Back 4 Blood. It was a zombie game marketed as "made by the same people who made Left 4 Dead" but they really didn't have any of that talent left after 15ish years and just seemed to be pretty unpolished all around. However, they had a card system where you make a deck of bonuses you want and after each mission you get one that you keep until the end of the campaign. But the devs, Turtle Rock, had a habit of nerfing any cards that were strong or fun into the ground even though the game was mostly PvE. Also they made a change halfway through the game's lifespan so that you get the entire deck at the start of the first level instead of building up to it. I still don't know if that was a good change or not, but they never rebalanced the game so the first couple levels of every campaign were just ridiculously easy. Unpolished game, horrible devs, but I had fun while it lasted
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Not sure if this counts because it's not that bad, but Final Fantasy 15.
I can't even begin to explain how much of a complete mess this game is. The combat consists of mashing buttons and teleporting away when you're low HP, the open world is very big and isn't that interesting, it's a mess of systems that don't work together because this game had a very troubled development, and the story is borderline incomprehensible - the last third of the game felt like I was skipping cutscenes. The few dungeons included were also terrible. Oh and there are parts in the game where you literally have to wait entire minutes in a car waiting to go from point A to B.
And yet, I played through the whole thing, it was weirdly relaxing. Whenever it wasn't trying to be a final fantasy game, it was actually pretty fun. Fishing, doing menial tasks, chocobo racing (and riding chocobos in general) were great. The game also has some of the most beautiful towns I've seen in gaming, and boy is that soundtrack perfect.
I enjoyed it a lot, but by all accounts I'd still call it a bad game.
Agree, it’s a spectacular world to bop about in on your boys road trip. But a pretty junk final fantasy game outside of that
Gonna agree with you for opposite reasons. The combat in the postgame dungeon, Costlemark I think. The one where you can’t use any healing items, it was a worthy challenge.
The other postgame dungeon, the platforming one was, was way better than many final fantasy challenges like jumping rope and dodging lighting.
Special mention for the incredible soundtrack, the Matoya’s Cave remix especially.
But ya everything before the postgame, the umm main game I guess, was ridiculously short. Imagine FFIV ending when you drill into the underworld, or FFVI ending when the the world breaks, that’s what the story in FF15 feels like. As soon as you depart to the next continent you get rug pulled by a time jump that takes you to the final boss 🫠
I too loved the first 85% of FF15, even did all of the sidequests.
I don't know how it ends and I've completed the game.
Alpha Protocol, a spy-themed RPG by Obsidian and probably their worst game. The gameplay was absolute garbage, but it had some of the best writing in games and your dialog choices actually affected the plot in dozens of ways. It was the first time I can remember since the old Sierra days where a minor choice you made ten hours ago could come back and screw you over.
In some ways it was the game that Mass Effect claimed to be, one that reshaped itself around your choices and let you lead the plot where you desired. It just sucks that in all other ways it was a buggy piece of crap, where everything from combat to stealth to hacking were miserable chores that weren't fun even when they did function properly.
I bought this on a sale and never played it..
You are doing yourself a disservice.
Install and play it now.
Its a fantastic fucking game. Literally no two playthroughs are the same.
OK I installed it, I'll give it a go
Ok so finally got around to playing it. This is not the game I was thinking of. It has been good so far
I bought a physical copy for PC cheap on sale, and never played it (my PC at the time wouldn't run it for some reason IDR).
Now I live in Japan and it's not available for sale here, on GOG or Steam, so I hope I can get that disc to work under Linux! I see there's an official patch that removes the DRM, but there's one for North America, and another for Europe, and I bought the game in Australia, so I it's a coin flip which one I've got. Hopefully once I install it there'll be some clues.
Excuse me.
The question was about bad games that you enjoy.
Not about fuckawesome games that are fuckawesome and that Sega needs to burn for not allowing us to have a sequel of.
Alpha Protocol is one of the great tragedies from Obsidian's days of doing contract work, back when they were never given enough time or money but still put out brilliant but flawed games like AP, New Vegas, and Knights of the Old Republic 2. I would do terrible things for a remake of any of those games where the original team was given the resources to do things properly.
(Though IMO I think AP might work better as a Telltale-style game in the vein of Dispatch or the Walking Dead. The dialog is the star and all the other gameplay only detracted from it.)
