The end result of placing product before craft, something that appears to be Arzest's entire model. It really doesn't matter how good the game is, just get it done under budget and on time. In a way, this has allowed Arzest to weather the volatile state of the modern gaming industry, providing them a sort of unkillable quality reminiscent of Ocean Software. Crank out crap and make enough money to keep going. A Sonic game with bosses that take eight minutes to beat? Yeah man, whatever. Charge 60$ for it and say it's because it's 3D. Read the review here.

It might be a bit of a stretch to include free DLC in the Gremmies, but I have a top three to fill and I didn't play much that left me feeling quite so irritated. The Final Horizon marks the return of Knuckles, Tails, and Amy as playable characters in a 3D Sonic game in almost 20 years... and somehow they all manage control worse than they did in the Adventure games. How is that even possible? The training wheels are off with the trial towers, forcing you to engage with Sonic's poor controls much more directly than in the main game, and any slight mistake will result in you losing a tremendous amount of progress. In my review for Frontiers, I cautioned that Sega could take the ideas and mechanics they introduced in that game and fuck them all up in short order. The Final Horizon doesn't engender confidence that they won't. Read the review here.

Art is often a process of iteration, whether of your own ideas or those that inspire you. And then there's just plain copying. At its most innocuous, Lies of P is borrowing narrative beats from media like Batman, and at its worst it's lifting mechanics and enemies wholesale out of Fromsoft's library. To me, Lies feels like it is designed for the self-aggrandizing subset of Souls fans who think it's the games they play that make them cool. Brutal and cheap, playing to the broad strokes of better work without an ounce of shame. Read the review here.

Determining my Worst Old Game of the Year was far easier than settling on my best. Doom 64 was nearly neck-and-neck with Ridge Racer 4, but Other M is such an obvious answer that the second I remembered playing it, I just disregarded everything else. The controls feel rotten, the Wiimote is barely functional, and Samus is the victim of character assassination from start to finish. Put her in heels and have her ask pretty-please to use her suit's upgrades. Motherhood is the theme of the game, and yet it never feels like a natural part of the story, but rather something that is referenced in increasingly tired and dull ways to make you think Other M has something to say. Hands down worse than any of the other three games on this list. Read the review here.