Infamously bad games that you like

[Ryallen]

I liked Final Fantasy XIII. I liked the gameplay, the linearity didn't bother me, and the soundtrack was really good. The characters didn't really seem all that bad. Snow was nice enough, Hope went through an actual transition, and Sazh was just well-written. I don't care what anyone else thinks. Fang and Vanille were alright, and I liked the whole part with "being from Fang" thing, how they caused the whole mess, and Lightning was my least favorite, mostly because she was just the token badass character.

I can't defend FF XIII-2, mostly because FF XIII ended in such a way that a sequel would just ruin the ending, but I liked FF XIII. I still don't get why so many people hate it.

 

[Steve Waltz]

Mine was already mentioned, but I LOOOOVE Alpha Protocol. Most of the characters are all really interesting, and after playing it 5 times I was even able to follow the story! P)

But really, I love the characters. It has that ?tailored to the choices you make? Taletell thing, except there?s actually action/stealth gameplay. Every choice you make--whether made in gameplay or in dialogue affects the next mission you do. It really is fantastic. It?s a really unbalanced game (the pistol is so OP it?s not even funny), but that?s easy to overlook when in the need of a challenge or whatever.


Who remembers Lost Kingdom 2? The game where you throw cards around and monsters pop out and kill everything? Man, I loved that game. It?s another one of those games that has a cult following, but overall isn?t well liked. Yea, it has a high player score on meteoritic, but that?s only because cult followers are the ones that even know the game exists these days. The game has a LOT of mechanic flaws and balance issues. For example: the transform cards have really clunky controls. the levels are too small, the wandering monsters have pitiful AI, the cards burn out too fast, and the game itself is just too short (and since the levels are really short that says a LOT). But, despite all of the flaws, there was enough concept in there to have me interested enough to enjoy it. And now that FromSoftware is a MUCH better company, they might actually be able to take the concept and make a better game. I *really* wish that would be able to remake the sequel because, goodness knows, the sequel was WAY more interesting than the original game.

Seriously, if there?s a game that needs a revamp/reboot/remake it?s Lost Kingdoms 2. I wish Activision and FromSoftware would work together again to make it happen.

 

[babinro]

Dragon Age 2.
Even after Inquisition, I still consider it the best entry in the franchise.

Diablo 3 vanilla with the AH/RMAH.
Much like DA2, this probably isn't considered truly bad but the negative press and response D3 vanilla got was extreme. Still..patch 1.0.8 was this games peak by far for me.

Marvel Puzzle Quest: Dark Reign
This has been my most played and favorite game for the last year. Metacritic users score it 3.3 out of 10 so I guess that applies. It's a F2P match 3 game with all negative facebook game style drawbacks you could ask for. Pay 2 win...timed play sessions...timers upon timers, poor character balancing. Yet this game is amazingly fun and competitive. I would easily make my GOTY 2014 if not for being released very late 2013.

 

[Signa]

You know what, I actually enjoyed Too Human. I figured out the necessary playstyle, and made it fun.

Two or three of the classes were useless though. I only could play the dual-wielding berserker or the ranged gunslinger guy. They didn't have much tanking abilities, so they would die constantly, but because their stats were min/maxed enough, they were playable. Other more middle-of-the-road classes like the defender weren't much fun to play.

 

[crazygameguy4ever]

Dragon Age 2 wasn't bad, it was a great game...the best game in the series (and still is)... when has it ever been considered infamously bad?

Jesus Christ, no, it was certianly not the best game in the DA series. That's not even an opinion, man. It had some cool characters going for it, but the rest of it was reused maps to the point where you'd have to wonder if they did it to be deliberately insulting, along with horrible combat with little to no strategic thinking required. EA pretty much destroyed the game by trying to make it appealing to the "console crowd" (whilst alienating DA:O fans) and by rushing it out the door before it was anywhere near finished. Sorry, but Fenris rivalmance or whatever does not make up for all of that.

