ImaginaryEngr76
Shared on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 09:45I think all of us at one point in time grew a weird kind of fondness for a something everyone else on earth made you feel ashamed for liking, be it that copy of Winger's "In the Heart of the Young" album lying in the backseat of your car or that Special Edition DVD of "Krull" that you swore was good and hidden on your DVD shelf. Games are no different - everyone's got a list of games they'd be embarrassed to let anyone else know that they liked, much less played. Here's a few of my guilty pleasures from my "hall of shame" from over the years.
KC Munchkin (Odyssey 2) - One of the first games I played as a kid. It was a pretty bad Pac Man clone, but I secretly always loved it more than its source of inspiration.
Ys Book I (Sega Master System) - Great game on the Turbografx, but not so hot on the SMS. Unfortunately, for reasons I can't recall I chose a SMS over an NES, so I was playing this while all of you were slicing up Octorocks in The Legend of Zelda.
Super Hydlide (Sega Genesis) - Still desperate for the a good Zelda clone, I picked this up with the money I got for my 14th birthday. Although it looked like shit (somehow, Zelda, which had come out three years earlier on previous generation hardware looked better), I still loved it. Plus, it has about the best soundtrack of any 16-bit game out there.
Primal Rage (Arcade) - Who doesn't know about Primal Rage? I lost many so quarters playing this, which was probably the poorest controlling fighting game I've ever played. But you got to be a digitized prehistoric ape, and that was good enough for me.
Apocalypse (Playstation) - A third person shooter with lots of explosions and a poorly digitized Bruce Willis. 'Nuff said.
Sword of the Berzerk: Gut's Rage (Dreamcast) - This third person action-adventure game had a main character named Guts who had a giant sword whose sole purpose in life was to cut dudes. Probably the most violent game I'd ever seen up to that point, but it was lots of fun slicing and dicing fools. Extra points for containing Mandragoras and an arch enemy named Balzac.
But even this generation, I still have a soft spot for the occasional bad game:
Just Cause (Xbox 360) - Even though the cut scenes, story, and dialog are all horrible and the side missions are extremely repetitive, I still enjoyed exploring the huge chain of islands and the jungle, as well as using the grappling hook to perform stunts. The boats, helicopters, and airplanes only added to the fun. Although your character pranced about as though he was chronically constipated, he won back coolness points by looking like a combo of Antonia Banderas and that dude from Creed (OK, maybe we should actually deduct some more of the coolness points for the Creed thing).
Earth Defense Force 2017 (Xbox 360) - Everything about this game screams poor production values (meh graphics, objects have no sense of weight or momentum, your main character runs around like a constipated Space Harrier, etc) it has a certain el cheapo charm. Killing ridiculous numbers of giant ants, spiders, and robots is also oddly cathartic. Bonus points for having powerups show up as 2D sprites in a 3D world.
Conan (Xbox 360) - Even though this game is shameless in its God of War rippoffery, it's actually not that bad. It has a really deep combo system (even deeper than God of War and rivals the one in Devil May Cry), cool bosses, and it plays to the 12 year old fantasies in all of us (lots of blood, bad fantasy, and tits). Plus you'll get to hear Ron Perlman (as Conan) say things like "I'll cleave your skull to the teeth" about 5 million times over the course of the 8 hours it takes to beat the game.
Solider of Fortune: Payback (Xbox 360) - The latest game in my bad game craze, I'm completely baffled to why I've had so much fun with it. While it can be masochistically difficult on the Hard difficulty (the level in the parking garage made me want to throw my controller for the first time in years), it's easy enough on Normal to give you a linear shooter where you can just run through levels and blow away people with ridiculously overpowered guns. There's a kind of primal fun in being able to cause someone to explode in a geyser of blood by hitting them from 100 yards with only a pistol. Realistic (or even good) it's not, but there's still something oddly compelling about the badness of it. While multiplayer can be laggy, it's still fun to blow someone's leg off by shooting them in the knee and causing them to helplessly topple over while still alive.
