Bad games you like



  • This is specifically meant for games that you know are bad, but have something to them that sticks with you, that you can explain.

    Things that you'd almost even suggest people try out because of the weird thing you like about it, but admit are bad.

    My example?

    Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online

    An Atlus developed MMO that used to be tied to Aeria games, this is a rare case of a Japanese MMO available outside of Japan.

    It controls basically like all wowlikes, has utterly atrocious UI, and looks like a PS2 game. Also the stats and skills are really kind of lame and badly described, and the localization has issues all over the place.

    But it has some good things!

    Demons:

    If you can fight an enemy, you can tame it and make it your minion, by learning to talk to it correctly. Some monsters prefer to be insulted, while others like flattery or threats.

    Some monsters can be ridden around on, and all monsters can be fused with other monsters to make different monsters.

    Everyone ultimately has one following them around all the time, that can be switched out pretty much freely with any that you have with you.

    The monster you have alongside you is controllable, or can do AI things, and has its own skills, so you can find all kinds of monsters that benefit your playstyle, and maybe even revive you. It's kind of cool.

    Combat:

    But the interesting thing to me was the combat, which while basically wow-like, did some things in a weird way.

    You essentially have three kinds of melee attacks, and you have ranged attacks. Melee counts as pierce, strike, or spin, which break guard, nothing, and counter respectively. Evade exists too, and allows people to dodge ranged things. Pretty much every attack or combo results in knockback, requiring you to suddenly plan how the next engagement will go, even if it's basically rock-paper-scissors.

    Some people hate the combat. It's really weird combat. But it seemed like an interesting change, at a time where every MMO played the same way. I'll probably always think back fondly at it.

    Too bad it's a pretty awful game overall.



  • Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

    It’s a mash-up of at least three different basic rules systems plus whatever incidental rules any of the writers needed for a given situation, and none of them seem to have been based on any of the others.

    The main reason I like it is because as a direct result of this nonsensical way of designing a game system, it’s nowhere near as sterile as D&D3 and beyond.




  • Winner of the 2016 Presidential Election

    Darksiders.
    But only the first

    For one, you can easily go out of bounds and do fun things. But the game doesn't advertise that at all. So many people play in bounds the entire time and miss out. Clearly an oversight by the devs.

    Second: There are like 3 different attack moves... but the fastest way is to simply repeat the first strike over and over again in a fast fashion.

    Third: It has quite a few subweapons but the sword is the strongest

    Fourth: It's Zelda for people who don't own any Nintendo console.

    I leave it to the reader to figure out what I like in that list and what is bad.

    Filed Under: Though maybe I am just playing it badly


  • 🚽 Regular

    Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.

    :trollface:

    There was a game back in the 90s that came free in a cereal box called Chex Quest. It was basically just a doom mod where instead of blood and guts, it was sticky slime. The levels were actually not that bad, all things considered, and especially considering it was a friggen free cereal toy.

    I also enjoyed playing Cool Spot on Sega, which was a shameless 7-UP promotional game that features its mascot of the time, a living red spot. Unlike other really broken games of the same genre like that Cheetos game that glitched out, I found the levels to be rather intriguing, and the game itself was really hard.

    Tribes 2 had decent critical reviews, but a large portion of its fanbase hated it. I think at the time it was because it required a lot better hardware, and I know it was a bit glitchy before the first patches. After that, I found it enjoyable, though, and it was about as moddable as the first version, IIRC.



  • @The_Quiet_One Are any of those games considered generally bad? I know Chex Quest still has a following even now.



  • @The_Quiet_One said in Bad games you like:

    Tribes 2 had decent critical reviews, but a large portion of its fanbase hated it.

    Yup.

    @The_Quiet_One said in Bad games you like:

    and I know it was a bit glitchy before the first patches.

    Never has an understatement been as under as that one.

    Tribes 2 was LEGIT BROKEN on something like 66% of machines at launch. And I don't mean like "oh the FPS is 4% slower" broken, I mean like "you start it and you either get a black screen or a crash" broken. Even if you got into the game, and it didn't disconnect, the vehicles didn't work for months after release.