Some times I wonder whether people have any standards at all. See, it's crap like this that makes people like EA think they can get away with mediocre stuff like DA2. I would class DA2 as the worst of games simply because of What Could Have Been. On its own, sure, it's a 6/10; seen worse, seen better. In the Dragon Age series, however, it really should have been called Dragon Age 2: Wasted Potential. It is a game and a publisher that deserves no apologists saying that they don't get what all the fuss was about.

I can't say I've ever loved any infamously bad games, but I have to confess to preferring Fallout Tactics over the original Fallout 1 or 2. That should count for something.

Dragon Age 2: Greatness revealed.. IT was the BEST game in the series.. that's fact not opinion.. EA may be be the worst publisher around, but DA 2 was a great game.. the only Dragon Age game worth playing through more then once.. can't speak for DA Inquisition, but since it's not like DA 2, it's probably not as good

 

[Flammablezeus]

Superman on N64. I was young, and damn it the training mode was still the closest we'd gotten to a proper Superman game at the time. It did at least one neat concept too. Flying/running to catch a car before it can hit somebody. I want more random stuff like that in my superhero games. You know, actually being a superhero. Not blowing up the streets of Gotham in my Deathmobile like in Arkham Knight.

 

[Savagezion]

EDIT: LOL forgot to put mine. Alpha Protocol. Yeah, its a bugfest but the potential the IP held was insane, especially in the hands of Obsidian. If cosmetic bugs can ruin a game for you then you probably hate Obsidian. The game does have a couple (yes, a couple) design flaws on a couple (yes, a couple) levels that mostly has to do with the leveling system. Personally, this is forgiven knowing that Sega was the publisher. I should have seen these flaws coming a mile away but a spy RPG, I got romanced by the idea. The mechanics involved in character dialogue were as fun and engaging as promised. The other mechanics were standard fare for the most part. Leveling did need some tweaking and such but my perspective is that they should have minimized violence and left this a dialogue game with you being able to level through dialogue and that leveling would improve dialogue. The game has boatloads of potential, but it's probably gonna be sitting on Sega's "useless" shelf indefinitely.

I really like Dragon Age 2. I played Origins first, and I actually prefer the second game.

Also, even though I admit that it is terrible, I enjoy Empire Earth 3. Heh.

Dragon Age 2 wasn't bad, it was a great game...the best game in the series (and still is)... when has it ever been considered infamously bad?

The general consensus is that it is a bad game. A notion I would agree with and do to some extent. The repetition and bland environments as well as a completely unpolished and disconnected story arc does serve to undermine it. If I were to look at it purely under a design microscope it is pretty bad considering the capabilities of the time it was made and comparing it with what simply other games of it genre were doing. Especially, if we compare it to the prior works of Bioware themselves. The game can really only be defended by one of the statements "it was lazy" or "it was rushed".

Now I do defend it to myself that it was rushed and in that context, I can forgive a lot. (It hit shelves merely 13 months after Origins did and didn't recycle much from Origins - that's insanely dumb, but hey, it EA.) I can forgive the disjointed story as I go ahead and give them the benefit of the doubt that their story was a little bit too ambitious for a rushed title. SO they get point sheerly through benefit of the doubt from me there. They did have enough material to work with. Then I can either forgive the bland environment (Kirkwall) or the repetitive "dungeons", but not both.

If you know your game is being rushed, it makes sense to make the player do laps over a small area and it could be done well. Or, you could do the whole fast travel style of getting fromplace to place to cut down on how much you need to construct, but what you do construct should be able to be fairly interesting that way. Both are viable ways of shaving a good game down to the bare bones. But Bioware tried to do both and it ended up being a game where the player makes laps around a small bland environment.

From my perspective it is Bioware's worst work to date by a pretty large margin. The aesthetic feels rushed and graphically the amount of clipping is insanely bad. They couldn't even make the bland stuff they had look decent. floating swords, phasing hair, phasing armor, etc.

