Games Panned by the Common Gamer that I Inherently Enjoy

Paraphrasing what my mother once said, "Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one." While I do find it rather crude to relate artistic tastes and beliefs to that of an anus, it drives its point home. Everyone in the world has an opinion; some look up to high-brow critics and celebrities for theirs, which is completely fine. Some try to be edgy and form their own, which also doesn't pose problems. Unfortunately, no matter who you are, what you do and what your ethical and moral standards are, someone in the word will want to impale you with a steak knife for what you believe. It's the hard truth that everyone has to accept at one point in their lives. I'm not Prince Nitpick Haggleton III, whose elegant writings and insightful beliefs turn a new leaf over that of the Internet population, and so I get dumped on a lot for my personal interests and video game outings that I enjoy. Here's some examples of Games Panned by the Common Gamer that I Inherently Enjoy, or, as a less verbose title, Games I Like that Everyone Else Hates. (again, this is another list that I will periodically update over time, and I do realize that not a lot of these games are hated universally per se, but quite a few of them strayed from the fans' expectations, such as Mario Kart Wii)

List items

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  Mario Kart Wii

  Mario Kart turned the tide on stylistic racing games and gave us an over-the-top, wacky and brilliant mascot racer that started the trend for copious amounts of kart racers to this day. The series started with Super Mario Kart, a game that used an engine that was previously unheard of, supercharging the racing genre to new heights. Mario Kart has had seven [non-arcade] entries at the time of this writing, and the sixth one negatively stirred up the fan base moreso than previous outings. It's quite sad, too; MKWii offered 12-person races, motion control support, 16 all-new illustrious tracks, the largest character roster the series had seen and online play for the first time in Mario Kart's known history, yet people still found ways to complain. 'Snaking,' a technique categorized by Mario Kart DS (which many regard to as the grand master of the series) that allowed you to zip through courses by repeatedly drifting was nerfed to extinction, and the series dipped to including obscure characters such as Baby Daisy in the roster. None of these were changes I got frustrated about, since the game also added bikes for smoother drifting and I got used to playing as 'cool' characters like Dry Bowser and effing Funky Kong, of all people. The game stretched the boundaries of the Wii's graphics capabilities to bring forward an art show of epic proportions, and the wheel-based controls were as smooth as silt (to me, anyway). Another thing people hated was the online, where games would altogether be unplayable if one person didn't have an optimal connection. While this is still a problem with the series (since Mario Kart 7 shares plenty of factors with Wii), I haven't experienced too many races where I was forced to disconnect, although it did pop up every now and then. Everyone in the world seems to have a grudge against MKWii, but I think it looks colorful, plays like a charm, and has an intense amount of unlockable content shelved within, not to mention the solid online (at least for a first in the series) and detailed courses.

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  FlatOut

  I wouldn't be surprised if this list comprises entirely of racing games, but in any case, FlatOut touched a critical premise that only a handful of franchises dared to enthuse on: The hilarity of Ragdoll-Physics. Ragdoll-Physics can be defined as an entity's body going completely limp and leaving his/her limbs and stature to gravity as to what cruel fate happens upon his/her corpse. Carcasses rebounded off of protrusions, got stabbed under spiked ceilings, crushed between pistons and generally flung all over the place. While FlatOut didn't bring anything new to the table in the racing department (think of it as a back-country Burnout clone with derby cars), it emphasized on all of the ridiculous ways you could off your driver, especially in Stunt mode. I loved Ragdoll-Physics when I was a kid, and they're still quite amusing today, but apparently this wasn't enough to fulfill the hopes of critics like EGM, who slapped the game with a depressing 4.0/4.0/6.0, citing that the game's driving controls weren't up to par with those of other modern-day racers like Need for Speed and Burnout. While I agree that the driving did seem clumsy at times, I never accidentally swerved off the road because of the control scheme, and I thought that driving game fans could have the best of both worlds in this game, especially with the sequel, where the chaos emerges beyond the back roads and into the suburbs and downtown areas. It may be a Burnout clone, but at least it took a silly premise and stuck with it, and that did more than enough to please my tastes.