    (Especially the portable resupply base, that one instantly exploded every time it hit a slight hill. Side note: notice how in pre-release art, even some in-game art, in Tribes 2, the tank was not a hovercraft? They made it a hovercraft at the last minute because they could never get their wheels to work correctly. Meanwhile, Halo came out the same year with 100% perfect wheeled vehicle physics.)

    Despite the fact that the core game didn't fucking work at all, they spent ages of time making these dumb and pointless social networking features for the game, most of which they had to remove anyway when they realized it'd blow up their ESRB rating.

    About a solid year and a half after the initial release, Tribes 2 was playable and actually not a terrible game. But that's LONG after they'd burned all player goodwill in the world's largest bonfire.

    Yes I'm still angry about the Tribes franchise going into the shitter and staying there.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @Magus said in Bad games you like:

    @The_Quiet_One Are any of those games considered generally bad? I know Chex Quest still has a following even now.

    So does Big Rigs. Granted, they're all ironic followers, but I am quite sure besides the worst of the worst, every game has some kind of cult. I mean, not to call you out or anything, but Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine had some good reviews and has a strong following, too.

    I recall people scoffing about Cool Spot because of its very commercialized premise, and the same could be said for Chex Quest. And as I mentioned, the most devout fans of the original Tribes didn't like Tribes 2, and a lot of the reasoning I heard from those fans were "it's different" even after the initial bugs were fixed.

    Chex Quest probably could go into a different category, since it was a free promotional game.


  • 🚽 Regular

    @blakeyrat said in Bad games you like:

    Never has an understatement been as under as that one.

    Tribes 2 was LEGIT BROKEN on something like 66% of machines at launch. And I don't mean like "oh the FPS is 4% slower" broken, I mean like "you start it and you either get a black screen or a crash" broken. Even if you got into the game, and it didn't disconnect, the vehicles didn't work for months after release.

    Despite the fact that the core game didn't fucking work at all, they spent ages of time making these dumb and pointless social networking features for the game, most of which they had to remove anyway when they realized it'd blow up their ESRB rating.

    About a solid year and a half after the initial release, Tribes 2 was playable and actually not a terrible game. But that's LONG after they'd burned all player goodwill in the world's largest bonfire.

    Hmm... I guess my recollection of how bad it was initially was a bit foggy, then. I do remember it having some serious problems, but I thought they had taken care of them sooner than 18 months.



  • Comic from when Penny-Arcade was actually funny:

    0_1497467660422_215116827_mwswn-l-2.jpg

    The guys who ran that strip also were huge Tribes fans until the game series turned to utter crapshit.



  • @The_Quiet_One said in Bad games you like:

    And as I mentioned, the most devout fans of the original Tribes didn't like Tribes 2, and a lot of the reasoning I heard from those fans were "it's different" even after the initial bugs were fixed.

    Tribes 2 wasn't Tribes 1 with better graphics. Which is what we all wanted.

    Tribes 2 (on release) had smaller maps, fewer weapons/items (than base tribes, let alone the myriad of mods) and a reworked ski system (no longer a bug, but actually coded to work). Even after the patches, it never felt as immense and fluid as Tribes 1.



  • @Dragoon said in Bad games you like:

    and a reworked ski system (no longer a bug, but actually coded to work).

    That was one thing Tribes 2 did correctly.

    The ski system in Tribes wasn't a "bug" but more like "something that wasn't in the original design document but it turns out to be pretty fun so we kept it". In Tribes 2 it was in the design document, and thus it had better controls making it more accessible and less carpel-tunnel-inducing.

    Pretty much everything else about Tribes 2 was crappy shit garbage crap.



  • @blakeyrat
    In the end the ski system was better, but for people who played Tribes 1 a lot and had mastered that system, the new one felt off. Also, how dare all the plebs have it easy. :)


  • 🚽 Regular

    @Dragoon said in Bad games you like:

    Tribes 2 (on release) had smaller maps, fewer weapons/items (than base tribes, let alone the myriad of mods) and a reworked ski system (no longer a bug, but actually coded to work). Even after the patches, it never felt as immense and fluid as Tribes 1.

