What game do you absolutely love that you know yourself is bad, but love it anyway?
For me, it’s Callisto Protocol. Loved that it was just more Dead Space. Not good by any metric but I liked it.
You must log in or register to comment.
Heroes of Might and Magic III, although I don’t think the game is bad.
What’s bad is that there’s really nothing new to it and yet from time to time I sink lots of hours into a new campaign.
It’s a kind of time machine bringing me back to more innocent times…
For the same reasons I need to beat some computer opponents in Broodwar on Big Game Hunters every once in a while.I played a bunch of HoMM 3 but I don’t think I understood how to really play the game. That game is a lot more complex than it initially seems and it’s not trivial to me when to add new heroes, explore and split your units.
It’s interesting to see what people genuinely consider to be bad, or maybe they just missed that word? 😅
For me, it would have to be Under The Skin; a solid 6/10 game, in a world where 7/10 is considered average!
I think some of the people posting comments don’t know what “guilty pleasure “ means.
Lego Tower. It’s a silly game with almost nothing to do. And I put more hours into it than anything else
Goddess of Victory NIKKE.
I try to be careful where I play it because the character designs are pretty uh… well the characters have huge personalities, usually. That’s not why I play the game, but I recognize some people have more of a problem with that than others so I try to be respectful about it. Also, NIKKE is a mobile gacha game, which a lot of people dislike. So I would say it counts as a guilty pleasure, although I don’t really feel guilty for playing the game.
For me, I don’t really spend money on it. Except for their two collabs with Neon Genesis Evangelion and one collab with NieR, because for me it is literally the law that I pay at least a little for IPs I really like. I am not a Whale (Richard Nixon impression lol), I am not even a Dolphin(?) I think I am called a Minnow. Whatever they call a basically F2P player that spends so rarely they might as well not spend at all. Besides, I have played for 3 years and only spent $60 total, I think that’s a pretty good deal so far.
Anyway, I like the gameplay. I realize to some people this might sound like I am saying “I read Playboy for the articles,” but hear me out.
When I was younger, I really enjoyed going to arcades. In the tail years of the arcades, newer games started to pop up, among them being lightgun games. I really enjoyed playing Time Crisis and Lethal Enforcers, and later on playing Silent Hill The Arcade, Alien, Terminator, and others. It was fun while it lasted, but now arcades are dead and game developers don’t really make those kind of games anymore. Beside my home arcade cabinet where I emulate the older games (and get a worse experience because I have neither the pizza grease and cigarette smell, nor the different shaped controllers), I don’t have new options for lightgun games these days. Then NIKKE came out and the gameplay was close enough for me that I felt that same fun of a lightgun game. I enjoy my time with the game mostly because it reminds me of the fun I had in actual arcades with lightgun games.
Far Cry games at least until 4. I like mindlessly collecting 300 map markers sometimes. Funny enough, I don‘t like 5 cause there doesn‘t seem to be a collectibles map that lets me just move up and down the map collecting everything lol
Final Fantasy VIII impressed me in my childhood and since then I’ve finished it 4–5 times. The story is a bit of a mess and doesn’t make sense sometimes, the fighting mechanics are peculiar, but the game is very dear to my heart. Thinking about giving it another go now, ha!
As a kid I picked up VIII before VII (thanks to demo discs) and it has always been my favourite FF game despite its predecessor’s huge shadow. Learning all of the quirks of the games systems felt really rewarding, though I can understand why it didn’t appeal to many.
I also played ff8 before ff7 and largely prefer it. The combat system is a mess but I’ve grown to like it.
Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.
Yes the DoA franchise has a solid fighting game mechanic, but this was made purely for the fan service.
Anything from Paradox, but right now it’s Europa Univeralis V. I really like some of their grand strategy staples, even if it’s an abusive relationship where they sometimes release updates that make the games worse and annoy you into buying overpriced DLC to make the last update slightly less bad. The new Crusader Kings 3 DLC is excellent, though. I hope they do more like that.
Fortnite. No story to catch up on, no true goals besides winning, no long-term strategizing. I’m sure PUBG is the same/better, but my SO is entertained by the cartoonish nature of FN. It brings us excitement when I’m close to winning. With the introduction of zero build, I fair well. I used to feel more guilt for it being a “bad” game and for not giving time to the betrer story/campaign titles, bur you know what? I’m tired and my time is limited as an actual adult. I’ll take my dopamine where I can get it, thank you.
I’m replaying Ace Combat 7 right now. I can’t believe how bad the writing is. I played it in 2020 and had a grand time with probably 6 runs for the various achievements. Turns out, I remember basically nothing of the story. It’s definitely amusing to revisit the AI story aspects now that “AI” is in full swing. I guess AC5 set my standard for AC stories, but maybe that doesn’t hold up well either. Regardless, I’m in it for the fun, respectable flight physics. Just don’t ask me where I keep 144 missiles stored.
My kids play fortnite and I sometimes join them. Was watching some tournament on a stream and the “meta” at a high level of this game is just completely bonkers.
Escape from Tarkov, but single player (SPTarkov, not the paid upgrade). Lots of controversy surrounding the game, but I quite enjoy it playing at my own pace and difficulty
Same same. It’s a whole other game when you can progress at your own pace and don’t have to worry about resets.
If you got friends, grab project fika mod and enjoy pve with friends. It’s a ton of fun and works great.
Random my little pony and other young kid games. Hate to admit it but even the paw patrol games are entertaining in this way (had a ps+ subscription, wouldn’t have paid for these). They are short and easy, and kinda junk, nice palate cleanser, and often very cute and encouraging. You don’t know a silly morale boost until you play something that says “you’re doing great!” periodically on the easiest thing you’ve done all day.
As weird as it sounds: Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (The OG one).
On the surface, it’s a shit platformer game for kids, but what makes it interesting is the ways you can break the game and the lively speedrunning community. If you just try to play the game by following its rules, you’re going to have a bad time.
However, if you use cool speedrunning glitches and exploits, it becomes much more fun to break the game in ways the developers didn’t intend. I tend to play from time to time 100%ing it using exploits to reach locked areas earlier, skip entire sections, and play some levels backwards.
That’s a classic! I hear the new one Titans of the Tide is really good.
Skyrim. I mostly just like to install a fuckzillion mods and not play it, though…
Right there with you.
Goat simulator and its sequels/DLCs. It’s a dumb shitpost game where you run around and create chaos but I enjoy it without any irony for some reason
Starstruck Vagabond, Yahtzee Croshaw’s game.
It’s a well-designed game, and he documented much of the development process on YouTube. It has a dopamine-laden primary gameplay loop that involves either manually piloting your ship around a star system to complete missions, or letting the autopilot fly while you run around your ship making repairs as needed.
I wouldn’t say it’s fun, but it’s not necessarily supposed to be fun, in the way that Papers Please is not meant to be fun. It’s mostly about the living as a star freighter pilot. What plot there is is driven by other characters coming in and interrupting the drudgery.
But I love playing it before bed. It winds me down nicely. And it’s perfect for the Steam Deck.
I used to use Stardew Valley as my wind-down game but I found I was staying up much later because “just one more day-itis” sets in. Starstruck Vagabond I can just save and put down whenever.
Edit: Oh, also it’s tangentially related to his Jacques McKeown book series, Will Save the Galaxy for Food, Will Destroy the Galaxy for Cash, and Will Leave the Galaxy for Good.