Anyone else have a bad game they secretly enjoy?
KC Munchkin (Odyssey 2) - One of the first games I played as a kid. It was a pretty bad Pac Man clone, but I secretly always loved it more than its source of inspiration.
Ys Book I (Sega Master System) - Great game on the Turbografx, but not so hot on the SMS. Unfortunately, for reasons I can't recall I chose a SMS over an NES, so I was playing this while all of you were slicing up Octorocks in The Legend of Zelda.
Super Hydlide (Sega Genesis) - Still desperate for the a good Zelda clone, I picked this up with the money I got for my 14th birthday. Although it looked like shit (somehow, Zelda, which had come out three years earlier on previous generation hardware looked better), I still loved it. Plus, it has about the best soundtrack of any 16-bit game out there.
Primal Rage (Arcade) - Who doesn't know about Primal Rage? I lost many so quarters playing this, which was probably the poorest controlling fighting game I've ever played. But you got to be a digitized prehistoric ape, and that was good enough for me.
Apocalypse (Playstation) - A third person shooter with lots of explosions and a poorly digitized Bruce Willis. 'Nuff said.
Sword of the Berzerk: Gut's Rage (Dreamcast) - This third person action-adventure game had a main character named Guts who had a giant sword whose sole purpose in life was to cut dudes. Probably the most violent game I'd ever seen up to that point, but it was lots of fun slicing and dicing fools. Extra points for containing Mandragoras and an arch enemy named Balzac.
But even this generation, I still have a soft spot for the occasional bad game:
Just Cause (Xbox 360) - Even though the cut scenes, story, and dialog are all horrible and the side missions are extremely repetitive, I still enjoyed exploring the huge chain of islands and the jungle, as well as using the grappling hook to perform stunts. The boats, helicopters, and airplanes only added to the fun. Although your character pranced about as though he was chronically constipated, he won back coolness points by looking like a combo of Antonia Banderas and that dude from Creed (OK, maybe we should actually deduct some more of the coolness points for the Creed thing).
Earth Defense Force 2017 (Xbox 360) - Everything about this game screams poor production values (meh graphics, objects have no sense of weight or momentum, your main character runs around like a constipated Space Harrier, etc) it has a certain el cheapo charm. Killing ridiculous numbers of giant ants, spiders, and robots is also oddly cathartic. Bonus points for having powerups show up as 2D sprites in a 3D world.
Conan (Xbox 360) - Even though this game is shameless in its God of War rippoffery, it's actually not that bad. It has a really deep combo system (even deeper than God of War and rivals the one in Devil May Cry), cool bosses, and it plays to the 12 year old fantasies in all of us (lots of blood, bad fantasy, and tits). Plus you'll get to hear Ron Perlman (as Conan) say things like "I'll cleave your skull to the teeth" about 5 million times over the course of the 8 hours it takes to beat the game.
Solider of Fortune: Payback (Xbox 360) - The latest game in my bad game craze, I'm completely baffled to why I've had so much fun with it. While it can be masochistically difficult on the Hard difficulty (the level in the parking garage made me want to throw my controller for the first time in years), it's easy enough on Normal to give you a linear shooter where you can just run through levels and blow away people with ridiculously overpowered guns. There's a kind of primal fun in being able to cause someone to explode in a geyser of blood by hitting them from 100 yards with only a pistol. Realistic (or even good) it's not, but there's still something oddly compelling about the badness of it. While multiplayer can be laggy, it's still fun to blow someone's leg off by shooting them in the knee and causing them to helplessly topple over while still alive.
Anyone else have a bad game they secretly enjoy?
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Submitted by Hetfield on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 09:52
Submitted by KingBayman on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 09:56
Submitted by MikeTheKnife on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 10:02
Submitted by ImaginaryEngr76 on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 10:16
Submitted by Mandingo on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 10:17