Alpha Protocol being rushed was especially tragic because there's no other game that changes the plot to such an extreme degree based on your actions. It really felt like your story. It also avoided an obvious "best" route by having every choice be a tradeoff, where helping one contact could alienate or even endanger another. It's not like a Bioware game where you can pick the top option in every dialog and cruise your way to an ideal ending for everyone. You had to pick a side eventually, pitting you against former allies who you genuinely liked.
I remember being impressed when an NPC commented on how I wore combat armor to a clandestine meeting. There were a lot of little touches that were nice.
Something key to remember is that when a game gets “Mixed” on Steam, eg 50/50, that still means half the people who play it enjoyed it. Half is not nothing.
For instance, Aliens: Colonial Marines. To my knowledge, AI was kinda shit, but could be fixed in a text file, but apparently a lot of people still enjoyed it otherwise.
So there’s probably a lot of these that have niche appeal to people.
Something key to remember is that when a game gets “Mixed” on Steam, eg 50/50, that still means half the people who play it enjoyed it. Half is not nothing.
No, it means half the people who can be bothered to review it enjoyed it.
For every review theres probably several hundred/thousands of people who play the game and dont review.
Ultima 3 Exodus for the NES. Few games incentivize you to wait to level up as much as this one does, not to mention the drudgery.
By all accounts, Quest 64 ranked somewhere between runny dog shit and aggressive bone cancer, but I was just enthralled with it as a kid. Actually kind of bummed when I got a Switch and it wasn't on the retro games subscription thing.
My general rule is that if the game title ends in "64" and doesn't start with "Mario", it probably sucks.
That was my Blockbuster rental one weekend. Coming off of final fantasy games it was a little disappointing, but not a disaster.
These might be closer to mediocre than BAD bad but I don't expect too many people to mention them so why not.
- Drakengard 3 - action adventure game with dated graphics (even at the time of release), terrible performance on the original hardware, huge amount of asset reuse (including whole levels) and writing that can range from childish, crass and annoying to extremely emotional. It's rough but it's also my favourite Yoko Taro game.
- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2004, PS2) - alright gameplay, decent voice acting, meh story and levels. It's not terrible but based on the opinions I've seen it seems like I enjoyed it a bit more than most. Pretty cool drum & bass soundtrack.
- Kane & Lynch (both games) - most people didn't like these games due to rough feeling gameplay and presentation (especially in the first game), I can't help but love it. I feel like all of the elements combine in a coherent and extremely raw experience which might not be "fun" or "polished" but for me it just works.
- Kao the Kangaroo (2000) - extremely basic mascot platformer with (mostly) dated visuals, linear levels and some annoying enemies. Sequel might be an improvement but I still prefer this ugly duckling over anything that came after.
- Oni (Bungie's action game from 2001) - it has huge empty levels, basic presentation, pretty mediocre story and uneven difficulty curve. It also has a great hand-to-hand combat system which makes those issues easier to swallow. Pretty good Ghost in the Shell game.
- Scarface: The World is Yours - GTA clone set after an alternative ending to the 1983 movie with Al Pacino. Pretty ugly and rough around the edges but it also has some fun mechanics (empire building, customisable mansion, money laundering, ability to bribe cops and more). A competent experience, even if it didn't reach the heights of GTA or Saints Row titles.
Edit: I remembered another one!
Trespasser - physics based action-adventure game from 1998, intended as a sequel to The Lost World: Jurassic Park movie. It has extremely weird and wonky control scheme where you interact with the world by moving your hand - as in, you physically move it with your mouse, no simple "press button to do things".
- You want to open the door? Cool, use your hand.
- You want to make yourself a ramp using a plank? You know how physics work so go ahead.
- Interacting with keypads? Just push the buttons.
- Want to attack something with melee? Pick up an object and swing manually.
- You want to aim your gun? No crosshair, move the barrel in the general direction of your target and pray it'll work.
It's not super intuitive but it does work pretty well once you get the hang of it. Heck, I even managed to throw a 3-pointer at the court in the residential zone! Man, I wish I still had my Twitch account...
The game also went with a "no hud" approach so no ammo count (only vague call-outs by the character like "about 5 shots") and to check your health you had to look at the tattoo on your chest (it changed depending on your HP). Also no gun reloading cause your other arm is broken and your character can't do it one handed, I guess.
It was unfinished, extremely ambitious (both in terms of planned features and implemented technology) and has a bunch of problems. It's an interesting and very unique experience, worth a try even today in my opinion. It's also the only piece of Jurassic Park media I actually care about and I wish it was easily obtainable in official distribution again - come on GOG, you can do it!