All that coming from someone who merely sees DA2 as average. Sadly, that IS average today. It isn't any worse than Bethesda gets away with every release and thats only because they give you a BIG bland world to explore instead. However, they are guilty of every crime against DA2. But many people consider Bethesda games above average or even superior games.

The complaints against the game are mostly valid, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is nothing wrong with liking a game that has been largely accepted as terrible or bad.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Sonic 06 was probably the most fun I've had with a 3D Sonic game. Nothing against Lost World, Adventure, etc but Sonic 06 was just a riot. I also had a lot of fun with Mario's Picross on the Gameboy despite it getting really low ratings at the time. As for games that people in general don't care about, I found Legend of Zelda 2 to be the most rewarding to beat.

 

[Brian Tams]

Quest 64/Holy Century Magic

Terrible game. A barebones story that gives you so little information its sometimes better to make up your own.
Overly simplified leveling up system.
Lack of any real characters or characterization. Bad guys do bad things because reasons. Quail head goes and beats them because they are bad guys doing bad things. Seriously frustrating to navigate dungeons (no really, whenever you win a battle your character does a little jump of joy, spins in the air, and randomly comes down facing some direction. So if you're in a cave where pretty everything around you looks exactly the same, you can sometimes backtrack all the way to the entrance without realizing it.)

However, it had an interesting take on turn based combat, some of the locals are pretty imaginative, and the hero both shares his name with me, and has quail hair. I loved this game as a child and still love it today.

Of course, that could just be the Stockholm syndrome talking.

EDIT-Also, I forgot to mention. Quail boy's staff has the force of a nuclear bomb, which, once realized, breaks the combat system.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I got Dark Sector on the 360 at a 5 below for, you guessed it, $5. I thought it was pretty fun even though apparently no one else did. Maybe my opinion would have been different if I had paid full retail but for $5 it was pretty good.

 

[NeutralDrow]

Devil May Cry 2 seems to be a universally derided game, even by its own universe.

Except for the utterly atrocious voice acting, I think it was a pretty good game. Certainly not as good as the other Devil May Cry games, but that's an unreasonably high bar, in my opinion (and I loved seeing the origin of some of the techniques fleshed out in DMC3).

Quest 64/Holy Century Magic

Terrible game. A barebones story that gives you so little information its sometimes better to make up your own.
Overly simplified leveling up system.
Lack of any real characters or characterization. Bad guys do bad things because reasons. Quail head goes and beats them because they are bad guys doing bad things. Seriously frustrating to navigate dungeons (no really, whenever you win a battle your character does a little jump of joy, spins in the air, and randomly comes down facing some direction. So if you're in a cave where pretty everything around you looks exactly the same, you can sometimes backtrack all the way to the entrance without realizing it.)

However, it had an interesting take on turn based combat, some of the locals are pretty imaginative, and the hero both shares his name with me, and has quail hair. I loved this game as a child and still love it today.

Of course, that could just be the Stockholm syndrome talking.

EDIT-Also, I forgot to mention. Quail boy's staff has the force of a nuclear bomb, which, once realized, breaks the combat system.

Agreed on most things, good and bad (adding that I loved the different characters of the element spell lists themselves). Only three exceptions: I don't share his name, I deliberately avoided staff combat (for me, the gamebreaker was the magic shield/avalanche combo), and Brian always comes down facing the direction he entered combat in (it's the camera that winds up pointing in random directions).

I still need to pull out my N64 and see if I can't finish my last challenge run. After I successfully beat the game using only fire and water (no magic shield), I tried using only fire and wind. Ran straight into a titanium wall with Begis, but I'd forgotten that fire has a healing spell, so I want another shot at it...

