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bobstremglav

Which games are bad, but you like them?

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I think this thread makes only sense when we explain why we think a game is bad and why we liked it nontheless.

 

Dark Salvation

- What's bad: Broken save system (autosave at the start of a level only) combined with ridiculously hard jumping puzzles results in frustrating gameplay.

- Why I liked it: nice eerie atmosphere and a unique art style that is a weird combination of teenage goth stuff and Quake 3 gothic, and some clever puzzles and traps.

 

Gene Troopers

- What's bad: Semi-finished game re-uses level parts and generally feels rushed.

- Why I liked it: Cool ideas, multiple-choice talk to NPCs, colorful levels and a fun Space Opera atmosphere.

 

Operation: Matriarchy

- What's bad: Game was practically released in alpha status. Sound design a complete failure, many stolen, unfitting placeholder sounds or no sound effects at all.

- Why I liked it: alien cyborg babes run amuck in vast spaceships, starbases and biomechanical alien hive structures.

 

You Are Empty

- What's bad: Technically flawed, cartoony monsters don't fit the rest of the game.

- Why I liked it: One of the most memorable gaming experiences I had, set in a post-apocalyptic Soviet Union in the 1950s.

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On 11/11/2019 at 4:53 AM, qdash said:

 

Dark Corners was insanely awesome! Best game about Cthulhu Mythos.

Agreed, I absolutely loved the game. Too bad it had so many glitches. Most notably, the blue light not showing up on the reef after the Dagon fight. I had to get a patch to fix it, but I know there were plenty of people who had no luck getting it to work. Killed the game for quite a few people. And this was back in 2008, using the box version. But it was still an amazing game, had quite a few things that seemed ahead of the time, or behind the time. Difficult as hell, atmospheric as hell, tense as hell. Probably one of the 'scariest' games I've ever played, or at least the most anxiety inducing. 

 

I heard the Xbox version was quite a bit better; the PC version was a rushed port made last minute by the last two people still working on the game, since the studio shut down. Although looking online now, it seems people have been able to fix most of the issues with it. So yeah, if anyone is interested in Cthulhu mythos, or just a really good, albeit kind of clunky game, it's a good choice.

 

Certainly wouldn't call it bad, just poorly ported to PC. 

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On 11/13/2019 at 1:50 PM, reflex17 said:

 

Yeah, but I would place her in a higher tier than Debbie who is stronger but slower, better weapons make attack power of the characters less important. I find slower characters die more often so I try to get them centrally located and ring the lake ASAP so they can do nearby cabin missions if necessary.

What are all the tips you have on getting far in the game?

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Dragon Ball Evolution (PSP), based on the awful live action Dragon Ball movie, no one can try this game without some level of prejudice, it's just a bite-sized Budokai game, which technically makes it not bad, just associated with a shitty product, I played it through and got everything in a few hours, honestly, it's a better experience than the proper Budokai games on PSP, maybe because it's literally those games but less, so everything feels more fresh.

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53 minutes ago, Jason said:

What are all the tips you have on getting far in the game?

 

So I played the game as a kid, and then again a few years ago with a walkthrough to finally beat the game. I don't remember everything but here's what I do know:

 

 

- #1 most important thing: the game hints that you should light all the fireplaces, but your first mission in the game is always to make sure the kids survive when Jason attacks, or else if he gets all of them it ends in game over. The next point is never really made clear at all - The only way to win is to defeat Jason across 3 consecutive in-game day/night cycles. I don't think it has to be the first 3, but they do have to be one after the other.

 

- you can switch your active councilor by entering a small cabin and pausing the game and choosing a new character. This is often overlooked and one of the main ways you can move across the map.

 

- it's possible to beat the game using all councilors, or just one if you're fast enough. Here are tips for each character:

 

- Mark is fast on foot and also the best at rowing, use him as a scout/emergency runner and possibly thru the caves. He has low attack power but once you get the knife and better weapons this doesn't matter so much.

- Crissy is fast like Mark, stronger attack but bad at rowing, don't use her to cross the lake.

- Laura is really quick on foot as well but has the lowest item collection rate of all the councilors. Laura is not good at rowing, so she makes a decent emergency runner.

- A lot of people don't like George because he has slow foot speed and is bad at rowing, but he has the best drop rates of all councilors, so use George to farm items (I think you can transfer items between characters but I forget how exactly, they probably have to be in the same cabin or something.)

- Paul and Debbie have the same stats, they have low speed and bad drop rates. They both have high attack power, so they can be used as filler to go to empty spots on the map if necessary.

