Game with the steepest ratio of bad graphics to good gameplay

[Flour]

Going purely by a "graphics(or lack of it) to gameplay" ratio, I don't think anything can beat ASCII/text-based games.

But personally I think this is a bit cheating since some of these games are older than I am.

 

[Paperplanes79]

Dragon Age! Oh dear lord Dragon Age!

MLB 2K9 fugly as all hell but as fun to play because it was arcady and a good escape from the seriousness of The Show.

 

[Daniel Cygnus]

Probably the original Doom games. They look like shit, but god damn, they're fun.

You seriously mean to tell me that the games with some of the best pixel art ever look like shit? I know the graphics are outdated, but they still look pretty good today from a purely aesthetic standpoint and not a technical one.

I'll have to go with Twisted Metal 2. Holy crap, that game looked horrible, even for its day. Every single non-vehicle texture was pixellated and distorted so that you could only get a vague idea of what it was you were looking at. At least you knew that a shotgun lying on the ground in Doom was a shotgun. None of that kept me from spending a good chunk of my childhood blasting my friends away on it, though.

 

[MicrosoftPaysMe]

System Shock 2 looked pretty ugly even when it came out, back in the day.

It still manages to use it's graphics to be supremely creepy though, and you can tell that the extra money freed up from the graphics went directly to crafting one of the best games of all time.

That said, I still like to play it with a graphics mod.

I agree with you kind sir and I would also like to add G.R.A.W.

 

[Bloody Crimson]

Final Fantasy 1. And 4. They've got some damned good gameplay, story wasn't all that bad either. Graphics were...meh.

Also lots of JRPGs that appear on the PSP. They've got...well, not shit graphics, more of crap graphics, but gameplay and everything is astounding.

 

[Eggsnham]

Morrowind wasn't exactly beautiful.. To me anyways (I played it on the Xbox, so no graphics extenders for me).

 

[CloakedOne]

Ogre Battle 64 in my opinion

 

[SpyderNynja]

....Gauntletark Legacy!
I'm a bit bored.

That game was like crack. Could NOT stop playing. ugly as hell graphics though.

 

[SangRahl]

Me:
A tie between 'Final Fantasy' (No 'I', 'II', 'III', or any other numeral...) and 'X-Com: Enemy Unknown'.

My Wife: Hands-down it would have to be 'PacMan'/'Ms.PacMan' (I swear... One quarter and she's set for a good twenty minutes to a half hour.)

 

[Infallible Fail]

Metal Gear: Solid? =)
I remember when I first played the demo, back when I was eight, amazingly intense game then.
When I played to win, at around 11, still fuggen intenseeee.
When I replayed at 16, just as immersive and suspensful. Butttt then I noticed the blob faces of every character... oh well, I'll always have my memories

 

[Teddy Roosevelt]

Ocarina of Time. 'Nough said.

 

[Angryman101]

Tales of Smyphonia. It actually has okay graphics, at least for a gamecube game (excluding whenever someone is stabbed. Then they bleed ketchup. Sometimes, usually they just vanish). However the character animations are atrocious. Anytime someone grabs something it looks like they are wearing 3 pairs of gloves and have forgotten how to use their fingers. Combine this with horrible voice acting and terrible dialogue (the main characters are cringe worthy at times. Most of the minor characters are either completely unconvincing or they make me want to tear my ears off. I can only imagine how bad it would have been if every character had voice acting), and you end up with a game that is just in general a pain to look at.

However, the combat is actually fun and is the only thing that manages to be more than adequate. Of course good gameplay in a cutscene heavy JRPG can only get you so far. But when the quality of the gameplay is compared to the quality of....well pretty much everything else in the game, it feels amazing.

I actually found the VAs for Lloyd and Kratos to be really good at their roles. Raine was also pretty good. The rest...eh.

 

[Maxman3002]

Deus Ex (The first one) was an amazing game built in blocky graphics.

Going one further though I found that the very first C&C was the most fun and had the worst graphics. Infact as C&C games have progressed in graphics ive found them less and less fun.

Also Kirbys All Stars on the Snes was amazing.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Hey, retro games don't count because most of them had great graphics for their time!!

 

[yankeefan19]

Darkest of Days

 

[Ryuo]

Gonna go with Perfect Dark.

 

[A random person]

Tales of Smyphonia. It actually has okay graphics, at least for a gamecube game (excluding whenever someone is stabbed. Then they bleed ketchup. Sometimes, usually they just vanish). However the character animations are atrocious. Anytime someone grabs something it looks like they are wearing 3 pairs of gloves and have forgotten how to use their fingers. Combine this with horrible voice acting and terrible dialogue (the main characters are cringe worthy at times. Most of the minor characters are either completely unconvincing or they make me want to tear my ears off. I can only imagine how bad it would have been if every character had voice acting), and you end up with a game that is just in general a pain to look at.

However, the combat is actually fun and is the only thing that manages to be more than adequate. Of course good gameplay in a cutscene heavy JRPG can only get you so far. But when the quality of the gameplay is compared to the quality of....well pretty much everything else in the game, it feels amazing.

I actually found the VAs for Lloyd and Kratos to be really good at their roles. Raine was also pretty good. The rest...eh.

Zelos struck me as rather dull at first, but a couple of surprisingly-good lines (one of them rather close to the ending) made good use of that deadpan. Other than him, I though the voices were perfectly serviceable with some hams here and there (yes, even Genis; I thought it was decent for the character. I can see how someone would hate it, though).

As for the animations Kraken mentioned, they did strike me as rather basic and odd in the context of, say, the Tower of Salvation, but it didn't really bother me, partly because I'm somewhat fanboyish towards the game like Drow (Ymir Forest and some 2nd disk plot wonkyness be damned).

On topic, I'll give the obligatory Deus Ex mention; the graphics indeed are rather blocky and the draw distance seemed off, but the gameplay systems were a flawed form of my dream game.

 

[Alarien]

Too many posts picking on games that looked great when they were released, like Morrowind. /boggle

A game that was fugly but great to play in it's time? If you ask me, Starcraft looked like ass when it was released. It's graphics were already at least 2 years dated by the time it was released, but, hey, it works and it works damned well.

 

[Malkavian]

They've got...well, not shit graphics, more of crap graphics, but gameplay and everything is astounding.

This sentence confuses me. A lot.

As for the topic, let me think...

Disgaea 3 was a lot of fun, while I played it. And even though it was PS3, much of the graphic could have been done on a PS1, almost.