Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing

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Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
Developer(s)	Stellar Stone LLC
Publisher(s)	GameMill Publishing (2003)
Platform(s)	PC
Release date(s)	November 20, 2003
Genre(s)	Racing
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Everyone
Media	CD
Input methods	Keyboard

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing (often simply referred to as Big Rigs) is a racing game released for PC by Stellar Stone LLC in 2003. Due to its severe lack of functionality on release, the title has received universally negative reviews, with many critics referring to it as the worst video game of all time.

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 Development 3 Reception 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The box of Big Rigs states that the player may "race trucks across the country trying to deliver illegal cargo, with cops chasing [them]." GameSpot's Alex Navarro wrote that this description of the game is nothing more than "horrible, horrible lies"^[1], since there are no police in the game. Additionally he pointed out that the computer-controlled opponent vehicles have no AI and never move from the starting position,^[2] making even the description of the gameplay as a "race" questionable.

There are technically no obstacles for the player to negotiate in Big Rigs, as the truck may freely be driven on and off roads without any loss of traction, up or down 90° slopes with no loss or gain of speed, through structures such as buildings and trees, simply falling right through bridges, and even out of the boundaries of the map into an endless grey void. When the player's vehicle is put into reverse, it can accelerate indefinitely, but the truck will halt instantly when the reverse key is released.^[3]

Though there appear to be five courses from which to choose, only four are playable. The fifth map, titled "Small Town Road", does not work and selecting it crashes the game.^[1]

Upon completion of the race, the player is presented with digital representation of a large three-handled trophy and the text "YOU'RE WINNER !" [sic]^[4] The game occasionally fails to distinguish between whether the player is starting or finishing the race when they pass through the starting point, and so this congratulatory screen may appear within seconds of starting a game, ending the race before it even begins.

Stellar Stone released a patch that addressed some of the game's complaints.^[5] With the patch, the opponent vehicles participate in the race,^[6] but stop before they reach the finish line, making the game still impossible to lose. Small Town Road, the non-functional track, was replaced with an exact mirror image of the first track, Devil Passage 1. Some versions of the patch replaced the "YOU'RE WINNER !" text with "YOU WIN!". Sound effects were also added, and later copies shipped with the patch by default. However, no effort was made to alter the physics of the game, and other common complaints were not addressed.^[6]

[edit] Development

According to Sergey Titov, the person credited as a lead programmer, he licensed his proprietary 3D engine by TS Group Entertainment to Stellar Stone "in exchange for a large chunk of the company", and the game was released in a pre-alpha state. Actual sales figures for the game are unknown, although GameSpot has stated that "perhaps most disgusting of all is that this game actually sold copies. More copies, in fact, than more than half of our finalists in the Best Game No One Played category", the criteria for which is selling fewer than 20,000 copies of the game.^[7]

[edit] Reception

Big Rigs received universally negative reviews. Thunderbolt Games stated, "I wish I could think of some redeeming factors for the game, but there simply aren't any" and gave the game a score of 1/10.^[8] It was also featured on the X-Play "Games You Should Never Buy" segment where Morgan Webb, one of the hosts, described Big Rigs as "the worst game ever made," and refused to even rate it as their 1/5 rating system did not feature a zero score.^[9] Netjak gave the game 0.0, commenting that a preferable negative score was not given because the design of the site wouldn't let the reviewer do so.^[10]

Big Rigs scores an 8 out of 100 on Metacritic, with the only scores higher than 0 being 1, which were given by websites that did not have a 0 score.^[11] This gave Big Rigs the lowest score of any game on Metacritic, on all platforms.^[12] Meanwhile, GameRankings has an average score of 3.83% making it number one on All-Time Worst.^{[13] [14]}

Alex Navarro of GameSpot declared that Big Rigs is "as bad as your mind will allow you to comprehend."^[1] Also he said in his review "Please do not play this game. We cannot stress this enough." In the special Halloween "Frightfully Bad Games" video, Navarro stated, "This game received the lowest score in the history of GameSpot, a 1.0. And by lowest, I mean it can't go any lower. We don't hand out zeros, but maybe we should have for Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing." In GameSpot's "Best and Worst of 2004" awards, Big Rigs was given the "Flat-out Worst Game" award, despite the fact that the game was actually released in 2003. They said that they would use the "YOU'RE WINNER !" trophy as a symbol for the 'Flat-Out Worst Game' award from then on, but by 2005 a more generic logo was used.^[7]

[edit] See also

• Video games notable for negative reception

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing at GameFAQs
• Metacritic review summary
• Big Rigs speechless GameSpot Review