Top 21 Most Overpraised Games of Each Year (2000 - 2020)
Script written by Caitlin Johnson
Top 21 Most Overrated Games of Each Year (2000-2020)
Top 21 Worst Video Games of Each Year (2000-2020)
Welcome to WatchMojo and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the Top 21 Most Overrated Games of Each Year.
For this list, we’re looking at the most overrated games of the century so far, picking one from each year. We’re not saying all of these games are bad, but they definitely don’t deserve the hype, either from players or from the gaming media.
Let us know in the comments which one made you the angriest.
2000: “Counter-Strike”
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Originally a mod for “Half-Life,” “Counter-Strike” was an early example of Valve’s habit of hiring talented modders to come and work for them directly. But while its creators Minh Le and Jess Cliffe created one of the most enduring shooter franchises of all time, they also created a monster. The “Counter-Strike” community is notoriously toxic, unforgiving of new players and bad players alike. And the most recent release, “CS: GO”, has been on the end of plenty of controversies, including becoming the heart of a large gambling operation. This has landed Valve in legal trouble numerous times. It’s strange to think that all this happened because two people made a decent mod for “Half-Life”.
2001: “Grand Theft Auto III”
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Though it brought “GTA” into the 3D era, something we can’t help but be thankful for, it’s also the worst 3D “GTA.” It just doesn’t hold up against the likes of “Vice City,” “San Andreas,” and even “GTA IV” - as unpopular as that game is with some fans. “GTA III” isn’t bad by any means; its open-world design and lenient mission structure combined to make it pretty fun, but its protagonist is just so boring. Admittedly, the reason Claude is completely silent is that he doesn’t have a tongue anymore, but he still has little personality besides. On top of that, the gameplay just hasn’t held up that well; it was good at the time, but not anymore.
2002: “Kingdom Hearts”
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This was the game that started it all. The most convoluted series in video game history began with the original “Kingdom Hearts” in 2002, which, along with its many sequels, prequels, and interquels, is designed to be as overly complex and incoherent as possible. This forces everybody who’s remotely interested in the Disney/“Final Fantasy” combo to buy and play every single one. That’s not to say the gameplay isn’t great; it’s certainly fun, and exploring the different worlds from across the Disney and Square Enix library is something any fan will enjoy, but it’s the nonsensical and ridiculous story that puts “Kingdom Hearts” on our list.
2003: “Call of Duty”
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Created by Infinity Ward, the original “Call of Duty” turned into a smash hit that launched one of the biggest and most lucrative game franchises in the world. As a standalone, WWII shooter it was definitely one of the best, exploring the European theater in a way other FPS titles hadn’t yet done. But was it really worth it, considering what we have to put up with today? Every single year a new, incredibly expensive “COD” will release, and very few of them have been as innovative as the original game – which was still pretty similar to “Medal of Honor” regardless. Was this game really good enough to justify endless copies of itself?
2004: “Halo 2”
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It’s got some of the best multiplayer in the series, but the thing that sets “Halo” aside from many other long-running franchises is the overarching story. The war between humanity, the Covenant, and the Flood is always at the forefront of the campaign, but “Halo 2” certainly suffered from the sophomore slump. Despite being lauded by reviewers, many fans took issue with Bungie removing them from the shoes of Master Chief and having them play as the Arbiter, one of the Covenant. Though this twist has received much praise, in actuality, it was just irritating for all the “Halo” players who wanted to see more of Master Chief – which is all of them.
2005: “Guitar Hero”
If you’ve always dreamed of being in a rock band with your friends, selling out stadiums while playing the last century’s greatest hits, “Guitar Hero” is the franchise for you. But even after the very first game, the gimmick began to wear thin. It’s fun enough at first, but with only five buttons on the guitar’s fretboard and a set library of songs, it gets old very fast. Even if you go the distance and master every song on the hardest difficulty, you’re almost certainly going to get bored. It wasn’t a formula with any longevity; “Guitar Hero” was just another fad, and an expensive one at that when you consider all those peripherals.
