Games you know are bad but enjoy anyways.

[Reality]

Duck Dodgers 64.

Obviously overshadowed by better 3d platformers, and obviously not a 3rd party superstar like rocket: robot on wheels. But to its credit, it is fairly faithful to classic daffy duck cartoons, and the setting is done perfectly. Whenever you sneak, the music stops and piano keys chime out as you walk, and they even increase in tempo if you sneak quickly, when you fall off a cliff there's a little wile-E. Coyote "hang in midair and wave" before the fall, if you get disintegrated, you turn into a pile of ash except for your mouth, which then complains about it. If I had to take one mediocre to average platformer redeemed by its personality this would be it over Gex anyday.

Steambot Chronicles.

I posted about it in a similar thread but, basically, tank controls, awful framerate, and stupid combat mechanics ensure that it's a subpar game. On the plus side, when you are not doing the main story, it's as sandboxy as GTA, without any of the content murder, just giving you time at your leisure to play billiards, explore for new equipment, join a band, find homes for orphans, etc.

Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat

Not sure if this counts, but while it's not recognized as a bad game per-se, it definitely isn't recognized as Nintendo's best platformer of the 6th console generation, (wario land 4 on GBA being only other contender). All of RareWare's Kremlings are gone, but they are replaced with a huge assortment of colorful animals. The levels are absolutely wonderful, from the ninja house, to the implausible "swimmable bubbles suspended in the air" and even generic stuff like the lava level works well. Visually this game is a treat, and it has replay value like the other DK games, as getting the platinum medals on every level requires a lot of care and the platforming is pretty diverse between the wall jumping, using trampolines, catching and throwing stuff, etc. The bongo controller actually gave me less trouble than DKCR on wii...

Future Tactics: The Uprising

Valkyria Chronicles before Valkyria Chronicles came out. Well not exactly. You still use turn based system with your characters and have to do their shooting yourself in a third person environment, but it cycles between them (ala Worms) instead of giving you action points to assign and potentially move a character twice or whatever. Also the in-between chapter management and class changing doesn't exist. The game just finds itself in a shallow, in between place, since it's not as RPG-heavy as Valkyria, but isn't as arcade and fun as Worms 3D (it does feature a level up system). I adore it's soundtrack though, the enemy personalities, the deformable terrain, and even some of its mechanics, like the swapgun. It's ultimately pretty generic though.

[PeaceRibbon]

I'm pretty good about buying quality games, but I do remember pouring hours into Sonic Riders Zero Gravity. I don't know, I guess there's something novel about the mechanics that I like. It's definitely a good time if another racing game gets a little stale.

[Moblin Major General]

Seconding Other M. Having played Other M before Prime and Prime 2 helped my opinion of it, but now I see how different it is functionally to anything before (or after, Fed Force is on my long list.) As for others, I could make a case for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Xbox version, if only because of how clunky the everything is in that game, although the story is at least enjoyable and gives some unknown needed context for the films... at least it did.

[DeoxyRibose]

Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold's Story Mode. It's not that the game is bad, but a whole lot of people found it unenjoyable because The Fafnir Knight is so OP. I honestly never found that to be too overwhelming, (given I do always play on Expert) because all the other characters have little to no attack power at all. In fact, the next strongest character is Chloe, who is the healer! Anyway, a lot of people also dislike the story itself, which I was fine with. It was just enough to keep you interested. Also, all the characters are likeable.

[Water Mage]

Duck Dodgers 64.

Obviously overshadowed by better 3d platformers, and obviously not a 3rd party superstar like rocket: robot on wheels. But to its credit, it is fairly faithful to classic daffy duck cartoons, and the setting is done perfectly. Whenever you sneak, the music stops and piano keys chime out as you walk, and they even increase in tempo if you sneak quickly, when you fall off a cliff there's a little wile-E. Coyote "hang in midair and wave" before the fall, if you get disintegrated, you turn into a pile of ash except for your mouth, which then complains about it. If I had to take one mediocre to average platformer redeemed by its personality this would be it over Gex anyday.

