Games purchased from morbid curiosity

[Callate]

So I happened to notice that Aliens: Colonial Marines is on sale on Steam today for $4.99.

I'm not suggesting that there's anything that should be done with this information. I'm certainly not planning to. But I did find it kind of amusing.

Some time back I purchased Duke Nukem Forever when it was surfing around the $5 level as well. There are games I've enjoyed more that I paid less for, but, y'know... Ten years of development time, beloved franchise, cringe-inducing reviews... I had to know, if only to rubberneck at the car accident, so to speak.

Does anyone else have any games they've purchased not so much because they expected to enjoy them, but because they had to know what all the fuss/confusion/contempt/frothing white-hot rage was about?

And hey, if you discovered you actually liked a game that you expected to be a train wreck, more power to you.

 

[Elfgore]

I've contemplated buying Ride to Hell. The game just looks so bad it may be good. Of course I'd only play it with friends so we can enjoy making fun of it.

Other than that, I've never thought about purchasing a bad game. Money is thin enough as is buying the good stuff.

 

[spiderzeter]

I got sonic '06 to see if it was really THAT bad. The fact it made other sonic games that are already terrible look like they where crafted by god, I would say so.

 

[Vault101]

while probably not "awful" I should play Ass Creed liberation at some point

 

[DementedSheep]

I didn't purchase it since its free but I did ply The Plan. Go to steam, look it up, play it and be amazed. It only lasts a few minutes but it will completely change your world view.

Spoiler

I'm pretty sure the developers where taking the piss not genuinely trying to symbolise the pursuit of god, knowledge or life in general but who knows. It is the same team as Among The Sleep

I messed around in The Endless Forest as well (also free)

DA2 (on sale) but it actually isn't that bad. It dose deserve a lot of its criticism though.

In general I'm fine with just looking it up terrible games on youtube.

 

[RJ 17]

Three times now I've gone up to Gamestop with the intention of buying FFXIII. Three times I've picked up the game case and looked it over. And three time's I've placed it back down and left the store.

I became disenfranchised with the FF series long before FFXIII, so I've got that bias already. Then there's the fact that FFXIII is almost universally hated. I've watched Spoony's playthrough of it. I know all about the dreaded Hallway. Still, a tiny part of me wants to play it and see it for myself. It's a fleeting notion, however, that quickly leaves once I remember I'm doomed to hate the game, and as such would be wasting my money.

 

[Ironshroom]

I've bought many pieces of utter crap out of curiosity alone. I'll name a few:
Desert Gunner, Real Horror Stories: Ultimate Edition and War Z are off the top of my head, but I'm sure I've bought plenty of shit in the past (never for more then like 50 cents)
I've also been given Bad Rats in the past which caused me to be violently ill, so that's great...
I've also bought the Rambo game as a birthday present to a friend once.
I did a list of terrible games once for a site called indie juice (http://indiejuice.tv/alans-musings-top-ten-awful-games-give-friend/) so you can check that out if you want to upset your friends.

 

[krazykidd]

Alpha protocol. And i was pleasently surprised.
Singularity. I was thoroughly dissapointed
Record of agrest war:Zero. It was so hard.
Metro 2033 ( before it was popular)It was okay.

 

[Twinrehz]

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron. I honestly don't know what to think, mainly because I don't seem to get the hang of it. The combat feels a bit weird, and comboing seems like it's a science in its own right. However I bought it mostly because it looked like an interesting game, different from your ordinary games that crowd the shelves. The story also got me hooked, it's the kind of fiction I love, it makes a blend out of a few religions, throws in some weird stuff and makes a new story out of it.

And it's stylized as fuck. I mean, REALLY stylized. You're playing an immortal guy, you run around in some pretty trippy environments, fight some messed up things, and get to fight fallen angels. What annoys me is I've met this same guy like 5 times, and every fight seems like a "supposed to lose"-fight. He seems impossible to beat, he proceeds to knock me down, and the story goes on from there.

EDIT: It seems I might be in trouble. Take a look at this.

