I wrote "that game". Typing the actual name of the game anywhere on the internet triggers a warning light at an undisclosed location, from which hundreds of Secret Agents are dispatched to 'silence' the person writing the name in a bid to finally remove this game from all knowledge.

I believe this is the last we will ever see of Mr Craig Fraser

  Somebody actually bought that piece of worthless s**t???               I'm guessing you were like 6 years old and bugged your mum to buy it for you after you've seen the movie. That's understandable

But above all, you will no longer be known as a Sins of a Solar Empire developer. Craig Frazer will henceforth be known as THE GUY WHO BOUGHT E.T FOR THE ATARI!

Oh crap I mentioned it....

My own top three of games I should never have bought:

1. Double Dragon 5 on SNES - All the previous DD games were great, especially 4. So little dumb me who was like 12 years old shelled out 749 SEK (74,9 Euro) for it and I STILL regret it!!!
2. Galactic Civilizations 2 - Brads exciting development journals made me excited for it and made me buy it without playing the demo first....TBS without tactical combat are boring as hell for me. But I wanted to support a good gamedeveloper company though and for making great A.I so it's not that bad....
3. Universe At War: Earth Assault - I bought it since I wanted achievements and Games For Windows Live scorepoints (yes I want a big e-peen....) and I didn't believe the reviews about "clunky interface" - disregarding them as RTS noobs who don't appreciate games with depth - and I payed the price for it....luckily it only cost me 8.8 euro though so not that much of a loss

This list will make people think that I either haven't understood the topic or is just arrgant but I haven't bought that much PC games and all the consolegames I've bought I've been happy with.

- Empire Earth 3. Easily the most terrible RTS game ever made. Think about how awesome EE2 was. Now wad that thought up, stuff it into your own colon, and pour lye in your eyes. I don't know what that makes of EE2, but that's pretty much what playing this game is like.

- Oblivion. The SINGLE WORST AAA GAME I'VE EVER PLAYED. Now granted, there's probably some buggy fucking piece of shit indy trash titles out there, but the key note is that: I haven't played those, because I avoid games that are probably bad. Oblivion made me completely lose faith in new games and hype. There was not a single aspect of this game that was acceptable. It was like watching my family get raped with FIRE. Count your blessings that I am ending this introspective here and now - I've been known to explode into a bloodwrath reaching multiple pages dissecting this BLIGHT unto gaming. Nobody should like this game. There is not a single redeeming quality here. Bethesda developers are probably the poorest in the industry and should be ashamed of themselves.

- Duke Nukem Forever. Worst preorder ever.

It's right up there with Daikatana.

Anyways, biggest glaring regret for buying a game: Shattered Suns. If it had come out a decade ago... it would have been mediocre at best.

1) X3(just hated the damn thing)

2) X3. Terran Conflict(I have no idea why I bought that one, I just did)

3) World of Warcraft, I got all my friends hooked on it, and though I stopped playing it ages ago, they all still are playing it. And pretty much wont even try anything else.

1) Deus Ex 2: Invisible War. Anyone who's played it knows it was a shameful, shameful sequel to a completely amazing and one-of-a-kind game (at least until Alpha Protocol)

2) Lord of the Rings: Conquest. I'm a big LoTR fan so I figured I'd give it a shot, but I only mustered enough strength to get through the first 2 "missions" before I wanted to gouge my eyes out and never touch it again.

3) Oblivion. Never could get into it. The world is incredibly bland for all its open-ness, there's nothing in it to suck you in. Way too generic.

1. Neverwinter Nights 2

2. Hellgate: London

3. Pirates of the Burning Sea

Luckily, after the last two, I got way more sceptic about buying games at release. So I avoided buying Spore and Warhammer Online.

I'm slowly regretting buying Demigod now too, because I bought the game for MP and as the weeks tick by, less and less friends are interested in trying the game. I keep telling them not to buy yet because it has problems that need to be solved first, before we can competitively play the game. I fear that by the time the game finally works as intended, the player base will be too small to have a good competition.

CNC3 Kane's wrath.  I liked the vanilla CNC3, but KW didn't add too much. 

AOE3.  The demo played okay, but the additional levels sucked.

Silent Hunter IV.  I hate how it takes you so freaking long to find anything to do in it.

Does spending money on GameTap count???? The worst 10 bucks i spent the only good games wouldnt ever work, so you pay 10 bucks a month for Arcade games basicly, Pissed me off, i needed to buy a new mouse afterwords

1 spore (though i didn't spend $80)

2 gothic 3 (wouldn't even run on my computer even though i well exceed everything and tech support is... nowhere)

3 the witcher (what, do i have to run through the same levels over and over, seriously?)

