I had a PS2 game as a kid (early teenager, maybe?) which I very much enjoyed. It was called Orphen: Scion of Sorcery.
I never finished it(I believe it was a rental or something) but I had fond memories of what I did play, with fun combat and totally cool characters- especially the titular character, who was one edgy dude.
Some time ago, maybe a year or two, I saw the game at a shop and, somewhat surprised and excited, decided to pick it up. A short time later at home I was just sitting stunned before the television, mortified at the terrible tastes my younger self apparently had.
The game I remembered as being fun had the most terribly, terribly clunky gameplay ever, making maneuvering a pain in the arse, and the voice acting was something dragged straight from the pits of hell- those characters I remembered being "interesting" and "cool" blared nonsense out the speakers in squeaky pre-pubescent voices that would make the average CoD player sound mature, and the lead character-- y'know, the edgy badass guy with the mysterious past?-- made the most horrible, cringe-inducing attempt at sounding tough that I quickly turned off the game and fled.
I guess, though, it obviously did appeal to its target audience, i.e my dorky younger self.
I shall throw in a vote for the first Bioshock game, too. The story was fairly interesting, from what I remember, but the combat was repetitive and dull. Towards the end of the game it was literally just a chore, where each thing I had to fight lead to a drawn-out encounter, dancing around the area firing repeatedly into them until they finally dropped dead and allowed me to move on and do it again in the next room.
Looking back I am amazed that I finished it, but then I guess that was before I became so lazy with regard to videogames. :-/
I don't remember too many other really bad games, to be honest. (I'm tempted to bash AC, but I never really played it because I hated it so badly.) I guess Voodoo Vince on the xbox was somewhat of a disappointment gameplay-wise, even if the theme and setting was nice.
Oh, every Crash Bandicoot (my favourite series!) game after Naughty Dog abandoned the franchise- man, that caused me a great deal of distress as a kid.
Those later cash-ins just shat over everything I loved about the games.
While we're talking Naughty Dog, Jak X was truly horrible. Seriously, I was confused- Naughty dog
knows how to make a good racing game- just look at Crash Team Racing on Psone! I cannot understand why they allowed Jak X to hit the shelves. (Wait, hang on, maybe it was done by another company? I don't know, I try not to dig up the painful memories of games like that too often.)
I think I just prefer to remember the good games.