unpopular (or outright bad) games that you enjoy

Dynasty Warriors, I've played every Dynasty Warriors since DW 2 and for some reason it never gets old to me.

The latest Sam & Max games by Telltale Games. They aren't bad, but unpopular enough that when somebody says "Telltale Games" odds are everyone else is thinking of the Walking Dead and other pop-fiction series they did. I love the humor and characters in all of them and really wish there was another one on the horizon.

Off the top of my head.... probably Deadly Premonition. I love that game to death. The characters, the SWERY-ness, the fact that it's set in a little American town where you can spy on people through their windows, the quirky side quests, the clean suits, the beard growth, I fucking love it all. But as a game it played like ass. The controls were awkward, the shooting is only saved by a lock-on system and only marginally better when you get the infinite ammo shotguns/SMG. The driving is only tolerable if you are moving in a straight line. Deadly Premonition is one of my favourite games of all time, and yet it is also one of the worst games I've ever played.

rune: viking warlord on the PS2.

@lentfilms: God, I wanted to like Knights in the Nightmare so badly, but it was just too damned difficult for me. It's a brilliant game that I wish I was better at.

I agree with all the people saying Alpha Protocol. I never really had issues with the gunplay cause I went stealth and had a fantastic time with it.

Is the Saboteur considered bad? I liked that game quite a bit. More than most GTA games honestly.

Marble Blast Ultra on the 360

binary domain

Star Wars The Force Unleashed and it's sequel I regret. Both are super flawed for very different reasons but on top of loving Star Wars I couldn't not fanboy for those silly games. The main characters name was Starkiller and he held two lightsabers like some stupid space ninja. It's hard not to just enjoy that aspect of it honestly.

Earth Defense Force is one of my favorite series; it's just fun to spec the weapons you suspect will let you rip through a level and then just hammer away on the trigger for 10 minutes while crazy crap is going on all around you. Musou games are much the same in terms of the kind of fun you can have if you just jump in.

I love to play licensed games because occasionally punch way above their weight (but you can often expect a good 5-7/10 experience regardless). Rango the Video Game gets real weird and is kind of incredible. Terminator Salvation was an entirely decent 3rd person shooter in which you shoot Terminators.

I liked that Crash of the Titans game... at least, I enjoyed the cutscenes because as bad as those later games got, they really did some good characterizations post-Naughty Dog (started around Twinsanity and continued to the end). Oh and they always had good colours and visual design, unlike that remake they're doing right now which looks like a college project.

@robbparris: i've been playing a lot of Resi 6 and its got some of the best third person shooting and melee i've played in a long while. completely absurd but satisfying as hell.

@lentfilms: hahah i spent a long time trying to get someone to let me write about Sonic R and i finally managed it last year. there's barely a game there but i find the environments very soothing to run around in and like the music a lot. plus the pc version plays music off whatever is in the cd drive which is cool as heck.

i'm real interested in Another Code R and Sakura Wars, as i'm making my way through wii games. what's the deal with those two?

@artisanbreads: a friend of mine really likes the winback games. they've got some great art and the lock on shooting actually seems rather fun

I love this thread. I've always loved beauty in imperfection, in all things, really, so hearing everyone's enjoyment of games that most others dislike is a fun read! It's also where you can find some gems!

For me, it's Doodle God. I really like the beginning prts of the game where combinations actually seem to make some sort of sense but as you get to the late game, or extra content, it starts to get very obscure and abstract.

One of my favorite games of all time is Jak 2 and I will never understand people's hate for that game, no matter how much they try to explain it. I've replayed it, I think, three times. Wasn't as big of a fan as 3.

Another would be Kingdom Hearts series. I liked 1 because it was my first 3D sword swinging real-time action adventure game that I experienced. Also, I liked the whole juxtaposition of Final Fantasy cross Disney. It's so wild that I just couldn't resist. To top it off, I think I'm drawn to overarching stories that include side adventures loosely tying into the overall plot; moreso in a supporting role than a direct one.

To take that one even further, I REALLY enjoyed Chain of Memories, particularly Re: Chain of Memories on PS2. The real time card combat was amazingly intuitive! I didn't appreciate just how repetitive it can get but I just loved the combat and deck building. Wish some developer would tackle that style, again.