4 dragonshard (great concept, horrbile game)

5 tie -- mass effect & black and white 2

imo AOE3 wasn't horrible, the concept with the cards was cool. it was just a rehash of the old games.

edit: i feel real bad for getting my father to buy spore. that was when i first had it, thought it was cool. then realized once you finish it one time, that's it... /sigh, sorry dad.

edit 2: oh god, and WoW. i hate that i gave them money for 1 month even.

For me, they'd be:

1. GalCiv II and Dark Avatar: They were rated so highly, and I liked Master of Orion I and II, and from everything I read about them they sounded like they'd be great. Unfortunately they turned out to alternately bore me and annoy me. I ended up quitting for good right after I conquered an enemy in one turn, the same turn I declared war on them, by simply having my entire fleet fly right past his warships because they were unable to react because of the game's design, then by blowing up the few ships orbiting each planet one at a time, and then by sending transports right past said enemy warships (and military starbases) to said enemy planets... After that victory in which the enemy was completely unable to respond, despite having a sizable fleet, I went "This is bullshit" and quit. There were half a dozen other things which bothered me about GalCiv II, though.

2. Civilization III: This also annoyed me. It was nowhere near as good (IMHO) as civ II or SMAC was, and it had a number of annoyances that made it frustratingly un-fun, but amazingly, Firaxis somehow fixed every single one in Civ IV. That said, I've talked to people who prefer Civ III over Civ IV, so it's personal preference. One of the big annoyances was that they had removed Zone of Control without giving you closed borders, making it impossible to close your borders without physically blocking them with a 100% solid line of units. They gave you the ability to demand that the AI remove their units from your border, but they made this annoy the AI. Do it enough times, and they'll declare war. The problem is, the AI repeatedly sends settlers (escorted by troops) into your territory in an attempt to cross it to colonize the territory beyond (or in pockets inside) it. So you either have to waste valuable resources and time churning out units to build a wall of bodies, or let the AI through, or say GTFO repeatedly while getting ready for war, because inevitably, the AI will go "NO! THIS MEANS WAR!"

In Civ IV, with each other civ, you have closed borders by default, unless you have agreed to an open borders treaty (which can be cancelled at any time with no penalty IIRC).

3.World of Warcraft. It's lower than the others because I did get some fun out of it, before it turned into "HAR HAR Run for 5 minutes to get resurrected again because your quests sent you to another map filled with deadly NPCs and high-level horde PKers! OH WAIT THE HORDE KILLED YOUR RESURRECTING NPC ALONG WITH THE REST OF THE TOWN'S NPCS! Now you have to wait for them to respawn! And then you've got good odds that the Horde will kill YOU, in town, causing even MORE damage to your items! HAHAHAHAHAH! Unless you manage to run to the griffin master before they kill either you or him... Of course that means you won't get any of your quests done." at around level 25-30 or so. And this was when level 70 was the highest level, and there were level 70 horde running around ganking everyone in the level 25-30 alliance areas. Probably I should have started on a non-PVP server. Anyways, it's a good way to not get addicted... I didn't renew the subscription after the first month, so I only spent the $60 price of the boxed game, and I had the 15 day or whatever trial period before that.

---

I didn't waste any money on Master of Orion III, thankfully, or it would probably be on the top of this list. I had read reviews about it and... they were not good. The lack of a demo was not a good indicator either. I ended up "trying it before buying it" because of the lack of a demo, and because I hoped that maybe the reviews were wrong - but I saw for myself that it really was that terrible. I ended up getting rid of it and not buying it. It's a shame, they had some nice ideas, but they completely FUBARed the game. Of course, that may partially be due to the principle of "Just because an idea sounds cool, that doesn't mean it will actually be fun."

---

I've only played AOE3 multiplayer, never tried the singleplayer, but didn't think it was bad, really. The cards stuff was a bit odd and probably unbalanced, but I wasn't playing with random internet strangers. I don't think I've really liked the campaign of any RTSes except for

1.battlecruiser 3000ad  2. MOO3   there has been many others but these are the ones that come to mind right away

witcher... horrible combat mechanic, stupid story, i hate any rpg where you have only 1 choice of character, and all you do is RUN!

mass effect... was OK, but expensive and once again you run through that stupid citadel all the time, the combat was ok, and why are there only 3 different underground/space lab levels? the repetition became annoying.

has anyone found any really good mods for Galactic Civilizations 2? maybe something like an unofficial patch that really makes the game better?