Bad games you coudn't help but play anyway

Whether it's because you're a fan of the concept or because you spent cold hard cash on it, what are some poorly made games you can't/couldn't help but find some way to force enjoyment out of?

This game definitely meets the criteria of "poorly made". Frustrating enemy encounters, lack of ammo, no explanation for any of the mechanics, RPG spam fucking everywhere, annoying knock-back animations, overwrought boss fights, lack of weapons, incoherent story-line (even for an RE), the many problems with this game are well documented.

However, there is a point, once I started to get a grip on the game-play (the rolling/diving, stamina management, quick shots, etc.), that RE6 started to become somewhat enjoyable. It's a disaster that I couldn't draw myself away from.

Pretty much fails at every aspect of a third-person shooter. Slant Six couldn't even get a basic cover mechanic to work. And yet, I couldn't help but put a dozen or so hours into the game's multiplayer component. Maybe it's because the idea of a straight up TPS set in the RE universe was to enticing to pass up, or that the PvPvE matches could sometimes result in some sort of fun (and I use that word lightly)

I knew full well this game was not going to be very great, yet I bought it because it was on sale, and it's hard for me to turn down a DBZ Vita game, considering how much I love playing on the hardware.

Really wish this was a physical release so I could have at least traded it in once my morbid curiosity was filled, but I guess I'm stuck with it now. I'm just going to pretend TkX cost $30 and this was $8.

Well, this is what happens when I can't preview my post before it goes through. I have no idea how to fix it up anyway.

Me and a friend played through all of Hunted: The Demon's Forge because..uh...hm.

I'm playing Knack right now.......

I actually really like your layout, its different, even if unintentional.

I play a LOT of bad games and skip on good AAA games. I don't know why, I just enjoy playing something like Damnation instead of Uncharted, Mayhem 3D instead of other racing games, etc etc

Kick Challenger: Air Foot.

Half Life 2 when it released. Yes, I am serious. I think that game is shit except for the graphics (when it released).

Mercenaries 2.

I played Killzone: Shadow Fall and thought it sucked pretty hard. But I had to finish it because next-gen. Apparently people like it but the campaign bummed me out.

Never understood why Killzone became the go-to Sony shooter. Resistance was fun at the PS3 launch, Resistance 2 tried a bunch of stuff and hit more than it missed, while 3 had one of the best shooter campaigns I can remember.

Anyway, I ended up trading it in when Gamestop had some promotion. I believe this is the second game in my 28 years that I've ever traded in.

I like to buy cheap games and usually pick up some baddies whenever I can. I also learned not to judge a game before I play it because I have been surprised before. Although I recently played Mindjack and that was not very good. Everything about it was generic amd not very fun.

Im also playing through SAW for the PS3. Had some fun when it started but im now a couple of hours in and the tedium is hitting me hard.

I can think of a few...

Mass Effect 2

ASSCREED 3

@demoskinos: :(

BOOOOOOOOOOOM

Boiling Point: Road to Hell

It's what I call a polished turd.

So yea. I actually kinda into the first one... #2 was straight up bad. I came out of curiosity but got caught up with getting an achievement for my time.

Now. If anyone has ever tried to get AN achievement in this game. Literally a single one, any one. You will know how fucking inane and time consuming it is. I did some research, did a print-out of some helpful info and spent about 15 hours working towards getting a single of the games achievements, which are all basically identical btw.

I think most of you people have no idea what 'BAD' game is.

@viciousbearmauling said:

But the black guy had a bird in his fro! How can you go wrong? That game was a pile of crap.

Looks around for Matt Rorie

Drops piece of paper

Paper Reads

Alpha Protocol

Welcome to the last year of my life. I think there's some merit to playing bad games, be it simply keeping things in perspective or finding nuggets of good ideas among all of the bad ones... though I really can't explain why I went on as long a kick with that as I did (I'm pretty sure I don't hate myself that much). I played Devil May Cry 2. No one should play Devil May Cry 2 unless they absolutely must know for themselves why it is the way it is.

I've been actively trying to do better this year, but that didn't stop me from playing The Bureau. Ugh. I can also claim with some satisfaction that I haven't picked that Sonic RPG back up again, but once I'm done with Bravely Default and Might and Magic X, who knows what terrible things I may do to myself? (Answer: Still probably not playing that Sonic RPG)

@wintersizzle: Nice first post.

