The quality of a game is, to an extent, subjective. Some titles that aren’t generally considered “good” still manage to gain devoted fanbases who love them passionately for various reasons.
However,certain games are released in a genuinely unacceptable state, whether due to fundamental design flaws, technical disasters, or simply rushed development. Ideally, these titles would stay on store shelves collecting dust, yet reality often surprises us.
10 Highly Reviewed Games That Are Actually Overrated
None of these games are bad, but they aren’t the world-beaters that the reviews would have you believe.
Many exceptional, innovative, and polished games fail to achieve the commercial success they deserve, while some objectively poor titles, thanks to brand recognition, clever timing, or aggressive marketing campaigns, fly off the shelves regardless. In this list, we’ll highlight ten prime examples of the latter.
10Aliens: Colonial Marines
Terrible AI, Terrific Sales
Aliens: Colonial Marines
Aliens: Colonial Marinesis notorious for the embarrassing state it launched in. The AI was so bad that the Xenomorphs would run in circles, get stuck in walls, or simply forget how to act scary.
To make matters worse, the human NPCs were just as useless, often doing more harm than good and occasionally seeming determined to end their own lives.
Even though it quickly became known as one ofthe worst AAA disasters of its time, the game still sold like hotcakes, clearingover a million copies in its first year.
Thanks to the strength of the Aliens brand, and a heavy marketing push, thousands of hopeful fans locked in their pre-orders before the awful reality had a chance to sink in.
9SimCity (2013)
How to Destroy Your Credibility and Still Make a Profit
For the longest time, in the niche of city management simulators,SimCityreigned king. The series is known as the de facto standard for the genre, setting the benchmark for creativity, depth, and strategic planning that countless other games would attempt to emulate.
For this reason, when the reboot was announced, most fans pre-ordered based on brand trust and anticipation. Grave mistake.
Back in 2013, always-online DRM was not as common as it is today, and the fact that SimCity required players to always be online despite being a single-player experience definitelyruffled many feathers.
What made it worse was that the DRM actively prevented players from accessing the game due to persistent login server issues. In addition, the game itself was underwhelming, even compared to previous SimCity titles. It was so bad that it directly contributed to the later success of Cities: Skylines.
The SimCity reboot is now consideredan absolute disaster that somehow sold over 1.1 million copiesin its first two weeks.
8No Man’s Sky
Never Forget What It Was
No Man’s Sky
Listen, we all know theNo Man’s Skystory. The game was marketed to hell and back by Sony, and when it came out, it managed to disappoint absolutely everyone.
The state it launched in was inexcusable, but Hello Games hunkered down for years, slowly and steadily making it better with each update, eventually delivering a game far greater than what was originally promised.
All is well and good, but I think the game should still serve asa cautionary tale about the dangers of pre-ordering based on promises alone.No Man’s Sky became a great game eventually, but that is thanks to the developers who decided to stick with it when many others would have jumped ship.
At launch, the game was a buggy mess and underwhelming in every way, but it still managed to become a huge financial hit, ranking among the bestsellers on every platform it was available on. I’d like to think people learned their lesson from this one… but did they?
7Cyberpunk 2077
Lessons Were Not Learned
Cyberpunk 2077
Fextralife Wiki
The story ofCyberpunk 2077is somewhat similar to that of No Man’s Sky. Expectations for the game were sky-high, thanks to a great marketing campaign, but it launched in an abominable state. Over time, with many updates, an almost total mechanical rework, and a great expansion,Cyberpunk 2077 eventually became a stellar game.
The key difference between this story and No Man’s Sky is that while the latter was developed by 15 people with a dream, Cyberpunk 2077 had the full power of the development house behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, making the disaster even more terrible by comparison.
Despite everything, the game was a financial success,moving 13 million copies in the first 10 days across all platformsand becoming one of the fastest-selling video games ever.
CD Projekt Red claimed to have learned its lesson from the release of Cyberpunk 2077 and the subsequent scandal, but that remains to be seen.
6Pokémon: Scarlet and Violet
Gotta Catch’em All (The Preorders, That Is)
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet
WhenPokémon: Scarlet and Violetwere announced, fans were ecstatic at the idea of a fully open-world Pokémon title. What they got instead was a technical disaster.
The games launched riddled with bugs (and not the ones you can throw a Pokeball at), constant frame rate drops, texture pop-ins, and glitches that quickly became viral meme material. Even die-hard fans had a hard time defending the sloppy state the games were released in.
And yet, none of that mattered when it came to the bottom line.Scarlet and Violet broke records,selling 10 million copies in just three daysand becoming some of the best-selling games on the Nintendo Switch.