    Yeah, I know what you're saying. I felt despite a lot of those flaws, it was still a fun game, especially with the mods that came out.

    I still enjoyed Tribes 1, and played that just as much as Tribes 2, which says a lot for how great Tribes 1 was. If I had to choose between the two, I'd most definitely choose Tribes 1 as the better of the two, but I thought, at least after the bugs were worked out, Tribes 2 was less of a "bad game" than people made it out to be.



  • @blakeyrat And then one day, everyone's favorite developers of really only one game and a bunch of temporary money grabs decided to make another one as their latest cash grab.



  • ben_lubot


  • FoxDev

    @Magus said in Bad games you like:

    Are any of those games considered generally bad?

    Big Rigs was released with no AI, no physics to speak of, no sound, and a bug where, if you finish a race, the next race you do, you win as soon as the start countdown hits zero. Oh, and if you quit a race in the middle, it's impossible to finish the next race.

    A patch was released that added sound (I think) and basic AI, but the AI always stops before the finish line.

    Oh, and if you reverse in the truck, you can eventually accelerate beyond the speed of light. And if you let go of reverse, you stop instantly. Just imagine the G involved in stopping instantly from 671,000,000 mph.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @RaceProUK said in Bad games you like:

    A patch was released that added sound (I think) and basic AI, but the AI always stops before the finish line.

    that's almost worse than releasing the broken game in the first place.

    Releasing a game that barely runs means that at some point someone went "it compiles, ship it" or similar, and didn't give a flying fuck but thought they'd make some cash off the handful of people who buy it before it's widely recognised as being just that shit. A patch means someone went "hey, this is actually pretty bad, lets fix it", and pushed out something that didn't actually stop it being broken at all. That takes it to another level



  • @Jaloopa said in Bad games you like:

    @RaceProUK said in Bad games you like:

    A patch was released that added sound (I think) and basic AI, but the AI always stops before the finish line.

    that's almost worse than releasing the broken game in the first place.

    Releasing a game that barely runs means that at some point someone went "it compiles, ship it" or similar, and didn't give a flying fuck but thought they'd make some cash off the handful of people who buy it before it's widely recognised as being just that shit. A patch means someone went "hey, this is actually pretty bad, lets fix it", and pushed out something that didn't actually stop it being broken at all. That takes it to another level

    Well there's a reason it stops before the finish line: There's no code for handling the case where the lone opponent wins. So they couldn't let that happen.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @Medinoc it just gets better and better!

    One of these days I'll get round to downloading it and seeing how bad it is first hand



  • @Jaloopa said in Bad games you like:

    @Medinoc it just gets better and better!

    One of these days I'll get round to downloading it and seeing how bad it is first hand

    The part that surprised me when I first saw a video was the infamous "You're winner!" trophy featured in countless screenshots. I always thought it was a vaguely spinning 3D object (what with the trophy's obvious polygon-ness), but it turns out they didn't even bother making that, and it's actually a still image that appears as the race and sounds suddenly stop, as if the game had just frozen.


  • FoxDev

    @Medinoc Speaking of freezing, one of the tracks causes the game to crash when you start the race.



  • @Jaloopa At this point they should release Big Rigs 2 (make it actually work) and release it for another quick buck, now that they have the brand recognition.

    Hey, money is money.



  • Paranautical activity. I love it. It's an old school fast paced shooter. I don't know WTF is up with all the reviewers.



  • @Jaloopa said in Bad games you like:

    that's almost worse than releasing the broken game in the first place.

    May I introduce you to the hard-mode DLC for Sonic '06? http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Additional-Mission-Pack-Sonic-Very-Hard/00000000-0000-400c-80c0-0000534507d6



  • @anonymous234 said in Bad games you like:

    Paranautical activity. I love it. It's an old school fast paced shooter. I don't know WTF is up with all the reviewers.

    The developers are complete asshole cocksuckers the kind of which the gaming industry does not need? Maybe that's why.



  • I mean, the goal of this thread is mostly games that you'd feel at least mildly guilty telling someone to try, but that you like some things about a lot.





