Enter the matrix was fun as hell, at least the first mission with all the bullet time, kung-fu and acrobatics. It wasn't a good game, but it was everything I needed from a Matrix spinoff

Kane and Lynch!

I liked it way more than Gears of War, which was also a 2 player coop cover shooter released around the same time.

I just really liked the banter, the characters, the setting, the way that you could see how one of the characters was crazy because when you play coop as him he sees different things.

Loved every second of it when I played it, even in single player.

The Matrix Online. It was not a very good game mechanically, but the community and the monolith employees that would log on to role play major characters was the most fun I've ever had playing video games in my life.

Bear with me…

Megaman legends 2

Silly kids game, lots of fun, early dungeon crawling, but they snuck in heavy philosophy.

There is a scene where the protagonist is recalling long forgotten memories. The last living human, in luxury, in extravagance, in exactly what techbros want today but actually achieved here, has a perfect system, a perfect world, serving his every whim. A world without poverty, disease, suffering.

And he is lonely.

He befriends a bot in this system charged with keeping order. Basically a cop in this world. But he gives him special privileges to be able to “think” in ways the others are restricted from. This one is special. He literally creates a friend.

Then he uses the incredible technological prowess to recreate suffering.

He creates a synthetic recreation of humans, designed to be vulnerable to disease, to hunger, to suffering. They are subject to pressures that simply delay their deaths. And through doing so they achieve meaning and happiness. They exist.

The master watches them, like fish in an aquarium, for generations. Eventually, he goes down to earth to fully experience them. Thousands of years of disease free living have basically robbed this last human of an immune system. He is vulnerable there. No force in the universe can take him out. Man has become god. And yet, he goes down there anyway.

To experience the smell of a dinner bearing prepared.

He dies. Before he does, he released the bot that brought him down to earth from the rules of the system that governed him and told him to burn it all down. Perfection was not a remedy, it was a curse. And then he dies as the bot holds him in his hands, watching him fade away.

This was a game for children. And I understood way too much of it.

Hmm, I guess I'll go with Barbie Explorer, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Petz Sports. Also arguably Ostrich Runner because it's unfinished/unpolished in some places: particularly I don't know how the final level is meant to be played because it ends on its own without the player really doing anything. I played those as a kid so I was less critical back then.
#game #videogames #gaming

Clive Barker's Jericho

It's janky af but it has great atmosphere.

Alpha Protocol, a spy-themed RPG by Obsidian and probably their worst game. The gameplay was absolute garbage, but it had some of the best writing in games and your dialog choices actually affected the plot in dozens of ways. It was the first time I can remember since the old Sierra days where a minor choice you made ten hours ago could come back and screw you over.

In some ways it was the game that Mass Effect claimed to be, one that reshaped itself around your choices and let you lead the plot where you desired. It just sucks that in all other ways it was a buggy piece of crap, where everything from combat to stealth to hacking were miserable chores that weren't fun even when they did function properly.

The first Witcher game. I adored it. Janky controls, weird plot holes, subpar graphics. But oh man - the environments, the ambiance, and the dialogue absolutely slap.

Back 4 Blood. It was a zombie game marketed as "made by the same people who made Left 4 Dead" but they really didn't have any of that talent left after 15ish years and just seemed to be pretty unpolished all around. However, they had a card system where you make a deck of bonuses you want and after each mission you get one that you keep until the end of the campaign. But the devs, Turtle Rock, had a habit of nerfing any cards that were strong or fun into the ground even though the game was mostly PvE. Also they made a change halfway through the game's lifespan so that you get the entire deck at the start of the first level instead of building up to it. I still don't know if that was a good change or not, but they never rebalanced the game so the first couple levels of every campaign were just ridiculously easy. Unpolished game, horrible devs, but I had fun while it lasted

Far Cry 2.

The game is fundamentally broken in a way that mods apparently can't even fix. The enemy militia checkpoints instantly fully respawn as soon as you trip an invisible trigger. It makes combat with them pointless, which means getting stuck in a firefight with a checkpoint tedious.

The weapon degradation feature is way overtuned to cause some weapons to start visibly rusting from shot to shot.

These two aspects turn the game into a slog. Not even in a way that makes it immersive and survivalist, but immersion breakingly frustrating.

It's a shame because the game was so ambitious. The game having a mechanic where a player at 0 health can get randomly saved if they befriended an NPC which will drag them to safety is really cool. The fire spreading everywhere was visually and tactically great. The malaria bouts were controversial, but I think they were a good way to increase the feeling of survival and desperation. There's a lot good with a bleak, serious, and grounded Far Cry game but it just missed the mark in all the most impossible to ignore ways.

'Far Cry 2 (2)' would be amazing.

Starbound is kind of like Terraria in space, but with a worse gameplay loop, worse characters, and worse bosses, but I did like gentrifying the cosmos.

