Fallout 4. game was pretty decent but the pacing was weird. by pacing I mean the game seemed like it was set out in a way that you wouldn't complete the game until you were many levels up from what I was, so many upgrades that took a lot of caps left unlockable, and by the time I felt I was really starting to get somewhere, the game ended with the Institute ending

Watch Dogs 1. It was quite fun for me, but quite a lot of people expected it to create a spark like GTA 5 back in the day, so when it didn't; they all criticized it to hell.

Path of Exile

Good fun game, but online communities are committing to min/max the fun out out of it. I like blowing up monsters, I don't care about optimising my chaos-per-hour rate.

Red Steel, actually. I'll admit to having fun memories of it from when the Wii launched.

Deus Ex 2 - on PC.

Mass Effect: Andromeda - I knew 1 & 2 were held in high regard, but I hadn't played them. Actually, I'd played about 10 minutes of one of them a couple years before and it just wasn't what I was in the mood for at that time. So, I went into Andromeda without any expectations really and thought it was a perfectly fine game.

COD Ghost. I loved the singleplayer storyline. Everyone hated the game for the storyline.

I remember some people in Reddit not being too happy with It Takes Two.

We loved it and look forward to playing Split Fiction when we find the time.

Interestingly, the two example you shared (Sonic Unleashed and the whole Sonic franchise being bad) are likely a good example of "hanging with the bad crowd". Unleashed is… not great, in my opinion, but the whole franchise? Please. We're not talking Sonic06 level of horrible decisions.

Another view on this is, if you enjoy something, and people have to tell you it's bad just so you know, it can't be that bad. People enjoy different things, and seriously, the toxicity of large communities is the worst thing ever. At this point, even with what seems to be "unanimously loved", you'll be able to find a large enough group of people happy to tell you it's shit.

With that said, some games are really, really bad. But these games usually don't need to be pointed out for people to know.

edit: dang, that was full of typo.

Sonic Adventure 2

None. I couldn't care less about people hating the games I enjoy.

Killzone. I really, really loved the story and level design, but everything was shit. Someone pointed it out to me and I suddenly seen everything wrong with the game hahha.

There was this one glitch where the first shot from the Helghast rifle was 100% accurate which I used and abused to absolutely destroy people in multiplayer games.

There's a lower budget game by Spiders called Technomancer that came out in 2016. It came up in my XBox game pass, so I played it before I read any reviews on it, and I honestly enjoyed the hell out of it.

I didn't find the combat stilted. It felt quite fun to work between three different fighting styles. The storyline was interesting and (to me anyway) original. And the Universe was pretty fun to play around in.

The original iteration of no mans sky. Absolutely lied a shit ton about what was in the game but I really enjoyed my initial time with it.

Dark Souls 2 was the first and only Soulslike game I played... Was a great experience and a good time killer during my summer break (when I still had one). Only later did I learn how poorly ppl thought of the game

RuneScape 😅

The first Deus Ex game I played was Deus Ex: Invisible War on the original Xbox, which I loved. It's the first foray into cyberpunk for me and sparked a love of it I've had since. It was not well received, and considered a dumbed down version of the original game.

Still love it. The Arcology in Cairo was my favorite part.

Industria, I really really love it but it turns out it's not particularly well reviewed. I've always wanted a game that felt like Simon Stålenhag's paintings and that game is actually specifically inspired by his work.

The Sniper Elite series, and to a lesser extent the Sniper Ghost Warrior series. Also, the True Crime series. I think all of those games are a ton of fun, I enjoyed playing them all and still do sometimes but they had very mixed reviews.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. Bought of for 9€ and had a lot of fun with it. Sure, the story was not as good as the first one and it's a lot shorter, but the new gameplay was great and it has a much better final boss than the first game.

Battlefield 1, I liked its slower-paced combat and need for teamwork for things like ships and the heavy bomber (original, not the super heavy).

It was different than almost all contemporary shooters, and I really found that refreshing. It also had a strong art design and really looked the part for WW1, even if some of the weapons were prototypes or team weapons (which should have been cut, imo) or vehicles were tweaked for gameplay (understandable, the German tanks were extremely tippy, and the French tanks were slower IRL)

That reminded me that Sonic Unleashed was the only game I ever got refunded.

I bought the game to play with my kids, expecting a colorful and fun Sonic game. I quickly realized it was quite different, much more violent than I expected. So I traded it for Sonic Colors, which was a bit more kid friendly.

call of duty world war 2. my favorite one (mostly cause its the only one im actually good at haha) but a lot of people hated it

@NONE_dc I'll say Binary Domain, Whether because it came out at the apex of the cover based shooter or whatever other reason it got lukewarm reviews, but the gameplay is actually pretty fun, and the story, while not the most original one, it did have some interesting elements to it

Mass Effect Andromeda. I plaid it well after launch after the initial "problems" were fixed, and I think it's a good game. I just wish we'd get a sequel.

Drakensang 1

On the topic of Sonic Unleashed, I played it as a kid on the Wii and actively disliked it because it just seemed sad and freaky to see Sonic effectively become mutated.

To give some idea, back then I had no internet so whatever games we had, I always gave a good go and I'd always play even the most mediocre of games.

We also had Sonic Colors and that game just felt the total opposite: very positive, lots of eye candy, arcadey, very much enjoyed it as a kid.

Some 20 years later and I'm speaking to a Sonic fan and they bring up how they've played every single game including Unleashed, and it was the only one they hated, which made me realise I'm not the only one.

To answer your question, I'd say Shrek for the Xbox - I did enjoy Shrek 2 more than the original game as a kid, but I also didn't mind the original either.

Once I had internet, I saw plenty of references to the original game as the butt of jokes and an example of what games should not be, and honestly those criticisms were valid.