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  Mario Party

  The following applies to the series after it hit its fifth entry. I think Mario is going to be reserving quite a few spots on this list, surprisingly, but I can at least justify each and every one of them. Mario Party, while often disgusted by the public because of its near-entirely luck-based objective, is an amazing game to play with a group of people, as denounced by the title. Truly, in a game of Mario Party, anyone can win, and they can have a hell of a time doing it. While the series had a questionable start, with a dozen minigame types and activities that destroyed people's palms (I'm looking at you, Tug-O-War), the series transitioned smoothly by the second installment, and continuously experimented and added new abilities as time went on. Mario Party 4 was essentially the highlight of the series, which started to go downhill from that point onward. Okay, I'll admit, the series went VERY repetitive and stale by the time the sixth entry rolled along, but it still managed to captivate what Mario Party was all about: Being a fun board-based party game, and a lot of critics and gamers bash the series too intensely for trying new things. Sure, the microphone usage in Mario Party 6 was kind of odd and out-of-place, but at least it tried to do something new, and that's way more than I can say for a lot of franchises out there. Mario Party 9 is also shaping up to be a game-changer, including boss battles and co-op gameplay into the mix, and I guarantee that someone will harp on it for not changing anything. There's new minigames, new boards, and new styles of gameplay with each entry, not to mention all of the new character additions such as Dry Bones and Hammer Bro. On the other side of the spectrum, people don't like Mario Party because it revolves around pure luck. Alright, sure, this makes Story Mode 5 times more infuriating to complete, and I sustain that, but I've seen people complain about how they can never win any games against their friends because they keep landing on Chance Time and end up giving their stars away. To this kind of person, I say "Tough sh*t." You cannot honestly tell me when you buy a title based off of a board game that you expect to win all the time. It's like if I played Farkle, but modified my dice so that they all have ones and fives on them. I mean, sure, I like to win too, but once I start racking up a decent score on Call of Duty or Halo and can kill someone just by breathing on them the experience begins to feel very lackluster. This is more of an opinionated statement than anything, but again, you can't just go walking into a board game and become a pro at it. Nobody can, there's a variety of factors that severely limit how your game plays out, and if you don't win, it's not like you didn't try, it's just that luck wasn't on your side that time. Even in the first few games, there's no punishment for losing (sans maybe a funny backdrop of your character getting smacked around or something), and all the coins and stars accumulated by every player gets added to the bank, which you can use to buy more items, minigames, boards and all that jazz. So, really, complaining about losing at Mario Party is like complaining about being taxed for your coffee, it's going to happen to you one time or another, regardless of how good you are, and it's not a huge ordeal to get worked up over.

