10 Most Forgotten Xbox One Games

While the Xbox One is still being supported for now, it won’t be long before the mismanaged console is in the rear-view mirror in favour of the Xbox Series X | S. New technology is great and all, but sometimes it’s great to reminisce on what’s come before, and there’s been plenty of forgotten Xbox One games over the years that could do with some additional spotlighting.

Before we get started, it’s worth noting that the games on this list aren’t ranked in any specific order, nor are they all good or bad games. These are just Xbox One games that, for one reason or another, have fallen by the wayside in comparison to other games on the market.

Here’s 10 of our picks for the most forgotten Xbox One games in history. In fact, some are so forgotten that they’re not even available anymore.

 

1. ReCore

Developer: Armature Games, Asobo Studio, Level-5 Comcept
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios

Considering that it was conceptualised by legendary game developer Keiji Inafune, responsible for work on the likes of Mega Man, Lost Planet, Dead Rising and more, there were high hopes for Recore. Unfortunately, the action-platformer failed to live up to those high expectations upon release in 2016, largely due to a host of technical issues that plagued the gameplay and particularly the loading screens.

The player controls Joule Adams, a lone wanderer of the planet of Far Eden, who must use a collection of corebots and their abilities to survive and fight off hordes of enemies. There were attempts to ensure that Recore wasn’t quite forgotten about, with a Definitive Edition relaunch in 2017 which included new story content, abilities and optimisations for a lot of the issues that plagued the original release.

However, it wasn’t enough to improve the game’s fortunes, with ReCore now sitting there as one of the many obscure Game Pass games you’ll download on a whim one day and never actually play. You know the type of games.

 

2. Rivals of Aether

Developer: Dan Fornace
Publisher: Dan Fornace

Smash clones are big business, with the likes of Brawlhalla and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl aiming to emulate the formula that Nintendo pioneered. Rivals of Aether from developer Dan Fornace is another game that followed a similar mold, and it’s honestly one of the best platform fighters that the genre has to offer. There’s plenty of colourful characters, each with interesting abilities, but the Xbox version has certainly been forgotten about.

While there’s plenty to love about Rivals of Aether on console (including the Nintendo Switch), it’s PC where Rivals truly shines, as one of the most substantial updates to the game there allowed players to use Steam Workshop to create their own characters. The results are interesting, to say the least, but because it uses Steam Workshop, only PC players get the privilege of playing around with these characters.

The Xbox version is still worth playing, with great online play and a decent helping of modes for playing not looking to get their heads stomped in by pro players, but if you want the definitive experience, the Xbox version isn’t it.

 

3. Bleeding Edge

Developer: Ninja Theory
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios

Oh, Bleeding Edge. You tried at least.

Developed by Ninja Theory, who have made a name for themselves with their melee-focused action games, Bleeding Edge was their take on the hero shooter genre. Perhaps hero brawler would be the best description. Players would pick from a variety of diverse characters, each with their own abilities, and compete in 4v4 deathmatch and objective game types.

There was a certain novelty to Bleeding Edge that made the game fun in the early going, but it felt like there wasn’t as much room for experimentation or new emergent gameplay like in other hero shooters, which led to the game feeling tedious before too long. With an average PC player base of only 480 players in the game’s launch month, Bleeding Edge was in for a rough time.

In January of 2021, Ninja Theory announced they’re no longer actively developing the game, effectively killing the game off.

 

4. Project Spark

Developer: Team Dakota, Skybox Labs
Publisher: Microsoft

If LittleBigPlanet taught us anything, it’s that players love being able to create stuff, so it was no surprise that Microsoft wanted in on that market when they announced Project Spark during Microsoft’s E3 2013 event. It seemed they were eager to make up for their lacklustre Xbox One reveal, and in fairness, Project Spark was exactly the kind of originality that should have led to success. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be.

The potential was there with Project Spark, as players could customise everything in their worlds from both a grand scale and via some fine-tuning. Players could even use their Kinect to motion capture and record audio for their worlds, allowing players to essentially create their own games. Despite all that, there wasn’t enough support for Project Spark to continue operations, with the game being canned in 2016, two and a half years after making its debut.

If nothing else, Project Spark briefly revived Conker. That’s something that happened.

 

5. Dead Alliance

Developer: Psyop Games, Illfonic
Publisher: Maximum Games

Some games are forgotten about because of some unfortunate circumstances, like a much bigger game overshadowing the release, or it just didn’t manage to cultivate enough support or hype to linger in a player’s memory. However, there are some games that are forgotten because they’ve been repressed; confined to the deepest, darkest recesses of your memory. Allow us to dredge up one such title in the form of Dead Alliance.

