Beastcast Question: Which broken games do you like?

The question on the last beastcast about a game that was broken that you still liked was really interesting and I'd like to hear what other people's were.

Mine was Rugrats: search for reptar. I never got far in this game cuz it was pretty much garbage, but as a kid I liked it. Probably had to do with the liscense, and the fact I didn't care about beating games.

What is yours?

I liked the first Iron Man movie game. I thought the flying felt good, and early on in my time with it, I ripped a helicopter in half, the pieces of which fell onto another helicopter. That helicopter also exploded, and it's pieces fell onto and then destroyed a tank. After that delightful and unlikely series of events, I was on board for whatever else the game had in store for me. That, as it turns out, was a dozen more levels filled with slightly larger helicopters and tanks, punctuated by the occasional horrible boss fight. Also enough heat-seeking missiles to make Macross blush.

The game was clearly not done, and I bet it could have been something more on the level of the Wolverine: Origins game with another year or so to work on it. Unfortunately, the game was rushed out to coincide with the movie (of course) and the studio was shuttered soon afterwards. And because this and the Iron Man 2 game were both universally panned, the very concept of an Iron Man-specific video game is probably radioactive for the foreseeable future. Oh well!

7th Legion is my go-to pick. As an RTS it's got some fundamental flaws, such as busted path finding and inconsistent mouse behavior in a mouse controlled game. But goddamnit, the atmosphere and music in that game is absolutely fantastic. The game is frustrating to play in many regards, but I keep returning to it over and over, and have done so for 19 years at this point.

So, yeah, it's a poor RTS game by a small studio in New Zealand which was closed down after the game failed both critically and commercially, and also one of my all time favorite games.

Cryostasis has some real technical issues, but I just really love that game.

The Wolverine game that was based on the movie (or rather, retro-fitted to include events from the movie). Drunk me ordered a physical copy from Amazon and it took so long to arrive that sober me forgot all about it.

It was seriously janky, and became less and less stable the farther into the game you went. It was also really easy, even as they introduced more enemies, and the mobility and brutality you could employ was so satisfying. Leaping from enemy to enemy, alternating between shredding their faces off and whipping them dozens of feet through the air, juggling them, ripping them in half, and then moving on to the next sad group of mooks was fun from minute one until the credits rolled.

If you took out the set piece boss fights from that game and cleaned up some of the crashes, it would be a solid movie tie-in.

Final Fantasy 8 it is for me. It seems to be widely regarded as among the worst FF games and there is no doubt it's broken in all sorts of ways from the Junction system to the scaling enemy levels but it holds a special place for me as the first JRPG I ever played. I go back and beat it about once a year and I must have purchased it on 6 or 7 occasions on various platforms and although I can't tell you exactly what it is that draws me to it I still love it.

Game has some serious jank, but I quite liked Alpha Protocol.

Though I never replayed it more than once since its release, I too really enjoyed that game. More so than 7 and 10 (10 being the last FF game I played through).

Also, FF8 had a character named Selphie before Selfies was a thing. Why hasn't she ever been doing what her name suggests in promo material for FF8 re-releases?

Indigo Prophecy

I like to best describe this game as simultaneously one of the BEST game I've ever player and one of the WORST games I've ever played.

Don't get me wrong, the game does start out with supernatural foreshadowing. And I'm aware of its conceptually-episodic-turned-to-one-release history which surely left its story threads in a knot. But the left turn which the story does takes is so sharp that it not only veers off the side of the road, it careens into the voids of time and space.

I love my time playing Indigo Prophecy with @demigodraven, but boy is it a mess.

My favorite "broken" game would have to be (Matt Rorie's) Alpha Protocol. Such a great concept that likely would be one of my favorite games ever had the devs executed on it better.

@ravey: Thats a really good point a lot of broken games are really hard to like, cuz there uh broken

Cortex Command, which is a ridiculous real-time Worms-a-like. Janky and broken and ridiculous, but I kind of adore it.