Let's see, what else. I had an odd time with Murdered: Soul Suspect. The whole time I was playing it I felt that I was playing a bad game, but I couldn't help myself to stop. I was enjoying it just enough to want to keep going.

Sonic Adventure 2 defined part of my childhood, and I still kind of like it.

EDIT: After reading a few people writing Kingdom Hearts, I guess I have to throw that one down too. I love that series and its ridiculous plot that somehow makes sense if you squint at all the million pieces just right. Really excited for 3 to never come out.

One other that I would have added a few(?) months ago is Toonstruck. But apparently that game has a bigger fan base than I had assumed. Still, it does have some awful puzzles and a few really rough depictions of things like homosexuality (but hey, it was the 90s).

I was thinking just a few weeks ago about how so many aspects of Binary Domain are so legitimately well done, and yet the game still has such an unshakable, inexplicable feeling of "this should be bad." I really wonder what it is about BD that makes people (myself included) think of it as "a 'bad game' that's actually really goddamned good" instead of simply as "a really goddamned good game."

Man, I should play Binary Domain again some time...

Kingdom Hearts is my favourite game ever. Played it as I was coming of age, and so was Sora, and I'm a huge Disney/FF fan, so everything just coalesced. The soundtrack is also phenomenally beautiful. It's neither unpopular or bad, though. The series is huge and critically acclaimed.

@devise22: add me to that list. I know that they aren't the worst games out there, but I really loved them. The over the top power of the Force really spoke to me for that power fantasy. Plus I even liked the plot line. I mean it was dumb, but better than the prequels, right?

Risen.

Maybe more of an average RPG than a bad one, but it was the first game that came to my mind.

I really liked it, great atmosphere and cool little combat system. I think I've actually finished it twice. They lost "the magic" with the sequels though, which is kind of a bummer.

Assassin's Creed III is the one that comes to mind. Apparently everyone hated Connor, but I respected that they tried to tell a less "fun" story with him, and I found him to be appropriately pissed off. Also, I thought the frontier was fucking rad, another opinion which doesn't seem to be shared by many. I think it's a pretty underrated game, as people seemed to nitpick the hell out of it instead of enjoying its strengths. Admittedly, ACIII didn't entirely pull off everything it tried to, but I loved its ambition. Any game that makes me "lose myself" in its world earns major points in my book, and I found myself gleefully exploring a pretty fantastic depiction of a fledgling America and its untouched wilderness, a feeling which carried me all the way through to 100%-ing the game despite some bad eavesdrop/follow/chase missions. I could make a pretty decent argument that the story missions were the worst part of the game, despite a narrative that was actually pretty decent, even if the latter parts of the story fell pretty flat.

I thought the inevitability of "civilization" was a fairly powerful theme, as that's precisely the tragedy that befell the Native Americans. Also, I don't know if this was even what they were going for with the story, but I found Connor's effort to carve out his own slice of land to be an oddly "American" sort of thing that's relatable even now. In other words, maybe part of Connor became what he despised in "claiming" a portion of the earth instead of the diametrically opposed general Native American sentiment that we belong to the earth. Additionally, I found his guerrilla warfare parallels to the Patriots to be really interesting. That kind of brought the story full-circle for me, as Connor had to accept who he (or at least half of him) really is and that he found some more commonality with the colonists than he wanted to. Maybe I read too much into that, but I felt like his disdain for others ultimately became self-loathing once he acknowledged his own failings and that maybe he was part of the problem, and perhaps that's why I found his character more palatable than most.

I digress, but IMO, ACIII is a good (albeit flawed) game. I get why people didn't like it. I really do. I'll even concede that mainlining the story missions and ditching the game the moment that's over is not a particularly great or memorable experience. However, roleplaying Connor in the Frontier ambushing brigades of Brits as they dared to trample through the wilderness like they owned it was my favorite assassinating of the entire series. I also really, really like the game's art design. I think it's one of my favorite-looking games of the last generation. I'm admittedly a sucker for snowy environments, but the overall look and feel of everything was pretty spectacular, even in the other seasons. I've got some real fondness for ACIII, even over arguably better games in both II and IV.

