1. Halo 3’s Cortana
Oh man, where to start. Any level that looks like a series of sphincters better not be full of shit, but this one is. FPS games are at their best when you’re weapons feel powerful and you feel like a hero. In this level you’re weapons do nothing but tickle these enemies, and when the enemies look like cling-ons inside an anus you wonder what issues the developers were dealing with when they designed this. All the fun of Halo is taken away as you blast hordes of scuttling rectum-dwellers instead of awesome alien warriors. Eventually you get pissed off and try to run past them. The level is long, but you finally reach the end where you realise……you have to go back out the same way. This time there’s more of the enemies too. This is easily the number 1 worst level of all time.
2. Tekken 6’s Nancy-MI847J
Sure, fighting the greatest martial artists from around the world is cool, but what I really want to face is a giant robot crab that looks like its made out of meccano. Hopefully I have to constantly sidestep around it like a lonely loser attending a dance class for the first time. Maybe it could have a giant health bar and missiles that make it stupidly hard to beat while simultaneously teaching me none of the skills I need to learn to get good at the game. Bravo Namco, you’ve done it again!
3. Alone in the Dark Central Park
So much potential. The opening parts of the game see you struggle with the awful controls and the innovative but broken inventory system. You struggle through numerous insta-death situations escaping a building that is being torn apart by a hole in reality. Its kinda cool. You escape to the park in a car chase which again has terrible controls, but the tension and pace of the game keep you going. Then you get to the park, where you will spend the rest of the game. Dull, ugly and repetitive, the game settles into a slog of terrible inventory management and awkward combat. Here’s a tip for developers, if you want to have very difficult driving sections, don’t have them happen in a park. They’re full of these tall, immovable things called trees which kinda get in the way.
4. Halo’s Library
Had to include this one as its popular with all you guys, and by popular I mean hated. The design is incredibly lazy and ugly and the enemies are the same ass-goblins you fight in Halo 3’s Cortana level. It almost seems like the developers were told the game had to be a certain length and some guy knocked this up on his lunch break to pad the game out. If Halo was a delicious steak dinner, this level was the soggy side salad.
5. Guitar Hero 3’s Devil Went Down to Georgia (on hard)
Not so much a bad choice of song as a stupid, awful difficulty spike. The guitar battles were a poor addition to Guitar Hero 3, taking away much of the purity and skill of the game and replacing it with random luck and pointless power ups. These power ups were very difficult for the human player to deal with, but often did nothing to the computer opponent. Worse, this song has long random solo sections which are almost impossible to follow musically. The best Guitar hero songs have clear, defined riffs and this one is just a mess of notes. To top off this shit pie, this battle is actually easier on expert than it is on hard as the faster notes mean you can sneakily knock out the computer opponent if you get lucky at the start of the song. On hard you just have to get lucky with this level, which is about 157 times harder than the song just one before it on the playlist. I’ll finish this game on expert before I will do it on hard, and that just makes no sense.
6. Half Life 2’s Sand Traps
Ok, don’t walk on the sand got it. Here we go, just put this plank down. Ok. Walk along the plank, now use this tire. Ok. Put this pallet down, almost at the ledge. Alright then, and jump. Done! That was a neat puzzle, avoiding the sand like that! Now that’s over with let’s go round this corner and see what my next challenge will be.
Oh shit! It’s a beach. It goes on forever, I can’t actually see the end. The end of the beach is BEYOND the horizon. Please don’t tell me I’ve got to move beach detirus around all the way across the beach. Thats no fun! Ok lets put this plank down. Alright. Just walk along….shit I hit the sand! Fuck it, RUN!!!!
7. Dragon’s Age Origins: The End
Never has a game dragged out its ending like this game. It goes on and on and on and, you get the idea. Spoilers ahead (obviously): The game pulls every shitty trick in the book. Based on some really unclear choices it takes can take away you’re best character (Damn you Morrigan, I’ll give you a demon baby if you come back) then later makes you play with the characters you didn’t choose to take on the main mission. You know, the ones you never take in your party and therefore have no good weapons or equipment and don’t work well together. You then fight one final boss after another between waves of identical enemies through identical looking levels thinking you can’t wait for the game to end. It never does. At the end of time, after all the stars have gone out and the universe grows cold there will be a single PC running Dragons Age with the last representative of humanity thinking to herself, “I must be near the end now”.
8. Modern Warfare 2’s Favella
Enemies appearing behind you, enemies spawning out of nowhere, the murder of numerous innocents who get in your way. This is the level that stopped me playing Modern Warfare 2. It’s no fun to constantly die without knowing why enemies keep appearing from nowhere. Meanwhile, every death is accompanied by Modern Warfare’s little quotes from military leaders like Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld on why war is about sacrifice, America must attack its enemies to defend itself and dropping bombs on civilians is totally awesome. Screw this game.
9. Street Fighter 4’s Seth
Weeeee!!!! It’s a boss who has better moves than everyone else in the game with the reactions time of a millionth of a second controlled by a computer opponent who cheats! How can that not be fun!?!
Seth is only balanced in game by giving him the lowest health of any character. Computer straight up cheats and has more health than you. That is all. Any complaints, take them to the department of- Ha! Sonic boomed you while you were looking for a Department!
10. Counter Strikes Dust
Whoah, I’m gonna draw some heat on this one. Sometimes a level is played by people so much it becomes a communal space in all our minds, a place more real than the physical world because we have all lived and died there together. That does not mean it is good. Dust is unbalanced and no fun. Its ugly, waiting at the end of a tunnel to shoot someones toes is no fun and the CT’s (almost) always win. Just because millions of people have been somewhere doesn’t mean its a good place. London for example. As for Dust 2…well who cares really. Everyone knows Nuke is best.
