Everywhere you look right now, there’s a gaggle of nerds foaming at the mouth to share their list of the very best video games of 2025. (And we’re no exception!) But what about the stinkers, the flops, the dead-on-arrival turds? We want to take a few moments to honor the low achievers of 2025, the absolute worst games of the year according to review aggregator Metacritic. Are all of these games truly as terrible as the reviews say? Is there a hidden gem or two hidden among the bunch? Let’s find out.
10
Nintendo Switch 2 Welcome Tour
Metascore 54/100, user score 3.4/10
Back when Nintendo first announced Welcome Tour, people were really cheesed off that the tech demo cost $9.99 instead of being included for free with the console (like the PlayStation 5’s terrific Astro’s Playroom pack-in), and that sentiment colors many of the reviews. That said, there’s a pretty wide spectrum of opinion here, with Keen Gamer calling it “a crushing disappointment” and “probably the worst Nintendo game I have ever played” on the lower end of scores. Nintendo Life offered a more generous assessment, noting “it’s a shame the whole pack-in argument overshadows the delightful software.” Despite all the grumbling, it seems plenty of players were actually willing to pay: Welcome Tour was the second-best digital seller during the month of the Switch 2’s launch, right behind the indie-darling RPG Deltarune.
9
Rennsport
Metascore 53/100, user score 3.2/10
This vroom-vroom sim from Munich-based Competition Company and Polish developer Teyon bills itself as “more than a racing game.” Unfortunately, critics were pretty unanimous in their assessment that it was, in fact, far less than a racing game. PlayStation Universe noted that the game “falls short in just about every way” and is “clearly unfinished.” In a year full of great racing titles like Mario Kart World, Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, and Tokyo Xtreme Racer, it seems like this sputtering stinker is better off left in the garage.
8
Bubsy in: The Purrfect Collection
Metascore 53/100, user score 8.6/10
First things first: As an editor, the colon usage in this title is more irritating than burlap underpants. You need either “in” or the colon, not both. How did no one notice this? Strike one, Bubsy.
Anyway, back in the ‘90s, everyone and their uncle jumped on the mascot platformer bandwagon amid the Mario-Sonic rivalry. This was the decade of Gex, Earthworm Jim, and the 7-Up shill Cool Spot. Positioned as a direct competitor to Sonic, Bubsy is a rude dude with a major ‘tude, and he has a T-shirt with an exclamation point on it as proof of said outrageousness. In practice, this means he’s spewing hacky one-liners pretty much every time you press a button in this collection of games from the SNES and PS1 eras. COG Connected’s review notes, “They’re not good games, and they haven’t aged well.” Sounds like the perfect way to get hyped for the upcoming Bubsy 4D — at least for the seven weirdos responsible for this compilation’s improbably high 8.6 user score.
7
Hunter x Hunter: Nen x Impact
Metascore 53, user score 3.5
When you see a title that looks like an algebra equation, it’s a reliable sign you’re pretty deep down the weeb-game rabbit hole. No fan loves as hard as a weeb, which also means there’s no bigger haters when a game fails to appropriately honor its source material. That’s certainly the case for this Hunter x Hunter-inspired fighting game, which has lousy critical reviews and an abysmal user score. Critics lambasted the thin roster of characters and minimal gameplay modes, while the unlucky customers who paid the full MSRP of $60 for the brawler held nothing back.
“I am extremely happy to see this game flop and burn because we as consumers should reject these types of scams and garbage in 2025. I sincerely hope this game will be the nail in the coffin for 8ing studios and hopefully they never make another video game again,” wrote user Aziz_Kash. Oof. It’s hard not to feel bad for the devs forced to churn this stuff out.
6
Neptunia Riders Vs Dogoos
Metascore 51, user score 5.3
Speaking of weeb stuff, this is a motorcycle action game where you collect legally distinct Dragon Quest slimes with cute dog faces. It’s based on the Hyperdimension Neptunia RPG series, which features candy-haired girls inspired by retro game consoles and sounds like it would give me a headache. In its review, Noisy Pixel notes that Neptunia Riders Vs Dogoos “attempts to deliver a Katamari-like gameplay experience with a comedic premise” but ultimately feels “more like a cash grab than a worthy entry in the Neptunia series.” According to Reddit, this game is only 3 hours long but retails for $40. Bold choice!
