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Games that Suck - UNpopular games that you loved, for some unholy reason
PeregrineFalcon
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
The obvious antithesis to the "Popular games suck, olol" - but with less hatred and more bizarre, inexplicable love, like the kind that happens on Scottish sheep farms and submerged Navy submarines that no one ever talks about ... until now.
We've all laughed at those tightly-coiled piles of silvery shit that passes for a good game disc. But every so often, you happen upon a dog that ate a bunch of jewelry, and a gem pops out. Or at least it's precious to you. So let's talk about those gems.
I won't make any silly requirements of You Must Be This Shitty Of A Game To Qualify and no doubt someone will get sand in their vagina over their favourite game being named as "unpopular" - but hey, if it's here, that means at least one other person liked it.
I'll start.
Army of Two
"A juvenile, immature power fantasy with cookie-cutter gameplay and more homoerotic undercurrent than a Broadway musical." All of it true, but for some reason I couldn't put it down. The hilariously over-the-top frat-boy Bro-isms, the fist-bumping after murdering hundreds and hundreds of people - it just felt like a disconnect-your-brain and enjoy the ride summer action movie, sans popcorn. And I totally want someone to co-op LP this with me.
We've all laughed at those tightly-coiled piles of silvery shit that passes for a good game disc. But every so often, you happen upon a dog that ate a bunch of jewelry, and a gem pops out. Or at least it's precious to you. So let's talk about those gems.
I won't make any silly requirements of You Must Be This Shitty Of A Game To Qualify and no doubt someone will get sand in their vagina over their favourite game being named as "unpopular" - but hey, if it's here, that means at least one other person liked it.
I'll start.
Army of Two
"A juvenile, immature power fantasy with cookie-cutter gameplay and more homoerotic undercurrent than a Broadway musical." All of it true, but for some reason I couldn't put it down. The hilariously over-the-top frat-boy Bro-isms, the fist-bumping after murdering hundreds and hundreds of people - it just felt like a disconnect-your-brain and enjoy the ride summer action movie, sans popcorn. And I totally want someone to co-op LP this with me.
Looking for a DX:HR OnLive code for my kid brother.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
PeregrineFalcon on
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Also, the first Bloodrayne, because killing Nazis with a leather-clad dhampir NEVER gets old.
Dark Messiah is my guilty pleasure game. Despite the cringe-worthy voice acting, the teeth-grindingly unimaginative plot, and the dense-as-fuck protagonist that makes me want to smash my head into a fucking wall, I love the fact that if I max out the Critical tree, when I get to Nar Haresh I can use the Superior Naga Silk Sword to mow through Blackguards like I was Beatrix Kiddo mowing through the Crazy 88s. Decapitating enemies in this game is so badass that I wish that Bethseda would take note for their next Elder Scrolls game and use the combat system in this game.
This was a puzzle game that involved a 100-story tower in which you had to put bolts on moving platforms. The platforms themselves were the puzzle, as you had to plan your route because some of them were moving, and some were stationary.
Here's the cover (spoilered for ZOMG HUEG):
edited to add: that cover is probably the best part of the game.
Oh god, Obscure is a fantastic game to play with friends. Especially when your friend takes control of the camera and runs away screaming while you're being eaten to death by the darkness!
I really enjoyed that game in its terribleness.
Yes, the respawning gets annoying. Yes, the voice actors talkwaytoofast. Yes, the game is quite buggy. Yes, the first half of the game is much better than the second.
But the combination of stealth, fire, guns, and more fire were just incredible. I even enjoyed the fact that your guns could jam and break.
Red Steel
The single player might be awful, but the multiplayer really appeals to me. I especially love the over/under hand grenade throwing.
You know, the one that the company that owned the rights to Civ made after Sid Meier left to form Firaxis and wasn't able to take the rights with him. The one that was released right around the same time as Alpha Centauri (which I disliked almost as much as I disliked Civ 2). I vaguely remember Call to Power getting like a 32% review somewhere, probably PC Gamer, since I had a subscription at around that point in time.
