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When people pay a decent amount of money for a game, the last thing they want is the game to not even launch. However, while there are masterpieces, there are indeed some expensive failures out there garnished with glitches. With that being said, here are five of the best-rated and five of the worst-rated $60 games on Steam.
10 Total War: Warhammer II | Best (92% Positive)
Total War: Warhammer II is a high-fantasy RTS game that features four factions, each with very distinct strengths and weaknesses. The game may seem overwhelming at first, but put some patience into it, and it turns into one of the most dynamic war games ever made. The game combines turn-based mechanics with huge real-time battles. Grand sieges, cunning diplomacy, and unique faction-based abilities are some of the few things to micromanage in this majestic RTS game. With a steep learning curve, Warhammer II is something players can sink years into and still discover new effective strategies. Now, moving on to the worst-rated $60 games.
9 Tennis World Tour | Worst (41% Positive)
Tennis World Tour shows exactly how far we’ve come from the innovative Pong. However, though Tennis World Tour accurately depicts world-class players with visual candy graphics to boot, they fell hard with their clunky and buggy mechanics. The base game may not be $60, but their Legends Edition is well over that price. If a sports game has users reporting that their character tends to ignore the ball, then that sports game needs more time in development.
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Players are better off playing tennis in GTA V than to struggle with a buggy rally. There is an effort to innovate with Tennis World Tour outside the most basic tennis mechanics in an attempt to recreate a proper tennis experience for gamers. Sadly, the game was just too ambitious with a sports market dominated by football, basketball, and wrestling fans.
8 Dark Souls III | Best (93% Positive)
Deemed as one of the most challenging games of all time, the Dark Souls franchise is a huge mountain filled with huge bosses and an even more gargantuan sense of achievement. With Dark Souls III, the enemies are impressively varied, each with their own character design, special abilities, and attack pattern. Players can choose to play from 10 classes, giving the game its much-needed replayability. Though the combat mechanics are the basic attack, parry, and roll; they have to be masterfully executed in order to demolish one-hit killing enemies. This earns the game one of the most dedicated skill-based communities in gaming, thus an impressive Steam rating.
7 Monkey King: Hero Is Back | Worst (41% Positive)
When an adventure game lacks in the combat system department, chances are, it wouldn’t feel like an adventure. Monkey King: Hero Is Back is based on the 2015 Chinese film of the same name. It features the adventures of Chinese legend, Sun Wukong, animated for a family-friendly appeal. Though Monkey King has an impressive art style with beautiful graphics to boot, the adventure isn’t as engaging as the 1985 Super Mario. Voice acting is horrendous, levels are repetitive, and beating enemies to a pulp doesn’t feel satisfying. The base game is $40, but the deluxe edition of the game goes up to $65.
6 Rise Of The Tomb Raider | Best (93% Positive)
Lara Croft has come a long way from polygon abomination to a photo-realistic heroine. Rise Of The Tomb Raider is a graphically stunning game that takes adventure to the next level. Like the other games in the Tomb Raider franchise, players take control of Croft as she scales difficult terrain, fights off baddies, solves puzzles, and makes the most epic of jumps as the bridge she’s on collapses. Traversing the different areas of the world is an exhilarating fun to dive in. This, partnered with unparalleled visuals, make this game a favorite among gamers both new and seasoned to the franchise.
5 Madden NFL 21 | Worst (37% Positive)
EA’s Madden franchise has gone from being one of the best sports games of all time to a dump everyone passionately craps on. Madden 21 is the epitome of everything gamers hate and despise about EA. Not Battlefront 2, but Madden 21. For years, EA has been giving gamers the same game annually over and over again through Madden. Madden 21 is where they crossed the line. Madden 21 is a blatantly recycled product from last year with the same exact 3D assets, the same exact animations, and the same exact menu interface. On top of that, the game is completely unplayable with game-breaking bugs everywhere. As if that wasn’t enough, EA had the gall to put microtransactions in this.
4 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice | Best (93% Positive)
Like Dark Souls, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a challenging slasher game set in Sengoku era Japan that places players in an atmosphere dynamically changing between calm and soothing to action-packed tense. The huge bosses in the game have players trying and trying again, learning different strategies to slay the Goliath along the way. Just getting around with a grappling hook in the beautifully crafted world is awe to behold.
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With regard to combat, players are given a wide array of abilities to chain together, creating impactful attacks. There are very specific counters for specific attacks. Players have to have a keen eye for what type of attack the boss will pull off, and must counter accordingly. With that said, the swordsman experience in Sekiro is unlike any other.
3 Fast & Furious Crossroads | Worst (35% Positive)
Fast & Furious Crossroads has done an amazing movie franchise an unforgivable bad with this abomination of a game. The driving mechanics are bland and the gameplay is not engaging. The Fast & Furious franchise indeed would make a great action racing game that has the potential to rival Need For Speed.
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Unfortunately, Bandai and Slightly Mad have dropped the ball on this one like EA once did Star Wars. With a completion time of only four hours long, it’s a wonder why they charge a whopping $60 for the base game alone.
2 Death Stranding | Best (93% Positive)
Though a “walking-simulator” would seem like an insult for a badly-made game, Death Stranding embraces the nature of it and makes it its central mechanic. In the cataclysmic event known as the death stranding, mankind shelters themselves in underground doomsday bunkers to protect themselves from the horrors. However, packages still need to be delivered and letters still need to be sent. Players play as Sam, a courier for these packages. Death Stranding wants to immerse players in the challenge of delivering these packages amidst a race-ending disaster; so, on top of difficult terrain, the walking mechanics get as clunky depending on how much is in the player’s inventory. No other game has given the fulfilling sense of achievement of walking up a steep incline than Death Stranding does.
1 NBA 2K21 | Worst (23% Positive)
NBA is one of the most glorified and patronized sports leagues out there. The game adaptation, NBA 2K, on the other hand, is inversely one of the worst sports games ever published. For the past four years, NBA 2K couldn’t even get past a 50% positive rating on Steam. 2K’s most recent release, NBA 2K21, is by far the lowest-rated game in the franchise and also the lowest-rated $60 game on Steam today.
NBA 2K21 made some changes to the shooting system which players took with a mixed reception. While some loved the extra skill it required, others found it to be a huge miss. This could have resulted in long time fans of the franchise disliking the game due to the tedious process of re-learning all that previously built-up muscle memory. On top of that, 2K has riddled this game with microtransactions as well. Everything in the game from customization to upgrades has an option for paying a “little extra,” if not grinding ’til sundown.
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