2006: “Wii Sports”
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The Nintendo Wii launched to unprecedented demand, and the flagship title designed to show off the all-new motion controls was “Wii Sports”. It remains one of the best-selling games in history, with the promise of playing virtual bowling or tennis with your casual family members proving tempting enough to shift millions of consoles. But when you really get down to it, “Wii Sports” is little more than a collection of minigames, minigames that aren’t even all that different from each other. You’ll be swinging your arms around wildly no matter which game you choose to play, with very few of them needing any skill or precision whatsoever.
2007: “Crysis”
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For many years, the benchmark for the quality of your gaming PC was how well it could run “Crysis,” an FPS praised for its incredibly high-fidelity graphics. “Crysis” definitely had the title of best-looking video game for a long time, achieving visuals in 2007 that wouldn’t be widely matched by consoles until the PS4 and Xbox One. But once you wipe those flashy graphics away, there’s little to nothing of any substance in “Crysis”. It’s a very mediocre shooter and that became clear in 2020 when the remaster came out. This remaster, which featured myriad technical issues, revealed “Crysis” to be the uninspired shooter it was from the beginning.
2008: “Spore”
Before its release, the excitement around “Spore” was palpable; it was going to be “The Sims” with a fresh twist. Instead of building people, you’d be building strange creatures and guiding them through evolution, starting with microorganisms and ending by going to outer space. But the hype quickly crashed down around EA’s ears when “Spore” released and turned out to be excruciatingly boring. The gimmick is fun for a while but once you reach the caveman stage of your evolutionary development, things fall apart. “Spore” was supposed to put players in the role of a god, but all it did was disappoint and bore you to death.
2009: “Left 4 Dead 2”
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It’s clear that “Left 4 Dead 2” is an amazing game, but it’s not an amazing sequel. Fundamentally, it’s almost completely identical to its predecessor that came out only a year earlier, but Valve wanted to charge full price for content that should have been available in the base game as DLC. It was still incredibly fun and a great time-sink for any zombie fans, but the whole thing stank of a cheap cash grab from Valve. And the series had harsher critics than that, with some people deriding both games as being repetitive, never offering anything new. Then, to make matters worse, after making everyone buy an unnecessary sequel, Valve totally abandoned the series.
2010: “Heavy Rain”
This murder mystery about a sadistic serial murderer obsessed with origami was widely praised upon release, but time hasn’t been kind to “Heavy Rain” at all. The story is a hack job; the characters are poorly written, and the actors are poorly directed, with clunky facial animation making even the most serious scenes incredibly ridiculous. The plot makes absolutely no sense, particularly the reveal of the villain’s identity, which doesn’t hold up if you think about it for more than a few seconds. The elaborate trials Ethan goes through; Ethan and Madison’s shallow romance subplot; and the awful QTEs all make this game sorely over-appreciated.
2011: “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim”
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One of Bethesda’s most critically acclaimed games, it’s difficult to find people who don’t adore “Skyrim” and its dozens of ports to every device imaginable. But though “Skyrim” is far from bad and is still a must-play for any fantasy fans, it really doesn’t deserve all the perfect scores it gets – both from critics and players. The game is riddled with bugs, with the vast majority of them never patched out. Instead, it was left up to modders to fix things that really, Bethesda’s developers should have been fixing themselves. And if you can’t play “Skyrim” on PC then you’re missing out even more, because you’re stuck with a game that will spontaneously combust every ten minutes.
2012: “Borderlands 2”
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It may have been fresh and funny when it came out, but “Borderlands 2” gets worse with every passing year. Though the looter shooter gameplay is still great if that’s what you like, the story and side missions are all crammed with dated jokes, memes, and references – they even threw in a “double rainbow” joke. This same humor persisted into 2019’s “Borderlands 3,” showing just how much the formula has aged since the original game ten years previously. And even if the writing was up to scratch and didn’t make you constantly cringe, underneath it all, the addictive gameplay still couldn’t quite live up to the original.
2013: “BioShock Infinite”
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Creative director Ken Levine had a lot to live up to with “Infinite,” but 2007’s “BioShock” proved to be difficult to match even for its original creator. “Infinite” has fast and fun gunplay and beautiful art direction, sure, but the plot is where things fall apart. It tries way too hard to be smart and complicated - with parallel universes, quantum mechanics, and alternate timelines - but this is mostly hot air. It’s not actually that complex at all if you pay close enough attention, which, considering this is a “BioShock” game, you probably were. But it’s the fact it has an erroneous reputation as a story only the smartest people will understand that makes it so overhyped.