I also remember thoroughly enjoying the Legend adventure game Death Gate, second of three (as far as I know) in a loose series of horribly bad games, each based on a different fantasy series (each of which is also horrific, aside from The Death Gate Cycle itself, which is mediocre).
I have a soft spot in my heart for the PC Japanese-style American-produced RPG Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator, one of two PC RPGs that were basically tributes to the awesomeness of Chrono Trigger, released around the same time. The other is the fairly well-known cult classic Anachronox. I never hear about Septerra Core anywhere. From what I remember, the gameplay was absolutely awful, particularly with a ridiculously high amount of unavoidable encounters and with magic spells and summons being laughably weak as two signs of how poorly tuned it was. However, I absolutely adored the world it presented, and while I don't remember them well, I'm sure the characters and plot were at least solid. I never completed it and lost the CD, and I'm stubborn about not paying for games I already own, so I'm not likely to ever get a hold of it again, even though it recently went up on GoG for under $10.
BUT! A dedicated group of mappers has made some really nice big maps with more complicated objectives and industries. And the very streamlined interface compliments the maps nicely. And with my 8800GTS it runs flawlessly. If they released the game like this, I'm convinced it would've done better.
I have even been thinking of starting up a thread.
Wait, seriously? I eagerly purchased that game on the strength of a thread here before it came out and was absolutely let down, I might have to reinstall if what you say is true.
I also thought Fable 1 was a pretty decent game.
...not really, but I wanted to make this a safe place in case someone comes in here and feels the need to confess liking AoC.
Remember how much Star Trek: Legacy sucked? I don't. I have found a reason to love every single Star Trek game ever. It connects me back to a lost part of my childhood when I didn't realize how campy that show could be. I suppose you could say I found it engage-ing.
Ok, so it was a basic D&D game that couldn't even get the D&D part right. So it had a few...many...gazillion bugs, including one that caused system files to uninstall when the game itself was removed. So the graphics sucked and the sound was sub-par. The combat was kind of dull, character creation non-existent and the NPCs were wooden caricatures.
But for whatever reason, I played the hell out of it in 2001, and I generally enjoyed it.
EDIT: I'm not recommending this game to anyone. In fact, I would stay far, far away due to the aforesaid uninstall bug. However, it was a game I loved despite the abhorrence that surrounded it.
Ah, if only we weren't from opposite sides of the XBox360/PS3 tracks, I a Capulet, you a Montague. Sadly, our love shall never be.
Oh what the fuck, :fist pound:
A THOUSAND TIMES BLUE STINGER. I love this game. With an unreal amount of love. I have no idea why. I bought it for myself in 1999 around Christmas time, used at an EBGames. I played the fuck out of it. I think I've actually only beaten it twice, but Ive started it and loved every damn second at least 20 times.
It scratches every itch I love. A sci-fi plot thats kinda interesting in that "this shit is crazy" way. Blatantly horrible voice acting that at the same time is so appealing to me. I love the look of it, honestly. The colors and graphics.
The BLATANT, INSANE, OVER THE TOP sexism. "Holy shit...a woman!" The swearing for no reason.
The cross promotion with Pen Pen Tricelon for NO DAMN REASON.
WEARING A SANTA SUIT.
I actually got a japaneese Blue Stinger poster on EBay and am getting it framed for that "Im a nerd...but I am professional enough to have a nice way of displaying it!" look in my 'den' area. I also named my band in Rock Band "Large Hassy".
I am playing this again when I get home.
Here are the two sites I go to for maps:
Hooked on Railroads map forum
Bobby's Railroads SAM/SAM 2 listings
Make sure you read how to install the maps
As you can see, it has a 38.5% rating on Gamerankings and I loved it. Yes, it has one of the dumbest names of all time, made dumber by the fact that there are no actual paladins in the game (your main character is a wizard). Yes, the music is awful. The graphics are good only if you can ignore the fact that everything is in PASTELS. The story is on par with the NES Dragon Warrior games. And yet despite all this, I loved the game because the gameplay is really good. They ditched the regular MP system and have all spells require HP with refillable medicine bottles acting as your healing. The magic system is fairly intricate with a different magic stat for each field of magic that increases the more you use spells of that type. There are a ton of playable characters: you have your two main characters and then dozen of mercenaries that you can hire at various parts of the game. Plus the dungeon designs are rather well done (I really liked how some of the dungeons would change due to stuff like changing water levels or magma flow).
