Numen: Contest of Heroes is a game that sits at about 50% recommended on steam. I beat it years ago and really enjoyed myself, but I knew it was a unique fit for me. I only say “bad” so that we have common ground, but I value that experience.
What are “bad” games you enjoy?
Life is Feudal. It had the potential to be something great, but ended dying in a hail of bad server coding and poorly implemented monetization.
Every so often I will reinstall it, find one of the free servers and just chill for hours on end.
Populous: The Beginning (1998). I don’t think it was actually bad, it’s just been forever. But man did we have fun with that.
Does anyone remember Deathtrap Dungeon. The game was so bad and confusing but i loved it.
I watched a portion of a lengthy video about it from Josh Strife Hayes. It seems like one of those games that would frustrate and compel me.
‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ (2003) by Bethesda
Edit: Also ‘Age of Pirates’ (2006)
I just liked pirates I guess.
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.
Hocus Pocus
Duke Nukem 2
Rise of the Triad
Raptor: Call of the Shadows
Sim Tower
Shadow the Hedgehog
Star Fox Adventures
Halo Reach
Raptor was great.
Oookay calling reach a bad game will make me your enemy for life
It’s a good game, but bad in terms of reception, which is what this thread is about
Okay fair
A couple I can remember really enjoying at the time that were not well reviewed and yeah probably are bad.
- Resident Evil: Outbreak
- Syphon Filter: The Omega Strain
I don’t remember a whole lot about either of these but do remember playing them a lot.
Final Fantasy XIII I don’t think it’s actually a bad game, and thought so at the time too. There’s a lot of revisionist history with this one. I see so many discussions now of people being like yeah it’s a great game I love it. Where were all these people at when it came out? XIII-2 is…weird. I think I prefer XIII, but like both. I’ve never finished Lightning Returns but enjoyed what I played.
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.
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.
I live Eurojank. Gotta be my favorite genre. I’ve finished Of Orcs And Men lately, it’s a pretty bad game but I really enjoyed it.
Xenogears/xenosaga. I liked them. Xenogears had a bad disc 2. Xenosaga had a bad episode 2. Saga also went overboard with the needlessly sexualized robots. But it was fun, the story was interesting, and by episode 3 the graphics were really good. Music was good, characters were enjoyable.
All I remember liking from episode 2 through was jr charging a religious zealot screaming “you damn bitch” while firing at her. It was such a weird scene I was laughing my ass off. Oh and the American censorship had a scene where a little girl going through a breakdown scooping blood from her mother and trying to put it back in the corpse, except there’s no blood in the US version so WTF are we supposed to think is happening here? Ep 2 was horrible.
When I am in a bad boss fight design competition and my opponent is any XenoSaga game:
How dare you!
Xenogears is a flawed masterpiece. Even disc 2 wasn’t “bad” so much as they pushed about three discs of story into it as they were not given the time and resources to do it right. From what I read, It was supposed to be a seven game series/story, but they knew they were only given a shot for one game so they picked one of the better chapter in the middle and got a bit overly ambitious.
As far as Xenosaga is considered, I am really surprised you called out episode 2 as I consider that the best one. If any could be called out, it would be ep 3 because it was supposed to be a longer series and they have to change it up to have it make any sense whatsoever. I really enjoyed episode 2, though the censorship issues you mention were hilariously bad.
Gears was great but the pacing was uneven. The story didn’t flow and progress. It surged uncomfortably. And emeralda never got an omnigear, which I’m still pissed about.
Emeralda was my favorite character, though I preferred fighting with citan. Chu chu is a fucking meme and I hate her. My step brother would just drug her up and beat on shit with her for the lols but I still hated chu chu. Billy had a delightfully dark storyline that was clearly based on the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church.
Ep 3 was a different style but wasn’t bad. Ep 1 was a good storytelling and battle style but you could tell they were still finding their way. Ep 2 was just….ugh. The into with asher being deployed was gorgeous though.
Earth Defense Force is a terrible looking game with an even worse premise and is fun as hell.
I’ve heard this a lot! I just searched “Earth Defense Force” and it showed me #6 and that makes me happy. Wasn’t the original on 360? I remember thinking it look like a bust and then hearing people pretty much say what you are saying.
Yeah, the first one on the 360 was called Earth Defense Force 2017 (actually the 3rd game in the series). I’ve played a bunch of EDF 2017 and 2025 and they are so fun. I’m glad they’re still making them; those games are so over-the-top. If you don’t care about graphics and just want something fun, I highly recommend.
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.
If you’ve played it, do you think it is worth it to play the first game first? Both are on sale from Steam. These look fun to me.
Sacred 1 is genuinely amazing, go for it
I did play it, but it didn’t “do it” for me the same way the sequel did. It could still be worth a shot. If you do end up playing Sacred 2, make sure you do the quest chain involving the “concert”. I won’t say more so you can experience the wackiness.
Empire total war on release, the battle AI was absolute garbage to the point where you can just start as the Netherlands, walk over to Paris and take their country.
Before everyone researches fire by rank you could just spread out the infantry and have 2x firepower. Cavalry charges straight into you, pathfinding was so bad that you’d have a single column of men moving through a wide area. Fucking loved it though, it was a grand strategy spectacle and naval battles felt intense.
I had fun unlocking the pirates via config file edit and spamming out general units from a single buccaneer sword infantry and took over all of the Americas.
Battleborn eventually shut down with a mixed rating on Steam, but I don’t accept that. Battleborn was a great game with terrible publicity and if randy had just said “FPS MOBA” instead of trying to compete with overwatch I could still be playing my beloved grenade-chicken.
