I've played a lot of games that could be considered quite bad, but never seriously. You know, when my friend rents some video game based on a movie nobody liked, and guess what, nobody likes the game, either. I have "played" those games, but I honestly don't count those experiences.
I find it funny that the two games which vie for "Worst Game I've Ever Played" were a), games I specifically asked for my birthday and received, and b), were given perfect 40/40 scores by Famitsu. Ugh.
The first is Nintendogs. Specifically the Labrador version, but who the heck cares, the versions are essentially the same except for what dogs you start with. I have an entire rant on Nintendogs written up on my computer just to get it out of my system, but I won't go into that much glorious detail here. Suffice to say that Nintendogs is completely over-hyped and overstated. Based on almost all the reviews I'd read, it was supposed to be Animal Crossing with pets. It wasn't. I actually enjoyed the game the first two weeks or so I played it, but that's because I was expecting something more. Then as time went on, I realized this was it. Nintendogs suffers from two fatal flaws: one, there is barely anything to do. You walk, you enter one of three contests, you teach your dog tricks, you play with your dog (with toys that are generally the same), and you pet your dog. No, you don't wander around the house, because you don't have a house, only a small, cramped room with white, unfinished edges. You don't actually meet or interact with people in town. Walking barely has any interaction. Contests are flawed and gimmicky. And then we hit reason number two: there are oppressive limits on everything. You can only walk your dog once every thirty minutes. You can only enter three contests a day. You can only teach your dog three tricks a day. You can only have three dogs in the house and own eight at a time, meaning you can't even own all the dogs at once without getting rid of the other ones you spent time, money, and possibly love on. There isn't a whole lot to do in Nintendogs, and what you can do is horribly, severely limited. Final score: 4/10. Maybe a 3/10.
I kind of promised myself I wouldn't go on a rant about it, and I did. Crap.
The second game vying for the title is Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies. My opinion of the game can be summed up in "Nothing is new, everything is flawed." Opinions will likely differ between me and everyone else here, but the story is completely moot. The first half of the game feels like the Pokemon anime: show up at a new location, help everyone, leave, never look back. Honestly, the people you interact with in the first half never, ever enter the story again. It's complete drivel. Then when the plot actually does show up, it's incredibly barebones, and any plot twists you come across aren't sufficiently explained, leaving you to guess at what you're doing and why. DQ9 is also supposed to be one of the harder games in the series, so as a Dragon Quest newcomer, this didn't bode well for me. The problem was that the difficulty felt completely artificial. Enemies had instant-death attacks, pretty much every item was too darned expensive, bosses were horribly cheap (particularly the final boss, that piece of crap), and the COMBAT SYSTEM IS BROKEN. Agility influences which characters go first, but it's not set in stone, meaning your Mage can go first in Turn 1, then third in Turn 2, then second in Turn 3...it's a strategy game where you can't strategize, and that breaks the combat system. Add to all this no character development, limited character customization, an astoundingly repetitive soundtrack, the inability to accept more than a small handful of missions, enemies that roam the overworld in such a way to be annoying...and you have one incredibly over-hyped game. Not to mention it brings almost nothing new to the JRPG genre. Final score: 5/10.
Hoo boy...there's so much more I could say about those games, but I have whole articles written up on them, so if anybody wants the full spiel, send me a message or something. I'm sure I stepped on someone's toes, but that's how I feel.