Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
Developer(s)	Stellar Stone LLC
Publisher(s)	Activision (2003) GameMill Publishing (2004)
Platform(s)	PC
Release date	November 20, 2003
Genre(s)	Racing
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Everyone (E)
Media	CD
Input methods	Keyboard

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing is a racing game released for PC by Stellar Stone LLC in 2003. The game has received universally negative reviews, with many critics referring to it as the worst video game of all time.

Gameplay

The box of Big Rigs states that the player may "race trucks across the country, with cops chasing ." GameSpot's Alex Navarro wrote that this description of the game is nothing more than "horrible, horrible lies", since there are no police in the game. Additionally, they pointed out, the computer-controlled opponent vehicles have no AI and never move from the starting position, 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, straight up 90° mountains (with no loss of speed), through structures, simply falling right through bridges, and even out of the boundaries of the map into an endless grey void. No matter what the player does, it is impossible to lose the race. When the player's truck is put into reverse, the truck will accelerate infinitely; however, the truck will halt instantly when the reverse key is released.

Upon completion of the race, the player is presented with a large, three-handled, on-screen trophy cup overlaid with the text "YOU'RE WINNER !" Due to a developer oversight, the game occasionally fails to distinguish between whether the player is starting or finishing the race when they pass through the starting checkpoint, and so this screen may appear to end the race before it even begins. In addition, one of the game's five maps causes the game to crash altogether when accessed.

Stellar Stone released a patch that fixes some of the game's glitches. With the patch, the opponent does participate in the race, but stops before it reaches the finish line. The fifth map that caused the game to crash when selected was also fixed. However, the patch replaced the broken track with an exact mirror image of the first track.

Despite all these issues, Big Rigs outsold three of the five games in GameSpot's "Best Game No One Played" category, the criteria of that category being that each game sold fewer than 20,000 units in North America.

Reception

Big Rigs received universally negative reviews with the critics considering it to be one of the worst video games, if not the worst, ever.

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. It was also featured on the X-Play "Games You Should Never Buy" segment. 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. Netjak gave the game its first ever 0.0.

Alex Navarro of GameSpot declared that Big Rigs is "as bad as your mind will allow you to comprehend." Also it 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.

Notes

External links

• Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing at GameFAQs
• Metacritic review summary
• Big Rigs speechless GameSpot Review
• Footage of the patched version of the game. - YouTube