 

- You collect better weapons by killing zombies and there's a way to get the torch by lighting certain fireplaces. I'm not sure which fireplaces are required to beat the game or in what order though, a walkthrough might be required for that part.

 

- It also helps to go through the caves and fight Jason's mother on the 2nd day for the sweater, which acts as armor for the councilor that wins the fight and collects it.

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20 hours ago, Tetzlaff said:

I think this thread makes only sense when we explain why we think a game is bad and why we liked it nontheless.

Well, I can explain about my favourite games then.

 

Land of The Dead: Road to Fiddlers Green: unexplanable gore system, poor level/game design, and some pretty notable issues and bugs. But it feels pretty dynamic and even kinda horror.

 

Chex Quest 3: doom clone, with only 5 maps in each episode, but it's cartoon-styled and easy to beat (except 3rd episode), relaxing and etc.

 

Far Cry 2: pretty boring and slow-paced, and too brown, but I like this. Dunno exactly why, but maybe because of harder healing and smarter enemies (harder gameplay), and various variants of playing (stealth/Rambo; pass missions as they was gave/use path with friends)

 

Also I like various short indie games. Technically they good, but too short. Some of them:

 

OFF The Game

Bitsturbed

Death Cabin

8-bit Zombie Survival 3D

BAD VIBES

Shambles

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The obvious choices are Witchaven & Witchaven II.

Buggy as all get-out (especially WH2 which was pretty much rushed out in a broken state) and with a few questionable design choices but I love the theme and ideas behind them, and still give them a play-through every year or two.

On the topic of Capstone, I also think Corridor 7 is better than it's generally given credit for, but that one I'd more just argue isn't actually all that "bad" to begin with.  Majority of people just don't like Wolf-alikes in general any more.

 

Catacomb Abyss / Armageddon / Apocalypse

The kindest you'll usually hear about them is that they're "dated" and they're certainly kind of clunky but I still enjoy giving them a play through now and again.

 

Rival Realms / Hesperian Wars / Atrox

All panned for being low-budget "clones" of Blizzard RTS games (though "clone" is only really a fair assessment for Atrox, IMO, the other two are "clones" about in the "Doom clone" sense), and, for the most part, flat out not working on modern systems.  They still had their share of interesting bits and especially Rival Realms souped up the formula with a bunch of goodies and is probably the most underappreciated one.  People point out the AI being bad, but I think they have forgotten just how bad the Warcraft II AI also was.

 

Castle of Dragon, for the NES.

I'm sure, it's not the best NES game by a long shot and its not-exactly-sequel Sword Master can probably be considered superior in most ways, but I feel like a lot of the complaints regarding it are from people who just can't be bothered to understand how to play it.  It's okay, probably helps that the idea of it is all the sorts of stuff I like.

 

Gauntlet, for the NES.

I've seen some people call this a "botched port" for deviating from the arcade version and a lot of people nowadays say the concept of Gauntlet "doesn't hold up" in general.  The character balance is really bad (you're a chump if you pick the warrior, or maybe you want to as a challenge thing I suppose...), and there are a bunch of potentially annoying parts (have fun in those invisible mazes, or how about the dead end level(s) that if you go to them you have no choice but to die and go back to your last password) but I still like it and think that putting in a quest rather than just being "play until you die" faithful to the arcade was a good move for a home port.

 

I'd kind of say Chasm: The Rift but I feel like that game's actually had a resurgence of appreciation these days and maybe isn't so widely regarded as "bad" any more.

 

I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch.

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2 hours ago, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

On the topic of Capstone, I also think Corridor 7 is better than it's generally given credit for, but that one I'd more just argue isn't actually all that "bad" to begin with.  Majority of people just don't like Wolf-alikes in general any more.

I remember first playing a demo of Corridor 7 before trying the full game which had some major differences, I believe that may be a huge factor on C7's reputation, people judged it by the demo.

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On 11/15/2019 at 5:58 PM, bobstremglav said:

Land of The Dead: Road to Fiddlers Green: unexplanable gore system, poor level/game design, and some pretty notable issues and bugs. But it feels pretty dynamic and even kinda horror.

 

 

I also enjoyed Land of the Dead, and I don't remember the level design as poor (except extreme linearity, but practically all FPS from that time period are like that). The one thing that irritated me were the jumps from one scenario to the next, whithout narrative explanation.

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I cant think of any at the moment, but I can say that I hate Fallout as a series. I cant think of one game I can sit down and play for more than thirty minutes. 

