• Top 5 Worst Video Game Related Websites of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 134 Comments
  Last Updated:: May 4, 2008

  Video game websites, like most theme focused sites (e.g. music websites), are a dime a dozen. Everywhere you go, you can find an opinion on video games with an equal amount of bitterness and approval. Some of these websites though, are clearly in the opinion market for other reasons. Some have seen the success of other websites and blatantly copied these originals. Some have even designed multiple websites with contradicting opinions in order to start fake console wars. Some of the most shameful acts from video game related websites have come from those sites who have cowered to public opinion and advertising money by only giving positive reviews to certain video games. One can see with their own eyes how a review went from a 5.0 to a 9.0 after one week, and how after that week, there was an advertisement for the game right next to the new rating. While we certainly don’t want to sound sanctimonious with our video game website ethics, we do realize that there are limits. For one, once a video game has been rated and reviewed, its over and done, even if we disagree with it later. That’s the beauty of writing in the present; we can look back and see how much we agreed or disagreed with our opinions from the past. This hope for a more pure writing and reviewing style has been guided by all these next websites who copy, change, and cower to other outside forces. The lack of any substantial writing from these websites is a signifier to their other motivations.

  5. The Irate Gamer dot com

  The Irate Gamer has won his success from copying the same fundamental formula as the Angry Video Game Nerd. With this in mind, it was absolutely disingenuous for him to criticize Mario 2 for being a copy of Dokie Dokie Panic. His criticizing of Mario 2 was unfounded beyond the disingenuous nature of this theme though. His criticism of the game was often marked by an inordinate amount of pejorative adjectives with nothing substantial back it up. No one understands why he hates Birdo so much, but for some reason he just gets ticked off at having to fight this affable monster. This type of unfounded criticism pervades all his reviews though, even beyond Mario 2. His review of Contra shows no in depth knowledge of a game that was easy to understand after two tries. His review of Q*bert shows that he had no sense for the inner simplicity in certain arcade games. All in all, The Irate Gamer seems to just be looking for something to bitch about with the least amount of real reasoning as humanly possible. The comic relief needed to support this adventure would have to be large, but he fails to deliver in this area relative to that which he is perennially trying to copy from. It’s sometimes understood that a good formula never needs to be screwed with. The Irate Gamer saw this and developed off of the success of the Angry Video Game Nerd. The only problem though, was that it was clearly worse than the original, making his forays into gaming criticism superfluous.

  4. Sega Nerds dot com

  It’s strange that there is even a fan site for a video game company who has perennially failed at making good systems and any memorable games for that matter. Seganerds is the last vestige of anyone who wants something to believe in that has no force. They treat Sonic like a hero without realizing how average the Sonic games actually were. New versions of Golden Axe and Streets of Rage are heralded as big news on the website, while clearly being of no matter to anyone else. They continually post articles that face Nintendo off with Sega without realizing that Nintendo doesn’t even recognize Sega anymore as a serious contender in the video game market. Only in the minds of Seganerds is there a console war between Sega and Nintendo. This one time battle for everyone else was swept away in the early 90’s when the Genesis was dominated by the SNES. The acolytes of Seganerds like to make paralogistic arguments. One of these for example is that the only reason why people didn’t like the Sega Saturn was because it wasn’t cool compared to the other systems in the market at that time. Nowhere do they realize that the Sega Saturn did not have one great game in its entire catalogue. When you read some of the opinions from Seganerds, nowhere do you find substantial arguments regarding the games they ostensibly love. Instead, all we get are defensive opining regarding apparitions of console battles. One must wonder who would be a Seganerd. How could anyone prefer Sonic over Super Mario World? Who in their right mind would defend Sega over Nintendo after playing games like Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy 3? Maybe they haven’t played these games, or maybe they just have bad taste in video games.

  3. Gamespot dot com

  Gamespot has lost mettle due to it’s servility towards advertisers and video game makers. The amount of favorably reviewed games on Gamespot goes to show that Gamespot is not a website for unbiased reviews of new games, but merely an advertising agency for new games, no matter how poor they are. There has been recent controversy over the firing of employees for not giving favorable reviews. While Gamespot at first denied these rumors, they were further corroborated by other employees who left the company for reasons of apostasy. This lightweight character of Gamespot carries over beyond the actual reviews by the employees. Anyone who has any animosity toward a game on their forums tends to be banned. Calling someone a “moron” will get you banned, making only the softest of video game nerds comfortable in Gamespot’s setting. Beyond these puerile tendencies, Gamespot has been notorious for making mistakes in their reviews that they have of course always quickly corrected. There have been errors from games as diverse as Metroid Prime Hunters (mistaking the multi-player mode) to Geometry Wars (which stated the game did not support multi-player action which was obviously incorrect). Most of the changes on the website reviews though came from a certain group not liking the score a game had received or advertisers not liking a low rating. This pressure led Gamespot to soften up its writing and led them to accept everything as at least good. This leveling down of standards in reviewing games has made Gamespot one of the weaker video game websites. Their reviews are not to be taken seriously with the knowledge of their past mistakes and slavish mentality towards anyone who disagrees with them.

