Hour of Victory

Many are the things that went wrong with Hour of Victory. See, the game actually had a few glimmers of hope at the very start. It was being developed by Nfusion, a studio that created the underrated Deadly Dozen shooters for the PC some years back, and the game was apparently going to be powered by Unreal Technology 3.0, the same tech that made last year's Gears of War look so impressive in motion.

Here's what actually happened: A disjointed, buggy mess tumbled off the production line and onto store shelves. What was inside: a nonsensical single-player story that jumped around from place to place without any real rhyme or reason, and a class-based gameplay system that seemingly let you play as one of three types of soldier: a sniper, a spy, or a commando who can soak up the most damage. The commando is the best choice in the game by far because the game's enemy soldiers just stand there, staring off into space, as you run right up and hit them with a melee attack that's far more devastating than any sniper rifle. And even if running up and smacking guys in the face might seem to offer some kind of potential for a cheap laugh, the game's many technical bugs and glitches stop cold even the possibility of light amusement, unless you find some kind of enjoyment in getting stuck on a wall or watching a tank mysteriously clip through the ground. Every year there are always new games that you should absolutely not play. For better or for worse, Hour of Victory comes out ahead of the rest to earn this dubious distinction.