Brand loyalty, the sheer power of Pokémon as a franchise, and the irresistible appeal of catching new monsters in an open-world setting carried the games to massive financial success, technical issues be damned.
5Enter the Matrix
This Is Not The One
In the early 2000s, the cultural impact that The Matrix had on society was substantial, enough to create a noticeable demand for black trench coats, at least. The franchise attempted, with varying degrees of success, to expand into other media such as comics, animation, and, of course, video games.
Enter the Matrix was the first attempt to bring the Matrix universe into the gaming world. A video game adaptation of a movie filled with martial arts, shootouts, and nonstop cyberpunk action seemed like a natural fit. The final result, however, was far from the highs of the movie.
Rushed development delivered, once again, a buggy game with questionable design choices. Both professional critics and players universally criticized the game for failing to live up to the IP. However, the hype surrounding the movie was apparently enough to save the title from the abyss, asthe game sold 1 million copies in its first week alone.
4Shadow the Hedgehog
Ultimate Life Form? Not Quite
Shadow the Hedgehog
The Sonic franchise has long been notorious for being… creative with the source material. The blue hedgehog explored a fully realistic city way before Mario did and even tried his hand at RPGs and rhythm games.
While Sonic was never as successful as our favorite plumber when it came to jumping into different genres, one cannot be mad at the effort. At least, not until things get really bizarre. Like using realistic-looking guns in a game.
Team Sonic Head Considers Bringing Back Evil Shadow the Hedgehog
Takashi Iizuka hints at exploring a darker version of Shadow the Hedgehog in future games.
Shadow the Hedgehog might be one of the most recognizable characters in the Sonic universe aside from Sonic himself, but the spin-off game that bears his name is nothing to be proud of.
It is full of weird edginess, forced darkness, and a storyline so serious that the juxtaposition with such cartoony characters breaks the cringe-o-meter. And that’s without even mentioning the shoddy gameplay.
However, people were intrigued by the character itself, which, combined with the strength of the Sonic franchise, brought the game to financial success,selling over 2 million copies in two years.
And thus, the Sonic Cycle continues.
3Resident Evil 6
When A Franchise Loses Its Identity
Resident Evil 6
Resident Evil 4was an amazing game by all accounts. Capcom managed to lean more into the action compared to its predecessors while still maintaining the survival horror aspect. It was a critical and financial success, but apparently, the publisher got the wrong message from it and decided to lean even further into action sequences in the following titles.
Resident Evil 6is the final consequence of this course of action. The game had a big budget and was supported by a huge marketing campaign, but people did not really like the direction the franchise was taking by leaving behind the survival aspect for good.Critics did not hold back, calling the game a disaster plagued by a bloated campaign and too much action for its own good.
The marketing campaign, however, worked, in no small part thanks to the strength of the Resident Evil franchise.The game sold five million copies in just a few months.
Luckily, Capcom apparently did not ignore the complaints despite the financial success and decided that the following main series game would lean in the opposite direction and focus on survival once again. Maybe someday they will find a happy medium.
2Duke Nukem Forever
The Biggest Surprise
Duke Nukem Forever
Duke Nukem Foreveris a well-known name in the “extremely bad, terrible, no-good” AAA releases niche.
The game was so reviled that it became a comparison point for horrible games from that moment forward. To be fair, I would challenge anyone to release a decent game after 14 years of development hell. However, it somehow still managed to turn a profit.
While the game itself was far behind its time in terms of design, gameplay, and technical quality, the return of the Duke managed to spark enough interest that the game was still successful from a financial standpoint.
It sold about 2 million copies and was able to turn a profit. I would imagine even the publisher was surprised.
1Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
This One Left a Mark
Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
How could we close the list any differently than with a game that contributed to a crisis thatalmost wiped out the entire industry?
In the early 80s,Pac-Manwas the biggest thing in gaming. Hundreds of thousands of people would pour quarter after quarter into Namco’s arcade machines every day, and the game quickly established itself as the cultural phenomenon we know today. It made perfect sense for Atari to seek the license to release the game on their home consoles. It was a surefire hit, right?
In a way, that is exactly what happened. Pac-Man was immensely popular in 1982, and that alone managed to movemore than 7 million copies in the year it was released. Unfortunately, buyers of the game found themselves playing a technical mess that was so far removed from the arcade version it was almost unrecognizable.
An unfortunate blend of incompetence and technical limitations created a far inferior version of the hottest game of the moment, which led to a huge loss of consumer confidence in Atari. This loss of confidence, according to experts, contributed to the company’s crisis, which would cause Atari to struggle in the following years and bring the entire gaming industry to the edge of oblivion.
9 Gaming Decisions Where Nobody Wins
There are some choices and endings in games that aren’t particularly pleasant for you or anyone else.