Another one for me is Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain. Don't get me wrong, I love that entire series, but that game...man, I dumped SO MANY HOURS into that game, trying to unlock every little thing. I very rarely become obsessed with games like that, but I adored that game. Something about it just really clicked with me.

And a bonus one: Dante's Inferno. Really wish that got a sequel, because that would've been fascinating.

Recently 100ft Robot Golf

But historically I've played a lot of bottom of the barrel RTSs that I would find in the discount section of a Target and would love every single one of them.

Batman Arkham origins.

Fallout 3/New Vegas/Fallout 4 - obviously usually reviewed well and a lot of people like these games but there always seems to be a lot of hate for them as well. I've enjoyed my time with all of them.

If I really had to choose, Dragon Age 2 is probably my all-time favorite game. I think it has great characters, including the best female in video games ever (Aveline). I know it has problems - the game was made in 11 months - but I love it all the same.

i love the first state of emergency on the xbox i just love going in on the poorly rendered people and just rampage trhough them i also love lollipop chainsaw i've completed that game more times that i can count and i loved that old game the now ninja theory people did for xbox kung fu chaos

@optimalpower: I finished it four times no joke. That last boss gets pretty serious on higher difficulties.

The Ar Tonelico series, especially the first two games. There's two pretty good Gust JRPGs with incredible soundtracks buried underneath all those anime ladies.

It's always good to hear some love for Final Fantasy XIII. I, too, loved that game. The linearity was one of the best things about it early on. It gave the game a sense of focus, with a clear goal, and was constantly dishing out story in regular intervals with combat in between. The focus this game had on story and combat is something a lot of RPGs are missing. Usually, it just puts you in an open world, and it goes something like, "Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be saving the world, but first, I'd better find this random person's lost magic tomato, instead of, you know, saving the WHOLE FUCKING WORLD." This also makes the story a pain to follow and difficult to get invested in. I also loved the combat in FFXIII. It did a few hours to pick up steam, but once it does it is so damn great. And some of the end fights, like the mission bosses, are intense as fuck requiring a ton of planning and strategy.

In what universe is Kingdom Hearts unpopular? I constantly hear how people can't wait for KH3.

As weird as the controls are Gunvalkerie is still an awesome game imo.

I also enjoy The Floigan Brothers but that's more of a so bad it's good thing.

It's funny you should mention Earth Defense Force, because I just recently bought EDF 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair out of curiosity and just wanting something different. I can't believe how addicting it is. It's one of those, "just one more mission", types of games for me. I get why it's not super popular. It's stupid as hell but in all the best, over the top ways possible. I'm really digging it so far.

@tyrrael: It's a good game!

Talking of Terminator games, I really enjoyed Terminator 3: Redemption. It's better than the film. You could shove road-signs into terminators' chests and smash their heads off. So much of it was set in the future (something I died to see more of in T1 and T2), so it hit the spot for me in some ways. (Is it the only game where you control the Arnie terminator?)

It's a popular enough game in general, but I seem to be only person out of all my gaming friends to really get into Fallout 4. I really enjoyed it. I'm talking like 400+ hours.

I understand it has its flaws but some people talk about it like it's pure poison.

I really need to take some time and pound out my love for Resident Evil: Outbreak one of these days, it's had a pretty heavy effect on my love of video games. I keep putting it off so I'll at least say something.

Resident Evil: Outbreak was a bizarre mess of a game with terrible load times, confusing mechanics, awkward controls and some pretty atrocious voice acting. Resident Evil: Outbreak was also wildly ambitious and unlike anything I've played before or after it's release. It's an online co-op survival game that plays more like those classic disaster movies than it does a modern PC survival game (think The Poseidon Adventure with zombies). The game plays heavily with the idea of loneliness and individuality in scenarios where you MUST work together with other survivors. Staying together is key, separating from the group leaves you wandering around shouting for help hoping someone nearby comes to your aid.