2014: “Five Nights at Freddy’s”
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In the years since it took over the world, “FNaF” has been everywhere, with a non-stop string of sequels, novels, and even a movie ripping off the formula [1]. The first game itself is perfectly fine as a short, indie horror title; sure, it’s mostly jump scares, but the “evil Chuck E. Cheese” concept was a winner. The problem was that very few of the subsequent games justified their existence, and the craze quickly spiraled out of control. “FNAF” just isn’t that good, with its inconsistent lore that changes with every game and incredibly tired formula. Everything that was good about the series originally disappears more and more with each sequel.
2015: “Fallout 4”
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Unlike many Bethesda games, “Fallout 4” hasn’t proven extremely popular – but it still gets way more attention than it probably deserves. Todd Howard decided to ditch practically everything that made “Fallout” good in favor of flashier combat and a grossly oversimplified dialogue system. Though the combat was fun and the crafting was a welcome addition to “Fallout,” the entire game quickly gets tedious. There are only so many times you can travel to a settlement in danger, wipe out a group of enemies, and scrounge enough material to build some weak defenses. And the main story left much to be desired, too; did anybody actually care about finding Shaun?
2016: “Tom Clancy’s The Division”
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You need to take to the streets of Manhattan to protect the world from a deadly virus, and how you do that is by running to objectives and taking down as many bullet sponge enemies as you can. That’s about everything “The Division” and its sequel have to offer. The series is yet another of Ubisoft’s formulaic open-world games, with a map full of repetitive busywork and a superficial story. It can be fun enough to play with friends, but even then, you’ll probably still find yourself getting bored of the same old missions repeating over and over again. But in spite of those flaws, it’s still got a large and dedicated fanbase singing its praises.
2017: “Fortnite”
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It’s been the biggest, most popular game in the world on-and-off since its release, with millions upon millions of active players, an enormous fan community, and lots of eSports stars. But is “Fortnite” actually all that good? Well, “Fortnite” probably wouldn’t have become anywhere near as big as it did if it wasn’t given away for free, and the only way it could be given away for free was by Epic Games filling it with predatory microtransactions. With little gameplay variety and randomly generated damage, all you’re playing “Fortnite” for is the chance to unlock more cosmetic items, perhaps paying a hefty sum of real-world money for the privilege.
2018: “Detroit: Become Human”
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To some, “Detroit: Become Human” is David Cage’s best game to date, a thoughtful examination of discrimination and modern culture. To others, it’s one of the worst games ever made. “Detroit” wants to be a game where androids are marginalized just like racial minorities, but Cage doesn’t want to commit to making that narrative actually work. Instead, the game ends up feeling hollow and immature, like it doesn’t even understand the very real history of Civil Rights it’s trying to refer to. The game’s only redeeming quality is the buddy cop subplot between Hank and Connor, which happened to be largely adlibbed by the actors anyway.
2019: “Death Stranding”
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Hideo Kojima’s 2019 masterpiece was somehow more bizarre than anyone could have guessed, boasting an all-star cast and an off-the-rails story about mass extinction events and rain that ages everything it touches, among other things. But for everyone who loves “Death Stranding” with all their heart, there’s somebody else who hates it and its endless, delivery boy gameplay with a passion. The truth about “Death Stranding” is somewhere in between; it’s far from the best game ever made and may not even be Kojima’s best game, but it’s also got an interesting story, deep gameplay mechanics, and stunning graphics. It’s overrated because it isn’t as bad or good as commentators make it out to be.
2020: “The Last of Us Part II”
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Perhaps the most divisive and polarizing game ever made, “The Last of Us Part II” has won unanimous praise for everything except its highly contentious story. Chief among its issues were the death of a main character early on – one who featured heavily in the marketing materials – and potential character assassination for Ellie. But the bigger issue was Naughty Dog’s working conditions. With developers forced to crunch for years on end, and Naughty Dog getting such a poor reputation within in the industry that it had to start hiring film animators instead of video game ones, “The Last of Us Part II” didn’t deserve most of the awards it got.