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  Star Fox Adventures

  When it comes time for fans to decide where and when Rare shifted its quality from 'freaking amazing' to 'complete joke,' three games are often mentioned. There's Donkey Kong 64 (a game I already covered) Grabbed By The Ghoulies (spoiler alert: it's also on this list) and Star Fox Adventures. Talk about a disappointment; imagine if you owned one of the most amazing shoot-em-ups this side of the planet, and your third-party company was being bought out by your rival, and that third party company's next big game (that was supposed to release on the last generation of consoles, and is COMPLETELY unrelated to said shoot-em-up) has to be ported to the Gamecube, and you fear that the hype for it will dissipate because of titles like Super Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker dominating the market. Whaddya do? Slap the shoot-em-up's name onto the project, of course! Okay, so Star Fox Adventures strayed about as far as you can go from the series' roots, morphing the core game from an on-rails shooter to a blatant Legend of Zelda clone with Star Fox hastily glued into the game's programming. As you can see, many fans erupted with hatred and disappointment. I was not one of them. Why? Well, ladies and gentlemen, get ready to hurl a dozen boxes of tomatoes at my face... I never actually played any Star Fox game before Adventures. "*GASP* BUT HOW COULD YOU, BANANAFOAM! IT WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST SHOOTERS TO EVER GRACE CONSOLES!" Back when this game was popular, I was barely five years old, and I already played the hell out of mostly every 3D platformer on the Nintendo 64, so I wasn't accustomed to Star Fox or the shoot-em-up genre in its entirety, sans maybe the goofy Space Invaders port on the Nintendo 64. So yeah, I really didn't have any game to compare this to, and the only game I knew Fox McCloud from was Super Smash Brothers, and by its own merit, it's a pretty decent Legend of Zelda expy. The combat, while not perfect, holds up nicely, the sense of exploration from the LoZ games is captivated pretty well, and I liked the many diverse dinosaur species that you met throughout the game. That isn't to say I find this game without flaw; Prince Tricky, a miniature triceratops that you meet early in the game, is somewhat annoying to utilize during gameplay, and many of the characters have irritating voice actors, not the least of which being Tricky. Much like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, if it had been released under its own franchise as Dinosaur Planet, then it would have been more well-received, but I cannot call this a proper Star Fox game. I can call it a nice Zelda clone that receives a lot of unnecessary flak, but not a Star Fox game.

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  Grabbed by the Ghoulies

  Grabbed By The Ghoulies was Rare's last fresh IP before making Nuts and Bolts, designing Xbox Live Avatars, and selling their souls to the devil. I can guarantee that if you go on any Rare fan site and ask anyone where Rare started to suck, they'll reply with this game somewhere in their statement. It's too bad, too; GBTG isn't a bad game. If anything, it tried to invigorate by using dual-analog controls, much like Katamari Damacy or Beat Hazard. Again, though, people hated it and dismissed it because "IT ISN'T A 3D PLATFORMER NAMED BANJO-KAZOOIE NYEH NYEH NYEH I HATE EVERYTHING." The game also bombed in sales and caught critical reception from reviewers for not being open-ended and not offering enough variety in gameplay. However, what everyone else saw as a cheap Xbox shoe-in, I saw as a neat beat-em-up that sought to test the player in a variety of ways. In nearly every room, the game sets up challenges for you to complete, such as limiting Cooper to how many attacks he can perform, or setting a time limit. Every room you enter throws new obstacles at you, such as a new enemy type or new power-ups. There's a diverse array of upgrades that come in cans that allow Cooper to turn invisible, increase his speed, and add time to the clock, among others. The venture through Baron von Ghoul's mansion also brings you to some interesting locales such as a lighthouse, a freezer room, and a barn shed, and while they don't seem too enticing, they look very nice up close. There are also plenty of side challenges unlocked by collecting bonus books throughout the levels, which also test your might against the titular ghoulies. While the game isn't the most exciting Rare title ever conceived, it still tried something new, and ended up as an above-average action-adventure romp that is at least worth a try, contrary to what's been said about it.

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  Army Men

  I can't come out and say that any one of the Army Men games were disappointing to the public. Really, in one way, shape or form, all of the titles caught flak in one way or another, especially after Sarge's War (which, I'll admit, is a game I despise in the depths of my still-beating heart). As a kid, though, I was willing to look past the primitive design flaws and find an endearing platformer series that I played through a lot of my childhood. The Army Men Sarge's Heroes games come to mind first, since they tried to mix platforming with a third person shooter, and it worked quite well. The levels really felt diverse, the characters were well introduced, and they even got Jim Freakin' Cummings to voice Sergeant Hawk (well, on the PS1/PS2 ports, at least; I mainly played the watered-down N64 games). Air Attack and its sequel provided a unique experience with chopper-based gameplay, one that had no matching rival during its time. RTS brought the series to another top-down perspective, with an easy-to-learn but punishing strategy title that ranks among the best in the entire series. Unfortunately, things went somewhat down the drain after that, culminating in the series' shutdown at Major Malfunction after 3DO went belly-up. After that... well, let's just say we don't speak of the series' recent future. While not every game was above-average (Rogue Agent and Sarge's War come to mind), the series is often overlooked when reminisced upon every now and then, especially the Sony console ports, and it deserves better treatment than what it gets now.

