""""bad""""" games you actually like

[Beancatte]

The thrilling sequel to my movie thread.


Im partial to a little OG Sonic 06 to be honest. It's just such a fascinating thing with the fingerprints of its rushed development on almost every single aspect and I cant help but love that. Every single playthrough feeling vaguely personalized because its that inconsistent rules also.

Unearthed: Trail of Ibn Battuta is one of my favorites just for speedrunner reasons. Its run is so goofy and silly and I really enjoy doing it. Short enough to do in less than 10 minutes.


Here's the big one: I like Bubsy 3D. its fucking weird but there's just something SO early 3D about it that im kinda taken with.

[Loosf]

I legit think that dark souls 2 is the best of the dark souls games.

[Moot]

resident evil 6. i love it. i've played through it multiple times on purpose. i know its trash but it is extremely playable and funny trash and the time i streamed a chunk of it was some of the most fun i've had and i'm a big fan of the recurring plot point that any vehicle that leon kennedy gets into will be completely destroyed mere moments later

i guess you can't embed twitch clips on here but its so bad never mind privacybadger was eating it. its still bad though


just to get ahead of the allegations, yes i do think RE6 is a more fun game than RE7. its not better by any stretch, but still

[NovaSquirrel]

I got the impression that Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz was seen as a particularly weak entry in the series (or at least a controversial one), but I had a lot of fun with it; I got it from a Scholastic Book Fair and it was my first introduction to the series, and I like being able to jump in that game.

[Micolithe]

Like is a strong word but I'm academically fascinated with David Cage's work. Heavy Rain's the closest he ever got to making a good game, it's one of those things where it becomes greater than the sum of it's parts.

[Patashu]

Oh man. Back when I played BYOND, I lived and breathed "bad" tower defense games. Castle, SpaceCastle and Gold Guardians were my favourite. Sadly bitrot has set in and my experiences with them were never well documented, but I managed to find a playable port of Castle and re-beat the game in the year of our lord 2022:

Me and my brother have also re-experienced Castle of the Winds in more ways than any human should have. A Win3.1 traditional roguelike from 1993, it's extremely cheeseable and breakable in so many ways, the player character is SO strong and gets infinite tools, so by modern sensibilities it is a "bad" game, but has the benefits of being accessible and easy to understand, and being possible to beat under many deranged challenge conducts, including 'Ironman' where you never visit any shops and never backtrack a dungeon floor:

[Loosf]

resident evil 6. i love it. i've played through it multiple times on purpose. i know its trash but it is extremely playable and funny trash and the time i streamed a chunk of it was some of the most fun i've had and i'm a big fan of the recurring plot point that any vehicle that leon kennedy gets into will be completely destroyed mere moments later

i guess you can't embed twitch clips on here but its so bad https://www.twitch.tv/mootzilla/clip/An ... 1tpfWe3stD

just to get ahead of the allegations, yes i do think RE6 is a more fun game than RE7. its not better by any stretch, but still

oh yeah

I played RE6's campaign and definitely liked it more than RE5. By A LOT. But the most I played of it was Mercs Mode.

RE6 Mercs Mode simply fucks. It is frantic and fun in ways that the others have not matched.

The weird UI fuckery it has with all the characters is also kinda charming.

[Beancatte]

[/quote]

I legit think that dark souls 2 is the best of the dark souls games.

It is wild that Souls 2 has had its rep dragged through the mud enough to actually be valid for this thread. People when the game is like 5% different

resident evil 6. i love it. i've played through it multiple times on purpose. i know its trash but it is extremely playable and funny trash and the time i streamed a chunk of it was some of the most fun i've had and i'm a big fan of the recurring plot point that any vehicle that leon kennedy gets into will be completely destroyed mere moments later

i guess you can't embed twitch clips on here but its so bad https://www.twitch.tv/mootzilla/clip/An ... 1tpfWe3stD

RE6 really is the logical end point of the shift RE4 introduced, its ridiculous, bombastic, and constantly throwing things at you in 60 different directions and hoping at least one of them hit. I love it. Its like an insane B-movie with an unattainable and wild as hell ambition

Like is a strong word but I'm academically fascinated with David Cage's work. Heavy Rain's the closest he ever got to making a good game, it's one of those things where it becomes greater than the sum of it's parts.

