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Yeah we all have our guilty pleasures, so let's talk about those guilty pleasure games you play!

Mine:

1. Slave Zero. Oh god Slave Zero. It's got weird design issues, it's got paper for plot, no characters worth talking about, and incredibly simplistic gameplay, the touted feature of beating people to death with girders or throwing them at enemies is useless. Why do I still play it? It was great graphically eight years ago (still not horrible now), and it's one of the few games where you play a 20 meter tall giant robot of the anime style that goes around stomping things. And seriously, punching the lights out of a 1500 ton robot so hard it explodes is still good fun.

2. Abomination: The Nemesis Project. It's got wonky AI, weird game mechanics, and 90% of the weapons are useless. I still like it because it lets you use RPGs on Cthulhu-cultist zombies and gun down the precursors to these zombie-critters with M60s. It's like they took the Cthulhu Mythos, threw in some standard sci-fi, and turned it into an action movie. It's (IMO) great mindless fun, even if it's not great as a game.

What are yours?

Bad games that the media considers bad or bad games that you personally consider bad? Because if I personally consider a game bad there's nothing that's going to change my mind that it's fun in any way.

Halo 1

General Zod wrote:Bad games that the media considers bad or bad games that you personally consider bad? Because if I personally consider a game bad there's nothing that's going to change my mind that it's fun in any way.

Either. Both of my examples I recognize as having loads of bad design, but I still like them for the aformentioned reasons. But neither were exactly media hits.

Slave Zero had an awesome soundtrack.

When the Slave Zero demo came out it was the most awesome shit - walking down a highway crushing cars and ruling all with lasers and predator guns. I don't even remember the full game coming out, so I assume it was really bad.

Just going by what I've got installed now, in the range of crap games I like anyway there is - Battle Realms (such a broken camera but so many good ideas), Conquest (better than Sins, ten years older, but so unbalanced) and STALKER (so broken but fun anyway).

Stark wrote:When the Slave Zero demo came out it was the most awesome shit - walking down a highway crushing cars and ruling all with lasers and predator guns. I don't even remember the full game coming out, so I assume it was really bad.

Just going by what I've got installed now, in the range of crap games I like anyway there is - Battle Realms (such a broken camera but so many good ideas), Conquest (better than Sins, ten years older, but so unbalanced) and STALKER (so broken but fun anyway).

I've got system crossing ion guns, invincible dreadnaughts and cloaked missile frigates. What do you have?

Diablo 1. Every monster is variation of same 3-4 archetypes with a different sprite and 3x the hitpoints. Same for every weapon and item in the game. So much for "infinite variations in replayability". Yet it is somehow rather fun to play in LAN to this day.

JointStrikeFighter wrote: I've got system crossing ion guns, invincible dreadnaughts and cloaked missile frigates. What do you have?

I've got no cloakable warships, no invincibility shield, no long-range support cannons, no effective battleship, and no chance of victory!

BEST GAME EVER.

Stark wrote:

JointStrikeFighter wrote: I've got system crossing ion guns, invincible dreadnaughts and cloaked missile frigates. What do you have?

I've got no cloakable warships, no invincibility shield, no long-range support cannons, no effective battleship, and no chance of victory!

BEST GAME EVER.

Maybe you can use your fleet carriers? Oops i overan the battleline and blew them up in 2 shots.

JointStrikeFighter wrote:Halo 1

Eh, they're not bad games. It's just that everyone likes to bitch about them because of the fanbase (or they're PS3 fanboys who want to compare them to their current "Halo 3 killer". Haze, anyone?). I played the first 2 games a for the first time a few weeks ago and I enjoyed them.

Amazons vs Aliens

Three races:
Amazons - basic humans
Pimmons - some sort of blue psychedelic 'orks' that eat mushrooms
Sajiki - insect like critters

Nice part - the more your characters walk across a certain area, the game starts to put a path there.

First problem with the game is the minimap. It is at 45 degrees to the main screen. So if you scroll up on the main screen, the minimap goes towards the upper left area.

Second - strategic games always have one each of the three races. Not two races, not four races, not two of one race, always three villages, one of each.

Third - noticeable at higher populations - the Sajiki has bad coding. I finally managed to lag the screen at about 100 Amazons or Pimmons in the village, while the Sajiki lag the screen at about 15-20.

Fourth - as your village increases in population, the locals demand higher levels of entertainment. No matter that I just upgraded the village to handle the last round of entertainment, now they want more.

Why do I play this game again?

A lot of the old platformers have... shall we say... "not aged gracefully." Despite that, I still like to play Turrican 2. It's the definition of linearity, but dammit, you can't beat it for nostalgia.

Eleas wrote:A lot of the old platformers have... shall we say... "not aged gracefully." Despite that, I still like to play Turrican 2. It's the definition of linearity, but dammit, you can't beat it for nostalgia.