I though I was the only the person who liked that game!

Glad to see another fan!

[Locke087]

My main one would be Megaman soccer, I have massive nostalgia for the game and even though I haven't played it in near a century I love the game to death as a kid so it must have some form of quality...

Megaman X6 (not really a bad game but not a good one), Megaman Network Transmission (I liked this as a kid). Umm.... Sonic Heroes as well... I'll put more if I can think of more...

[DragonLord]

Anyone saying Star Fox Adventures should understand that it's not really a "bad" game at all, it's actually well received by critics. Is it a proper Star Fox game? No, so I can see why many decide to hate on it. But it's still a well made puzzle adventure game. That being said, I personally love the game.

As for a game that doesn't hold up as well today but I love quite a bit, I'd say Sonic Adventure. While it has many flaws, there are many good things that outweigh the bad in my opinion.

Edited May 25, 2016 by DragonLord

[Blue Druid]

Seconding Other M. Having played Other M before Prime and Prime 2 helped my opinion of it, but now I see how different it is functionally to anything before (or after, Fed Force is on my long list.) As for others, I could make a case for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Xbox version, if only because of how clunky the everything is in that game, although the story is at least enjoyable and gives some unknown needed context for the films... at least it did.

high five

Weird thing for me is that it was the first Metroid game I've ever fully played through, and from then started to play the rest Metroid games and now I'm a big Metroid fan. I won't even defend it though, it's bad, but in a good way (if that even makes sense).

Edited May 25, 2016 by Blue Druid

[VeryAngryBisharp]

I wouldn't call it a bad game (because it's my favorite game on the 3DS) but everyone complains about the second half to Bravely Default. I personally enjoyed it because it let me see more of those characters I ended up loving.

[Shinehollow]

Resident Evil 6

Far from being the best in the series but seeing all these legendary characters in the one game and Leon's campaign is a real treat. It also has the best mercenary mode in my opinion.

I can agree. The Mercenaries has less crazy spawn amounts than 5 and they don't send like two Ubistovs at you at you at once (looking at you, Ship Deck with the dual Red and Blue chainsaw Majini). 6 also has some of my favourite characters (like Helena).

[EricaofRenais]

Conception II Children of the Seven Stars. I bought it because it was an Atlus game but from what I can tell everyone thought it was horrible. I found it very funny and over the top with good game play but the whole premise is rather dumb and I can see why it did not go over that well, but it is no where near as bad as everyone who saw the trailers/reviewed it made it out to be.

[The DanMan]

FE2 isn't bad tho, it just hasn't aged gracefully, but if you look past that, it's a damn fine game and was way ahead of it's time.

Sonic the Hedgehog 06 definitely appies for me, and while I don't think it's a bad game, most of the internet thinks Shadow the Hedgehog is, but I love that game.

I honestly give '06 a semi-pardon because of the travesty that was it's development and executive meddling.

Basically, it went from a PC-360 game to PC-360-PS3-Wii, with them finding out that a Wii port wouldn't work... and Sega then taking a portion of the dev team to work on Secret Rings.

Honestly, it should've been delayed a lot.

Anyways, for my contribution to this thread... StarFox Command.

Yeah, locking you into one set route the first time through is dumb. But then the game opens up, with a bunch of side-stories/what-ifs.

The strategy aspect to the gameplay was honestly pretty interesting, if light. Everybody sharing the same fuel- while making no sense -made you strategize and forced you to improve your aim rather than "homing shot everything to death".

And the amount of playable characters is awesome; there's at least a dozen, each one of them different. Slippy's ship has no lock-on, but powerful shots and can carry 3 bombs (which are more like nukes that you drag and denote using the touch screen. Panther (yes, you get to control Star Wolf members in some scenarios) has low health and no-lockon, but his ship's weapon is basically a sniper rifle: slow firing and powerful. Falco can only carry one smart-bomb, but can lock onto four targets at once. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

[Original Alear]

i'm really stretching the definition of enjoy here but Drakengard

EDIT: bad is just an opinion thing to a certain extent anyway, not every game a reviewer says is bad is really "bad"

ie there are less "bad" games than people claim

I only played the first one, but this.