 

[JohnnyDelRay]

I'll have to agree with those who mentioned Resident Evil 6, and the Kane & Lynch games. I absolutely loved all of those. Once I got the hang of the RE6 controls, it makes every old RE game seem rubbing sticks together backwards. Kane & Lynch are fantastic for their heist-type gameplay (especially the first one) and horrible personality development. Even just for having the balls to throw story convention out the window makes them great.

For my own contribution, I have a few, I don't know if I loooooved them enough to qualify but they definitely entertained me more than warranted.
*Battlefield 2142 -I actually quite adored this game and sunk many hours into defending/assaulting Titans.
*Killing Floor - Just had a freaking ball LANing this game with buddies on low-end laptops.
*FEAR 3 -I found the game to control quite tight, nice mechanics and shootouts. So good it made the game somewhat easy. A little bit awkward on a keyboard, trying to lean and crouch but I worked my way around it and it's superb. Yeah it's not a horror game, and it reduced FEAR into a simple shooter but on it's own merit it's fine.

Even some movie franchises that I expected to flop, but were actually kinda fun: (despite most movie->games being absolutely crap)
*Wanted: Weapons of Fate
*Terminator Salvation
*The Godfather 2 - Loved what a brutal and simplified rendition of a gangster lifestyle in the 60's it was. And the story progressed into a downward spiral magnificently, which is not easy to do in movie writing let along games.

 

[Fox12]

None.

Any game bad enough to merit the descriptor "infamously bad" was either wisely avoided by me, or I hated it.

There are some average/good but flawed titles that drum up a lot of community outrage, probably because they make for good controversial forum fodder. I like some of those. Your Dragon Age 2/Alpha Protocol type games.

Bloated Guppy has it right, if a game is "infamously bad" then it's usually a broken mess, and I avoid it. There are less then perfect games that I enjoy, but I would't call any of them bad.

I think some people forget how mixed the response to Valkyria Chronicles was. At the time of its release it was largely average to negative. It's since been recognized as a cult classic, and has enjoyed a slight resurgence in popularity. However, at the tie the game was met with a great collective "meh" by the critical community. This is unfortunate, as it was quite the unsung treasure, and was always one of my favorites.

We also seem to have agreed that Mass Effect 3 was universally awful, based upon its ending. Most people don't want anything to do with it. This is sad, as I wouldn't change almost anything about it until the last five minutes. The plot was borderline perfect for me, and it featured some of the most emotional moments in the history of gaming for me. That ending though...

Is it unfair to mention Final Fantasy 7? Yes. However, the blacklash its suffered over the last few years is rather unfortunate. The characters and plot were very solid, and perhaps the best in the series. Final Fantasy lost its way after that.

 

[Amaror]

I think people weren't ready for the great action heavy game of DA2.. they liked less actiony game play of DA Origins and DA Awakening for some reason.. But I liked the great graphics, the action focus, the smaller areas that meant you didn't need to travel 30 minutes or more to get to your mission's starting place on the map(with more attention to detail and more interesting environments afforded by the smaller maps, the fact that your main character actually spoke.. i found nothing wrong with the game,and in fact It's the only Dragon Age game out of the first 3 that I actually wanted to finish.. i got bored after a while with the first 2.. and everyone i know who's played it agrees @ was the best so far..

I don't really want to get into another Dragon Age 2 discussion. You like the combat and that's fine, i personally had trouble not falling asleep during it but that's just my personal opinion.
But if you really think Dragon Age 2, aka Dragon Age Copy-Paste or Dragon Age Grey-Brown, has more interesting environments and great graphics i can just not take you seriously. I can see that some people liked the actionfocused combat or the small areas or the voiced protagonist.
But the reused environments in Dragon Age 2 were just objectively bad and you have to admit that the graphics aren't great considering it was released in the same year as games like Crysis 3 or The Witcher 2.