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  Rampage World Tour

  From a technical aspect, Rampage is bad. The level environments are frequently overused, the art style looks like the excrete of the Clayfighter series, and the game was brutally challenging to the point of absolute unfairness. It's bad, but it's JUST bad enough to make it one of the most enjoyable games to play on the Nintendo 64. The controls actually work pretty fine, the hammy screams of the innocent people never dull out, and the fact that you eventually get to destroy a MOON BASE is incomprehensibly badass. The sequel, Universal Tour, adds more characters, more power-ups, and a better performance rate, which adds to the experience even more. Sadly, I can't say the same for Total Destruction, which suffered from extensive loading screens and some terribly slow pacing, but for what it's worth, the two Nintendo 64 games are a cut of their own, and deserve more recognition.

• 

  WWE '12

  I never really was into watching wrestling on TV or pay-per-view. It might have had something to do with everyone claiming that wrestling was fake, or it could have been that the wrestler's speeches sounded like the drunken tirades of a pissed-off lumberjack. I did have a knack for the games, though, especially the Def Jam fighting games (well, before Icon), which featured chaotic bouts between famous rap starts in and out of the ring, showcasing a lot of physics-defying finisher moves. While the WWE games didn't take the physics-defying route to heart, they still found a special place in my heart. You could argue that WWE '12 was pretty much copied over in every shape and form from the last few iterations, but it was still backed up by an plethora of customizable content. The character creator lets you tool with your wrestler's body type, shape, attributes, and even his/her entrance voice-over, although there's only so many preset names and nouns included. There's also multiple clothing articles to choose from, ranging from natural to outrageous (you can dress yourself up as a CHICKEN?!?). And that's just the character creator! Wait until you get to see the moveset creator, the entrance creator, the entrance VIDEO creator, and even the finishing move creator! The options are more abroad in this game than almost any other fighting game I've ever seen, even Soul Calibur, for God's sake. Unfortunately, there are quite a few technical hiccups that occur here and there, but they're few and far between and don't really tamper much with the WWE experience. If you like your customization, and you like beating the tar out of people, this is a great game for you and your friends to try out.

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  Worms 3D

  I'm not big into strategy games, truth be told. I scoff at the idea of playing games like Supreme Commander because, to be honest, I'm just terrible at resource management. I can't even get a tight grasp on my own personal budget, let alone command entire armies. HOWEVER, that isn't to say I don't like ALL strategy games. To be honest, though, if anyone was to ask me if I was an avid strategy game follower, I'd reply with "My strategical heart forever belongs to Worms." Okay, maybe not with something THAT sappy, but I friggin' love Worms. Where else would you have to ability to command a battalion of vermicular troops and duke it out in fully-destructible environments? Oh, and said duking out is being done with sheep, bazookas, air strikes, and old ladies. Worms in video games just can't take a break, huh? (especially poor ol' Jim) Anyways, get this: just like Earthworm Jim, Worms was mostly a 2D game, but when it tried to go 3D it was slammed with negative reception, and the Worms name suddenly was put on console hiatus until it could straighten up its act. I couldn't believe it, either; to me, it had seemed that Worms transitioned quite smoothly from dimension to dimension. Most of the core mechanics of the 2D games, including complete team customization and destructible environments make their return, and there is a much larger variety of weaponry to dispose your opponents with, including the aforementioned Old Lady and my personal favorite, the Fatkins Strike. Heck, in Worms Mayhem, you could essentially CREATE your own Super Weapon along with your team, stats and all (although you couldn't purposefully make it overpowered. Nice try, bub). Sure, the 3D controls made it harder to judge distance and direction, meaning more missed shots, but it isn't entirely screwed up, and it feels so much more rewarding to land a grenade hit on an enemy to me than it does in the 2D versions. The 3D iterations in the franchise are far from perfect, but are often misjudged because of the mechanics not being implemented as smoothly as they were in the 2D games, and to those people who do that, I say poo to you, because I thoroughly enjoyed my time with both games, and am still currently reliving those days with the re-release of Worms Mayhem on XBLA.

