What are some genuinely bad games you enjoy?

[Ikagura]

Both have some design decisions that hold them back. Advance 3 especially with the crusher spam, terrible team combos, the 7 minute long Chaos Angel Act 2, the boss of Twinkle Snow, and the locations of Chao. Though now looking back at it, I may have stretched with DKC3, that game's just kinda odd. Sonic Advance 3 not so much, though it's way better off than Sonic Advance 2, which I didn't mention because I legitimately hate that game.

It's weird how Advance fans are overpraising 2 for its speed focused gameplay (almost like a proto-boost one) but because of the screen crunch I am legit annoyed by that decision. Advance 3 could've been better if it kept the best of 1 and 2 but alas... Advance 1 is still my favourite.

As for DKC the issue is that 3 came out when 3D platformers were established so it felt more like yet another DKC 1 with more levels. I still liked the different setting (more like Banjo & Kazooie with a northern American region vibe) and the RPG esque progression with vehicles and secrets in the map.

 

[Tonberry]

This crock:



It’s really awful. The gameplay is insanely stiff and every match ends up a cat-and-mouse match depending on who manages to fill their super mega ultra meter the fastest, the control scheme is really weird too.
Also one of those weird situations where the splitscreen multiplayer has those awkward panels on the sides so that the screens are extra small. But it’s fun to play with your friends with a party of six Vegetas running around like crazy.

And somehow they managed to make Kenshiro one of the weakest characters.

It’s still a trillion times better than Jump Force though.

 

[Jotaro]

I really like quite a few of these. I'd take a goofy, janky but otherwise fun or soulful game over a technically perfect but bland game any day of the week.

obviously, people bite the aaa propaganda agenda, and think only 4k/8k graphics make a game good, they miss that what makes the game is the plot, characters, etc, and only think the visuals matter, lol, i get it, visuals play a major role, but it isn't the only thng

its crazy though, almost every next gen game, needs dozens of patches in order to be playable, insane, how spoiled the current gen gaming era is, back in the 2000s era, no matter bad a game was, dlc's and patches didnt exist, a game was complete by having its pros and cons, so simple, good times

I preferred Alan Wake to Alan Wake 2. While Alan Wake 2 can be visually spectacular, I preferred the storytelling, the characters, and the gameplay of the first.

yeah, first game had lot of janky/repetitive moments, with its gameplay being barely average, but what made that game memorable was the story and roster of it's characters, alan wake 2, lore wise, wasn't that good, i expected more

 

[KingKarlak]

Alpha Protocol got slated pretty badly if I remember correctly. But I really enjoyed that game

 

[Ikagura]

I really like quite a few of these. I'd take a goofy, janky but otherwise fun or soulful game over a technically perfect but bland game any day of the week.

I would kinda argue that "soulful" is a bit subjective and that technically a perfect game is rarely bland (or usually is simply not your thing).

 

[RanmyakuIchi's iconRanmyakuIchi]

Alpha Protocol got slated pretty badly if I remember correctly. But I really enjoyed that game

Alpha Protocol is great, but it's one of those games you gotta let cook for a bit before it gets really good. I imagine a lot of people played it for 20 minutes then dismissed it.

Post automatically merged: Feb 6, 2025

I would kinda argue that "soulful" is a bit subjective and that technically a perfect game is rarely bland (or usually is simply not your thing).

"Technically Perfect" as in something where everything is polished and working as intended, but the end result is kinda bland or derivative. A lot of (post patch) modern Triple A games fit this mold. I'm just saying I'd take any of the games Jotaro listed over, say, a Horizon Zero Dawn or an Assassin's Creed. I suppose "Focus-tested to be perfect" fits better.

 

[What's His Face]

This is the first game to get Spider-Man's controls RIGHT. I also greatly enjoyed how each level was designed to work against the characters:

• Spider-Man: Unfinished buildings full of Spider Slayers, exposed rebar, and surfaces he can't crawl on.
• Cyclops: Underground/mines where he would slowly use his power as his Optic Blasts (eye lasers) are solar powered.
• Storm: She's claustrophobic, so chuck her in a tank of water where the only escape is to raise the water level slowly making the ceiling close-in on her.
• Wolverine: I read somewhere, and I'm sure the devs did to, that Wolverine had a fear of clowns - so chuck him into a fun house full of acid-cream-pie-chucking Obnoxio the Clowns, toy soldiers and toy WWII bombers (referencing his military service), etc.
• Gambit: Meh, he's the new character that had to be included to gain the interest of newer X-Men fans, nothing is known about him except him always carrying power cards...so chuck him in an elaborate chess game.