A PvPvE game, two teams of mercenaries would compete against each other, trading kills and objectives. However, there was also a host of zombies all over the environment, which could be weaponised against your foes. It all sounds like a decently fun time, but the actual gunplay felt janky and unresponsive, leading to an unsatisfying game that was quickly kicked to the curb, even if Xbox keeps featuring it in sales every month or so.

If the gameplay sounds that good though, just pick up World War Z instead.

 

6. Fighter Within

Developer: Daoka
Publisher: Ubisoft

Truth be told, we could do an entire 10 point article on just Kinect games for this list. Remember Kinect Sports Rivals? At least Disneyland Adventures and Rush: A Disney-Pixar Adventure had the good sense to ditch the Kinect and be their own games. However, perhaps the biggest Kinect backfire has to be Fighter Within, which is probably the least forgotten game on the list just because it’s one of the worst games of all-time.

A fighting game enabled by the Kinect, players would kick, punch and perform other actions to perform moves in-game. That was the theory anyway, as the Kinect’s body tracking was so broken at the best of times that you’d often struggle using the moves you wanted to.

Fighter Within was an absolute travesty of a game, with terrible reviews and even worse sales. It’s even the second worst Xbox One game on Metacritic, bested only by Rugby 15, of all games. Its only worth post release has been from various content creators online who’ve made hilarious videos using the game as a joke punching bag.

 

7. Past Cure

Developer: Phantom 8 Studio
Publisher: Phantom 8 Studio

Past Cure’s a curious one, because it feels like the Xbox Store has mostly forgotten about this one.

When doing research for this article, I couldn’t find Past Cure by searching for it on the Xbox Store, as the listing wouldn’t appear. However, there’s nothing online to suggest that the game got delisted, especially as it’s still available on Steam. Turns out, it is on the Xbox Store, but the only way to get there is via a link on the Xbox Store Checker website.

Half tempted to buy it now just for the content, but I digress.

Players control an elite soldier by the name of Ian, who was the subject of a variety of military experiments that gave Ian superpowers. While these powers make Ian a force to be reckoned with, they also lead to him becoming more and more detached from reality.

There was some promise for the game to become somewhat of a hit, but all of its mechanics fail to mesh together in anything meaningful, leading to a pretty awful total package. Reviews for the game were less than kind, citing the shoddy technical issues and weak gameplay, and it’s not hard to see why.

 

8. #IDARB

Developer: Other Ocean
Publisher: Other Ocean

Multiplayer games can either be cultural touchstones or fall off the face of the earth pretty quickly, and that’s the case with I Drew A Red Ball, also known as #IDARB.

A small indie multiplayer game that wasn’t designed to be anything other than a silly joke, #IDARB made a splash when it first debuted, but now, six years later, you’ll be pulling teeth trying to find people to play this game with you.

Launching onto Games With Gold back during a time when Games With Gold could actually be worth getting out of bed for, #IDARB was the exact kind of internet weirdness that you’d expect from a game from 2015. There were plenty of jokes and memes, but the game was also forward thinking with regards to social interaction, with Twitter engagement influencing gameplay throughout. Players could even share their characters through QR codes too.

 

9. Troll And I

Developer: Spiral House
Publisher: Maximum Games

Another game that’s perhaps leaning towards memorable just because of how bad it is, Troll And I is, if nothing else, an interesting premise.

You control a boy named Otto, who stumbles upon a mythical troll and must work together with the creature to outwit defeat a group of hunters in order to find their way home. It’s a decent, inoffensive story, but that’s pretty much where the game’s good qualities end.

The issue with Troll And I was the litany of glitches and technical issues that plague the game, from controls being unresponsive to a framerate that chugs whenever the action gets slightly heated. Perhaps worst of all is the crashes, with reviews on the Microsoft Store saying that the game can crash up to four times per hour. These reviews extend from the game’s release in 2017 to 2021, so it seems like even the developers have forgotten about this one.

 

10. D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die

Developer: Access Games
Publisher: Microsoft

Sometimes, games are just forgotten because they’re an unfortunate casualty of outside circumstances, which is true of D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die.

An episodic detective thriller, you controlled a private investigator who could travel back in time to try and solve their wife’s murder. It was an intriguing title that used the Kinect in some interesting ways, and there was plenty of support for the game after its release.

However, after an initial prologue and two episode season, the D4 story has gone cold for years, and it’s likely that it’ll never be revisited again. The reason for this is because D4 was the product of visionary game developer SWERY, who was working at Access Games at the time. In 2016, SWERY would suddenly retire from Access Games, which essentially torpedoed any chance of D4 getting some follow-up or resolution in the future.

At the very least, SWERY is still out there making games, so that’s something.

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