Bioshock Infinite. I wouldn't call it bad, but it gets a bad rep for not being the game that Bioshock superfans wanted. I hadn't been infected by the immersive sim brain worm when I played it and didn't judge games based on their box-stacking mechanics, nor did I care about how it fit into the lineage of *shock games. Evaluated on its own, It was a fair shooter with great visual style and okay story.

There are other cheap shot meme games that I enjoyed for how bad they were, like Mystery of the Droods.

Starfield is great if instead of wanting to play a good RPG with a great story, you wanna just play 1st person Diablo with guns in space and be a loot goblin.

Maplestory. I had a ton of fun hanging out with friends and grinding for hours with cute art. I would never recommend anyone play it, absolutely does not respect your time.

Not sure if this counts because it's not that bad, but Final Fantasy 15.

I can't even begin to explain how much of a complete mess this game is. The combat consists of mashing buttons and teleporting away when you're low HP, the open world is very big and isn't that interesting, it's a mess of systems that don't work together because this game had a very troubled development, and the story is borderline incomprehensible - the last third of the game felt like I was skipping cutscenes. The few dungeons included were also terrible. Oh and there are parts in the game where you literally have to wait entire minutes in a car waiting to go from point A to B.

And yet, I played through the whole thing, it was weirdly relaxing. Whenever it wasn't trying to be a final fantasy game, it was actually pretty fun. Fishing, doing menial tasks, chocobo racing (and riding chocobos in general) were great. The game also has some of the most beautiful towns I've seen in gaming, and boy is that soundtrack perfect.

I enjoyed it a lot, but by all accounts I'd still call it a bad game.

Hard Times by MDickie.

It's crap, but has generated some stupidly fun shit because of it

Two Worlds and Two Worlds 2 The first one was advertised as the "Oblivion killer". Which is hilarious, because of how janky bug ridden pile of code it is. Yet I love it. I could create such broken OP characters, which could one shot bosses.

The second one got a bit better production quality, but its still a broken mess. Love it.

Stretching the definition of "bad", perhaps, I say Far Cry 4/5.

It's the classic game with a map full of repetitive quests: go there and kill that guy, liberate the outpost, climb the tower, etc. It should have basically 0 replayability value, and yet sometimes I just need to switch off my brain and mindlessly do one quest after the other.

Something key to remember is that when a game gets “Mixed” on Steam, eg 50/50, that still means half the people who play it enjoyed it. Half is not nothing.

For instance, Aliens: Colonial Marines. To my knowledge, AI was kinda shit, but could be fixed in a text file, but apparently a lot of people still enjoyed it otherwise.

So there’s probably a lot of these that have niche appeal to people.

Ultima 3 Exodus for the NES. Few games incentivize you to wait to level up as much as this one does, not to mention the drudgery.

Worms 3D sits at 70 score on metacritic. I see lots of people mention that this is the worst Worms title.

I still have original double-cd game and it holds a special corner in my nostalgia box.

Hocus Pocus

Duke Nukem 2

Rise of the Triad

Raptor: Call of the Shadows

Sim Tower

Shadow the Hedgehog

Star Fox Adventures

Halo Reach

Friend and I played through Redfall and enjoyed it immensely , specifically because of how broken and half-complete it was. We just could not stop laughing.

Fallout 76

The game was a fucking dumpster fire on release, but honestly, I really enjoyed the item grind with nuclear bombs and the build system. I was building some really cool houses back then and I probably spend a vast majority of my time with that.

Haven't touched it in years tho. Idk how it is today.

Athena for NES. Now THAT'S some jank!

Bad is very subjective ofcourse. Most of the time these days it means that a video game is very polarizing. Elite: Dangerous is a great example of this. I fucking love it and have lived in that game for thousands of hours. But it's not hard to see how it's not everyone's cup of tea.

By all accounts, Quest 64 ranked somewhere between runny dog shit and aggressive bone cancer, but I was just enthralled with it as a kid. Actually kind of bummed when I got a Switch and it wasn't on the retro games subscription thing.

It’s got good steam reviews so everyone else liked it too, but Mad Max. I would describe it to people as just a great bad game. It’s not art. The story is crap. The ending was dumb.

The actual gameplay was amazing. Just really really great. Still love that game.

These might be closer to mediocre than BAD bad but I don't expect too many people to mention them so why not.

• Drakengard 3 - action adventure game with dated graphics (even at the time of release), terrible performance on the original hardware, huge amount of asset reuse (including whole levels) and writing that can range from childish, crass and annoying to extremely emotional. It's rough but it's also my favourite Yoko Taro game.
• Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2004, PS2) - alright gameplay, decent voice acting, meh story and levels. It's not terrible but based on the opinions I've seen it seems like I enjoyed it a bit more than most. Pretty cool drum & bass soundtrack.
• Kane & Lynch (both games) - most people didn't like these games due to rough feeling gameplay and presentation (especially in the first game), I can't help but love it. I feel like all of the elements combine in a coherent and extremely raw experience which might not be "fun" or "polished" but for me it just works.
• Kao the Kangaroo (2000) - extremely basic mascot platformer with (mostly) dated visuals, linear levels and some annoying enemies. Sequel might be an improvement but I still prefer this ugly duckling over anything that came after.
• Oni (Bungie's action game from 2001) - it has huge empty levels, basic presentation, pretty mediocre story and uneven difficulty curve. It also has a great hand-to-hand combat system which makes those issues easier to swallow. Pretty good Ghost in the Shell game.
• Scarface: The World is Yours - GTA clone set after an alternative ending to the 1983 movie with Al Pacino. Pretty ugly and rough around the edges but it also has some fun mechanics (empire building, customisable mansion, money laundering, ability to bribe cops and more). A competent experience, even if it didn't reach the heights of GTA or Saints Row titles.

