It's Critter Time!

3d Blast with the Director's Cut is really good, genuinely love that game.

After playing a bit today, I'm thinking that I might actually like Virtual Hydlide and it's 9 fps Trundle Simulator gameplay.

Teacyn wrote: Sun Jul 20, 2025 7:56 pm 3d Blast with the Director's Cut is really good, genuinely love that game.

I've always been in 3D Blasts corner entirely because I played the Saturn/PC port when I was young. I keep on wanting to see a fangame or something revisit that formula, tbh..

Lolo De Puzlo wrote: Sun Jul 20, 2025 11:29 pm After playing a bit today, I'm thinking that I might actually like Virtual Hydlide and it's 9 fps Trundle Simulator gameplay.

It has such a fun vibe and I really wanna play it myself. it seems extremely my sorta shit

Teacyn wrote: Sun Jul 20, 2025 7:56 pm 3d Blast with the Director's Cut is really good, genuinely love that game.

Kinda funny that the Sonic series produced two notoriously bad games that were made good with a bit of love, the other being Sonic 2006 which was fixed up into a pretty excellent game with the Project 06 fan mod.

Some of my favorite games of all time are famously "bad" so I've gotta narrow it down a bit and just highlight Darkened Skye, the Skittles game (also shameless plug for my very thorough Let's Play series covering it). It's a 3D platformer directed by the guy who also directed the CDi Zeldas, with ridiculously difficult level design and combat, glitches so severe they can make the game unwinnable, and atrocious controls, all in service of shilling the candy Skittles (which are relics of magical power in the story). The writer, however, recognized how terrible an assignment he'd been handed and stuffed the game with sarcastic, lovable characters who make a mockery of the brand, brought to life by excellent performances that include the actor who played Jasmine in Disney's Aladdin. Probably the funniest game I've ever played.

I'm also looking forward to trying out a PS1 game called Cheesy, it looks horrible and I expect to love it

I've always felt that The Town with No Name was very clearly intentionally funny. It's a game that aims to be funny and succeeds. I don't really get why so many people, especially YouTubers, seem to assume that a game where you can immediately quit and shoot the kid from the ending of the 1953 movie Shane into orbit was intended with any sincerity. Maybe it's because its sense of humor overlaps so much with modern-era shitposting? I don't know.

I'm also quite fond of LaserDisc arcade games as a general rule, although I admit as an animator that I may be slightly biased on that front.

Fiendly wrote: Mon Jul 21, 2025 12:45 am

I did a one-off stream of Cheesy and got really far into it. Absolutely hated it. Dreadful game. The difficulty becomes almost unhinged eventually. I still want to try and beat it...

Not "bad" insomuch as critically panned, because I don't think critics ever cared about it, but I really like the game Airport CEO: it's a game where you build and run an airport.

It's kinda buggy; it's poorly optimised; it left Early Access, the devs dumped a few cosmetic DLCs and then never updated the game again.

But goddamn if it isn't the best, most feature-rich airport sim game I've played.

test drive unlimited solar crown has so much modern gaming crap in it (always online, battle pass, crap performance on basically anything) but i really enjoyed my time with it, the driving in it feels really satisfying and something about driving around and ticking boxes has always sat right with me, probably why i'm also generally okay with ubisoft games nowadays for a similar reason (although i did drop off of valhalla fairly quickly because it was a bit too bloated for me).

Neopets: The Darkest Faerie nearly killed me when I streamed it but I found it weirdly compelling. It's an Ocarina of Time-like with lovingly designed and animated characters, and almost no other good qualities. The only walkthrough available skips the hardest part of the game (The Oubliette, a prison with one of the most convoluted layouts I've ever seen) which took me a solid three hours to complete. It's hard to convey how poorly designed this game is

but

I kinda like it? it's charming and it serves as a reminder that if I put my mind to it I can do anything. also I found a new glitch in my playthrough but the speed runners couldn't make any use of it.

I have now twice attempted to play through The Darkest Fairy! Because as time goes on I forget that the core combat loop is somehow both uninteresting and difficult at the same time and the only thing I remember is "oh! The Neopets game with cool vibes and charming visuals!"

yeah the combat is abysmal. i seem to remember figuring out some tricks for it but frankly, when im streaming i often end up with little to no memory of the minute to minute moments hahaha

i think i'm like, one of the only creatures on the planet who finished that game

Apparently the common consensus is that Sonic Forces is meant to be a "bad" game and I just genuinely can't fathom how that's the case (I think it's more memetic than anything), even if the Classic Sonic sections are really janky (and the game's worst part). The 3D sections are excellent and the Avatar story raised such a genuine, huge smile on my face as I leodicaprio'd at the screen whenever my character I teamed up with the one and only Sonic the Hedgehog to save the world. Such a fun game.

On a more genuinely bad note, I echo the OP's thoughts in that Sonic 06 is a giant mess that absolutely doesn't deserve to be called a good game, but there's a part in me that has a soft spot when a piece of media attempts something grand and ambitious even if it crash lands on its face in the attempt. I played it for the first time last year and I had a decent and surprisingly engaging time with it, especially the Silver sections which honestly could be a real blast at times.

generally my opinion on "bad" works is that trying to judge something on whether it's "bad or good" is missing the point of engaging with art. like, there's no such thing as a perfect entertainment quotient that art should have, or some sort of mechanical way to tell whether something is the correct quality. this is all a symptom of capitalism assigning everything a specific "value" based on, essentially, arbitrary measures. we should not do this ourselves! do not let capitalism colonize your brain!

now sometimes something is bad because it's actually full of really awful/bigoted/harmful ideas. can't dispute that. and of course i would never say that someone must like or dislike something i like or dislike - taste is real, and most things are not for everyone.

all of this is to say that I also love:

Flint wrote: Mon Jul 21, 2025 3:48 pm when a piece of media attempts something grand and ambitious even if it crash lands on its face in the attempt

!!

Sonic Adventure, Fable 2, Balan Wonderworld,failed MMOs, many many amateur games, etc. etc. are really where my blood gets flowing. There's a place in the world for "perfect" games (ex: Portal is a game where changing any single thing about it would collapse the entire thing) but i will always be more excited about a game that tries something new, even if it totally fails to achieve that goal.

Anyway, talking about "bad" stuff is really fun though, and an easy shortcut to understand what the goal of the conversation is! I just think it's interesting to separate out what I actually mean when I say "bad".

oh and don't get me started on the phrase "guilty pleasure."

Yeah, I've really gone off that phrase, it just sounds like you're apologising for liking art that most people don't. Eff that, just own it.

Moot wrote: Sun Jul 20, 2025 10:30 am apparently in the japanese version that characters name is "Melinda de Cameron", which in katakana is "dekameron" but also translates straight into "mega melons" and i'm not sure if thats a genius translation move or the dumbest one in history

Genius. It is a genius move.

If Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts has one fan, it's me.
If Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts has no fans, I have died.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts is the only good banjo game

I like other Banjos but I will cast them into the fire for Nuts and Bolts if only for the bit.

Thirded, Nuts&Bolts is fantastic and criminally underrated.

I have serious problems with that game but I still love it. I wish it didn't feel like the first 4 hours are a tutorial though.

Yeah the first few hours are a terrible slog and I encourage anyone to look up methods to cheat and get more better parts unintentionally early.

Another game that is jank in ways that are hard to love broadly but that I adore: Phantom Dust.

Best of Best from South Korean developer SunA is a rather renegade-ly put together arcade game, but it's an enjoyable bit of jank that's fun to dick around with in Fightcade

Best of Best rules. More games should trace kevin mcalster in home alone for the Statue of Liberty for some reason.