5
Captain Blood
Metascore 50, user score 5.3
With glorious himbo artwork plucked straight from the cover of a bodice ripper, Captain Blood looks like a throwback from 20 years ago. There’s a very good reason for that: It was initially in development during the mid-2000s for Xbox, and later Xbox 360. After nearly two decades of development hell and legal battles, this lost game was revived by SNEG, a small publisher headed by two GOG veterans.
“There are many things that we could change to ensure that the game is better received by the modern generation of gamers,” SNEG co-founder Oleg Klapovskiy told Polygon back in May. “But at the same time, we are not original creators and we want to ensure that this is actually the piece of art created by the original team, and I think that if the game will get lower scores because of that, we’ll accept it. We just want to bring an experience that was supposed to be released over 10 years ago, and we understand that everyone might not like it, especially modern gamers, but we want to stick to what was supposed to be.”
The Russian games site Riot Pixels sums up the critical consensus pretty well: “This game is a curious artifact of a bygone era. It’s not terrible, but the story behind its development is far more interesting than the gameplay.” Well, that’s kind of a bummer!
4
Scar-Lead Salvation
Metascore 44, user score 2.4
A Returnal-inspired third-person shooter with an anime art style doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, right? Wrong! Critics were underwhelmed by this roguelike’s bland enemies, repetitive level design, and snoozy story. Even the chance to see the buxom protagonist in her skivvies wasn’t enough to earn Scar-Lead Salvation critical goodwill. “Losing clothing while you take damage during your run is unnecessary and doesn’t add anything to the overall gameplay; if anything, it takes away any charm the game could have,” notes Hardcore Gamer’s review.
3
Ambulance Life: A Paramedic Simulator
Metascore 44, user score 4.9
Remember Atlus’s Trauma Center games for the Nintendo DS and Wii, which blended visual novels with surgery sims? Now imagine those games without the gripping story, memorable character designs, or strategic gameplay, and you’ve got Ambulance Life. Critics bemoaned the tedious, repetitive ambulance-driving sequences and the story’s “tone-deaf portrayal of mental health.” I can’t imagine wanting to take someone’s vitals or apply a tourniquet unless there are hot anime waifus involved, and apparently everyone else agrees with me.
2
Tamagotchi Plaza
Metascore 43, user score 5.8
When I was a kid, I had a purple-and-orange Tamagotchi keychain. My virtual pet died because it shat too much, suffocating beneath heaping piles of its own waste. Tamagotchi Plaza met a similar fate on the reviews circuit this year. This shopping sim isn’t about keeping your digital pals alive, but keeping a colorful and cutesy town running by means of various simple minigames, like crafting eyeglasses or serving up platters of sweets at the tea shop. Nintendo Life called it “a dull, vapid, and utterly unsatisfying minigame collection that rapidly overstays its welcome.” TechRadar went a step further, declaring it “hands down the worst Nintendo Switch 2 title yet.”
1
MindsEye
Metascore 37, user score 2.5
With Grand Theft Auto 6 still roughly a year away, there’s certainly an audience that’s hungry for a decent GTA clone to pass the time. Unfortunately, MindsEye — the debut game from ex-Rockstar bigwig Leslie Benzies’s new studio Build a Rocket Boy — was a catastrophic flop right out the gate. Lousy combat, dull plotting, horrendous face-melting glitches (see above), and underwhelming missions left critics scratching their heads and wondering what the hell went wrong.
In a scathing one-star review, Eurogamer called it a “cataclysmic failure,” pointing out that “there are action games ten, even twenty years older than MindsEye that are infinitely better to play. Max Payne 3, which is thirteen years old and the weakest Max Payne game, is a masterpiece compared to this.”
That said, at least one person out there really, really liked MindsEye. In a 10/10 review, Metacritic user 863i5 wrote, “This game is very, very fun. It is true that it is similar to GTA, but it is fun.” And I think that’s very sweet.