Now I’m not talking about bad as in completely soulless and creatively bankrupt games like Gollum or (insert zombie survival asset flip here) but more like the games that promised the world but missed their mark massively and became commercial failures.
Tomb raider angel of darkness widely known as what killed the franchise and Core design for me is actually a really enjoyable and completely absurd experience. The game has a fever dream like quality to it that i find quite mysterious and alluring. I sense an attempt at an immersive sim but eidos didn’t seem interested in letting the team finish it.
Sonic 06. I can’t explain it but it has an allure i can’t quite explain. On all fronts its bad but I can’t stop thinking about it. With better controls this game could have been a lot better than it was.
Operation winback on the ps2. Brilliant game, my favourite third person shooter with a really high skill ceiling its just fun to master. Subtitles are in comic sans which means its perfect.
Drakengard. The monotonous gameplay and ear grating music amplify the games core themes and the general madness as the story unfolds.
Goldeneye rogue agent. An odd one considering the era had no shortage of brilliant bond games yet this one seemed to ensare me more than others.
Ff14 1.0. 1000 polygon flower pot need i say more? I really want to have some private server snapshot of this game to play because it just doesn’t look real.
Haze. Thematically quite an interesting game but executed very poorly, the game that killed free radical and why timesplitters will never come back.
Alone in the dark 2008. Its a stupid game filled to the brim with such brazen stupid I can’t help but adore it. It’s definitely unique I’ll give it that.
Two worlds 1 and 2. Honestly somehow my favourite RPGs there’s something deeply wrong with me.
So these are the most notable bad games I enjoy. Anyone else got any?
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In hindsight that Shadow the Hedgehog game was cringe af but 11 y/o me absolutely loved it.
It was like perfect anthracite cringe coal, which time and irony have compressed into a radiant cultural gem
Same but I was 12-13.
They hit the target demographic perfectly at the time (me) also its intro video is fire
why timesplitters will never come back.
Says you, some of us are still holding out hope.
There’s no hope left. A dev build of a new timesplitters game was found and it was a direct ripoff of fortnite. They basically were making a reskinned fortnite with timesplitters characters… There’s no hope.
At bare minimum the series needs a remaster with functioning online multiplayer but can’t even get that.
There’s still TSRewind yeah?
50 Cent: Blood in the Sand is pretty entertaining. Terrible game, but everything is so over the top that it’s fun.
I love the Dynasty Warriors series.
Including Dynasty Warriors 9.
Do not pursue Lu Bu
Pursue Lu Bu, but be prepared to dodge roll for 10 minutes
It’s… LU BU!
Oh Tomb Raider AOD, I was so hyped for this game back at release as a teenager only to be so let down. Notable because Lara has boob jiggle physics, obviously the team were busy on that and not the camera.
Balan Wonderworld is such a wonderful pile of nonsense. It has all of these different power-ups, but a good portion of them are just different ways to shoot or jump. It feels like it was made for small kids, but there’s no way a kid could get through some of the difficult parts toward the end. The absolute lack of any explanation as to why anything is happening. I love it so much.
Sid Meier’s Beyond Earth is a nigh unplayable mess but it has so many well done mechanics that it’s still worth a play from time to time even if it doesn’t result in an actually playable experience
I don’t think Beyond Earth is thaaat bad as a 4X game. My main criticism would be that it never reached its full potential as a Civ game that tried to follow in the footsteps of Alpha Centauri. Like, I had fun with it, but it’s for sure not in my top 10 strategy games.
Honestly I didn’t think it was that bad either, but the whole thing feels kind of directionless and half baked. Not bad other than that. It added a bunch of stuff to the civ 5 formula, but none of it really seemed to address any of the problems I had with civ 5 over 4
If we can discuss newer 4X games, you should try Old World. There is a small fanbase that absolutely loves this game. I think it’s really well done, but a bit too military-focused for my liking. I have to admit, though, it’s a really competent game. It also has a bit of an RPG aspect with features like characters that age, marry, etc. Also has a really nice OST btw.
I was sooooo disappointed in that game 😓
I love Deadly Premonition
I also like the Game Gear and Master System Sonic games. Even obscure ones like Tails Adventure. Sonic Blast can die in a fire though.
I like Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, which while popular, are considered very rough around the edges.
I’m sure there are more which I will add as I remember them. Gonna have a look through my retroarch ROMs.
I want a deadly-premonition game with a stupidly long and complicated story that takes like 200 hours to get through
The GG sonic games are good fun. Sonic blast is at least enjoyable from the perspective of it being so brain bendingly bad and ugly I wonder how it was ever made and sold in the first place. Like what were they thinking? I’ve never had a game assault my senses that badly.
Speaking of unpopular sonic games i love sonic 3D flickies island its brilliant
Deadly Premonition is such a great game, it’s just a shame Swery never managed to replicate its success. I honestly think D4 was building to be just as great had it not been cancelled before any more episodes were finished.
Not bad bad, but I have a soft spot for mediocre early 2000s sci fi shooters, especially knockoffs of more popular ones. The combination of graphical/engine limitations at the time, plus the combined zeitgeist of residual 90s techno-optimism muxed with war on terror bleakness and paranoia created a really singular vibe to the shooter environments of that genre and era. Playing them induces this slick, sleepy liminal effect in me where i just get into a flow state and stare at the pretty PS2 laser effects. Games like Project Snowblind, Fire Warrior and the hilariously named Chaser.
the game that killed free radical and why timesplitters will never come back.
EYE Divine Cybermancy was translated from French very badly, and the plot didn’t make much sense anyway, and I love it so. It’s an extremely weird, janky 40k knock off built on the source engine. It’s got completely uneccessary amounts of RPG character customiztion and build specialization, tons of weird obscure systems, and a six foot long power sword that turns werewolves in to Salsa. The werewolves may be your guilt for betraying your ex-wife.
I’ve got that on steam and still haven’t tried it despite hearing it’s a bizarre shit-gem for years now
Load it up. It’s so fucking weird and esoteric. The sheer number of options for building your character are completely bewildering. You start as a normal, fairly tough Doomguy type FPS shooter man, but late game you could be a psychic invisible ninja who teleports inside people to explode them, you could be an invincible shielded uber-tank with a nuclear grenade launcher, you could send your massive army of psychic clones out to fight for you, You could blow fist sized holes in people with your wallhacks and sniper rifle, you could turn people against their own allies by hacking their cyberware or turn their turrets against them. I loved upgrading my cyberlegs massively then leaping across the battlefield smashing down in front of them and turning them in to a cloud of regrets with the giant power sword.
Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s weird and obtuse and takes effort to get in to, but it’s such a dark horse weird gem if you put the effort in. And you can do goofy source engine things if you want to, like play coop with an arbitrary number of friends!
This has reminded me that I need to play that game
Drakkhen on the SNES was an unmitigated train wreck plagued by translation errors, a nonsensical plot, and one shark-infested moat that should feel out of place, but given the rest of the game’s disjointed bullshit, fuck it, why not.
Drakengard’s OST is good. Do not slander it.
Lichdom Battlemage is my favorite example of a really cool and promising set of gameplay systems, and then you get the worst most boring fucking enemies to fight with them
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Word. I put like 300 hours in to it and I think my mod folder eventually eclipsed the size on disk of the actual game. But it was such a jank mess.
It defies logic with how broken it is while still being sort of fun
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