I am a huge fan of games involving zombies (I’m also a sucker for games involving jet packs). I am COMPELLED to play any zombie game, be it Resident Evil, Left 4 Dead or Atom Zombie Smasher (great indie game, by the way). Naturally when the first Dead Island teaser video came out showing the infection of a little girl using a nonlinear sequence presentation, I was hooked. I have been waiting eagerly ever since to play this game. Unfortunately, despite the release of the game on Steam, I am still eagerly waiting to play this game. So with no game to review due to its extreme bugginess, I have to occupy my time in another manner, so I present to you:

The 10 Buggiest (released) Games of All Time

10. Vampire: Bloodlines

Released in 2004, Bloodlines was one of the first games (other than Half Life 2) to use the source engine. At the time, the game showed a lot of promise, running the unique role playing system made by White Wolf.

Too bad that the game was ridden with bugs, where simple actions such as saving and reloading broke the scripting of a level. There are also many game breaking bugs that caused many frustrating CTDs. Since then, the game has received numerous patches that have made the game much more playable, but Bloodlines has been forever tainted with the reputation of being a buggy game.

9. Ultima IX: Ascension

Released by EA in 1999, Ultima IX: Ascension was supposed to be a new major title in the franchise, boasting of a seamless world with vastly improved graphics over previous titles.

This was the dark ages during the draconian EA video game sweat shop days, and the game showed its rough edges at release. From unresponsive critical NPCs to extremely glitchy graphics, Ultima 9 has disenchanted many gamers, new and old alike. The Ultima series never recovered, with Ultima X being cancelled by EA 4 years later.

8. NHL2k6

NHL2k6 game froze, a lot (haha, get it?). From constantly losing your profile to wrong players being credited for goals (simply due to the fact that they were closer to the goal), this game makes #7 on our list. And what was the official response from 2K sports about these issues? “Reformat your hard drive.”

7. Shadowbane

This MMORPG was released by Ubisoft in 2003, before they became better known for their draconian DRM.

The first release of the game had so many bugs that the servers routinely performed player wipes to cut back on the rampant cheating. It didn’t help. On top of that, the game was extremely laggy and was filled with in game bugs. Surprisingly, it stuck around until 2009 before it was finally killed.

6. Fallout: New Vegas

Even though Bethesda games are extremely entertaining and unique, they also have quite the reputation for being slightly wormy. And even among Bethesda games, Fallout New Vegas stands head and shoulders above the rest.

For a game that is built upon a 9 year old engine, the game sure was buggy. New Vegas has an extremely large amount of CTDs, glitchy quests, and severe clipping of objects (such as radscorpions stuck in the ground) on release. Never fear! The modding community has been hard at work updating and working on their unofficial patch mod, which seems to be the prerequisite for every recently released Bethesda game.

5. Enter the Matrix

Based on the Matrix movie (Trilogy? What trilogy?), Enter the Matrix featured the slow action stylish kung fu that has become a trademark of the movie.

The game was released in such a shambled state that Electronic Gaming Monthly gave it this review: “In more than 20 years of playing games, I have never seen a console game as obviously unfinished and rushed to market as Enter the Matrix. … This game is a complete mess, and that’s the only thing complete about it.”(EGM, August. 2003).

Despite the appeal of a Wachowski Brother’s directed game and the awesomeness that is Kung Fu, the game featured many CTDs, stuttering, and graphics glitches that made it utterly unimpressive at best and completely unplayable at worst.

4. Dead Island

And now we come full circle to discuss Dead Island. Right now many Dead Island players on Steam, such as myself, are finding out that an unfinished version of the game may have been released. OOPS!

From being unable to start up the game to constant stutters, and the discovery of a built in no clip feature built right into the released product, Dead Island definitely deserves to be in the top 10 of the most buggiest games of all time. And thus, like many other eager zombie fans, we must wait breathlessly as Deep Silver scrambles to fix this mess so an actual review can be made.

3. The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

I remember many a night where I would be playing this game and then end up being stuck in a hole somewhere in a dungeon where the quest objective did not exit. In fact, the glitches and bugs were so bad in Daggerfall that an eventual patch was made that allowed the players to use commands to teleport themselves around.

Despite the game being extremely buggy, I have many fond memories of this game as the game world was massive, perhaps one of the biggest ever single player game in existence. It has, since then, received a lot of patches and is now in a semi playable state. Now if you would excuse me, I have to go give it another shot…

2. Battlecruiser 3000AD

The game that started one of the biggest flame wars in the history of Usenet, lasting over several years and resulting in 70,000 posts.

Battlecruiser 3000AD supposedly incorporated neural networking to perform the AI tasking within the game, somewhat of a ridiculous claim considering it was released in 1995, when top of the line CPUs roared at a whopping 100 mhz. What was really released was a game that crashed constantly with every action you took and where you could not advance past the second mission because it was structured in such a way that it cannot possibly ever end.

1. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing.

And the winner is...

Buggiest game of all time, folks. From unlimited reverse speeds to going up a 90 degree vertical climb and constant CTDs, this Youtube review demonstrates it all: