Ranking 2023's worst games by Metacritic User Score
Give gamers something to love, and they’ll sing its praises for a week; give gamers something to hate, and they’ll complain about it for years. This is often the way it feels online, and whether it’s true or not, it’s certainly true that on Metacritic, people are more vocal about what they hate than what they love.
Maybe it’s because it’s more fun to insult something than it is to praise it, or maybe it’s to do with complicated psychology about how we feel negative emotions more intensely than positive ones. This is all a lot of words to say that there were bad games released in 2023, and users were not quiet about it.
These are the games released in 2023 with the lowest User Score on Metacritic. We will also be listing the critic score for each game so you can see where the gaming public disagreed with the press.
Curse of the Sea Rats
Curse of the Sea Rats failed to meet its Kickstarter backers' expectations.
PQube
- User Score: 2.4
- Critic Score: 61
Critics, by and large, considered this to be a very average action platformer, but it drew a lot more ire from its community as it is the result of a Kickstarter campaign, and those who put down money for the game were extremely disappointed with what they got when it was all said and done.
NBA 2K24
NBA 2K24 introduced many changes that actually made the game worse than its predecessors.
Visual Concepts/2K Games
- User Score: 2.2
- Critic Score: 69
It’s not uncommon to see sports games at the low end of the User Score spectrum in recent years. Fan bases have gotten tired of similar games coming out year after year with iterative changes, especially in NBA 2K24’s case, where many of the changes have actually made the experience worse both mechanically and technically.
Diablo 4
Diablo 4's focus on purchasable cosmetics didn't go very well with fans.
Blizzard Entertainment
- User Score: 2.1
- Critic Score: 86
There is a huge gap between the critics and the users on this one, as Diablo 4 is generally considered to be a highlight of the year. However, 80% of almost 9,000 user reviews disagree. Most of them take issue with how microtransactions and purchasable skins have been implemented post-launch, and it doesn’t help that Activision Blizzard isn’t a company in many people’s good books this year. More on that shortly.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III
Fans and critics concurred that Modern Warfare 3 is underwhelming.
Activision
- User Score: 1.6
- Critic Score: 53
Much like the critics, fans where underwhelmed with the lack of new content despite being charged full price for the campaign. Most didn’t find anything worthwhile in the campaign, and even popular modes like Zombies seemed underbaked compared to what was in previous CoD games.
Blood Bowl 3
Blood Bowl 3 was clearly unfinished at launch and marred by bugs and performance issues.
Cyanide Studios
- User Score: 1.6
- Critic Score: 57
While the previous Blood Bowl games are quite liked among a subset of the gaming audience, the third installment was not well-received by anyone. It is a simple case of the game releasing well before it is ready, with performance issues and bugs plaguing the game’s launch version.
Overwatch 2
Overwatch 2 quickly became one of the worst-reviewed games of all time.
Activision Blizzard
- User Score: 1.4
- Critic Score: 79
While Overwatch 2 was officially released in 2022, this year’s Steam release served as somewhat of a relaunch of the game, and to put it gently, it did not go well. Within hours it had become Steam’s worst-reviewed game of all time thanks to a general dip in quality from the first game, overuse of predatory monetization, and the lack of a promised PvE campaign.
Madden NFL 24
Madden NFL 24 was too incremental, so fans were left wanting more.
EA Sports
- User Score: 1.3
- Critic Score: 65
This game didn’t do anything especially bad, but the fan base has been calling out for major improvements in the Madden series for a long time and Madden 24 is yet another year where none of those improvements came about. Some notable glitches at launch didn’t help its case either.
The Lord of the Rings: Gollum
Following poor reviews, players agreed that LotR: Gollum is boring and full of bugs.
Daedalic Entertainment
- User Score: 1.2
- Critic Score: 34
Critics agreed that this is one of the worst games of 2023, and gamers were much less willing to give it anything higher than a score of 1 – even looking at the positive reviews, almost all of them are sarcastic. This was a horribly buggy game that failed completely at what it set out to do, and even when it did work as intended, it wasn’t exciting to play at all.
Greyhill Incident
Greyhill Incident is forgettable in every way.
Perp Games
- User Score: 1.0
- Critic Score: 38
Another game that the critics panned, Greyhill Incident is simply an unremarkable game in every aspect. Everything it does has been done before to a much higher standard, and there is no point in anyone checking it out.
Pinball FX
Pinball FX is a decent pinball game, but it's predatory monetization proved a huge turn-off for players.
Zen Studios
- User Score: 0.6
- Critic Score: 74
Pinball FX was already a series on thin ice. While it is a decent Pinball simulation, it asks a lot of cash from its users, charging roughly $10 for each new table players want to add to their game. This game served as a bit of a reboot of the series, and asks players to pay again for any tables they already owned in the older games, plus, it has a few more technical flaws than what came before it.