I think the fucked thing with David Cage for me is i LIKE some of what he's doing on paper. But he's just so in love with himself that it brings absolutely everything down. I think Heavy Rain is the closest he ever got to me, yeah.

Oh man. Back when I played BYOND, I lived and breathed "bad" tower defense games. Castle, SpaceCastle and Gold Guardians were my favourite. Sadly bitrot has set in and my experiences with them were never well documented, but I managed to find a playable port of Castle and re-beat the game in the year of our lord 2022:

Me and my brother have also re-experienced Castle of the Winds in more ways than any human should have. A Win3.1 traditional roguelike from 1993, it's extremely cheeseable and breakable in so many ways, the player character is SO strong and gets infinite tools, so by modern sensibilities it is a "bad" game, but has the benefits of being accessible and easy to understand, and being possible to beat under many deranged challenge conducts, including 'Ironman' where you never visit any shops and never backtrack a dungeon floor:

i have been thinking about the silly as hell sprites from this constantly since I first saw them. I love them.

[TheAusSpideyGuy]

Me and my brother have also re-experienced Castle of the Winds in more ways than any human should have. A Win3.1 traditional roguelike from 1993, it's extremely cheeseable and breakable in so many ways, the player character is SO strong and gets infinite tools, so by modern sensibilities it is a "bad" game, but has the benefits of being accessible and easy to understand, and being possible to beat under many deranged challenge conducts, including 'Ironman' where you never visit any shops and never backtrack a dungeon floor:

Seeing this game everytime makes me flashback to video of Vinesauce Joel playing it for a shovelware stream, the way he went to look it up further and eventually discovered that it was distributed Epic Megagames, the company that would eventually become Epic Games. Truly interesting beginnings for some companies during the early years. XXD

[Weasel]

I legit think that dark souls 2 is the best of the dark souls games.

Thirded. Best dragon form, power stancing, the Pursuer slowly going from a menace to someone you look forward to dunk on as your skills improve, mwah.

[frozentreasure]

I legit think that dark souls 2 is the best of the dark souls games.

I've certainly come around on parts of it a lot more with the context of Elden Ring, that's for sure.

Speaking of coming around on things, I think I've at long last warmed up to Croc a little in the past year or so. I see the concepts the developers were going for with a lot of the levels and worlds, there are visuals that I do like in spots, and the soundtrack continues to be an absolute jam. Ironically, the remaster they put out has made me only like the original more; removing the tank controls made it an entirely worse experience.

[Enbyeon]

I really like Tom & Jerry the Movie for the Sega Master System, despite it being a really bad game.



First, playing as Tom is a big selling point, but also the game is very speedrunnable in a way that you want to optimize even if you're not a speedrunner. Each stage has a max duration and if you get to the end, you're guaranteed to catch Jerry, but if you somehow manage to reach Jerry (which is very difficult) before the end, you also beat the stage. So the idea is that you find spots in each level where you can exploit the terrain and get the drop on him.

Here's a speedrun for comparison:

[EdenCoven]

Been on "Dark Souls 2 is the only good one" train for a while. Also love Croc.

My original contribution is Shadow the Hedgehog (2005), which is weirdly narratively more ambitious than any of the other Sonics from that era and works pretty well as a game once you get used to its eccentricities. Really any 3D Sonic is possibly something we could post here.

I'm sure we'll think of more for this video games are so cool and good

[Micolithe]

Like is a strong word but I'm academically fascinated with David Cage's work. Heavy Rain's the closest he ever got to making a good game, it's one of those things where it becomes greater than the sum of it's parts.

I think the fucked thing with David Cage for me is i LIKE some of what he's doing on paper. But he's just so in love with himself that it brings absolutely everything down. I think Heavy Rain is the closest he ever got to me, yeah.