The game is bad, no doubt about it. But not due to any of the typical issues. The game is relatively bug-free. It looks decent. It has a killer soundtrack by the legendary Follin Brothers. The controls are spot-on. Sooo...what happened?

• Only 5 characters, and the designs of 2 are based on the pre-Jim Lee revamp that the hit cartoon was based on.
• Small character graphics.
• Boring combat.
• Poor stage/level design - despite what I wrote above, these levels only make sense if you REALLY know your pre-Jim Lee comics and know your X-Men lore. The manual helps to an extent, but again it's in the manual.
• Poor boss design. Apocalypse jumps high and throws a stretchy-arm punch, repeat. Shocker jumps and shoots yellow squiggly beams. Juggernaut chases you. Rhino runs back-and-forth between two girders. A...hydro-electric dam-thingy? Carnage just runs hops around tossing red spikes. A giant poker card with The Black King's face on it. Sentinel robots with one point of articulation (it's arm that it raises to fire'n its lazers). A giant robotic Black Queen (which sounds awesome until you see that all she does is sit on a throne shooting lasers are something). N'astirh...as a large red bat-thingy. Mastermold...which just shoots plink-lasers and flies over head a few times. Arcade as a Russian Doll.

Oh, and those poor level designs? Spider-Man's levels are genuinely fun...mostly...

1. The opening level is all about Spider-Man collecting security devices as they activate in a specific order to get used to the controls...err...enter the evil villain lair. His real first stage is a maze of climbing up a maze-like construction site, and part two is swinging along the rooftops with giant stage lights in the background showing that he's still indoors.
2. Storm's are the de-facto WORST water levels ever designed. Swimming in an electrified maze, with your health being your air supply, while being attacked by robot fish & scuba-divers. YAWN.
3. Wolverine's first level is climbing to the top of a maze themed after a circus...but after 2 minutes you've seen it all. His second stage is being chased by Juggernaut while staying JUST close enough to cut ropes holding anvils atop his head. That's it.
4. Cyclops is dropped in a mine that he must go DEEPER into by going down...and riding mine carts! Everyone loves mine cart rides! While avoiding falling stalactites, being shot at by robotic Genoshan Magistrates (think Judge Dredd but racist & without the cool), and H.G. Wells' version of robot Morlocks who reflect your eye lasers back at you...so you HAVE to use Cyclops' clunky kicks to destroy them.
5. Gambit's initial stage is being chased by a giant spiked ball while destroying chess pieces and bits of walls with his cards (which fly 52-card pick-up style and NOT in a straight line), and his second stage is an auto-scroller akin to being on an elevator and needing to shoot the same walls but now from below. Oh, and he can run out of cards if you're wasteful.

The only good stages for the X-Men are when they beat their respective Murder Worlds and wind-up back-stage, which are short levels.

• Cyclops is straightforward platforming where you can just optic blast everything in front of you.
• Wolverine is the same except he's clawing everything.
• Gambit is the same again except he has better jumping and his platforms are more spaced for challenge.
• Storm is OUT OF THE WATER and can jump real good while shooting lightning bolts at everything in revenge for being dumped in the worst water levels in the history of video games.
• Spider-Man is a climb DOWN a short section of construction that's only one-screen wide.
  The final boss is also a let-down - only Spider-Man is playable, with the other four X-Men in stasis fields on either side of the screen who will occasionally shoot at the various pop-out Russian Doll robots with Arcade's stupid face on them - each robot being easier than the last.

The ending, however, SUCKS.

If this game hadn't had Spider-Man and the X-Men in it, no-one would've bought it. The concept of the game is rock solid, but the execution was exceedingly poor despite getting the basics (graphics, control, music) right. It may have LJN on the label, but Spider-Man & The X-Men in Arcade's Revenge was made by Software Creations...and it shows. When Americans call a game "Euro-Trash", this is what they mean.

One of the only play-throughs that are entertaining, if you MUST subject yourself to this game:

 

[Viviana Santos]

Shadow The Hedgehog (2005) is definitely not a good game, but I unironically love it, I love its atmosphere and soundtrack, I also like its story even though it's not very good, I like the characterization of Shadow in this game, it's definitely my guilty pleasure.

 

[Ikagura]

Shadow The Hedgehog (2005) is definitely not a good game, but I unironically love it, I love its atmosphere and soundtrack, I also like its story even though it's not very good, I like the characterization of Shadow in this game, it's definitely my guilty pleasure.

I would love if there was a "Linear Edition" hack of the game.


But Shadow as a whole is an overrated character imo, I largely prefer Metal Sonic as his alter-ego.

 

[Viviana Santos]

I would love if there was a "Linear Edition" hack of the game.


