back in April.
If you’ve not heard about it, Outer Terror is a B-movie-themed rogue-lite shooter that basically feels like a reskin of Vampire Survivors but with all of the charm and good game design surgically cut out of it. The storylines were exercises in by-the-numbers storytelling, the levels were either entirely undesigned or so badly designed that they became part of the challenge that you had to overcome to proceed, and the idea of blending anthological storytelling with rogue-lite gameplay just felt like a poor choice.
Loaded with bugs, terrible level design, and the baffling decision to allow your characters literally zero invincibility frames, Outer Terror is a game to be pitied. Someone, somewhere really believed in this project, and honestly, I really wanted it to work out. In the end though, being one year out from release and still having bugs that cause upwards of 20 minutes of gameplay loss is a good enough reason on its own for this game to be on this list.
Peter Keen
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
The year 2024 hasn’t been a superb year, but it also has not been that bad either. If I’m honest, I’ve been struggling to think of one game that stank so much it should be awarded our version of a Razzie.
However, there was one game I played that I honestly felt was very disappointing to the point where it could make my list. It’s also very controversial as some might actually have this game as their Game of the Year. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?
So, with a deep breath, my Flop of the Year for 2024 is Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth! I’ve got some explaining to do, haven’t I?
The reason this game is my choice is that I felt so disappointed with it for so many reasons. For me, Yakuza games are supposed to be about a hard, gritty, sometimes gruesome lead character who has a fun, comedic side that complements the grittiness. However, Ichiban Kasuga, the lead character here, is just a likeable buffoon and feels so “un-Yakuza” that it just puts me right off. Because he is already a buffoon, the silly side stuff doesn’t have the same resonance as it does with Kiryu. The other Ryu ga Gotoku series set in the same universe, Judgment, managed to create a lead character that wasn’t Kiryu but was still kickass, funny, and interesting yet doesn’t have this problem (as I see it), but Infinite Wealth with Ichiban does.
Matthew Wojciow
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League
While I do have a few flops on my review list from this year, I had to think about which game to pick as my Flop of the Year in a certain way. I had to ask myself which game I was most disappointed with and which one infuriated me with how it could have easily been made better. That game is Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. From the iconic developer Rocksteady, you would think another game in the same universe as its Arkham series would be a slam dunk, but the curse of the live service game killed this one.
It actually opens quite well, and I thought maybe the critics were wrong at first, but my word, did it fall off a cliff fast. Each boss battle is laughably bad, and the story tries so hard to pull itself up from the grave, but because it needs to set up future seasons, it just can’t match the developer’s previous work. The gameplay is probably one of the worst aspects of Suicide Squad. After revolutionising the gaming landscape with that Arkham combat system and then moving to this awful gunplay with the stupid damage numbers popping off enemies, Rocksteady practically made me launch the disc out of the PlayStation. You know it’s a bad game when its digital deluxe edition is already a fiver on the Xbox store. Even then, I don’t think it’s worth it.