SteveSawyer

Have you ever loaded up what you think is going to be the most groundbreaking, revolutionary piece of gaming software ever committed to the medium, only to find out that the game you just picked, is filled with more bugs than a 3 week old bloated deer carcass? It's happened to the best of us, and if you're anything like me, the experience can be enough to throw you into a sheer frenzy of caffeine fueled controller smashing, vengeance. The following 5 games are not only buggy, but they are so buggy, that if you ever dared attempt to play any of them, your eyes would leap from your head, and jump into the garbage to spare your mind the indignity of being subjected to their torture.


Superman 64
Widely regarded as one of the worst games of all time... Superman 64 can be summed up in one word... rings. Not only did the game feature some of the worst flight controls possible, where a simple touch of the stick would be enough to send The Man of Steel into a kamikaze death roll. But it also forced you to utilize these horrible controls in an attempt to fly the Supes through a series of rings. And not just once. Pretty much every other level was the mind searing pain of flying through those damn rings. And to add insult to injury the levels that weren't rings were generally superman picking up cars for some barely explained reason. But the descent into madness didn't end there... Superman 64 made sure that even if you somehow mastered the genuinely insane control scheme, the game was crippled with so many bugs that the game was essentially unplayable. So often would Superman get stuck in the floor, walls, air, hell on his cape, that it made the most invincible super hero of all time seem like he could get beat up by Stephen Hawking.



Driv3r
Driver 3, or Driv3r, as it was moronically marketed... was a game that was supposed to take on the Grand Theft Auto series both in terms of storytelling, and gameplay, and promised to be more entertaining than the popular franchise. However when the game was released, people found that the only source of entertainment came in the form of the hundreds of game breaking glitches, that ranged from mundane to insane.



Favorites include:
Having your car disappear while driving it.
Having your vehicle launched a hundred feet into the air after being rear ended.
Having the road spontaneously turn into an ocean.


Saints Row 2 (PC)
Saints Row 2 is a wildly imaginative and recklessly violent open world sandbox game that provides countless hours of awesome, thanks to it's extensive customization, and unique missions. However PC users expecting to partake in all the chaos that Saints Row, and it's fictional town Stillwater, had to offer were floored to find out the game was essentially a mentally challenged stepchild of it's former console self. A hampered frame rate, horrendous pop-in, and textures reduced in visual fidelity all made this craptastic port almost completely broken. What's worse is that the limitations are so severe, that most of the games advanced ranged combat maneuvers become impossible, forcing you to run face first into a hail of gun fire only to watch your poor bullet riddled corpse fly across the scenery. Over, and over, and over.....




The STALKER series.
This series is bar none, the buggiest, and most technically baffling game trilogy of all time. From the first game Shadow of Chernobyl, to the latest game, Call of Pripyat, the STALKER series can be considered a magnum opus of glitches, bugs, and crippling engine problems. Almost every iteration has featured horrible stuttering, low frame rates, and ridiculous system requirements. And thanks to their "revolutionary" AI system, it is completely plausible for critical NPCs to get murdered in the face making it impossible to finish quests. Awesome. Although I can't say it isn't entertaining walking up to a camp only to find dead bodies spiraling around in a trash bin fire, like some sick satanic offering to the hobo gods.



The Elder Scrolls Morrowind/Oblivion
This entry breaks a couple of rules. One, it's a double entry, and two, the bugs in these games don't make the game unplayable at all, in fact, they're amazingly entertaining. But the bugs are so random and so bizarre that not only did it justify inclusion. It pretty much takes the cake.

Morrowinds greatest hits include.
Cassius Cosades (the person who gives you the main quest) dies, or disappears before I can make it to his home.
Being attacked in my sleep by monsters that followed me into my house... from a fight that happened 3 days ago.
Guards attacking me for no reason.
Lord Vivec attacking me for no reason.
Every NPC in town attacking me for no reason.



Oblivion's finest moments
Completely black screens out of nowhere!
Corpses getting stuck in doors.
Flying horses.
Fish mysteriously appearing on the shore, and in the woods flopping around for air.
Incredible floating islands
Rain falling straight through roofs.
And my all time favorite glitch... invisible walls around the environment. Jerks.

Steve Sawyer
Editor in Chief
SteveS@GameGavel.com