Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing - Reception

Reception

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing was widely panned by critics and gamers alike, and has been listed among the worst video games of all-time. It garnered an 8 out of 100 score on Metacritic, with the only scores higher than 0 being 1 out of 10, which were given by websites that did not have a zero-score, giving it the lowest score of any game on Metacritic, as well as an average score of 3.83% on GameRankings, making it the number one "All-Time Worst" video game on the website.

Matt Wadleigh of Thunderbolt Games stated "I wish I could think of some redeeming factors for, but there simply aren't any", rating the game a score of 1/10. It was also featured on the X-Play "Games You Should Never Buy" segment where series co-host Morgan Webb described Big Rigs as "the worst game ever made," and refused to even rate it as their 1/5 rating system never features a zero score. 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. Alex Navarro of GameSpot declared that Big Rigs is "as bad as your mind will allow you to comprehend"; later in his review, Navarro added, "Please do not play this game. We cannot stress this enough." Navarro's video review has no narration whatsoever; it consists of in-game footage interspersed with wider shots showing Navarro staring in disbelief, crying, beating his head on a desk and finally exiting the building and lying down in the middle of an alley in disgust. In the Halloween video Frightfully Bad Games, Navarro stated, "This game received the lowest score in the history of GameSpot, a 1.0 (Abysmal). 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."

Big Rigs has developed a reputation for its poor quality; 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. In 2009, the game was nominated for Worst Video Game of the Decade at the 2009 SAGY Awards by ScrewAttack. In Skate 3 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, the player can obtain an achievement or trophy entitled "You're Winner" if he or she wins an online match, a reference to the "YOU'RE WINNER !" trophy in Big Rigs. 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 less than 20,000 copies of the game.