  2. Sony Defense Force dot com

  The staff, and the fanboys on the forums at SonyDefenseForce are purposely blind to anything other than what is made by Sony in the video game market. They support Sony to such extremes that they clearly don’t play any of the games they consider on the bad side of the video game market. Anything that’s not the lackluster PS3 they hate to excessive lengths. They berate the Nintendo Wii without ever having played any of the games thoroughly. The Xbox takes this same punishment with unwitting phrases that float away lacking in any weight. This all seems like a typical fan boy site until one realizes that the owner of Sonydefenseforce also owns wii60 dot com. When one realizes this, they realize that Sonydefenseforce has no real conviction in defending Sony over Nintendo, but an interest in trying to get popular by creating console wars they don’t believe in themselves. This type of action should make both websites completely ignored. Video game websites that aren’t interested in telling their honest opinions on games and systems should not be taken seriously. That there is a market for video game websites has guided the authors on these websites more than anything. Reviewing Super Mario Galaxy and giving it a 1/10 and at the same time writing a new positive article about it on his other Wii site points to the real motivation of this rapacious website marketers. The best thing to happen for the video game reader is for them to realize that this type of stuff probably happens more than they think. A slight skepticism going into reading video game websites like this will go a long way into making this type of website completely ignored and understood as inconsequential.

  1. IGN dot com

  IGN is the worst video game website for a plethora of reasons. First off, if you’re not a member, don’t even bother going there. You can’t go to half the places on their website if you’re not an insider. Even more annoying than this, you can’t post a topic on IGN without being a member. You take time to write a thoughtful post on IGN and as soon as you press submit, you are greeted with an advertisement cajoling you into having to be a member in order to post on their forum. This is slightly disrespectful. Beyond this haughty “members only” disposition, IGN seems to only want to make opinions rather than give accurate outlooks on video games from the past and present. For example, look at their review of the Atari 2600. Their acrimony towards games for the Atari 2600 only included the first generation games. Their ignorance of all the games that came after the first games showed their want to only make opinions rather than give a fair outlook on the whole gaming system. On top of this, they don’t seem to realize that video games are relative to their technology of the day. Their criticism of Atari’s graphics screams of amateurism taking precedence at IGN. Further beyond their ignorance in understanding the movement in the history of video games, they fall to the same type of problems that Gamespot suffers from. They will contradict themselves with games they say they love one day, and hate the next. These examples are conspicuous. Anyone who wasted their money on being a member and reading their reviews will see these contradictions consistently. One must wonder whether pecuniary interests guide these accepted contradictions. One must wonder who contacts IGN to give favorable reviews of games that just a month ago they repudiated. With all these facts in mind, IGN comes across as an extremely shallow video game website. It’s peculiar that they are one of the most popular video game websites on the internet. They have probably just perfected the cowardly formula of trying to make everyone happy at the sake of their own self-dignity.
  
  

134 Comments

1. #1 old-wizard.com sucks says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 9:05 pm

   Dude, your list suck, just like the others. in fact, your whole site sucks, you should appear in that list. GameSpot and IGN kick your ass.
2. #2 Osama says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 1:59 pm

   You guys should just come out and say your Nintendo fanboys. It’s obvious enough for all your readers…
3. #3 George says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:00 am

   Nintendo is so much better than Sega, it’s mind boggling. Sega sucks, and not just in a little way. Remember when you saw Epic Movie, that’s how much Sega sucks. Sonic is irritating, Tails is even more irritating, Soul Calibur is the most overrated game ever, and Sega has not produced a decent game in 5 years at least. The worst part about IGN and Gamespot is that they have first priority in Google, and IGN has not given one major game a score below 7.0, (Soulcalibur Legends and any new Sonic game are not major games). They shall burn forever for their bias, and the thousands of commercials they force us to sit through.
4. #4 Jasmine says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:53 am