PC Version? 360 version ran fine from what i remember and i really liked that game.

I really like Darksiders 2 on the 360 when i played it but i could never beat it because it constantly crashed on me every 10 minutes.

I didn't hate the Deadpool game. I thought some parts were done well. The combat was a bit loose, and it was really short, but I think I'm one of the few that didn't hate that game.

Skyrim

Darklands was (and is) an awesome game but it shipped very broken. By the time it was fixed enough to not be frustrating (more than a year after release) almost everyone forgot it existed.

Constructor on the PC. Loved its style and idea, played like absolute garbage and went nowhere but still my young self played hours of it

I am one of the people who didn't hate Resident Evil 6. I will agree that the pacing is terrible and many of the chapters seem to go on forever but I appreciated the movement in that game which to me felt way more fluid than past games. I especially appreciated this in their mercenaries mode, although i didn't like the way they prioritized the "kill" animations in that game where sometimes you would button prompt a zombie and the attack wouldn't connect.

Another game for me would be the gba dragon ball Z games aka Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury. This may be more of a nostalgic thing since I played those in my childhood and haven't dared to pick one of those up now after looking at reviews.

"Superficial things like story"

I firmly, FIRMLY, disagree with this statement. Story is very important for me to enjoy most games. (Not all games, mind you. I like abstract puzzle games, but they're far for my favorite games of all time.)

Kerbal space program. That game has crashed and glitched a million times for me and i still love it.

I think KOTOR2 immediately. That game is clearly unfinished and busted. And it's great.

EDF, EDF.

Does Alpha Protocol count as broken?

Blue Stinger is so bad on so many different levels. I can't think of a single thing in this game that actually works well, nearly everything there is trash with the exception of Dogs Bower. I love it all anyway. At least it doesn't have many bugs, I guess.

KOTOR 2 probably aligns more to the question's example, though. I like it despite it being real janky and buggy, not because of it.

I continue to firmly, FIRMLY, disagree with your entire premise, but I don't want to derail the thread.

In terms of the original question, PSO is probably my answer. That game doesn't have anywhere near enough content or mechanical depth to justify the hundreds of hours I've spent with that game. It's also broken in the sense that duping is trivial.

Alpha Protocol was never given an official patch and is janky as hell, so yeah, I think it fits the spirit of this question even if I wouldn't personally list it. (I respect Alpha Protocol for what it does with choice and reactivity, especially in the ensuing years as Bioware has dropped the ball, but I can't stand actually playing it.)

On that same level, I might say Resident Evil 6? It's kind of everything wrong with modern game design, but on the other hand it's terrible in a really bombastic way and has some neat ideas with its combat systems, even if they're kinda buried under... everything else.

I'll also say Might and Magic IX, because I actually think it's pretty good for a half-finished mess of a video game.

Arcanum, probably. It was a hugely impressive Fallout-like in a steampunk fantasy world, but it had tons of glitches and problems. Still an amazing game, but one you had to be very patient with. Runner ups go to every Bethesda RPG (especially Morrowind with its awesome, game breaking magic creation system), Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines, and Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist.

Probably Fallout New Vegas. On the PS3.

Not sure I've ever played another game with so many technical issues, some that literally break the game, and yet it's still easily my favorite Fallout game. I admittedly have a high tolerance for technical bullshit, but you know a game has something going for it when I can put up with that much of it. Multiple times.

Enter the Matrix
ArmA Franchise and mods- Some people would call them broken because of all the janky animations and unpolished areas but those are some of the best gaming experiences out there in my opinion.

All of Troika's games were undercooked, buggy as hell and absolutely fantastic. Not sure if I love Vampire the masquerade: bloodlines or arcanum: of magicks and steamworks obscura more.

These and KOTOR II are great answers that I should have said.

Alpha Protocol.

The game is janky as hell, but it did a lot of cool stuff with the branching plot stuff. Plus, I just really like the idea of a modern-day espionage RPG.