[The DanMan]

I only played the first one, but this.

I was able to play part of the 3rd one at a friend's and watched an LP of it.

Good story, decent soundtrack, runs like crap, gameplay's a bit generic. Hold true for the first one as well?

Edited May 26, 2016 by The DanMan

[BlueLeafeon]

Sonic the Hedgehog 06 definitely appies for me, and while I don't think it's a bad game, most of the internet thinks Shadow the Hedgehog is, but I love that game.

I haven't played either one, but my friend says that '06 was actually more enjoyable than the more stable, modern Sonic games. But now '06 isn't the worst Sonic game anymore. Sonic Boom is.

For me...

Hey You! Pikachu.

But the reason most people hated that game and said it was "bad" was because Pikachu was unable to understand them, for whatever reason. I guess I was lucky in that Pikachu understood most of what I said, and for the things I couldn't get it to understand, I found workarounds for. (Instead of saying 'okay' to send food to bulbasaur, I say "That's fine." Instead of "reel it in!" I say "thunderbolt!" etc.) The only time I ever find any significant difficulty in getting Pikachu to obey me is the pinata game, and even then, it's hit-or-miss.

[Zera]

Most of the games here aren't really that bad...

I'll second Shadow the Hedgehog. While it's arguably the weakest "Sonic Adventure" type title, it doesn't have the "teamwork" gimmick of Sonic Heroes, and is way less broken than Sonic '06. Just doing a basic playthrough is actually pretty decent, and the branching storyline is a neat idea.

[Lord Raven]

I was able to play part of the 3rd one at a friend's and watched an LP of it.

Good story, decent soundtrack, runs like crap, gameplay's a bit generic. Hold true for the first one as well?

Ummm..

http://lparchive.org/Drakengard/

(it runs fine on PS2)

See for yourself. I will quote:

Jun Iwasaki, president and chief executive officer of Square-Enix USA, described Drakengard as a "perfect hybrid of genres" due to its blend of action, character growth influenced by role-playing games, and a "solid story that binds it all together". According to him, the game is intended to appeal to gamers looking for a "deeper action game".

Jun Iwasaki is a fucking idiot. Drakengard is a terrible game -- absolutely awful. It isn't fun. At all. There is no fun to be found here. Look elsewhere for fun. It is a muddy hybrid of a half-assed Dynasty Warriors clone meets a poor man's knock off of Panzer Dragoon coupled with an unbearably dull grind fest.

What's so "What the Fuck" worthy about this game?

Take your pick: Exploding fairies, a stage devoted to killing children, giant magic eggs, a fifty story tall little girl, nukes, apocalypse by evil clones, a variety of the less pleasant "-philia" types, Notspain. All are just the tip of the iceberg.

It's actually... pretty awful.

Edited May 26, 2016 by Lord Raven

[The DanMan]

Ummm..

http://lparchive.org/Drakengard/

*snip*

(it runs fine on PS2)

See for yourself. I will quote:

It's actually... pretty awful.

...*whistles*

And I thought the amount of sex jokes in 3 was overdoing it.

Edited May 26, 2016 by The DanMan

[Lord Raven]

There are like no sex jokes in Drakengard.

EDIT: nvm i know what you're saying, yeah nothing compares to the original

Edited May 26, 2016 by Lord Raven

[Rapier]

Megaman X6, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Heroes, Sonic 3D Blast, Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories, Pepsiman... well, those are the ones I could remember.

Also, never played Drakkengard, and while it has some elements that attract me, its clusterfucky nature and having a pedophile as a main character makes me give up on even looking further. I guess I'll try NieR and maybe Drakkengard 3 when I have the means (read: a PS3).

And I thought the amount of sex jokes in 3 was overdoing it.

well

maybe just nier

Edited May 26, 2016 by Rapier

[Tamanoir]

Tales of games tends to fit this pretty well, but my pick would be :

-Tales of the Heart. The story here is particularily awfull (taking care of a zombie doll and her creepy incestuous bro for 2/3 of the game isn't really fun.), but the combat system is amazing and tons of funs.