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21 hours ago, Tetzlaff said:

 

I also enjoyed Land of the Dead, and I don't remember the level design as poor (except extreme linearity, but practically all FPS from that time period are like that). The one thing that irritated me were the jumps from one scenario to the next, whithout narrative explanation.

Jumps? What about videos between levels?

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Is it bad that I have quite a soft spot for Action 52? Sure it may be very unpolished but god, the unpolishness of Action 52 is precisely what makes it so entertaining.

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11 hours ago, Coopersville said:

Deathtrap Dungeon comes to mind. I've seen it on a few 'worst ever' lists and I don't know why. 

+1 to this.  I haven't played it through entirely yet but I've been about halfway and I'd say the controls are admittedly a little clunky but it's otherwise not that bad.  I wouldn't be surprised if some people are just put off by some of the less-serious theming, I mean you've got those little goblin guys whose laughing sounds like Beavis & Butt-head and stuff.

Did you play the PC version, or Playstation?  Supposedly they're a little different and I recall seeing people who'd tried both saying the Playstation version is the really bad one.  I've only tried the PC ver.  Maybe the Playstation version's super buggy or something, I dunno.

 

Speaking of games I've seen people call "worst ever" that don't deserve it, add Daemon Vector to my list.  Mediocre and behind the times of what people wanted when it came out?  I'd grant that.  But worst ever?  Come on.

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2 hours ago, bobstremglav said:

Jumps? What about videos between levels?

 

As far as I remember there were no videos between levels.

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11 minutes ago, Tetzlaff said:

 

As far as I remember there were no videos between levels.

Lol but there is videos between some levels

But I didn't saw them because I played in illegal copy :-(

(Please be merceful, there wasn't anyway licensed discs of this game in our shops, only version on disc with various games, so...)

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Depending on who you ask, the free to play MMO third person shooter Defiance is generally considered to be garbage, I however enjoyed it incredibly and even made a few buddies on there, however the recent re-release of Defiance is irrefutably and objectively inferior to the original (literally less content and more bugs/crashes that it feels like the original beta ffs).

 

Defiance was a real "acquired taste" kinda game, mad janky and ridiculously difficult at times but with all its flaws I still loved it, got to Ego (level) 5000+ and watched the TV show for unique unlocks... One man's garbage is another's treasure... Except the re-release,  fuck off with that over monetized vapid piece of jek.

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The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall

 

It was a bethesda tradition to have games be as glitchy as possible, even back in the 90's

 

Each dungeon, not related to the main quest, is randomly generated, which usually sounds fun, until you realize they can be broken. And then main quest dungeons are just as confusing as the gigantic mazes as the randomly generated ones. Quests can randomly break, and you can get flat out locked out completing the main quest. There are also several audio bugs, which I think come from the torch noises in game which won't stop until you walk away from them. It has a brutal opening, but god damn do I love it.

 

I've played through and beaten it four times, which doesn't sound like a lot on paper. But playing through the game and going through each maze and dungeon is taxing. Even with all these downfalls the game is amazing. It has a really interesting story that doesn't play you off as the chosen one. Quests don't wait for you and have to hurry to do them. The map is also humongous, having some dude on youtube take days to walk across it (69 hours and 33 minutes)

 

Even with all of this, it is my favorite elder scrolls games of all time. Even beating out Morrowind and Oblivion

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On 11/13/2019 at 10:51 AM, bobstremglav said:

Anybody know about NAM on Build engine?

 

I like NAM and WW2Gi, both a bit shit really.. but kind of fun.

 

The Starship troopers FPS was good when played in god mode, had some fun with that, blasting bugs etc.

 

I have a soft spot for Jaguar AvP, although popular back in the day to a degree.. it was abit crappy, but I do really like the marine campaign.

 

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Soldiers at War -- Turn based WWII combat with some basic rpg elements and interesting scenarios.  Broken somewhat but still fun.  I should re-install it and see if it works on Win10.

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3 hours ago, bobstremglav said:

 

But I didn't saw them because I played in illegal copy :-(

(Please be merceful, there wasn't anyway licensed discs of this game in our shops, only version on disc with various games, so...)

 

Maybe I played that illegal copy as well :)

 

I also remember that I read that Land of the Dead - Road to Fiddlers Green was re-released under a different name and with comic panels instead of cutscenes between the levels.