The world is sort of an instanced persistent world in that other players can progress through the game even when you're busy getting lost and desperately searching for them. Events go on around you but only from the perspective of your character, not knowing when somebody kicks the bucket unless you saw it happen or find the corpse. Hearing people communicating in adjacent rooms after getting lost and nearly running out of supplies is one of those "OH THANK GOD!!!" moments of relief that really sticks with you. Should you die you simply get booted from the game, never to see your team again. Losing someone in Outbreak means you not only lose that character, you lose that person. There's a finality there that synergises extremely well with the apocalyptic setting. At the end of the day the only thing the game cares about is whether or not YOU survive. Any assistance you give to someone else is ultimately for the good of your own survival. No respawn closets and no reward for saving an ally, the temptation to save an endangered ally is really put to the test in a high stakes environment. No good or evil morality meter here, only whatever you think is worth sticking your neck out for. You never quite know for sure if that buddy of yours will still be there if shit goes south.

Sonic games. Sonic's gotten a bad rap for quite a while now and you've still got a significant segment of the gaming community convinced he hasn't done anything good since the Genesis, but I really enjoy most of the 3D entires. Adventure 2, Heroes, Unleashed (Wii version), Generations and others are all fun, fast-paced platformers and I really like the universe they've built as well.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows got a bad rap when it was released, but it's one of my favorite Spidey games. The reimagined combat was the best and I really enjoyed the choice-based story, especially when the game made the huge choice based on your gameplay and previous choices. Some of the bosses were great too.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed may not have hit the heights of the Old Republic series, but it's a fun romp through the Star Wars universe with a pretty cool story. And it's great to go nuts with the powers, especially with the Wii version's better bosses.

The Legend of Zelda: TriForce Heroes wasn't the Zelda game people wanted, but my girlfriend and I had a lot of fun going through that game's dungeons together while alternately laughing at and raging at randos we got paired with. Still my favorite online experience in gaming (usually hate online).

And Hot Wheels: World Race holds up really well. Went back to it with my brother a couple of months ago and we had a blast.

Is this your first Bethesda game you put that much time into? I feel like for most who did put a bunch of hours into Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim at a certain point the scale in their formula doesn't real wow you. The only new thing this game had was really the base building stuff which was pretty flawed. It's not really a bad game per say, I think just a bit tired. However if it was the first Bethesda style open world game you came to, it probably seems amazing the stuff it's doing.

@lv4monk: Man, I wish I had good enough internet to have enjoyed RE: Outbreak properly.

Second Sight has a very special place in my heart, hell of a thing.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge is actually a really good game. The original release left such a bitter taste in everyone's mouths that it didn't matter how many things TN fixed (and they fixed a lot, I mean this game is barely recognizable from the original), no one was going to give it another shot. Compounded by the fact that they locked this thing to the Wii U for the first year, it didn't stand a chance. I still wouldn't say it's close to Ninja Gaiden II, and it definitely doesn't hold a fraction of a candle to Ninja Gaiden: Black (what action game does, really?), but it stands on its own as a great Ninja Gaiden game that no one will ever play or remember.

I really enjoyed Arcania on PS4 - music relaxed me and it just kind of sucked me in. Finished it with no regrets.

EDF games are and forever will be my jam. Still pop in 4.1 every now and again to beat a few more levels. The trophy system for this game is garbage though (If you beat the game on hard for a class - the normal completion trophy for that same class should stack. Just saying.)

@notnert427: While IV and maybe II are still my favorites in the series, III is definitely not far behind. I have a pretty deep fondness for Connor and that game in general; it's good to finally see someone talk about it in a positive context. Hell, I actually liked doing the Homestead missions too. I think it nicely conveyed a sense of familial bonding between Connor and the other characters.

Played far more Turok (2008) then I'd ever like to admit

I kind of like Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard.

I actually really love Star Fox Adventures and Assault. I totally understand the issues people had with them, with Adventures literally being a game that was forced to have Star Fox characters slapped on it at the request of Miyamoto (was originally Dinosaur Planet, and the gameplay was almost indentical). For what it is, it's a very well made game, easily one of the better Zelda clones I've ever played, and visually looked amazing at the time. It's also probably the last game Rare made that I really got into, as their Xbox era stuff did nothing for me, so I look at it as Rare's swan song for Nintendo. (sorry Nuts & Bolts and Viva-Pinata fans). As for Star Fox Assault, I really didn't mind the on-ground missions and thought the game was a lot of fun, though the lack of branching paths was kinda of a bummer at the time.

