Interesting all the hate for Elite, though, I agree with some of it--especially the boredom. The game is a million miles across but a slip of paper deep. I got 500 hours or so out of it, due to me both buying it upon release and choosing to forgo the boring life of a trader or bounty hunter and jumped straight into robbing, err, ahem, taxing human players in my lowly Viper, and slowly worked my way up to a Clipper. Who says crime doesn't pay? It paid me! Haha!

But then the player pool in Open started to dry up, all the wimps and wusses went Solo or worse, Mobius(talk about sausage party) and alas, robberies were far more wait than rob.

500 hours wasn't bad, I can't complain, and had some of the most thrilling fun online ever while it lasted. But, without the people, and the risk they bring, the game doesn't have much left to give.

Yeah, it's an odd one. It's beautifully realised, but beyond the rare moment of excitement before annihilation, the gameplay is like doing the end of year accounts.

I often don't regret buying a game as much as I do investing hours of my time before coming to the conclusion that it's crap. In those terms No Man's Sky is the worst offender, without any doubt. I've never felt so mislead by the pre-release hype and let down so much by the result. A budget indie game dressed up as AAA.

I'm another one who got bored with Elite. Loved the setting and the flying, but the lack of depth in the gameplay made the grind intolerable after a while. The way new stuff - like the aliens I occasionally read about - are added every now and then feels very arbitrary, but I can understand why that's necessary from a development point of view.

GR Wildlands was bought in the recent sale and is the only game I've ever requested a refund for. That might not have turned out to be too bad, but initial impressions were that it wasn't worth my trouble finding out.

Never pre-ordered anything, no kick starter etc. Sucker Bet if you ask me....

Kinda PO'd about the direction Eve online took. They pretty much mismanaged at least half their customer base away.

Still skill training for free but down to only about 100B net worth. Haven't undocked a ship in months.

Might go full pirate whenever I have the time to play...dunno.

The only game I participated in early access was ARMA 3. I new there was no way I would ever not buy it.

Holy crap, I forgot about Nether lol. I played it for a bit then just shelved it and never looked back. It wasnt bad but it wasnt good either.

Two "worsts" for me. Only one is a sim.

1) Tabula Rasa - I bought this JUST before the announcement the game would be closing. I was so disgusted I never even bothered to install it. I never even opened the box.
2) Mechwarrior Online - I bought a Founder's package, hoping they would deliver the game they promised. PGI "released" the game while it was still in beta testing. They started charging for ingame items, which was (and should ALWAYS be) unheard of. After a couple years, I got disgusted and left, never to return. Most of the features they promised STILL weren't in the game. I have less than one hour actual ingame time.



-Irish

In terms of game itself - CFS3. After months of screwing with it trying to make it run even half decent I finally BURNED the discs - as in combustion.

But the actual worst was a DRM incident - F.E.A.R. Never even got to play it. I got flat out ripped off on that one.

It was around that time I finally learned (and not just with PC games, but with almost anything in life) to never buy "version 1.0" of anything, and never be an early adopter.

I was a "beta tester" for a LOT of things up until my mid thirties.

Now I wait. My time on this earth is running out, and I refuse to spend my precious time (and money!) on headaches. My money only goes where a great reputation has already been established by the people willing to go through what I used to go through.

The two worst games that stand out for me were:

Battlecruiser 3000, at least it was free and even at that it was a price too high, never ever got the thing to run.

X-Rebirth (Stillbirth?) It's one redeeming feature was the nice music.

Cliffs of Dover. With it's pedigree and hype, caused so much outrage when first released.
There was another Flight Sim that hijacked a reputable name, Jane's Fighter something; so awful my mind has blocked the trauma of remembering the title.

Jane's Advanced Strike Fighters? I dodged that one luckily.

Cliffs of Dover was no doubt a huge disappointment. I uninstalled it after about 7-8 hours of game time.

Ugh,I think I paid around £25 for my copy. I don't understand why DS has a hate campaign against Star Citizen.I know I like to moan about Star Citizen a little,but when I look at what that gave me for my £55,even in its current state,it's head and shoulders above the POS DS delivered.

I would suggest reinstalling and toggle the teamfusion beta. The tf beta improves it a lot.

Isn't the teamfusion beta almost exclusively for head to head MP. I don't even think it adds the cooperative mode that the IL-2 series had.

I got my copy as a freebie with a Creative Video Blaster DVD drive and MPG video card, those I still have and they still work unlike the POS BC30k. I remember the hype around the BC game at the time and it was one of those it can do it all: Fly a spaceship; run and gun on the ground and fly around in between, great idea but sadly the product was not up to the hype.

SC does have it's own problems, but as you say, it is a better game now than BC ever was. I think DS' problem is that Chris Roberts is doing what he can not, SC is what DS wanted to make but didn't have the skill, his one talent is trolling.

Maybe you are thinking of Jane's Attack Squadron. It went through several developers and publishers and took so long to get to market that it was in shambles by that time and dated looking to boot. I had forgotten about it until you mentioned a Jane's title. I gave it a go, but after 10 or 12 hours of buggy play with questionable flight physics, I gave up.

CFS 3, already mentioned by Zamzow, was another horrible release--especially since version 1 and 2 were decent. It's amazing that modders were able to take the engine and turn it into OFF.

I also bought Battlecruiser 3000 and couldn't get it to run. This was back in the day with Electronics Boutique was still a business and would take returns on PC games for store credit. I took it back the day after I bought it.


Cheers

Ah I forgot Jagdverband '44: Screaming Eagles. A friend gave me that and I never spoke to him again!

haha priceless.
We have a winner!

Back then Sierra had a 30 day exchange policy. I mailed back my Outpost to Sierra and had them exchange it for Aces of the Deep.

Bad game purchase for me recently was Miscreated. Was watching a twitch streamer play it and he said it was "totally worth it" so I bought it. It's just like DayZ and is pretty much a clone of DayZ.