Oni was fun, but did not age well. By the time I finished the game I had enough combat moves to make it feel interesting, then the game ended.
Absolutely! It's a very flawed game and a pretty rough experience, even with the Anniversary Edition fixes and mods. I'm still not sure what makes me go back to it but for some reason I end up doing just that every few years. It's one of a few titles I'd like to see in a remastered or (slightly) modernised form. Not that it's going to happen but one can dream, right?
You know, now that I think of it, Mirrors Edge Catalyst kinda scratched that Oni itch a while back. Another underrated game that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Still waiting for Oni 2
Catalyst missed the mark for me. Between locking the moves behind skill tree, larger focus on combat and slightly reworked art style it just didn't grab me the way the original did. It's not all bad and I still want to play it to completion some day but it was kind of a disappointment nonetheless.
Still waiting for Oni 2
Best I can do is the leaked early build of the project attempted by Angel Studios. It's rough, obviously unfinished and Konoko looks a bit different but it has a somewhat working combat system you can play with and a bunch of levels to run around in. It's also prone to crashes but that's to be expected.
Oni - a certified classic/hidden gem. Bungie cooked there. Just not with the level design and plot of the game.
I think the general idea for the plot and world at large is pretty good (there are some interesting and rather grim details in the background), it's just that Bungie missed the mark with how to write and present these things to actually hit the mark. It was also rushed out the door due to business shenanigans which cemented the end result.
Kane and Lynch 2 was an amazing experience with a friend. We talk about it as much as Gears of War for all of its impact. Reflecting now, I still think it has style.
It has great style! I love how much the leaned into the found footage/internet video aesthetic, as well as how they decided to go for a more naturalistic approach in regards to game ambiance (environmental sounds, diegetic music etc). It's such a unique experience in video games, especially bigger published ones.
Yes! Plus there is the ::: naked run ::: level where we squealed our way through it. A hot take to: the online was fun and under appreciated from what I remember.
Edit: I don’t know how spoiler tags work.
They really went all in with setpieces that felt like a serious crime drama. I never got to experience the multiplayer (co-op or otherwise) but what I've seen looked cool. I wonder if they're people playing it these days.
For spoilers it's:
<spoiler_name>
I remember even back then that the amount of people playing was the issue. It had this "fragile alliance" mode where you all would do a heist, collecting money as you went. The players with the most money "won" by the end. You could turn on your allies and try to take theirs and get to the getaway, but you could also not and then split everything 50/50 from all who make it to the getaway. Pretty sure you could even bribe the driver/pilot with a 50/50 offer to leave early and abandon everyone else. Or something like that. It was a lot of fun and certainly unique in its time. I actually got inspired and just found a video. Good times.
Worms 3D sits at 70 score on metacritic. I see lots of people mention that this is the worst Worms title.
I still have original double-cd game and it holds a special corner in my nostalgia box.
Two Worlds and Two Worlds 2 The first one was advertised as the "Oblivion killer". Which is hilarious, because of how janky bug ridden pile of code it is. Yet I love it. I could create such broken OP characters, which could one shot bosses.
The second one got a bit better production quality, but its still a broken mess. Love it.
If I jumped in right now, should I just start with #2?
Came here to say it. I absolutely love Two Worlds games, they are so unique janky, both of them. The dialogues are so awful in a good way.
I am just happy Two Worlds came into being because we got that beautiful speedrun out of it : https://youtu.be/5NeR-bT3uv0?is=F6o9i7-_Dgrm09qP
I actually enjoyed both Two Worlds, even replayed them like 10 years ago. Tbh though "janky bug ridden pile of code" also applies to Bethesda titles, especially Oblivion.
Uplink wasn't bad at all. It just was quite niche.
Old timey? You are making me feel older than Yoda.
Far Cry 2.
The game is fundamentally broken in a way that mods apparently can't even fix. The enemy militia checkpoints instantly fully respawn as soon as you trip an invisible trigger. It makes combat with them pointless, which means getting stuck in a firefight with a checkpoint tedious.
The weapon degradation feature is way overtuned to cause some weapons to start visibly rusting from shot to shot.
These two aspects turn the game into a slog. Not even in a way that makes it immersive and survivalist, but immersion breakingly frustrating.