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  The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

  So, SO many people absolutely despise Skyward Sword. When you ask anyone on the internet what the worst canonical Zelda game in the history of the series is, you're almost guaranteed to hear someone say this one is the culprit. And from a certain standpoint, yes, I can sympathize with the massive amount of disappointment this game got. Exploration was barely possible and often fruitless in the tightly-confined overworld, backtracking to previously-visited areas to advance the main quest is a VERY frequent occurrence, your companion made most of the puzzles and dungeons you come across a complete joke if they weren't already, one particular boss is fought a grand total of three goddamn times in just one playthrough, and the motion control didn't add anything into the already stagnant 3D Zelda formula. Then there was the Groosenator, the harp sections, the fucking ancient robot helper guy... What could anyone possibly even like about this game?!

  But I still liked it. Even with a trifling amount of Zelda experience beforehand, I still enjoyed it. Maybe that's why I'm stupid and that's why it wasn't a huge disappointment to me, but even with the odd, unnecessary changes to the formula, I found things to love about this game.

  First and foremost, I was absolutely infatuated with the game's art style. It burst with color at every seam; even the dry, dirty desert region was fun to look at when you found the time warping mechanic and you got to run around through two conflicting art schemes. All the characters were chock full of animation and livelihood - let's face it, there's a reason why Groose got as popular as he was. Every cloth, every hair, every limb on every NPC's body was in motion compared to the soulless, rigorous figures in past Zelda titles. Just the way they looked told a story about them, and Zelda's redesign for this game in particular is my favorite out of any of the Zeldas to date.

  Another bullet point that makes Skyward Sword enjoyable to me was all the new things it was willing to try. This game allowed you to sprint, introduced precision sword swinging (which, while most people would complain, I had barely any trouble with the WiiMotion Plus registering the direction of my sword swings, so if you ask me, it's mainly operator error), a fucking mountable flying bird creature (that admittedly controls like feces, but that's besides the point), an inventory system (that most people again complained about, but if you ask me, it adds a bit of complexion to the game, having you choose which items are most important to you in the heat of battle), and introduced plenty of new and exciting gadgets like the beetle launcher and yes, the goofy-but-fun-to-use leaf-blower-lookin' thingy, rather than simply giving you the same damn boomerang-bow-and-arrow-hookshot-mirror-shield bullshit that Ocarina, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess were ALL guilty of. It wasn't afraid to branch off and try new things, and while not every addition was welcome - the harp and the flying bird spring to mind immediately - there were some new features that genuinely pleased me.

  And the soundtrack? Don't even get me started. It's one of my favorites out of every Zelda title hands-down. The orchestra did a knockout job; I loved the blissful melodies that played when I faffed about Skyloft, I loved the chilling tension coming from the boss fight music, and Fi's Theme in particular almost has me in tears every time I hear it. It's just so amazing, and to think that the sound directors took Zelda's Lullaby, REVERSED IT, and made it into something as epic as the game's main theme is truly astounding to me.

  Aesthetically, I can see why everyone shits on this game at every opportunity they can get, but I was enthralled enough by the artistic design and the atmosphere enough to finish the game. To date, it's one of the only Zelda game's I've played to completion. Maybe I'm an idiot for that, who knows, but I just don't think Skyward Sword gets a fair shake nowadays.

  ...get it? Shake? Cause of the WiiMotion Plu- ah, forget it.