Is Turrican 2 the one they hastily rebranded as Universal soldier, where you fight 30 ft tall Dolph Lundgren and then giant floatin 50ft tall Dolph Lundgren's head?

Oh yeah, boy-o, every single Dynasty Warriors game EVER. Except Gundam. Because it's just TOO AWFUL. (read: Makes my eyes bleed.)

Look, China, if you din't like DWx - there's something wrong with you, yeah?

Stark wrote:

Eleas wrote:A lot of the old platformers have... shall we say... "not aged gracefully." Despite that, I still like to play Turrican 2. It's the definition of linearity, but dammit, you can't beat it for nostalgia.

Is Turrican 2 the one they hastily rebranded as Universal soldier, where you fight 30 ft tall Dolph Lundgren and then giant floatin 50ft tall Dolph Lundgren's head?

I... honestly, I don't know. It was a sidescroller, but not one produced by Ocean, which were the ones most well-known for recycling their shit constantly. In Turrican 2, you started as a guy in a suit who could transform into a sort of rolling sawtoothed ball, and who had numerous weapons you could activate by powerups. The animations were pretty solid for its time, and it featured extensive copper effects (the copper being a graphical coprocessor that could be programmed separately, and was useful in creating the smoothly animated color bar and blob effects you'd see in demos)... I think there was some parallax scrolling as well. In the middle of the game, it turned into a space shooter (you flew a fighter) and then for the last few levels it returned to ground combat.

Another guilty pleasure is The Last Ninja, but I'm honestly not sure if I'd even be able to play it today without wanting to kill the programmers. It really is the definition of "linear".

Oh I'm familiar with Turrican; this is why rebranding it 'Universal Soldier' was so amusing. Who knew you had a laser whip in Universal Soldier??

Stark wrote:Oh I'm familiar with Turrican; this is why rebranding it 'Universal Soldier' was so amusing. Who knew you had a laser whip in Universal Soldier??

Haha, now I've gotta get me that game!

HALO (1): I hate the gameplay, but I really like the story, which is the only reason I finished that game. Something about a universe that is visually bright and vibrant (as opposed to realism brown or grimdark gray.) but is full of so many conspiracies and twists (if they were all harvested from other sci-fi works) really tickles me. Plus, while I won't pretend there was some grand plan, the setting is naturally a great jumping off point for fiction not directly related to the MC.

Earth Defence Force 3

Zombies Vs Ambulance

Maid Vs Robots

Every Simple 2000 i get but at the same time i can't resist awesome titles...

Gabriel Knight 2:The Beast Within, its almost entirely FMV, the story is a bit hokey, but is somehow enjoyable despite some extremely variable acting.

Ima second Dynasty Samurai Warriors Orochi Empires Extreme Legends Musou 9. I'm an unabashed whore for the series, and the only games I don't own are DW1-3, DW6, and Gundam Musou. Oh, and maybe that medieval one who's name I can't recall.

The games are endlessly repetitive, hopelessly identical, woefully uninspired, and undeniably fun, and I can't get enough of them. Each game has an iterate changes to the system that do very little, yet it's always slightly fresh despite the nine thousand titles in the series. The graphics engine is a joke that hasn't been overhauled since the first game came out on the PS2; the game's performance is surpassed by a title called "Nintey-nine Nights" which to date has had exactly one game, yet it handily triples or quadruples draw distance and the number of onscreen polys.

Yeah, I still can't get enough. The cheesy voice acting, the horrible melodrama, the "re-vamped" gameplay, the absolutely SHAMELESS smashing of their two biggest franchises, the "strategy games" they called Empires... It's all uninspired cash grinding, and I still have fun.

I always liked Shadowgate, despite the fact it was basically a Myst clone.

Jade Falcon wrote:Gabriel Knight 2:The Beast Within, its almost entirely FMV, the story is a bit hokey, but is somehow enjoyable despite some extremely variable acting.

That reminds me; I feel the exact same way about Wing Commander IV. Nice atmosphere and a universe with its own distinct feel and verisimilitude. Plus, it may just have been that I was young when I first played it, but I really liked the feeling of post-war "fighting for fighting's sake" insanity that WC IV had. While the game engine itself frankly sucked, at the same time it was cool to be able to control the different aspects of the ships' systems, plus, Mark Hamill made for a sympathetic avatar.
All in all, WC IV vastly outstripped its moronic successor.

*Digs out shitty game Collection*

Bust a Groove. Yes, that is a five-story robot doing the Vogue. It is eclipsed only by Bust a Groove 2's seizure inducing awesomeness.

Shadow Man. I owned the 'superior' Dreamcast version.

Two words: Irritating Stick.