It's a shame because the game was so ambitious. The game having a mechanic where a player at 0 health can get randomly saved if they befriended an NPC which will drag them to safety is really cool. The fire spreading everywhere was visually and tactically great. The malaria bouts were controversial, but I think they were a good way to increase the feeling of survival and desperation. There's a lot good with a bleak, serious, and grounded Far Cry game but it just missed the mark in all the most impossible to ignore ways.
'Far Cry 2 (2)' would be amazing.
Oh also No Mans Sky.
I've put hundreds of hours into it, and there's definitely fun to be had, but it is so buggy and janky, especially in Co-op. It's great they're still putting out updates and content, but I really wish they'd spend a cycle or two just fixing bugs.
I bounced off No Man's Sky hard at first, I just started playing it again 6+ years later and man what a difference. The game was a buggy shell of the game they had promised, but now it is unironically pretty great. I have encountered far, far fewer bugs now, so they may have addressed many of those you rememember.
I love No Mans Sky. I feel like I would tell people to be careful going to others homes as you can easily get past all currency hurdles... that being said, I did that and still had a blast. Also, don't dig and then build in it, treat he ground like it will swallow you. lol
Stretching the definition of "bad", perhaps, I say Far Cry 4/5.
It's the classic game with a map full of repetitive quests: go there and kill that guy, liberate the outpost, climb the tower, etc. It should have basically 0 replayability value, and yet sometimes I just need to switch off my brain and mindlessly do one quest after the other.
FC4 and FC5 have some structural differences. I think a decent amount of feedback was taken for FC5. It doesn't have tower climbing puzzles and the collectathoning which had gotten way out of hand in FC4 was toned down a lot in FC5. FC5 replaced some of that with the totally optional survivalist bunkers that give rewards per bunker. It's hard to go back to FC4 and it's "collect 300 scraps of paper" nonsense after FC5.
Fallout 4 is good until it just stops working. It’s fine on PC but they never got it fully working on Xbox. They still sell it though.
It's not fine on PC, idiots keep releasing patches for the game to advertise shit on the main menu and it breaks mods.
I've always had pretty good experiences with Bethesda's 3D games on the PC, but I did play Fallout: New Vegas on both the PC and the XBox 360, and the console experience did make me appreciate some of the complaints from console players. Like, the loading times were substantially worse than on the PC, and I recall the game being obnoxiously less-stable.
My mods haven't broken anything, and I've got some from almost 10 years ago that somehow still work.
I just put in a good 100-hour playthrough just a couple months ago in fact.
Yeah, but at least on PC you can block the updates until all your mods update. And IIRC it just breaks scripting stuff like F4SE... for the most part... but a lot of stuff relies on that.
I like how GOG just flat out refused to push the "next gen update" until they fixed their shit or something. Thing is, they never did. Modders told them how to fix it, but apparently it had to be fixed on their end. They never do. Because they don't care.
Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue
(original PC release)
I've heard this a lot! I just searched "Earth Defense Force" and it showed me #6 and that makes me happy. Wasn't the original on 360? I remember thinking it look like a bust and then hearing people pretty much say what you are saying.
I don't know that anyone will understand, but, Rogue Warrior on the Xbox 360.
A game about Dick Marcinko and is voiced by Mickey Rourke. Its gameplay and movement dynamics were trash, but the storyline, vulgar language, and achievements were fun to work on. Because it was so poorly received, hardly anyone played online, so I'm still missing 1 achievement 😓. But I made some good friends on Xbox live during this days.
Plus, I got to learn about SEAL Team 6 and its history. I've also meet Adm William McRaven who's spoken well of him and his accomplishments.
"April fool motherfucker."
The lines in that game are truly something else. It's really not a good game at all but I think that credits song makes up for a lot of it.
For anyone who doesn't like YT
Rogue Warrior credits song: https://inv.nadeko.net/OVoyGUcXepc
BONUS: Killing Gunther end credits song https://inv.nadeko.net/M3s3oFddWI0
Some of them born from my period of discovering Castlevania and having to play all of them.
First, the N64 Castlevanias. Ugly, terrible platforming, bad camera, but occasionally trying cool stuff. Oh, of course, bonus point for the second one being technically a sequel with new characters and a continuation of the story and basically the same game with a lot of reused and slightly tweaked levels.
And now for the worst one...Castlevania Judgment (Wii). A fighting game featuring several characters from the Castlevania series fighting in gimmicky arenas with a generic "I gathered you all from all over the timeline to fight the ultimate big bad". I loved to hate that game.