To answer OP's question, I played 40 hours of Tenchu Z. I don't know why I like this game.

the look of the game is great, but shit gets weird and not in a good way...in a my therapist breaks into my house at night to molest my little sister kinda way. its a really weird game too it turns into a really bad 2d platformer sometimes, i dont even know.

ride to hell retribution

bought it knowing full well how horrible it was

had to experience it

Rock Band, it's not bad but I don't like it too much, I enjoy GH much more, but I felt like I was torturing myself for no reason. I usually don't do that, if I am not enjoying a game then I will stop playing and put it on the shelf for a few years. I gave Crackdown 2 3 hours of my time before perma-banning the game from my Xbox 360.

FF XIII-2. I was kind of lukewarm on the original and everything I saw about the sequel made me feel less confident about it rather than better. So I didn't buy it at release. But then I read people talking about it here, and those people liked it, because only crazy people decided to play the sequel to FFXIII, and when it came to Games on Demand, I bought it. The good news is that my antipathy toward XIII-2 ensures I'm not even slightly tempted by XIII-3.

There are three bad games I've played that I can think of.

The first is Hyperdimension Neptunia, which at least had some charm, and at least the characters KNEW they were in a shitty game, so it was kind of fun in a way. I can't believe I managed to beat this entire game, even getting the golden ending. However, while I admit it's bad, I actually kind of like it. Call it a guilty pleasure I suppose.

The second is Records of the Agarest War. I got to the final boss of the game, and I finally gave up. This is one of the worst JRPGs I have ever played - the story is awful, a majority of the protagonists are bland as hell (except for the third generation guy, he's pretty rad), and while the combat is actually entertaining, it REALLY wears thin after playing over twenty hours. I regret wasting so much time and energy on this game, I can't even explain WHY I did it... Ugh.

The final one is Time and Eternity. This game is garbage. Whereas I said Records of the Agarest War was ONE of the worst, I proclaim Time and Eternity to be the worst JRPG I have ever played, and perhaps the worst JRPG to ever have gotten a western release. Thank GOD I realized relatively early on what a piece of shit this game was, and I stopped playing near the beginning of the second act. NONE of the characters are likeable, the animation is terrible, the in-game art is bad, the combat is boring as hell... The ONLY positive thing I can say about this game is that the box art looks incredibly good. That's it.

The bad games I play are usually Japanese games that get VERY little coverage prior to coming over here, and no huge websites do any reviews of them, so I almost always go in blind, not sure what I'm gonna get.

I spent probably upwards of 60 hrs playing this game, no joke.

In all seriousness, this was probably the last "Warriors" game that I sunk a lot of time into. I really enjoyed how ridiculous it was. It was kind of like a greatest hits with all of your favorite characters mashed together. The story made no sense, the game was just insane, but it was a lot of fun. A lot of stupid, bad fun.

I actually enjoyed this series for a long time. I remember going to KB Toys and looking at the PS2 display and being amazed by Dynasty Warriors 2. It looked "next gen" and was one of the games, if not the game, that made me want to get a PS2. So I played that, then the third game, then the fourth, then Samurai Warriors, then Dynasty Warriors: Gundam, and the last one I really played was Warriors Orochi. Then I tried Dynsaty Warriors 6 and I just couldn't get into it. That was the end for me.

Still, I had a long torrid love affair with the Dynasty Warriors franchise, a pretty bad batch of games in all honesty, and I regret nothing.

Man, it still bums me out when people slam RE6.

As for my answer, Vampire Rain. I beat Vampire Rain. It was totally serviceable.

I'm playing Castlevania: Lords of Shadow currently and while some of it is great some of it is so gosh darn awful it brings back rage I hadn't felt since I was a young kid in the age of all games are broken.

@clonedzero said:

Ha, spot on. I spent so many hours playing that travesty.

@jadegl: There was a time in my life that had me buying like every single Warriors game ever. It started with DW5: Empires, which I bought because I had heard a few good things about the franchise, and before I know it I ended up buying another Warriors game per week... They were all used and mega cheap at least, but it was still a really dark time in my life. Mainly because while I've invested a crazy amount of hours into those games, I frankly think a large majority of 'em are terrible, terrible games. But I've always thought they have such potential, and because each one is mildly different from the next, with each doing things better than the other, it's like I was on this epic search for the one Warriors game that I would legitimately enjoy.

I admittedly have a bit of a sweet spot for the first Samurai Warriors, and mechanically wise I think I like Warriors Orochi 3 the most, but for now I think I've played enough of those damn games that I can mentally handle...

I played through that Aliens Colonial Marines game on hard. That was a wild ride.

Too Human and Kingdom of Amalur.