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Enclave (Starbreeze Studios, 2002)

 

220px-Enclave_Coverart.png.8300bfdd8899f14aa93ce03f3ee9b0c2.png

 

The bad:

 

The combat mechanics are pretty underwhelming. You can use a melee weapon, a bow, a crossbow, or a magic staff depending on which character you play as. Bows can be awesome, because you can load up to 7 (or 9?) arrows onto the bow to fire at once, which is extremely lethal and satisfying. Magic staffs are almost useless, not because of their effectiveness, but because of your piss poor mana pool. But, due to a lot of the level design, melee weapons are almost mandatory for most of the game, meaning this is all you'll really use outside of some niche levels where bows can be effective. With a melee, you hit the attack button 3 times in quick succession, you do a nice chunky AOE slam with it. This is the extent of the melee mechanics. You'll be spamming that 3-hit attack from start to finish, and that's it, unfortunately.

 

Movement can be a tad janky, which isn't the worst thing until you come up against one of the games' several platforming sections. There's a moment in level 10 where you have to walk onto a platform hanging over a pit of lava (instant death if you fall). The platform starts lowering, as a second platform starts raising from out of the lava ahead of you. Once you leave the descending plat for the ascending one in front, the ascending one then begins to lower back into the lava. It's just a timing thing to get across. The movement/controls/physics can make this a bit of a nightmare... made worse by the fact that it's at the end of the level, and (in the original release) this game had no checkpoints and no way of saving. If you die, back to beginning of the level you go.

 

The shield mechanics are dodgy at best. So, you can equip a shield in your left hand (with a melee in the right). You can't use a shield if you use a bow, crossbow, or magic staff (staffs have their own shield mechanic by holding left trigger/right-click, which drains your precious piss poor mana pool). Sometimes your shield will block attacks, sometimes it won't. This is extra sketchy when facing certain enemies who can load a bow with max arrows (7 or 9 can't remember) just like you can, and fire them all at once. This attack is INSTANT death if they hit you directly with even half the arrow payload. Sometimes your shield will block it... sometimes. Cross your fingers, basically.

 

It was re-released on Steam and available for Mac and Linux in 2013, but I've found that modern systems aren't the most compatible with this game. I'm not sure if it's Win10 or what, but I find if I play the Steam version now, the movement is even far jankier, as well as a few other bugs, making certain areas (though not the whole game) diabolically painful to play through. Modern PC versions do however sport a fancy checkpoint system (unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty), so there's that.

 

Why I love this game:

 

I'm sorry, there's a wall of text in this spoiler tag. I REALLY love this game.

 

Spoiler

So, this game didn't get the greatest of scores when it came out, and I think it pretty much fell beneath the radar of most people until eventually falling out of existence (even with Starbreeze, who I wish with all my heart would return to this IP).


But, this game is awesome. While the story isn't winning any awards (classic good versus evil), and the voice acting is less than stellar, it has this double campaign system where you play the Light Campaign first (the Enclave resistance (good guys) setting out on their quest to defeat the evil Demon King Vatar and his Dreg'atar hordes), which spans 14 levels. After you've beaten this campaign and defeated Vatar, you unlock the Dark Campaign, where for another 13 levels you get play through these events again, now as the Dreg'atar fighting to destroy the Enclave and defeat the Queen. The way they handled this dual-campaign system with the mirrored story elements is absolutely brilliant. 


 

This game shines brightest with the level design. Across 27+ levels, you hardly ever find yourself wandering and fighting through similar environments. There's such a beautiful variety to the design of the world, the levels, the architecture, the missions, the atmosphere, even the color palette. And some of the level locales are just downright gorgeous and creative. In the span of 4 levels during the Light Campaign, you'll go from a foggy Harbour town at night, to a large Greek-inspired temple, to a creepy, rust-laden prison beneath a lake, to the depths of the underworld itself. There's so many cool places to discover in this game. There is also a wide range of interesting mechanics you'll come across in various levels, from stationary canons and activatable kill-traps, to puzzles and bits of mission-specific gameplay. The world can be pretty interactable at times, but usually for very limited reasons/outcomes -- that said, it can still feel incredibly satisfying and unique, offering each level that much more personality.


 

The character/inventory system is not the most nuanced or developed, but it works perfectly within the game. At the start of each level, you pick your character and loadout. The farther into the campaign you get, the more characters, weapons, and items you'll unlock. You'll pick a weapon depending on your chosen character (some can only use melee, others bows, staffs, etc). If you're using a bow, you can pick what type of arrows you want to bring with you, from normal, to fire, to poison-tipped, etc., in addition to daggers, health potions, and armor. How this works is, you have a set amount of gold to spend -- each thing you equip to your character during loadout costs gold, so you have to be mindful of what you want to take versus what you can afford. You might want to equip Light Armor, but this costs 500 gold, which might mean taking a total shit sword and no shield. This leads to another thing about this game I love: the gold.