Right?? The thing is, the concept of a story-driven game where the choices you make can affect what happens? The gaming industry is *still* trying to make games this way, and is still struggling to pull it off. But David Cage is so bad at writing the stories that it just becomes a Joke.

[Cayman]

Me and my brother have also re-experienced Castle of the Winds in more ways than any human should have. A Win3.1 traditional roguelike from 1993, it's extremely cheeseable and breakable in so many ways, the player character is SO strong and gets infinite tools, so by modern sensibilities it is a "bad" game, but has the benefits of being accessible and easy to understand, and being possible to beat under many deranged challenge conducts, including 'Ironman' where you never visit any shops and never backtrack a dungeon floor:

Seeing this game everytime makes me flashback to video of Vinesauce Joel playing it for a shovelware stream, the way he went to look it up further and eventually discovered that it was distributed Epic Megagames, the company that would eventually become Epic Games. Truly interesting beginnings for some companies during the early years. XXD

Linking the topic of early games from modern game companies with the Dark Souls discussion, one of my favorite “bad” games is an early GameCube title called Lost Kingdoms from a little studio called Fromsoftware.

[media] [/media]

It’s an interesting game where you play as a princess named Katia who can use the souls of monsters trapped in cards to fight. Part deckbuilder, part action RPG, you use monster cards in real time battles with different effects. Some are an attack right in front of you, some summon a monster to fight alongside you, some set traps, some heal you or let you move faster, etc. The game wasn’t well-received for being very slow paced, having confusing puzzles, and having “bad music,” though I find a sort of charm in it. A lot of early fromsoft music has this sort of experimental, amateurish vibe that kind of fits the clunkiness of their early games. Still, I actually played and beat Lost Kingdoms back in the GameCube days and it still holds a place in my heart.

[ElTipejoLoco]

I'd need to be able to recognize bad games while or after I'm playing them for me to properly participate in this thread, I think. I don't usually check what the majority opinion is about things I've played afterwards.

Giving a simple cursory glance over my Backloggery to try and think about it, maybe Lagoon for the SNES counts? At least, if you consider 'bad' game to be something that looks like it could've had more polish to stand proudly amongst the rest of a game library. I recall simultaneously enjoying it but also being aware that it felt like someone who hadn't heard of invulnerability frames and time alongside being bumped out of enemies' hitboxes designed its entirety, which makes it feel unforgiving if you only played games where all of those things had already been normalized beforehand. It also feels very unpolished when you put it up against A Link to the Past, Soul Blader/Blazer, and other early ARPG hack-and-slash games of the SNES library.

[Mandrake]

My guilty pleasure is The Simpsons Wrestling on the PS1. It's barely a wrestling game and more of a 3D beat-em-up with Simpsons characters (including Bart and Lisa, which is an absolutely wild decision considering this results in adults beating up literal children). You press buttons to spend stamina to perform moves, with square being a four-move combo, triangle usually being a projectile or heavy attack, and circle being a special move. (For example, Homer can throw a bowling ball that bounces off the ropes and eat donuts to become temporarily bigger and with stronger moves.) The idea is that you reduce your opponent's health before knocking them down, then perform a pin before they can get back up to win. There's a bit of strategy in using your stamina effectively, combining moves, and running around to dodge damage while recharging, but a lot of the time it comes down to who can mash square the fastest.

The character roster is horribly unbalanced, with characters ranging from absolutely useless (Barney Gumble, who has slow attacks that barely do damage) to being completely broken (hilariously Ned Flanders, who not only has a fast four-move combo and overpowered moves that deal tons of damage and are extremely hard to dodge, but also gets a resurrection, requiring you to deplete his health bar and pin him twice per round). But it gives the impression that the devs weren't really thinking of making a "serious" fighting game and just wanted to do something wacky and fun with the licence (and ended up making something more violent than Hit and Run).

