Gaming took some giant leaps this decade, but it would be irresponsible to only acknowledge the goodness from the past ten years. For every masterpiece pushing the medium foward, dozens fall flat for a variety of reasons.
After all, no one sets out to make a bad game. Budget limitations, strict deadlines, mismanagement, and unforeseen problems get in the way of a studio's vision. The next ten games from the soon to be over decade are the lowest rated first-person shooters on Metacritic. None of these are digs against the people who worked on them, as every creator makes a dud every once in a while.
10 Battle: Los Angeles (38)
Remember the 2011 film Battle: LA with Aaron Eckhart? It came and went at the box office. Even the greatest movies have lackluster video game adaptations, so just imagine how this movie's tie-in fared.
Some poor movies were turned into great interactive experiences, but this was not the case for Battle: Los Angeles, judging from the Metacritic score. The game play comes off as a budget version of the military shooters dominating the market around the time, a similar trend games further down the list follow.
9 Heavy Fire: Red Shadow (38)
This on rails shooter series has miraculously been floating on for almost ten years despite universal disapproval. At least it distinguishes itslef by being on rails, but that does little to redeem the wonky aiming, dreadful graphics, and hammy voice acting.
Rail shooting can be a vehicle for exciting spectacles, but Heavy Fire: Red Shadow doesn't take advantage of this, instead making war look as boring as an office job. This entry in the series also gets rid of multiplayer, which at least could have been a small saving grace.
8 Blackwater (37)
Microsoft's Kinect was a novel idea, and we applaud the effort for trying to innovate. Unfortunately, few of the original games for the device are worth anyone's time. Blackwater is an FPS putting players into the shoes of a soldier working for the titular private military outfit.
The company advised on the game's development, but it wasn't created as a recruitment tool. It's a good thing, too, as no one would ever be convinced to sign up based on this game's quality. In fact, it would turn most people into pacifists.
7 Enemy Front (35)
Stuart Black made an impression on the gaming sphere with the fine-tuned Black in 2006. His next work, Bodycount, piqued no one's interest. Then worked on Enemy Front for a while before leaving the project and is ultimately uncredited in the game.
Considering its low score, he should consider himself lucky. It came before the short-lived renaissance of World War II era shooters, but it failed to impressive reviewers and few bought it. Stuart Black has also disappeared from the gaming landscape in the years since.
6 Takedown: Red Sabre (34)
Takedown: Red Sabre is a tactical first-person shooter in the vein of Rainbow Six. It fails to get anywhere near the long-running beloved franchise in terms of quality. The one advantage it has over the most recent Rainbow Six entry is a single-player mode, but that's little consolation when the core game play is poor.
In addition, the experience is plagued with bugs and glitches, rendering it barely functional. Jank can have its own unique charm, but Takedown: Red Sabre crosses a line.
5 Call Of Duty Black Ops: Declassified (33)
With its dual analog stick set up, the PlayStation Vita presented a unique opportunity to provide an authentic FPS experience on a handheld. Only a few games realized this, like Killzone: Mercenary and Resistance: Retribution.
The Call of Duty series tried their hand at it too, but the results were disastrous. Declassified's campaign takes about an hour to finish. Afterwards, players can spend their time with a small survival mode and multiplayer. At the end of the day, it's better to stick with a console entry in the series.
4 The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct (32)
Telltale's The Walking Dead will go down as a classic. The drama and tough decisions players make will forever be ingrained in players' minds. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, on the other hand, is horrifying in a whole other way. Everything about is is broken in a way to make the story a cakewalk.
The only plus is Norman Reedus and Michael Rooker voicing their respective characters. Fortunately, Reedus has since gone on to have better associations with the medium with the release of Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding.
3 007 Legends (26)
On paper, the idea of playing through the Bond franchise's most iconic scenes seems neat. However, the execution falls apart. Jumping through select missions makes the campaign feel like patchwork with no real thread connecting them. Several actors reprise their roles from years past, but Daniel Craig sits this one out.
The game was so bad, another adaptation of 007 has yet to come out. It's a shame, considering the agent's legacy within the medium. He is responsible for some of the best FPS games ever made, and some of the worst.
2 Chasing Dead (24)
Zombies are a cliched go to enemy force. That's not to say great zombie games don't come out anymore, but Chasing Dead certainly is not one of them. Released on the PC and Wii U, the story follows Jake as he battles hordes of undead.
While only three years old, the graphics mirror titles released over a decade ago. Ugly visuals can be forgiven; it's the broken hit detection and myriad of bugs dooming it to the abyss.
1 Orc Slayer (15)
What's the point in poking fun at a game this bad? It must know how poor it is, and the developers must understand this too. From first glance, Orc Slayer looks like something someone slapped together in Dreams over the course of a few hours, but saying that would be grave disservice to Media Molecule's new game.
Players run around a crudely crafted fantasy setting blasting orcs with a cross bow. It's not quite Life of Black Tiger, but it's definitely a contender for worst game of the decade.