 

[ninjaRiv]

Duke Nukem. I bought it, I kind of liked it. It was halfway decent, imo. I actually liked the ability to pick up poo. I thought a lot of the stuff people complained about was pretty funny, in its own way. I thought it was ridiculous and I happen to like ridiculous! Not a great game, of course.

 

[lacktheknack]

I remembered this really surreal game a friend of mine had when we were kids, "Beyond Atlantis". We never got far in it. So I bought it, determined to beat the damned thing, to see if it was as weird as I remember.

It was. And how. The game is now in my top ten games ever... and the bottom ten at the same time. It's hard to explain. Maybe I'll Let's Play it at some point.

 

[AmberSword]

Somehow I get the feeling this thread is going to create a lot of regretted purchases

On topic though, I haven't fallen victim to my own curiosity yet, besides Alan Wake, but since that's a title most people enjoyed, it doesn't really count. Waking up this morning and seeing Aliens: CM on daily did make me laugh though, people will actually get this game just because its on sale, I feel sorry for them.

 

[Knight Captain Kerr]

I bought Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel which is meant to be just awful. It's also non-canon. Haven't played it yet but I'm playing through the Fallout series and I'm on Tactics at the moment so it's up next. I'm dreading it. Although on the bright side after I play that I'm onto Fallout 3, a good game.

 

[SanguiniusMagnificum]

Alpha Protocol. I bought it after watching Angry Joe tear it to pieces in his review. Since it was like 2.99 in my local Game Mania I decided to give it a go and see how terrible it is.

Turns out that it's now one of my favourite games of all time.

 

[Gizmo1990]

Another vote for Alpha Protocol and I was also happy that I did. Great game even if it could have used a bit more work.

The other is the Witcher. I know it is really popular but I did not have a PC good enough to play it for a long time so my enthusiasm for the game had gone by the time I did have a good PC. Picked it up in a steam sale and loved it. Started The Witcher 2 a week ago and love that even more.

Thats not a good thing tho because I have had to stop for two weeks while I put the finishing touches on my dissertation! I just finished chapter 1 as well......

 

[elvor0]

Somehow I get the feeling this thread is going to create a lot of regretted purchases

On topic though, I haven't fallen victim to my own curiosity yet, besides Alan Wake, but since that's a title most people enjoyed, it doesn't really count. Waking up this morning and seeing Aliens: CM on daily did make me laugh though, people will actually get this game just because its on sale, I feel sorry for them.

I have heard that Alan Wake is enjoyable for the most part, most complaints tend to be directed at the ending being a let down. In fact my mother only ever refers to it as Alan "bloody" Wake for that reason.

 

[AmberSword]

I have heard that Alan Wake is enjoyable for the most part, most complaints tend to be directed at the ending being a let down. In fact my mother only ever refers to it as Alan "bloody" Wake for that reason.

Well since you did mention it, might as well explain what I meant with Alan Wake by roughly quoting myself.

The game just doesn't know what it wants to be, a horror game with a soothing narrator and pages strewn about telling exactly what you'll be facing? A survival game that gives you enough ammunition and supplies on its default setting to put several holes through each and every enemy you encounter? Just a general third person action adventure shooter where the movement mechanics are so clunky and your character can't run more than half a block without gasping for air?

Oh wait I get it, it wants to tell a story, through uninteractive means that don't take advantage of the medium (contrast Brothers: Tale of Two Sons), well then stay a film or a book please.

So basically, whether someone liked the story or the ending is subjective and based on opinion, its obvious from my rant that (to me) it wasn't so incredibly amazing that I was able to overlook the fact that I was playing a game, but that's just my opinion.


Edit: On another note, take a look at the steam top sellers list. Aliens is VERY HIGH on it, I couldn't stop laughing.

 

[Zhukov]

I pre-ordered Duke Nukem Forever, knowing full well is was going to be horrible, just to see how horrible it would be.

Do I get a prize?

 

[Evonisia]

Well I say it far too often enough but I preordered Halo 4 just to see what kind of batshit nonsense the writers could come up with.

To add to that bat shit nonsense I got a laggy, unfinished game with boring enemies, unnecessary re inclusion of Elites as enemies, a more grey/brown colour palette and no decent maps to mess around with on the admittedly improved Forge mode.