 

[KayRead91]

Postal 2 is broken beyond belief and not very well made, but mod it up (Or play the pre-modded Steam version) and it's a blast, despite it's off colour humour not really working. I don't seem to be alone in that though, game has a bit of a cult following but it wasn't ever precisely well received. I also rather enjoy a lot of old FMV games for god knows what reason, but I have a 3DO pretty much just for them. I also rather liked the second Deus Ex, I agree it was a download but dammit it was still fun.

 

[The Raw Shark]

DAMN IT, EVERYONE ALREADY SAID DRAGON AGE II.

On a serious note, the PS3/Xbox 360 versions of Shadow of Mordor and Inquisition aren't THAT BAD.

Not on par with the next gen experiences, but the little bits that I played at friend's houses or laptops or computers were functional and fun enough. True they didn't push what the Old Machines could do (They admittedly look like Slightly improved versions of Dragon's Dogma for the most part) but they're well off enough that it's not unbearable.

And for going even further back, I actually liked Devil May Cry 2.

I mean despite the series' retarded chronological order (Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, then Devil May Cry, then Devil May Cry 4 and then finally Devil May Cry 2.....what the shit?) I thought it was a welcome addition to the series.

Sure the fighting wasn't as hard as it could've been, but it was entertaining for what it was.

I especially liked Dante in it. What's everyone talking about that he's serious all the time? The promotional artwork makes him look serious but he's the most non-chalant person in the entire game. Hell he gave the best crowning I had ever seen in fictional media.
Arius: "I was going to be KING OF THIS WOOORLD!" (This is said in the most over the top and hilarious way possible by the way)
Dante: "King?"
-Loads guns-
Dante: "Here's your crown"
-Shoots Arius out through a wall-

My favorite Dante yet, second favorite being the first Dante. He just walks in, raises hell, then leaves like a proper gentlemen with some sort of hidden motive in his most professional outfit I've seen.

 

[MetalShadowChaos]

I got me Duke Nukem Forever in a steam sale and actually enjoyed it. I don't play many games to completion these days but I did actually finish it, which is something. It retained my interest. Yes it was a bit rubbish in places, it was a Frankenstein's monster of different devs and it looks like everything is covered in a veil of cellophane, but it was so stupid that I did actually have a bit of laugh at it.

 

[Nomad]

I really like Dragon Age 2. I played Origins first, and I actually prefer the second game.

Also, even though I admit that it is terrible, I enjoy Empire Earth 3. Heh.

Dragon Age 2 wasn't bad, it was a great game...the best game in the series (and still is)... when has it ever been considered infamously bad?

No offence, but have you been living under a rock? Because pretty much every mention of the game is about how it was rushed and unfinished, has reused dungeons, and bad romances. A lot of people seem to think those three little things ruin the game.

There are a couple of other reasons - my primary ones are three entirely different little things, for instance.

One is the artistic direction, best illustrated by the mage combat animations. The game just thoroughly looks arcadey and ridiculous. Oversized weapons, thoroughly impractical armour and combat movement that would make you miss every attack, sprain your ankles and promptly get killed because you thought doing a little pirouette in front of your enemy was a good idea.

Another is the dialogue wheel: it simplified dialogue to the point of having three and exactly three reactions to everything. Saint, psychopath and smug. Colour-coded for your convenience so you wouldn't have to worry too much about which one to pick. This was also a bit of a blessing in disguise, because the dissonance between what you thought you would say (judging by the dialogue text you selected) and what your character would actually say was often jarring. I can't remember a dialogue in that game where I didn't at least once think "That was not at all what I told you to say, damn you!".

The third is the story direction. I'm not a big fan of the cult of personality variety of story telling. It all basically amounted to "Hey, look! It's Hawke, isn't he/she awesome?! And look at those other awesome people following him/her around for some reason, aren't they all awesome too?!". There was no real point to anything that happened, apart from the narrative constantly pointing empathically at the characters for no good reason. I get it - it was supposed to be a "hero's journey" type of story and everything. But hero worship just doesn't appeal to me.