It looks poor graphically (the audience are static jpegs) and the campaign mode solely consists of beating up AI opponents on three difficulties. But I was such a big fan of the Simpsons as a kid (it was still in its "Golden Era" at the time) that I had fun messing around this badly-designed fighter, especially once I found the "Unlock all characters" cheat on the Internet and could set up custom matches more easily. There's a good variety of characters with some creative movesets, and the music's actually pretty good.

Homer prepares to kick his own son in the face

Thesimpsonswrestlinggameplay.png (174.03 KiB) Viewed 295 times

[Teacyn]

Underhero
https://store.steampowered.com/app/573320/Underhero/

This doesn't quite qualify as a bad game probably, but it is definitely a rough game and one I think a lot of people wouldn't like due to that. It's a janky RPG + Platformer combo largely inspired by Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi.

To be completely blunt, the platforming can be quite a mess sometimes due to how janky collision detection is. The combat is weirdly balanced and battles definitely take too long. But even with that, I had an excellent time with this game the first time I played it.

The devs have a new game coming out later this year that I'm looking forward to trying out.

[Trysdyn]

Too many to count. I run three events dedicated to appreciating bad games.

If I had to narrow it down: Lost in Plantinus is the most unusual MSX obscura because some kid built it in his basement in the 90s and it somehow ended up shared with a scenegroup and preserved. It's terrible; it runs at literally 1 FPS and has the distinction of being the only Turn Based Platformer I know of as a result. But it's just so charming and interesting to me as a weird thing someone made that ended up surviving.

The NES Beauty and the Beast is rough and chunky but it's a neat platformer once you get right down to it; ignoring the fact that one of the final challenges in the game is a pixel perfect blind jump from an un-obvious place.

Skunny Kart is one of the "Skunny" IP games. They're all absolute kusoge, and Skunny Kart is directly stolen from another DOS kart racer called "Wacky Wheels". So it's stolen, and then ruined by bad choices. But it's kind of hard to get a kart racer wrong.

Speaking of getting a kart racer wrong: a little nugget no one's heard of called Billabong Racers for DOS. The sprites are all snapshots of models from 1999 era modeling software. Aww yeah.

Finally Packy & Marlon for the SNES is a diabetes edutainment game (that does portray needles/injections, as a CW). It handles like trash and punishes you for picking up too many pickups in stages (because they're all food, and that whole blood sugar thing is a thing). I managed to softlock in it in a race and that made me fall in love with it as a pile of jank.

I could go on for ages.

[Enbyeon]

-snip-

I 100%'d this game as a child. Unlocked literally everything legit.

[Fiadh]

final fantasy explorers is a really weird monster hunter clone, and honestly a kind of awful one at that where only one of the "monsters" i've fought in it has been much fun
however? i'll admit i have a big soft spot for it, especially because i actually like the player gameplay in it and i wish square enix would give the idea a second shot for real instead of how the closest it's gotten is a mobile game that shut down only about a year later

[RueAzure]

I have ALWAYS been partial to the Way of the Samurai games. They're not good games by any stretch of the imagination, but I really do just like the idea of a mediocre action game with narrative branches based on what sort of nonsense you get up to.

Even when the narrative changes boil down to some of the dumbest shit, like whether or not you kill a character named "Melinda Megamelons". (Thanks, Acquire. Stay classy.)

Also, collecting all the different sword styles and secret moves tied to all the swords in the game scratches that collectathon completionist itch for me.

[Moot]

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

[Lavender]

Genuinely? Like, most of 'em. It's reached a point where some of my discord servers will occasionally name some game or anozher to trip me up, but honestly zhere's VERY few games where I don't like at least a couple elements.

Deadly Towers probably confuses people ze most. I can absolutely manage a tower, maybe several, deadly or not! Granted, part of it is just knowing ze game pretty well after growing up on it, but whatever zhat's as legit a reason as any.

[Raven]

I am one of the world's biggest Genesis Sonic 3D Blast defender (Sonic 3D Flicky's Island in Europe). The gameplay and level design is okay, but the vibes, the music, and even most of the boss fights are really good! The Director's Cut "official" romhack makes the game even better. Someday I wanna try the Saturn version.