Submitted 3 weeks ago by VerseAndVermin@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
Numen: Contest of Heroes is a game that sits at about 50% recommended on steam. I beat it years ago and really enjoyed myself, but I knew it was a unique fit for me. I only say “bad” so that we have common ground, but I value that experience.
What are “bad” games you enjoy?
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.
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 of Obsidian’s contract work days, 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 Obsidian 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.
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
The card thing made it a game that was fun when you play all the time instead of the once a month your busy adult friends are free at the same time, so a lot of people that had previously loved l4d couldn’t really get into it
I had a beta. And all I remember is that on easy game is truly easy. But once you up difficulty by 1, game becomes terribly difficult. Makes it impossible to play with bots and even with real people and voice chat it was quite a challenge.
Card system should be better and they shouldn’t nerf all the fun cards. They shoul’ve taken inspiration from Dead by Daylight. But again, for a PvE game, nerfing fun stuff to the ground is dumb and a way to distance from the community.
As a 1k hours L4D2 veteran, I really wanted to like B4B. Not sure how could they fumble the formula that they participated in creation of. Sad to see it fail.
I definitely enjoyed my time with B4B. I don’t think it’s a really good game, but it definitely wasn’t as bad as everyone was saying.
Haven’t played in forever though so maybe it has gone to shit in the meantime.
A couple of buddies and I still play this. It is definitely unbalanced but thats part of its charm to us. Plus when you start getting a groove as a team its just tons of fun
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
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.
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.
Good point. Personally, I basically never review games on Steam (love OR hate).
Yes but there is no reason to think that they wouldn’t fall roughly in the same distribution.
Fallout 76
The game was a fucking dumpster fire on release, but honestly, I really enjoyed the item grind and the build system. I was building some really cool houses back then and I probably spend a vast majority of my time with that.
Haven’t touched it in years tho. Idk how it is today.
I know it was broken as all hell at release, but a buddy and I had a blast playing it. I still love playing with a friend, going around, then after a big fight looking at my friend, looking at a corpse, back at a friend… “You gonna eat that?”
I played for awhile a couple years back and it was fun. I owned it for awhile before but didn’t put serious time till then for whatever reason. I think the general consensus is that it definitely improved over the years since release. I never did anything but solo things too so the harder content was still nothing I checked out.
I think they got a lot of the major bugs out but given it’s a fallout game there’s plenty more I assume.
Last I played storage sucked without the subscription for the gathering box which is a big downside cause I love to pick up crap.
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. 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
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 kill 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?
2nd is the better game, if you want a little more streamlined experience.
I would not worry about the story, the voice acting is so ridiculously bad in a funny way, you will not remember anything, just the presentation.
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 exists because then we got that beautiful speedrun of it : youtu.be/5NeR-bT3uv0?is=F6o9i7-_Dgrm09qP
Always makes me laugh, “what a god” :D It demonstrates the game really good
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.
Yup, except the two words games had like 75 USD budget and 2 voice actors tops :)
Oh yeah! Didn’t they give away a physical edgy dagger with ‘cool spikes’ with the special edition of one of the Two Worlds games?
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.
I forgot about the “not leveling” thing. I thought I was so clever as a kid when I realized it was better.
These might be closer to mediocre than BAD bad but I don’t expect too many people to mention them so why not.
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?
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.
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.
I love starbound, it’s definitely not a bad game at all.
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 feed back 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.
FC5 even has a joke about not making you climbing towers in the tutorial island
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.
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.
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.
Uplink
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.
Earth Defense Force is a terrible looking game with an even worse premise and is fun as hell.
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 already, 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. I spent way too much time on that shit.
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.
Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear to the Rescue
(original PC release)
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.
Clive Barker’s Jericho
It’s janky af but it has great atmosphere.
Hocus Pocus
Duke Nukem 2
Rise of the Triad
Raptor: Call of the Shadows
Sim Tower
Shadow the Hedgehog
Star Fox Adventures
Halo Reach
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
The first Witcher game. I adored it. Janky controls, weird plot holes, subpar graphics. But oh man - the environments, the ambiance, and the dialogue absolutely slap.
Daikatana.
The first map was absolute mince, the colour tones were boring, the opening cinematics were long and boring, and even the whole first episode was a bit shit. The sidekicks were poorly coded and the last map was just a challenge map.
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 beautiful, 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.
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.
Sacred 2 for PC. It is a top down action RPG (Diablo-like) that had dated graphics on release (it was still essentially 2D when everyone else had already gone 3D), it had tons of super cringe voice acting, and jankiness for miles. The game itself was just really, really fun, especially in co-op. The different characters and builds were really fun to play in a way that tend to get balanced out by dev in AAA games. My friends and I had a great time playing it, but it was clearly not a good game.
I will likely be crucified for this, but it’s true…
Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind
This game was hard as fuck and super satisfying to beat.
rtxn@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I enjoyed Bioshock Infinite. Probably because I hadn’t been infected by the immersive sim brain worm when I played it and didn’t judge games based on their box-stacking mechanics, nor did I care about how it fit into the lineage of *shock games.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s the #72 highest rated game of all time on Metacritic with a 94/100. I don’t think BioShock Infinite really fits this thread.
Carl@anarchist.nexus 3 weeks ago
It’s a funny case where it was pretty widely panned by diehard fans of the previous games, but it was extremely popular with basically everyone else. So there was a very vocal minority who shat on the game right after it released. But it hit a broad enough audience that the new/casual players overwhelmed the diehard fans.
Bioshock Infinite is basically the Fallout 4 of Bioshock games. If you played Fallout 4 first, you’d probably think it’s a great Fallout game. The gameplay is decent, you have roleplay choices for the story, there is lots of world building, etc… But if New Vegas is already your favorite game, you probably hated FO4 for not being enough Fallout. It doesn’t mean people enjoying FO4 are wrong. It just means the game didn’t deliver what existing fans were hoping for.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It seemed widely decried at release, but it really stood up in the end.
rtxn@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Apparently imsimmers really hate it for not being Bioshock 1 But More.
iamthetot@piefed.ca 3 weeks ago
Bioshock Infinite had a wildly good reception. It’s 91% positive on Steam with 47k reviews.
Korkki@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
I don’t get how game that has 94/100 on metacritic and only lost to GTA5 on it’s release year calling it “not bad” is an understatement to say the least.
wirelesswire@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I enjoyed Infinite as well. The story was good enough to keep me hooked, and despite you having to escort Elizabeth or the majority of the game, she didn’t feel like a burden.
topcrest@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Surprised to see this in the thread. Agreed it’s a fun game!
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
As someone who didn’t particularly enjoy the first two, I was very grateful that Infinite was different. The only really bad part IMO was the ghost fight. On the higher difficulties, she tanked more ammo than existed in the area.