Edit: I remembered another one!

Trespasser - physics based action-adventure game from 1998, intended as a sequel to The Lost World: Jurassic Park movie. It has extremely weird and wonky control scheme where you interact with the world by moving your hand - as in, you physically move it with your mouse, no simple "press button to do things".

• You want to open the door? Cool, use your hand.
• You want to make yourself a ramp using a plank? You know how physics work so go ahead.
• Interacting with keypads? Just push the buttons.
• Want to attack something with melee? Pick up an object and swing manually.
• You want to aim your gun? No crosshair, move the barrel in the general direction of your target and pray it'll work.

It's not super intuitive but it does work pretty well once you get the hang of it. Heck, I even managed to throw a 3-pointer at the court in the residential zone! Man, I wish I still had my Twitch account...

The game also went with a "no hud" approach so no ammo count (only vague call-outs by the character like "about 5 shots") and to check your health you had to look at the tattoo on your chest (it changed depending on your HP). Also no gun reloading cause your other arm is broken and your character can't do it one handed, I guess.

It was unfinished, extremely ambitious (both in terms of planned features and implemented technology) and has a bunch of problems. It's an interesting and very unique experience, worth a try even today in my opinion. It's also the only piece of Jurassic Park media I actually care about and I wish it was easily obtainable in official distribution again - come on GOG, you can do it!

Uplink

Oh also No Mans Sky.

I've put hundreds of hours into it, and there's definitely fun to be had, but it is so buggy and janky, especially in Co-op. It's great they're still putting out updates and content, but I really wish they'd spend a cycle or two just fixing bugs.

X-Com: The Bureau Declassified. Your "teammates" are fundamentally suicidal, making keeping them alive almost impossible. But the setting, story and challenge made up for it. It was inventive.

The Technomancer: Mid-budget game by Spiders. Was short and straightforward, which most people disliked, but I thought it was a blast. The story still sticks in my head screaming for me to write a novel based on it.

Sacred 2 for PC. It is a top down action RPG (Diablo-like) that had dated graphics on release (it was still essentially 2D when everyone else had already gone 3D), it had tons of super cringe voice acting, and jankiness for miles. The game itself was just really, really fun, especially in co-op. The different characters and builds were really fun to play in a way that tend to get balanced out by dev in AAA games. My friends and I had a great time playing it, but it was clearly not a good game.

'Pirates of the Caribbean' (2003) by Bethesda

Edit: Also 'Age of Pirates' (2006)

I just liked pirates I guess.

Some of them born from my period of discovering Castlevania and having to play all of them.

First, the N64 Castlevanias. Ugly, terrible platforming, bad camera, but occasionally trying cool stuff. Oh, of course, bonus point for the second one being technically a sequel with new characters and a continuation of the story and basically the same game with a lot of reused and slightly tweaked levels.

And now for the worst one...Castlevania Judgment (Wii). A fighting game featuring several characters from the Castlevania series fighting in gimmicky arenas with a generic "I gathered you all from all over the timeline to fight the ultimate big bad". I loved to hate that game.

Most characters are unrecognizable. They got Obata of Death Note fame to redesign everyone, and it shows.

Simon Belmont has the usual beefy barbarian body with Light Yagami's head grafted on it. Death is basically Ryuk. Maria has a distinctly Misa Amane gothic lolita style that has nothing to do with any of her apparitions. Grant Danasti is... well it's not as much as he's a Death Note character, he just basically became Voldo from SoulCalibur for some reason. Eric Lecarde was brought into the game as a young boy and doesn't look anything like his two apparitions in the series, he's the token shouta brat in this.

Funnily enough, the game has Cornell, the werewolf from the aforementioned second Castlevania 64, despite those games being basically purged from the Castlevania canon in everything else. Likewise the boss is a very random reference to the Kid Dracula NES game, basically a Castlavania parody game featuring... a young Alucard? maybe? He technically already had a reference in Symphony of the Night, but in this game he's specifically referencing "lore" from the parody game.

Even the characterization is unsufferable. Maria is a teen from somewhere between Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, and she spends the whole game envying other female characters who have bigger breasts. In fact almost everyone is obsessed with something they have to bring up in almost every line, and it's either a very basic background tidbit or completely out of place.

All in all it's very much bad SoulCalibur with an attempt at CV fanservice completely missing the point. I spent way too much time on that shit.

Thing thing on Crazymonkeygames