Resident Evil 5 gets a lot of hate these days, not to the same level as 6, sure, but it was definitely a turning point for the series that left a bad taste in people's mouth's. While the lack of puzzle's and tedium of dealing with Sheva's inventory was annoying, and the scariness was thrown out almost completely, I really loved the game as a whole, it's definitely not some masterpiece the same way I would classify RE 1, 2 and 4 as, but a totally fun and well-made game that I thought closed off the Wesker storyline in an entertaining, albeit ridiculous in a fun, big-budget B-movie kind of way.

Kid Icarus: Uprising was surprisingly fun with really great humor and visuals. As someone who has no nostalgia for the original Kid Icarus, I got really into it, but can totally see why others hated it. It was also a bad portable game.

I loved Twilight Princess and find it has some of the best dungeons, boss fights, and characters of any Zelda game, even if I agree with others that the Wolf Link stuff isn't great, I find everything else about the game awesome, even if it does play it a little too safe in terms of pushing the Zelda series forward. I also really like Skyward Sword, though am a little bit more mixed on Skyward Sword as a whole despite liking it overall (FUCK FI!!!).

Metal Gear Solid 4, Mass Effect 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, L.A. Noire and Bioshock Infinite are all games that were critically well-recieved but are super contentious and divisive these days for various reasons, yet I love ALL 5 of them immensely and would easily rank all of them among my favorite games of all-time.

Last but not least, I'm one of those weirdo's who LOVES Shenmue, even in spite of the recent endurance run. I totally understand the issues people have with it, and I definitely think it's not an easy game to go back to today unless you get swept up in its ambition and let yourself get immersed in its weirdness and embrace all of its miniutiae and find it's mundane qualities charming, but I love it just the same, and CANNOT WAIT for Shenmue 3.

I will also say I LOVE Super Mario Sunshine, it isn't perfect, as some of objectives are downright annoying, and the camera can be a pain sometimes, but it's still a lot of fun, and I like how organic most of the levels are, and find almost everything about the game charming as hell.

I think Dark Messiah is pretty good. It gets more adoration from old fans than it did for the first few years after it came out, but I'm sure the hordes of naysayers are still around.

Thief (the reboot) starts to drag at a certain point and does have its flaws throughout, but I still think it's pretty decent overall and even excellent at times. I've never understood why I'm such an outlier - even most people who don't care about the original games seem to be pretty sour on it.

I'm sure there are others, but that's all I can think of, at the moment.

This thread makes me realise I like a lot of bad games lol, and that theres probably a whole lot more I should give a chance one day.

Ill just add to the EDF 4.1 love, mostly because I cant seem to care about any 'other' musou games. People often compare the 2 but I think EDF has something every musou game I've played so far has lacked and that is IMPACT and WEIGHT (I havent played all of them obviously, if you have a recommendation of one that does feel weighty and impactful, im open to suggestions.) . EDF maybe doesn't have the strategy of the usual musou game so it might be even dumber (there is still SOME strategy in picking weapons, mind you) but If you are going to make a game were you are spending 90% of the time smashing the attack button you'd better make it feel good as fuck and that is something Sandlot definitely excels at imo. (Case in point: every weapon in EDF:IA, the only edf not developed by sandlot, felt like an impactless peashooter and I had 0 fun with it). All the weapons in these games are the fucking best, its great how you can also blow yourself up more easily the more powerfull your weapon is so they actually feel more dangerous to you as well. Also, the way those big controllable robot are insanely slow and powerfull is just something you wont get to experience in a better game, it doesnt necessarily 'play well' at all but boy does it feel right :)

Fighter's History holds a special place in my heart.

And also NiGHTS into Dreams wasn't that bad. It was a little bad. Kinda. Kinda. I liked how dreamy it was, dangit!