 

You get gold by finding it in each level. There is 50 gold to find in level 1, and each level the amount of gold to find goes up by 50 (then 100 later on). Most of the time, you're finding pots worth 5 gold each, but this is where the game has a serious (and fun/rewarding) element of secret hunting. Some of the gold is hidden really, really well. For years and years I had levels where I'd get 380/400 gold, or 595/600 gold, because I just couldn't find those last pots for the life of me. It's never a case of having to discover a "false wall" or something, it's just a matter of really exploring the environment creatively. But, every bit of gold you find in this level, means the more gold you have to spend on your character loadout for the next. It's a fantastic system. The cherry on top of it all is, you can replay levels at any point to try and find the gold you missed. Sometimes the count is also made up of precious gems worth certain values (blue (50), green (100), red and white (which I think were 150 and 200), which even more satisfying to find. 


 

In addition to finding gold, you'll also be hunting for secret "maps" which unlock bonus levels to play from the level select screen (which is this big awesome cartographic map with all of the levels you've completed dotted across the landscape). Most of these bonus levels are just arena wave-survival things, where you can play an easy, medium, and hard survival wave, but they grant extra gold for you to use in your main campaign. Some of these survival waves are actually the most difficult portions of the entire game, which is awesome.


 

I also absolutely love the enemy bestiary in this game, and there's a massive variety. The Light Campaign alone has over 25 different types of enemies, and there are at least 20 new ones to face in the Dark Campaign -- add to this the various boss encounters, there are easily over 50 different enemy types you'll fight throughout the game, with a wide range of tactics needed between them all. The bosses aren't ground breaking or complex, but can still be interesting, minus the final fight against the Queen in the Dark Campaign -- she's a total pushover.


 

On top of everything, the game can be hard at times. One of the little things I love about Enclave (at least, the original release, and the hard difficulty on modern PC ports), is that there is no checkpoint or save system. If you die during a level, you restart the level. Sometimes it can be a massive pain the ass, but, I found that it just made me master the levels with fanaticism. I found it very rewarding. This is something that most modern games just don't seem to understand. 

 

Sorry, I'll stop here.

 

 

TL;DR

 

 

A fucking awesome game with absolutely fantastic level design, a wonderfully diverse range of enemies, and an interesting character loadout system made all the more engaging by the wonderful secret-hunting sensation of per-level gold quotas to find. If you can get past some of the jank in the movement and physics, as well as the relatively 1-dimensional combat system, it's definitely worth checking out. Keep in mind, this game doesn't seem to play well with Windows 10, and can lead to even jankier movement, physics, and combat.

 

 

 

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@RonnieJamesDiner

I've said before and will say again that if asked what game I think has the best prospects to be considered "heir to the throne" to the Heretic-Hexen series since the last release of one of those, it would be Enclave.  Rune and Blade of Darkness might be all-around better games but Enclave out of anything I've played is the one that comes closest to capturing the Serpent Rider "feel" to me, especially once you get the wizard classes unlocked.  I'd also be very surprised if the battle with Vatar at the end of the light campaign wasn't intentionally meant to pay homage to the Eidolon battle in Hexen II.

 

I suppose some people might argue for Ziggurat being a worthier choice, but the whole "roguelite" aspect somewhat ruins that one for me.

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Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. Unbalanced and sometimes broken combat mechanics. Weird cutscenes with terrible character models. Mechs that move unrealistically fast. Still...pretty fun weapons and a few unique ideas...played the crap out of it and still load it up every once and a while. My guilty pleasure.

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1 hour ago, Payload4367 said:

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. Unbalanced and sometimes broken combat mechanics. Weird cutscenes with terrible character models. Mechs that move unrealistically fast. Still...pretty fun weapons and a few unique ideas...played the crap out of it and still load it up every once and a while. My guilty pleasure.

 

+1 the icon is on my desktop right now. I groan every time I go through a doorway and a hidden enemy hits with a critical and 1-shots me, but the quirky and unique parts of the game are cool enough to suffer through that stuff, yeah.

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Hey guys, I tried some Virtual Boy games on emulator :-)

 

First one was Teleroboxer, and I beat it twice already. As I know, there isn't any remastereds, remakes and etc. Why? The game is cool, including the fact that it was created in 1995.

 

But the second one is pretty bad - Innsmouth no Yakata. 

Poor level design and monsters variety is main disadvantages of game, but anyway it's pretty good. FPS with horror elements and 4 endings... But anyway much worse that Teleroboxer.

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