But Shadow as a whole is an overrated character imo, I largely prefer Metal Sonic as his alter-ego.

Shadow the Hedgehog: Reloaded is a good Rom Hack that does a good job at fixing the most tedious and boring parts of the original game, and in general makes the game less of a chore to play.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Shadow the Hedgehog: Reloaded is a good Rom Hack that does a good job at fixing the most tedious and boring parts of the original game, and in general makes the game less of a chore to play.

THX, recently saw the movie and still has the hype, to the Backlog after beating SA 2

 

[Hourai]

I enjoy Megaman Battle Network 4. It's kinda just really bad, having a script that was functionally an afterthought (the A plot happens in the background until the last 90% of the game, and most of the B plot is just filler and making you do obnoxious challenges because otherwise it would be two hours long) and was translated so poorly that you can feel the untranslated Japanese breaking through the text, has the absolute worst new game plus system, the new Doublesoul system was unbalanced, the game flat-out locks you out of the postgame if you don't play how it wants you to, so on and so on and so on.

Interestingly, I love it because playing the way the game doesn't want you to is fun. Dark chips provide a massive amount of immediate power, but come at the cost of fucking with you for the rest of the battle and permanently reducing your max HP by one. It's supposed to be to a maximum of 501 below your pre-darkchip max, but the game is bugged and functionally goes to like -800 if you do a normal run to NG+2. It's high risk, high reward. Which is really fun compared to the low risk, obscenely high reward of playing light. The final boss also "purifies" you, but he does it in a way that made it obvious this was never supposed to be something you should do to begin with. You're still treated as evil by the mood screen, and so can't enter the double damage Full Synchro or Anger status, nor Doublesouls. You can't use normal or SP versions of chips, which you can't use while dark. You aren't experiencing a newfound redemption; you're being made to play with the drawbacks of being evil but none of the benefits. Lastly, you enter the new game still as evil as you were before.

The issue is that in order to enter the postgame, you need to give the base version battlechip of every boss. This isn't something you can do for Shademan, one of the only three villains in the game, because he doesn't have a fixed encounter that drops it guaranteed. And a side effect of being dark is that you always get the DS chip (only version usable by dark Megaman) outside of the fixed encounter. You can't leave the deep darkness (which you are inevitably in, if playing dark) unless you get something incredibly deep into the postgame, which requires you get something you need to be out of the darkness to get. Thankfully, you can trade with other players.

It has a great soundtrack, too.

 

[iamthemilkman]

Shadow The Hedgehog (2005) is definitely not a good game, but I unironically love it, I love its atmosphere and soundtrack, I also like its story even though it's not very good, I like the characterization of Shadow in this game, it's definitely my guilty pleasure.

I also really like Shadow the Hedgehog even though it's a bad game -- though it's still a better game than Sonic the Hedgehog 2006. I'm just glad I own the game for Xbox and Gamecube and got both for cheap because the price is crazy nowadays.

 

[Leviafen]

Shadow The Hedgehog (2005) is definitely not a good game, but I unironically love it, I love its atmosphere and soundtrack, I also like its story even though it's not very good, I like the characterization of Shadow in this game, it's definitely my guilty pleasure.

i absolutely adore this game and its great to see other people giving it love. its absolutely not not as great as i let on with my circles, but its such a great game to turn your brain off to and play. also

 

[Ikagura]

What annoys me is that Shadow The Hedgehog is genuinely doing nostalgic throwbacks much better than Forces or Frontiers (yes I said it).

 

[King Koopa's iconKing Koopa]

It gotta be Jersey Devil, just played it too much as a kid so it has that nostalgic value

View attachment 22052

I love this game too. It's good until it isn't but I still love it.

 

[DPRWesley]

Ephemeral Fantasia is my drug of choice here. Everyone lambasted this game when it came out, but I positively adored it. Encounter rate was excessively excessive mind you, but I dug it's vibes. The game starts out with your main character and his talking guitar explaining their plot to rob the castle blind, and ends with a series of time loops. It's dope, love it.

 

[Esidemoken]

Although many fans of the saga don't like it (I understand why) I really enjoy Castlevania 64, it's the closest thing to the classic saga in 3D compared to the hack n slash that were the PS2 ones, although I admit that the part I hate the most is the magic nitro.

 

[Bakuma1997]

Castlevania: The Adventure, easly the worst of the GB trilogy (You walk like mollases and lose upgrades by blinking too hard) yet it has some charm, of course i still prefer Belmont's Revenge AND definitively Legends, but The Adventure has a unique charm that i still apreciate

In a similar note Super Mario Land, hardly a BAD game, but it feels too different in the wrong ways to be good, despite that i still give it a shot or two, also Daisy debuts here