   It would seem that unbiased, original, non-tardish gaming sites can be few and far between. It’s a shame, really.
   [Good to see we didn't make it =PP]

   And again, kudos for an ace write up ^_^
5. #5 Dav says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 6:03 am

   Why is old-wizard not on this list?
6. #6 craig says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:02 am

   no offense but you seem to have made a mistake. while sega made a lot of mistakes. they did have their moments.
   I prey that you don’t forget that you have a few sega Genisis games on your top 100 list my favorite being ecco.
   also sega may have been before their time but they were the ones who first attempted online gameplay. a thing that nintendo has also had its problems with.

   but don’t get me wrong I am not a sega fanboy. I use emulators the only actual gaming consoles i own are my n64 Ps2 and My computer that acts as a ds xbox saturn dreamcast nes snes and arcade as well as many other systems.
7. #7 Ky-Guy says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 12:18 am

   I should have known that IGN would be at #1 on that list. In fact, there is this obnoxious-as-hell gray block that covers half of a page there. I found out that the only way to get rid of it is to download Firebug on Firefox, activate it, click “Inspect”, go over the gray block, and delete this part of the code that says “AdsHotContent”. That is the only way to see anything there anymore.

   But why am I telling you all that? Nobody will ever go there after reading this article.
8. #8 shay says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 9:44 pm

   Old-wizards is a bit of a laugh and completely fucking harmless…

   There are more important things in life than giving out online to anonymous fuckwits…
9. #9 Gunsn1per says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 1:44 pm

   This list is so hilarious…And it’s even funnier because of comments the people posted here. XD
10. #10 tim says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 1:21 am

    So you can’t fork over some dough to post? I won’t, but it doesn’t make it the worst site. AND FOR THE :AST FUCKING TIME, SDF IS RUN BY THE GUY WHO DOES WII60.COM!!!
11. #11 Matt says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 2:03 pm

    It’s probably wasted on you guys but whatever.

    The person who started Wii60.com “Razoric or Rob Foor” handed over control of the site to staff members who had joined the forums from various locations. He then went on to create SDF. But guess what? What Kotaku and the other haters never mentioned because they never bothered to care is that Razoric has never had any influence in the writing or releasing of any stories/reviews on Wii60 if not SDF as well and when it became unveiled that Razoric owned both sites it was as big of a shock to the writers, editors and staff at Wii60 as it was to anyone else.

    So while Razoric created both sites purely for ad revenue the staff of at least Wii60 had no knowledge of this and had no connection with the SDF staff. While you may disagree with their opinions the articles and reviews posted on Wii60 were entirely genuine and without ulterior motive. When the staff realized the truth about Razoric and the SDF many of them resigned and stopped supporting the site and when Razoric showed up at Wii60 for the first time in almost a year using his admin control to force something of his own design onto the front page without consulting the editors, the rest of the staff resigned their editorial duties which is why the front page and review columns haven’t been regularly updated in nearly 8 months.

    The more you know, eh? So stop hating on genuine game fans who were unfortunate enough to be duped into supporting a site made by a crook because when you spread hate and lies about Wii60 you weren’t hurting Razoric or his ad revenue which he shared with none of the actual content providers at Wii60; you are hurting the genuine gamers who took a volunteer position at Wii60 to exercise a creative outlet when they were given the chance to have their work posted my a once popular site.

    I’m not blaming you for these inaccuracies, I blame Kotaku who decided to publish their half-story about Wii60/SDF/Razoric without giving any thought to who the half-truths would affect simply because it was the hottest topic on a slow news day. But it would do you well to either retract your statements or at the very least not continue to perpetrate hatred towards the undeserving.
12. #12 KarmaRocketX says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 9:27 pm

    This. Is the greatest article ever written.

    Every word of this was incredibly true.

    Also, I can only laugh at the stupidity of many of these comments here. Many of the comments here against this article are a good indication as to why these aforementioned horrible sites exist.

    Simply because many of the morons you see criticizing this article, display everything that is wrong with gamers, today, themselves.

    From the complete and fanboyish immaturity of 7 year old commenters unable to accuratly form coherent thoughts as to explaining why this article has upset their pathetic, feeble minds, left with with INTERNET RAGE at someone with a well-written article of opinions that differ than their own fanboy stupidity….

    ….to those that try so hard to again, fanboyishly defend these sites so hard that they make themselves sound like ignorant dumbshit…

    All of the baseless and criticizing of this well-written and absolutely necessary article really accomplishes is making those that are complaining about it look even worse than the awful websites in question.