The Simpsons Game for 360 and Deadly Premonition. I'm a big fan of the Simpsons of yore, and it was also a period of achievement lust, so I decided to slog through it. And DP has so much goddamn heart, its hard not to love it in spite of its piss poor game play.

The preview coverage on this was really positive, bought it first day, and beat it a few hours later.

Such garbage.

That's funny because I think that's the best Simpsons game ever made.

@yummylee: Yeah, I loved the first Warriors Orochi, I bought the second and watched the opening cinematic, and then I never played it. I think I reached that point of critical mass where I had played so much and just was done with it. On top of that, I kind of realized that the games were pretty terrible, as you stated.

There's only so many times you can fight the Yellow Turban Rebellion before you have a breakdown I guess...

@jadegl: I've always kinda liked the first Orochi game as well, though a large part of that may be down to its fantasticcharacter select theme :P Whenever it came time to select my roster, I would sometimes literally just sit there lightly tapping the buttons on my pad--if not scrolling through the characters--to the beat.

Assassins creed 1. I thought it was fantastic for the first hour, then it got extremely repetitive and the climbing didnt feel right at all. For some reason however, I still played the game to completion, maybe because I wanted to finish it before I played the second. AC II is a monumental improvement over the first game, and now I kind of wish I had just given up on the first one because it feels like a waste of time that I finished it. I truly believe AC 1 is a bad game.

@coafi: I liked that game. :-(

So many. Too many. Just in the past six months I played through all of Legendary, The Bureau, Alien Rage, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, part of Operation Flashpoint Red River, all of Lost Planet 3, Remember Me, and Ninja Gaiden 3. And in the year before that I played both Transformers: Cybertron games, Goldeneye: Reloaded, FEAR 3, Shadows of the Damned, and the single player of Syndicate.

All of these were rentals mind you, and I beat most within a couple days and returned them. Honestly I enjoy mediocre shooters most of the time. Out of all these the only one I can say I really wanted to stop playing was Lost Planet 3 and that was just because going from area to area took so long. All the others I enjoyed to an extent. I can't call a single one of those games remotely good, but for me as long as a game isn't frustrating and has some big explosions I'll play through it.

I know Ryan Davis hated his time with this game, but I really liked it. I didn't mind it being a clone of God of War, since I love God of War. I really liked the atmosphere, the really good audio and the disgusting visuals. Now, if only the game was longer. Like Satan's dangling penis at the end of the game.

@liquidsaiyan3 said:

The preview coverage on this was really positive, bought it first day, and beat it a few hours later.

Such garbage.

oh man.

I wanted to like this game so much. It looked so cool at the time but the controls were literally coded by the fucking devil.

Too many to count, I just flatout like games, even the bad ones.

Brink. I tried to pretend that I liked it because I had bought it new for full price. Went through a good chunk of the game before finally coming to terms with the fact that it wasn't worth it.

@klei said:

I know Ryan Davis hated his time with this game, but I really liked it. I didn't mind it being a clone of God of War, since I love God of War. I really liked the atmosphere, the really good audio and the disgusting visuals. Now, if only the game was longer. Like Satan's dangling penis at the end of the game.

It was shocking that they threw in that BBC action at the end. Anyway I've played the shit out of Dante's Inferno. Showing demons the holy spirit with the cross, and slashing demons with a fatass scythe was just extraordinary. Though the last few levels could have been better, and I wish there was more upgrades.

I've beaten that game afew weeks ago. I thought it was ok overall, but I can definitely understand why some people will hate it. If a person comes in with the mindset that its a simple yet challenging game to play. Then I think they will get some enjoyment out of it, other then that they will be bored as shit and annoyed.

I'll definitely agree with LP3. I really wanted to finish it because Jim Payton is a great character, but the monotonous gameplay took it's toll on me ten hours in. I traded it in for two dollars less than I bought it for, so no big loss. Guess I should Youtube the rest of the cut-scenes.

Alpha protocol at release

Star Trek: Legacy, I'm just a sucker for Star Trek space combat games.

Halo Wars. Man I followed the development of this game all the way to release and the final product was such a huge letdown, yet I still continue to play it from time to time as it's still one of the best console RTS games around sadly.

@futurstock said:

the look of the game is great, but shit gets weird and not in a good way...in a my therapist breaks into my house at night to molest my little sister kinda way. its a really weird game too it turns into a really bad 2d platformer sometimes, i dont even know.

That's not a bad game. I understand why you may not like it. I loved it. But I don't think it had any major problems, other than being a bit too long

interesting that the following..

frustrating enemy encounters..

lack of ammo..

no explanation for any of its mechanics..

are criteria for making a game bad, according to the OP