  • @MathNerdCNU And that's a game I've only ever heard described as someone's favorite game. Because no one else seemed to have heard of it.

    Still haven't played it, and know nothing about it.



  • @Magus Do not ever, under ANY circumstances, be tempted use a PSN sale to buy and attempt to complete this game. That is my one and only warning, because it is so rage-inducing that you "will" finish it; if for no reason other than to say, "Fuck you, Sony! I finished this radioactive turd, HAH! Wait, I just played with a radioactive turd....SHIT!"



  • @MathNerdCNU All you're doing is tempting me. I don't have any idea what you dislike about it.


  • sekret PM club

    @thegoryone I remember playing the games that Tribes was spun-off from. Starsiege was neat for a mech combat game, at the time.


  • kills Dumbledore

    @MathNerdCNU said in Bad games you like:

    Legend of Dragoon - Commercial – 00:33
    — DPyro

    My shame knows no bounds.

    I had a demo of this that came with some Playstation magazine. It looked like a fairly standard RPG and I quite enjoyed the demo but by the time I saw the full game in shops I'd seen a bunch of reviews saying not to bother, so I didn't



  • @Magus The combat system is complete garbage, and that is being generous. It uses a timed pattern (Additions in game) based system for basic attacks. I swear, the fault tolerance for that game is fucking sub 25ms response time. It also had battle load times that rivaled FF9 but lacked all of the glamour of FF that might gloss over it.

    Basically LoD is a giant C-Rank game that really reminds me of a poor 3D-Tales of Destiny clone meets Super Mario RPG meets Final Fantasy 4. King of Mediocrity.

    Yet I still enjoy dusting it off on my PlayStation TV.



  • @e4tmyl33t said in Bad games you like:

    @thegoryone I remember playing the games that Tribes was spun-off from. Starsiege was neat for a mech combat game, at the time.

    Loved starsiege so much better than mechwarrior. Starsiege made me feel like walking tanks was worth it. Mechwarrior made me feel like treads would have worked out better anyway.



  • Battlecruiser 3000 AD


  • area_deu

    Man I absolutely loved Europa Universalis 3 even though it is nigh unplayable without all addons (and I mean ALL of them, if you don't have everything up to "Divine Wind" good fucking luck) and even then, the only way to convert it from ok to great is playing with total overhaul mods. The Clausewitz engine is moddable in all the right ways and if you don't take one of the super bloated mods like MEIOU and stick to the likes of Death and Taxes, it becomes a legendary game.

    It occupied so much of my and my step brother's time. If I hadn't gotten this game outside of steam, it would be my most played game in the statistics. We once did some calculations, and it turns out we must have played ~1500 hours in MP each, plus any single player experience. And that's because this game is brutally difficult and unforgiving.

    When EU4 came out, a lot of people hated it because muh cartoon graphics (which is a completely insane complaint btw, not only does it look better than ever - unlike in EU3 I was never tempted to install a graphics or UI mod - it doesn't fucking look like a cartoon. That honor goes to HOI4) and because the system of having a extremely limited amount of magistrates and diplomats that can do shit was replaced by a point system that measures the ability of your ruler to manage administrative, military, and diplomatic parts of the government and have those points accumulate. This was, despite being a way better, way more interactive, less cumbersome, more moddable method of achieving the same thing as in EU3, of course decryed as the impending doom of all that is good and right in the world. They decryed it as the three Führermanas and said that now you are some kind of wizzard commanding the use of paper, sword and bird mana.

    Years later EU4 is still the best strategy game that ever was and will be for the forseeable future, but it's steam score has dipped massively because of entitled shitheads meming the score down to oblivion. You see, EU4 works on the model of optional DLCs. They are usually about 10 - 15 € and are the expansions that keep the game alive. They are allways accompanied by a patch with a boatload of free stuff and mechanics for all of those that don't buy it, but the core of the expension is the dlc. That dlc then funds the next half year of development, that allways includes another big patch with free extra stuff that roughly equals a small dlc, free for everybody. Rinse and repeat. If you don't like an expansion, don't get it. If you play multiplayer, the hosts dlc's are allways active, regardless of the other people in the lobby. If they don't have one or even any of the dlc, it doesn't matter: This session will activate them for them. If you save during multiplayer, they will even stay active in the save game. You can even rehost that savegame and thus spread the dlc so to speak.