Most characters are unrecognizable. They got Obata of Death Note fame to redesign everyone, and it shows.
Simon Belmont has the usual beefy barbarian body with Light Yagami's head grafted on it. Death is basically Ryuk. Maria has a distinctly Misa Amane gothic lolita style that has nothing to do with any of her apparitions. Grant Danasti is... well it's not as much as he's a Death Note character, he just basically became Voldo from SoulCalibur for some reason. Eric Lecarde was brought into the game as a young boy and doesn't look anything like his two apparitions in the series, he's the token shouta brat in this.
Funnily enough, the game has Cornell, the werewolf from the aforementioned second Castlevania 64, despite those games being basically purged from the Castlevania canon in everything else. Likewise the boss is a very random reference to the Kid Dracula NES game, basically a Castlavania parody game featuring... a young Alucard? maybe? He technically already had a reference in Symphony of the Night, but in this game he's specifically referencing "lore" from the parody game.
Even the characterization is unsufferable. Maria is a teen from somewhere between Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, and she spends the whole game envying other female characters who have bigger breasts. In fact almost everyone is obsessed with something they have to bring up in almost every line, and it's either a very basic background tidbit or completely out of place.
All in all it's very much bad SoulCalibur with an attempt at CV fanservice completely missing the point. I spent way too much time on that shit.
Daikatana.
The first map was absolute mince, the colour tones were boring, the opening cinematics were long and tiresome, and even the whole first episode was a bit shit. The sidekicks were poorly coded and the last map was just a challenge map, especially with the game breaking bug at the end.
However...
The rest of the game was actually pretty good. The Greek episode was absolutely beautiful and excellently designed, the Norwegian episode was great fun and the soundtrack was wonderful, and the last episode was... decent, nothing great but nothing poor.
The patch fixed the bullshit sidekick pathfinding, the titular Daikatana made you feel like a fucking badass if you took the time to level it up, and the story was actually okay for the last three quarters of the game.
Moreover, if you like twitch multiplayer games - the multiplayer component is the closest to pure QuakeWorld I have ever experienced. Fast, unforgiving, great movement mechanics. It's got a very high skill ceiling.
Unfortunately, the opening hour or four is massively substandard and sunk the entire game - John Romero's name and the ill fated marketing campaign just made it easy fodder for people to shit on it.
Like Duke Nukem Forever, TimeShift, FEAR 2, or the Half Life expansions... it isn't amazing... but it's a competent FPS and does the job.
Clive Barker's Jericho
It's janky af but it has great atmosphere.
Really cool to see this mentioned. It was a mediocre game indeed but had such an amazing premise. I still think about it often.
I thought it was great, loved the characters, the atmosphere and all the lore, didn't know it was considered bad until now 😅
I will likely be crucified for this, but it's true...
Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind. (SNES version)
This game was hard as fuck and super satisfying to beat.
I always liked the first Bubsy. Never understood the hate it got. The second one, though, is completely unplayable to me due to the lag between pressing the jump button and Bubsy actually jumping. No review I've ever seen has mentioned this for some reason.
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. It's more of a camp and a meme answer tough.
X-Com: The Bureau Declassified. Your "teammates" are fundamentally suicidal, making keeping them alive almost impossible. But the setting, story and challenge made up for it. It was inventive.
The Technomancer: Mid-budget game by Spiders. Was short and straightforward, which most people disliked, but I thought it was a blast. The story still sticks in my head screaming for me to write a novel based on it.
DMC devil may cry. I played it and it was fun. The someone showed me "the real dante" and I was like nah that guy looks cringe I like this Dante better. Then I played DMC 3 and I was like yep this game sucks Compared to DMC DMC. But I saw more from the franchise and I can definitely see why dmc dmc is so hated.
Starbound is kind of like Terraria in space, but with a worse gameplay loop, worse characters, and worse bosses, but I did like gentrifying the cosmos.
Man, the full release Starbound was such a... I don't want to call it a disappointment but it's definitely a shame what happened with it. It went through so many cool mechanics throughout the development and threw away like half of them (not to mention the near complete rewrite of the lore). Such a weird situation.
I barely touched the 1.0 version but I still play some of the beta builds from time to time - they might lack in content but boy do they grab me in a way the full release never managed to.
It’s got good steam reviews so everyone else liked it too, but Mad Max. I would describe it to people as just a great bad game. It’s not art. The story is crap. The ending was dumb.
The actual gameplay was amazing. Just really really great. Still love that game.



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