    I find it funny that you took so much time and effort to actually back-up your opinions for the article with very good points, and all those that criticize this article can do is say “YORU ARTICEL MEAKS ME TEH ANGREYYY!!!”

    That is the power of the truth with which this article shines.

    First off, this article is the best i’ve ever seen in all my days as a gamer being forced to see these same worthless and pathetic sites, when all I want to see is a straightforward, honest, interesting website minus all of the fanboyishness and stupidity rampant on them (or perpetrated purposefully by them)

    However, you are missing one very, very notable omission, which I must point out.

    Screwattack.com.

    Screwattack, I dare say, could very well overtake the deservedly horrible IGN.com as a definite #1 worst gaming website ever.

    Screwattack is a website that suffers a repeat of all of the problems encountered on the other sties on this list… but magnafied many times over.

    They not only seem incredibly smarmy and proud at having an identity, as unfunny, obnoxious, self-serving, self-congratulatory, drama-creating assholes… but also take this same approach at mocking shows like X-Play for being the VERY SAME THING. The hypocrisy staggers the mind.

    In the midst of this, you will rarely, if ever see anything, relevant to the gaming industry or the gaming community anywhere on their website besides these things.

    Unless of course, you also mean to include “relevancy” as their obvious bias, and constant alienation of others with opinions formed almost completly out of ignorance, staffed by wanna-be fanboys-in-sheeps-clothing “comedians” who are blissfully unaware of just how incredibly unfunny they truly are.

    With an astounding number of jokes that are not funny, “staffers” devoid of interestin or worthwhile personalities, that do little more than seem to mock shows like “X-Play” by essentially being exactly as obnoxious and ignorant as the X-Play hosts, all the while.

    But of course, their fanboyism can’t help but be mentioned. From their complete dismissal, jabs and insults at whatever gaming company they feel hasn’t met their ridiculous standards that week, their instigation of other internet drama between other sites, and such other purposefully-drama-creation traps as “madden bashing” and “everythin we say is right, and what we say must reflect your opinion, now please kiss our ass” mentality.

    All the while attempting to do this with incredibly biased, off-the-mark, painfully unfunny “Top 10″ lists, filled, the other 98% of the time with their self-congradulatory, self-advertisin “We’re so awesome for no particular reason” crap. Screwattack.com is a horrible fucking website and a pox to the gaming community, far more than IGN.com.

    Screwattack takes everything wrong with the gaming community and turns it into one big list of “How to fail at everything all at once”
13. #13 aiman says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 6:54 pm

    I agree with the list. What was Sony defense thinking giving mario galaxy a 1? What was that for? I like sony but did they make the site just to show false points of views of Sony? I own galaxy which a may admit is easy but is in fact A FUN GAME that has THE best graphics on the wii that is a appropiate sequal to sunshine and mario 64.

    I also agree for having gamespot considering
    they give good reviews only to games that are fps with big names. What confused me the most was one time, i looked in a gamespot magazine which gave halo a 8. Next month, halo had a 9.5 supporting the fact the reviewer who gave a 8 was fired.

    The irate gamer completly plagurised the avgn a million times using the same idea with same text. He also gave a bad review to contra…wait what? Contra! He couldn’t tell that the game was about an alien war from the cover. Doesn’t a person pick from the cover? And he also couldn’t figure that you are supposed to let the laser go of to the enemie before launching another round. Considering he showed that in his review, it didn’t made the game look bad, but rob.
14. #14 avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 8:21 pm

    ya IGN is #1 worst!!
15. #15 avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:28 pm

    the irate gamer also gave a bad review to megaman, mario 3, TMNT & Zombies Ate My Neighbours.
16. #16 avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:37 pm

    karmarocketX:Screwattack a fanboy website? what? the user top 10s I don’t always agree with, but I like them and same with the screwattack top 10s. actually I would call it best gaming website. I like Gamespot, what was it doing there? I agree w/ the article on everything else though.
17. #17 avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:41 pm

