Metacritic has revealed its ten worst video games of 2023, and yes. Lord of the Rings: Gollum is at the bottom. That’s why I put it in the image right above these words.
The outlet, which consolidates review scores from across the industry, revealed the ten games with the lowest score. Here’s the list from highest to lowest score: Gargoyles Remastered at 49, Loop8: Summer of Gods at 49, Gangs of Sherwood at 48, Hellboy: Web of Wyrd at 47, Crime Boss: Rockay City at 43, Testament: The Order of High-Human at 41, Quantum Error at 40, Greyhill Incident at 38, Flashback 2 at 35, and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum at 34.
Absent from this worst video games of 2023 list are the many other games that have released this year that were met with derision following their releases, including The Walking Dead: Destinies and Skull Island: Rise of Kong, which looks like it was ripped straight from the PlayStation 2. While both of those games have lower scores on Metacritic, holding a 29 and 23, respectively, they don’t meet the list’s requirement of having at least seven reviews from professional critics. Basically, they were safe on a technicality.
The same is true of The Day Before, which was pulled almost immediately after launch, and doesn’t actually have a score on Metacritic at the time of writing.
As this article goes on, I do want to say that I’m sure people worked hard on all of these games, and that no one sets out to make bad art. Projects can fail for a lot of reasons, including mismanagement from corporations and those in positions of power, which is entirely outside the control of those working on them. In some cases, like with Skull Island: Rise of Kong, the game was rushed out in twelve months.
Despite those rough games, 2023 also featured a ton of really great games across various genres, which we’ve covered at length here. You can read our breakdown of the best fighting games in 2023 here, for example.