The sequel seems pretty good (it's called Lennus 2), but I haven't gotten around to playing much of it despite the fact that it was translated fairly recently.
Oh and I liked Sonic R & Septerra Core (2 games that have been mentioned so far).
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
In fact whenever I get around to getting a PS3 I am going to get the PS3 version to see how the supposedly improved controls feel like.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Oh I was younger then and more easily pleased, still I enjoyed these games which apparently people hated, episode 1 in particular. Had good bitses and pieces and wasn't a cakewalk.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
For example, I actually played Damnation. Finished it, even. It was terrible in almost every way, and I laughed the whole time.
Played Turning Point, too. That game was so bad that it red ringed my 360 before I was done.
Yeah, I'm going to burn for this one.
I remember when I bought it at Wal-mart packaged with SHOGO (which I also love) for like 15$, several, several years ago.
I was very happy, even though I never beat Septerra Core.
Vampire: The Masquerade: Redemption. I loved this game, and not only because it was my first introduction to World of Darkness, which is a pretty cool setting. I never really understood why people seem to hate it so much - maybe their expectations are off due to already knowing about World of Darkness and expecting the game to be set in modern times, or because they somehow expect it to be a proto-Bloodlines when the games have nothing to do with one another except for the license.
Great soundtrack, too.
I didn't really see much hate for it before Bloodlines, though, so it's probably just that it didn't age well and isn't really anything like Bloodlines.
Xenosaga episode 2: I thought the gameplay in this one was the best of the series (though it was pretty mediocre throughout.) It usually gets absolutely blasted as the worst. The break system actually added some strategy to battles; episodes 1 and 3 had very few worthwhile additions to the standard turn-based formula. There were problems - not being able to profitably mix air and ground combo characters was stupid - but it kept things interesting at the cost of making me use Jin instead of chaos for one game.
It also got panned for not having a Mitsuda soundtrack, which I didn't really understand because episode 1's soundtrack was pretty unremarkable. (Don't shoot me, but I also think Xenogears' soundtrack is, with the exception of Knight of Fire, entirely unremarkable, particularly in its lack of variety. It does fit the game well though.) (This is coming from someone who believes Chrono Cross to be by far the pinnacle of gaming soundtracks, so it's not that I don't like Mitsuda.)
Fable. I've seen that a lot of people hate it and I know it's more considered mediocre then bad but since I read no hype whatsoever I liked it.. under one condition... I had to play it evil (and if given the choice I usually play games as the good guy). I tried a good game, I just found it so boring compared to my evil game.
For about an hour.
Kudos to you.
I have that at home and I love it. Only reason I haven' beaten it is becuase it doesn't have a mid mission save ability. I can't alocate enough time to sit down and play through an entire mission for sure...
And a recent LP from a certain German forumgoer will attest to the fact that I love me some fucking Dark Sector.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
I thought Dark Messiah was generally considered to have a good combat system. Any way, I liked it too.
Everything about this game was awesome except for the "tactical battles," which were a laughable mess. Still, it was just a fun game that I spent hundreds of hours on, despite paying only $9.99 for it. There's just something about bombarding Coruscant with dozens of Mon Calamari Cruisers that makes me squeal with nerdish glee.
Secret of Evermore
Despite being broken, grindy, and basically the bastard brother of Secret of Mana, I still prefer SoE. The game just had this bizarre atmosphere that clicked for me. I've replayed it a few times and it still manages to be way more fun than people give it credit for. I was actually surprised to see how highly rated it was (though Gamerankings only has 4 reviews) given how much people seemed to hate it.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.