Glitchiest Games You've Ever Played

What you mentioned reminds me of that football game Intellivision made for the Atari 2600: if you were on defense you could have your player run off the right side of the screen and re-appear on the left to try and make a tackle.

The manual even mentions this as a viable strategy when you're playing defense.

Driver 3, no question. A shockingly poor game, riddled with outrageous graphical glitches. And not just the flying car. Every time I played that game, I discovered a new glitch. Like the one where you could find people sitting on benches facing the ocean, shoot them in the head and they'd get stuck in an animation loop that made them shuffle all the way across the map - even zooming up into the sky to go over buildings.

Also, the PAL conversion of Knights of the Old Republic had one fatal bug. If you left Tatooine without completing all the missions, you couldn't finish the game - it just locked up on the final movie. That bugged the hell out of me. Hours and hours of gameplay wasted.

WWII Online. That was the glitchiest launch of an online multiplayer game ever. I can't remember a game that was worse than that on it's initial release. Server crashes, lock ups, and hours of waiting just to be able to even log on. On top of all the problems upon it's release, it also required a monthly fee to play. It was a fiasco to say the least.

Good choice with WWII Online, which the developers admit was shipped before it was finished because the publisher needed it on the shelves by a particular date, regardless of whether it was finished or not.

The game's still around and has a following, and a lot of the bugs have been taken care of.

Another notoriously buggy game: Sin. This too was released before it was finished, and it had game-stopping bugs, slow load times, etc. Even after a bunch of patches there were still bugs that make you wonder how they kept missing them. Even the version they released with Sin Episodes still has bugs.

I remember in NBA Hangtime for the SNES if you were playing with white players and paused the game, when you unpaused they would be black.

I haven't played many games lately, so the only one I can think of is Madden 06 for the PS2. The number of gameplay bugs annoys the hell out of me, and I don't understand why any game critic in high right mind will not rate the game very negatively for it.

Sometimes it's fairly obvious things that don't necessarily have a big impact on gameplay, such as tackling a guy from one direction, yet the tackled player goes into an animation which has nothing to do with how he was hit. For instance, a player running with the ball will be tackled by a guy running straight into him behind, and yet his falling animation will be that of a guy somersaulting.

Other problems really hurt the game. There are LOTS of clipping issues with guys' arms going through each other, and when you're receiving that's the biggest load of crap to deal with. Your receiver may be anticipating the ball flying towards him, jump in the air to catch it, and yet the ball will literally pass through his arm and teleport into the hands of a defender who intercepts it.

I even took polaroids once of when the game just totally crapped out on my brother. He was playing when it looked like the training camp mini game he was playing was being held in an alternate universe. The colors were all distorted. It just looked like shit.

Oblivion. Hands-down.

The US release had a nice little problem, too. If you chose Mission to break you out of the Leviathan, and she was stealthed at the time of the rescue, she became unplayable once the other characters were freed, and the game simply froze where her dialogue was supposed to be.

Good thing I picked the little astrodroid to save my ass. He turned out to be quite effective!

And man, everyone likes Mission.

Enter The Matrix was a horrible gaming experience. So much clipping, so many animation glitches, and there was some really bad glitch in the airport level where you couldnt get out of the control tower unless you were in the right quadrant by luck.

Overall, it was a very bad experience.

Tribes 2 was awful upon it's initial release. Even though the hardware specs would have them listed, none of the graphics cards would render the game properly. When I fired it up for the first time, I was greeted with craptastic graphics that looked no better than a PS1 game. And the online play was so dreadful(framerates slowing to a crawl as if it were a slideshow)it wasn't worth taking the time to even log on. Subsequent patches didn't do enough in addressing these issues for me to continue playing after the first several months or so. Which sucks, cause this game should have been great.

I remember spending hours trying to get Doom 3 and Civilzation IV to run with Windows Service Pack 2 installed. And pretty much every suggestion was "Uninstall Service Pack 2." Oh please, don't make your game compatible with the most widespread iteration of the most popular operating system on the planet.

Super Powers 2.

You had to download patches even before you installed the game and it still didn't work all the time.

Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness for the PS2.


Not only did this game suck... the glitches were horrible. I remember playing and falling through the ground. Yes I jumped on the street and fell through the earth into a white vortex and was left hanging in limbo.

So all you could see was Lara hanging around solid white. I could move the camera around her but that was it. I then had to reset and start over.

Outcast. No patch, no install.

Ultima IX. Horribly bugged.

Starship Troopers: The Game. Extremely glitchy.

At least your game works. Mine won't even work. It freezes every game in 2 player action and every other game in single player. The only saving grace is that if you leave it on payoff pitching style it doesn't freeze. That bullshit patch they released a month ago did nothing, and 2k won't do anything about it. There has been an uprising on their forums from gamers complaining about not being able to play the game. Many calls to 2k have gone basically SOL. At least mine worked when I put payoff pitching on, I hate the style for that though and it ruins the principle that the game should fucking work no matter what setting is put on it. Also many gamers' games still don't work when they put payoff pitching on. Also many people have taken their complaints now to the Better Business Bureau but nothing really has come from that. Kush, the developer, seems to have a problem programming for the 360 because from what I have read the same thing happened with NHL2k6 for 360 and nothing was ever done about that game. I used to defend 2k sports many times on here on Chud but as of right now I regret it and they can all rot in hell.

I remember continually having the same problem with Hidden & Dangerous. We'd always see it coming, too. One of our guys would suddenly be knee-deep in ground, and he'd sink a little more every time he moved. We'd have a couple of minutes at that point, and try to get something done before he popped into another dimension.

There were also times that I'd be able to shoot a Nazi in another room because his elbow was poking through the wall. That was handy.

Moreso than Morrowind?

Super Mario Sunshine was not the most glitchy game, but it was certainly uncharacteristically glitchy for a Nintendo game. Lots of falling through solid objects and cameras that would always go nutzoid at the worst moment.

I know for awhile every Rockstar Game that was PS2 exclusive and then ported for XBOX wouldn't work on my XBOX at all. GTA3, Vice City and Manhunt would freeze in the initial loading screens and if I were lucky enough to get to play it wouldn't last long. And it wasn't just the disc as I had the same problem with multiple copies. Hopefully they've fixed that.

Did anyone try Chaser on the PC? It wouldn't install on XP, so you had to download and run a program to allow the installer to work.

Then, it wouldn't install if you had XP with Service Pack 2. The company's advice? Uninstall Service Pack 2 and then install the game.

Another game like that was Project IGI. It wouldn't run properly on certain video cards, even though they're listed as being supported. According to the company's website, the only way to fix this was to "bring the game back to the store and try and get a refund."