What’s The Worst Game That You’ve Beaten?

Some games are so bad that you have to play them to experience it for yourself. Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks. Maybe there’s some nugget of goodness in there. Maybe the pure jank of it all will be fun.

I’ve played my share of terrible games. The licensed tie-in games stand out as particularly terrible.

Once I tried to play Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth to see if I could beat the game without earning 1000 gamerscore. The game was infamous at the time because players could earn all of the achievements in just a few minutes.

All you had to do to unlock the achievements was get a 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 hit combo. That was it. Easy, right? Too easy.

The Burning Earth is based second season of The Last Airbender. You probably guessed by the name being wedged in there between all of those semicolons. It’s a horrible jankfest designed around punching dudes with elemental powers.

Everything about the game feels slapped together.

The script is clearly based on an old outline of what the show was going to do during the second season. The combat is dull and unresponsive. The levels are twisting corridors full of absolutely nothing of interest.

I made it about halfway through the game before abandoning my attempts to not get the achievements. There is a boss fight against a swamp monster that is just impossible to beat without getting a 50 hit combo. Well, not impossible. I’m sure someone patient enough could do it. I am not that person.

I tried my best. Even exploiting the game’s Lego-like co-operative gameplay to disrupt my combo by constantly jumping between different members of the Gaang.

It didn’t work. The fight was just taking too damned long and I resorted to “proper” gameplay – mashing the attack button until the boss fell over. Despite my failure, I endured the rest of the game. For the life of me, I don’t know why I bothered.

Sure it’s a children’s game based on a popular cartoon. The Burning Earth was still a massive waste of time. Making something for kids doesn’t mean you can’t make something with standards.

Speedrunner Brossentia revels in terrible games. He even runs a tournament called Kusogrande where people compete in some of the worst games he can find – Brossentia has a knack for finding some truly awful games. At least that’s a way people can find joy in these games.

How about you, what’s the worst game that you’ve beaten?


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