-Tales of Innocence. Probably my favourite Tales of games (I didn't played a lot of them though...). Great cast, pretty good story. But I have to admit the dungeons where really linear and not really well done.

Not sure if it counts, but FF: The 4 Heroes of Light. He doesn't have the highest reputation (Now Bravely Default stole its spotlilight.)

It isn't a simple appeal to nostalgia, it have a great plot, fine cast with good character development, and a pretty interresting battle system.) It is quite slow though.

It doesn't really counts either but Dungeon travelers 2. Why you may think it sucks : It's a dungeon-RPGs where a guy leads his skimpy dressed harem of girls against skimpy dressed monster girls. Yet another one, yeah. The graphism is Nothing special, and the budget was clearly limited. Or, let's just says this game had some clear priority.

Indeed, it is fully voiced. And it is plenty conscient his basic premise is ridiculous, so they have fun with it.

The tutorials regularily breaks the 4th walls, and are some of the most enjoyable I ever read (Maid Sensei is amazing. And the Beard/Peggy duo is quite cool.)

There's also plenty (fully voiced ofc) sub-events (in dungeon events happeing when doing specific actins with specific party.)

And it has a complete post game that is as big as the main game. They even introduced a "unique" mechanic in the second to last post game dungeon (moving floors. Still the 1st instance on the game.)

In short, it's so damn generous I can't hate it for anything.

And now, too old games no one ever heard about :

-Hourai High School : a game with a fun, zany universe, one of the best video games introduction, and a pretty interresting class system based on club.

Sadly, the game is both too easy, and have too many random encounters. The only kinda challenging battle (meaning : you can't just press the auto-Attack button and made yourself a cup of tea while it's happening.) is the final form of the final boss. Meaning clubs are cool on paper, but completely useless actually.)

-Burning heroes. The main problem of this game is you'll made sensibly the same thing 8 time in a row (4 characters and their 4 "rivals").

But it has some interresting characters, mainly Naga. Naga is a girl in full suit armour and a big mouth, working to pay her immense debt. She'll end up saving the world facing a sentai girl squad and developping a rivalry with a mutant. She's just such a unique character I can't totally hate her (there's also a Lizard priest (actually not Judge) as a character, which makes it automatically cool

[Caster]

IMO the title should be renamed "Flawed games that you enjoy" because generally if people enjoy a game, there's at least one genuinely quality aspect to it that keeps drawing them back to it. It also invites more discussion because it lets them talk about the aspect that they like about it while saying what they think the flaws are (I mean, people are doing this anyways but yeah). Also it lets them talk about more games.

Like, I'd talk about Dawn of Sorrow here (Refa talking about Dawn of Sorrow, big surprise) but I don't think it's a genuinely bad game.

Well, it's a fine line between the two, but I did actually mean bad, not flawed, there is a big enough line between the two, imo.

I actually meant bad games, and I feel bad games CAN be enjoyable, I don't think many people are going to argue games like Sonic '06 are actually good games, but many people still have fun playing with them.

It is objective, of course, what someone considers bad, and I do believe the two games I listed ARE bad, imo, but I can still get a good amount of enjoyment out of them.

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't really wanna change the title, sorry.

The most I'd be willing to change it to would be Bad/Flawed, so.

[Blue Druid]

There we go with the people wanting to change the very title again...

[Loki Laufeyson]

Drakkhen is one of the Genuinely Bad Games that ive played and freaking adored. Its for the SNES and its just a clunky mess of an RPG. It has plenty of lore and story but its really not told in a way that endears people to it. The battle is like, automated and you just equip your guys and shit. Its a weird game.

Also, Nekopara.

[whase]

I used to love this multiplayer trading card game called Legacy of Heroes. But the company that made it didn't make enough money out of it, so they decided to remove it.

The game had massive power creep, pay-to-win, bad energy system and many other flaws, but the simple fact that it was a superhero-themed cardgame made me completely addicted to it. I was really sad to see it go... =/