    I would have suggested OW if it were specifically a gaming website.
18. #18 avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:53 am

    to all you ppl who are asking where old-wizard is on the list, OLD-WIZARD IS NOT A GAMING WEBSITE so THAT is why it is not here.
19. #19 avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 11:08 am

    secret of mana and ff3 r made by squaresoft, not nintendo. the sega saturn and sega dreamcast failed for 3 reasons, 1.bernie stolar 2.32X 3.PS1. it had nothing to do w/ game library. (P.S. I’m a Nintendo fanboy so don’t call me a Sega fanboy.) The Genesis is the 4th greatest console ever made after PS2, NES and SNES. I don’t even care if you hate sega. my problem is that you can’t get past it. whenever you see something made by sega, you just say it sucks
20. #20 avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:03 pm

    the IG did not give a bad review to contra. he said that it was awesome (which it is), he said the enemies could get frustrating (which they could), he said it was very hard (which it is). he’s a game reviewer for god’s sake. a reviewer is supposed to say the good and bad about the game. he is actually a pretty good reviewer when he sounds normal. when he has a weird, deep voice, he sucks, but in other videos, I actually think he is pretty good. i am sick of all this AVGN vs. IG stuff. why can’t you like them both? I went to Sega-Nerds and they are not a bad website. Gamespot reviews aren’t the greatest, but what about the gamespot forums? THE WORST:SDF and IGN.
21. #21 Avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    hey, try reveiwing any of the games AVGN reveiwed without copying every single word of his review. I bet you can’t do it.
22. #22 Avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 2:20 am

    KarmaRocketX, if you Had actually been to Screwattack, I doubt you’d say any of that.
23. #23 Avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 2:25 am

    here’s how the AVGN copied: the Irate Gamer started his reviews in 04. the AVGN started in 06.
24. #24 Logan says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 6:13 am

    “Nowhere do they realize that the Sega Saturn did not have one great game in its entire catalogue. When you read some of the opinions from Seganerds, nowhere do you find substantial arguments regarding the games they ostensibly love. Instead, all we get are defensive opining regarding apparitions of console battles. One must wonder who would be a Seganerd. How could anyone prefer Sonic over Super Mario World? Who in their right mind would defend Sega over Nintendo after playing games like Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy 3? Maybe they haven’t played these games, or maybe they just have bad taste in video games.”

    And I really must wonder if you guys are really as ignorant as you make yourselves out to be. Not a single great game on the Sega Saturn?

    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/198258-panzer-dragoon-saga/index.html
    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/198201-nights-into-dreams/index.html
    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/198389-radiant-silvergun/index.html
    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/573960-guardian-heroes/index.html
    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/198623-shining-force-iii/index.html
    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/197149-dragon-force/index.html
    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/375831-virtua-fighter-2/index.html
    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/198551-saturn-bomberman/index.html
    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/573998-sega-rally-championship/index.html
    http://www.gamerankings.com/saturn/574569-princess-crown/index.html

    How could someone prefer Sonic the Hedgehog to Super Mario World? Because they play completely differently. I personally prefer Sonic because I favor its speed, controls, implementation of puzzles, and special stages compounded with more superficial reasons such as the fact that I find its soundtrack and visuals more pleasing to me personally.

    And Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy III weren’t even made by Nintendo, so what relevance do they have in the matter?

    I personally find Sega Nerds hard to follow because they seem to believe that Sega-Sammy is still composed of the masters who worked at the company from the mid-eighties to the early 2000’s. The argument that the Sega of old isn’t worth praising, however is nothing more than stupid, ignorant trolling.

    Leave the damn people alone, you’re not cool for trying to make people feel stupid for enjoying more aggressive gameplay than Nintendo offers.
25. #25 Avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    the cover of a game is often misleading.
26. #26 Avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 3:20 pm

    you guys combine every problem you listed with any of these websites together.
27. #27 Avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 12:06 am

    my mistake! the ”deep-voice IRATE gamer” is actually an IRATE parody called ”Irateqaner!” and saying Gamespot didn’t belong on the list was a mistake.
28. #28 Patrick says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 2:58 am

    Why isn’t this website listed? lol
29. #29 Danielle [a7x forever] says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 2:29 pm

    You’re dumb. IGN and GAMESPOT own this site; by so much. This site should be listed there instead of IGN for sure.
30. #30 Blade says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 12:27 pm

    I dont mind your list…I am a Nintendo fan myself, but my one problem with your list is that you did the very thing you criticized the other websites for doing by bashing Sega like that…I agree Irate Gamer is pathetic, IGN and Gamespot, as well as the other two sites are all horrible sources, you bashed sega, and showed bias for Nintendo…dont get me wrong, I prefer Nintendo to everything, and the only reason I am pointing this out is because you pointed it out in each one…Sonic was not just an average game…you left out the fact that way back, Sonic was the second most known video game character next to Mario…
    On a side note however…I must laugh at Sega’s feeble attempts at keeping the Genesis alive with the 32x and the Sega CD…