    For a long time this worked well because the dlc's are basically what used to be entire expansions. It keeps the game fresh and in development, for years. Someone who would get the base game and all the dlc as they are released would have payed about 200 € by now, but considering that all those that do have playtime in the 100s of hours and often support an entire host of friends that play MP with them and only have the base game, that's completely fine. My friends and I usually measure the worth of a game in hours/€ and EU4 still comes out on top as the best game even ahead of Skyrim. The problem just is that it's hard to get the full game outside of steam sales now. But it doesn't really matter, every DLC means two free content and mechanics patches for the basegame, the basegame is still perfectly playable and fun, contrary to what some people claim. What they are thinking of is "I can't game the technology system as a native american or SEA country without Common Sense DLC" and stuff like that.

    But now, in the last few weeks, the score has dropped massively, with people claiming that it is because of the dlc policy, which is btw still the best possible approach for a non-esport title IMO, but in reality it's because they are entitled fucking shits from developing countries. You see, ever since the base game came out, Paradox hasn't adjusted their prices anywhere, at all. But with rampant inflastion in places like Russia, and cumultative inflation in places like Brazil, people from those countries could get the game for bastically jack shit. So Paradox adjusted the prices so that the game costs the same basically everywhere now. If they had done so over the years, noone would even have noticed. But this singular up in price, somehow, triggered them hardcore. I just can't understand why to be honest. It's not even like it costs massively much compared the the local spending levels, the game still costs about 8 snickers in all of those countries.

    But that's russian and brazillian "fans" for you. They are by no means the only ones, but the magnitude in which those people started to troll down the steam score and hate on the game on reddit is unreal. From my compounded experience from e-sport games and this, it is really hard not to develop a prejudice towards them. I mean, some pro Counter Strike players won't attend events in Brazil and don't want any events to be held there because they get massive amounts of death threats from brazilians and those that do go get threatened in the streets despite having some bodyguards.



  • @Quwertzuiopp said in Bad games you like:

    For a long time this worked well because the dlc's are basically what used to be entire expansions. It keeps the game fresh and in development, for years.

    Funny thing is that board game players will pay for this multiple times over and never notice. Put it on a computer and people get pissy.

    It's different than Skyrim which has a larger market to pull from. They can afford to put out a few DLCs and then work on the next title. Strategy game mechanics are much more complicated, so they need the extended revenue.


  • Fake News

    I guess Redneck Rampage can be on this list...

    It's a graphically outdated 2.5D game which would crash every so often, it has crude humor and horrible key / switch quests... and still there is something of a charm to it all in the way it pushed the Build engine to new frontiers.





  • @MathNerdCNU That sounds like something I'd like though.



  • @magus no such games, I think. if I like an idea or a mechanic in a bad game, it makes me dislike the game even more, because it makes me sad/angry they wasted a good/interesting thing/mechanic in a bad game.

    but probably closest to what you're saying would be Wiggles / The Diggles in america and for the first time I realized the dick connection that made them rename it :-D

    Nice idea, cute ...everything, I love most of the design and all, except...
    ...the pacing is broken, so slow, so much loves to waste your time. and on top of that, the pathfinding, and unit job resolving is kinda broken as well so when your clan and base grows beyond a certain point suddenly nobody is capable of doing anything, getting to the buildings where there's jobs pending, and such, so it results in even more time-wasting.

    Always irritated me so much that in all other aspects it's such an unusual and interesting game, rpg/rts/dwarf colony management thing, but these two things make it basically unplayable/unenjoyable.

    --

    Oh, and Stonehearth (not hearthstone). So much potential, I love the voxel building system, but unfinished and broken in almost every other aspect, and as far as I know it will never get better because the devs just stopped caring and working on it, for whatever reason. Again, once in a while I try to play it because the building system has a good idea, and then all the unfinishedness and buggyness starts slapping me in the face and I just get sad and irritated and angry.


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