That sucky game that you love

[Weezer]

Lord of Magic

Crappy, broken, buggy game. Still has a warm place in my heart..

How was it broken? I used to play the **** out of the Special Edition version of that game. Such fun, especially using hotseat mode with my brother, admittedly I was young and may be forgetting flaws, but I don't remember any major problems.

[toasty]

Agreed with regards to III and V. V for me had concentrated too much on the pretty and not enough on it being easy to see what's going on, and the III graphics were iconic and cute. Can't comment on IV, didn't particularly like it so haven't played it much.

My question is why didn't people like this game? Was it so different? Were the different ways of organizing the different towns so obnoxious? Was the magic/hero system so disliked? Were the stories so terrible?

Like... Heroes IV is one of my favorite games of all time. Period.

[Castaras]

My question is why didn't people like this game? Was it so different? Were the different ways of organizing the different towns so obnoxious? Was the magic/hero system so disliked? Were the stories so terrible?

Like... Heroes IV is one of my favorite games of all time. Period.

I ... honestly can't remember the exact reason. I feel bad now.

I believe it was a combination of lots of little things that were different to 3. and the fact it was different to 3, which was so wonderful and amazing.

[Cikomyr]

How was it broken? I used to play the **** out of the Special Edition version of that game. Such fun, especially using hotseat mode with my brother, admittedly I was young and may be forgetting flaws, but I don't remember any major problems.

I remember beating the game when the Lord of Death came knocking on my Order door.

I just hired 12x mercenary crossbowmen and sniped him. 1 volley = dead. Victory.

[Artanis]

Star Wars: Rebellion.

The interface could get clunky at times, the AI was atrocious, the endgame mop-up would drag on ten times as long as any other 4X I've ever played, and the "3D tactical combat" that it hung its hat on was largely a joke. And yet, I still can't help but bust that sucker out every now and then.

[Mx.Silver]

My question is why didn't people like this game? Was it so different? Were the different ways of organizing the different towns so obnoxious? Was the magic/hero system so disliked? Were the stories so terrible?

Like... Heroes IV is one of my favorite games of all time. Period.

There were a few complaints with it. Now, as you've played HoMM3 you'll have noticed that HoMM4 is quite a big departure from it in how it plays, especially since HoMM3 is not all that dissimilar from 2, which itself is again quite similar to 1. The biggest change is in regard to how heroes work, in all the other games heroes led the armies but in 4 you were actually better off using your heroes as your armies. Basically it was often a better use of resources to buy stuff for your heroes - especially immortality potions - than it was to rely on creatures because a higher-level, well kitted out hero is frequently a more effective combatant than most stacks of creatures.
The changes to castle defences and creature growth were also rather jarring.

Then there was the balance, or rather the lack thereof. Now, HoMM has never much concerned itself with balance between the towns but some effort was made. In HoMM2 made it abundantly clear than the 'might' towns needed different tactics to win than the 'magic' towns, while HoMM3 made a fair effort to at least put the towns in a position where they were within a measurable distance of each other (even if Conflux did it's best to ruin that), despite the secondary skills being hilariously imbalanced.
HoMM4 however created a whole new set of problems (besides the secondary skills, which were still fairly wonky) due to the alternate creature upgrades, which were frequently not balanced at all.

Then you have the various other gripes, like the changed battle maps (and attack mechanics), the death town (many felt Inferno and Necropolis should not have been fused) and that 4 just doesn't look as nice as 3 or 2. But a lot of this can basically be summarised as "It wasn't HoMM3".



Having said that, I do think 4 is regarded somewhat more fondly now than it was on release. It's not really a bad game, it just wasn't what a lot of people were expecting. The writing of the core campaigns is also the best the franchise has seen, and it's one of strongest contenders for best soundtrack of the series.
It probably didn't deserve to be essentially ignored when 5 was being made either - which it seems to have been, given how little of it there was to be seen in 5, at least until the second expansion pack.

[Zevox]

The issue is Gladius didn't suck. The story was awful but if you take it as it is, it's a wonderful person-based tactical combat simulator with a really balanced rock-paper-scissor approach to unit types.

I don't think I'd say it was particularly balanced. The whole concept that light units beat heavy ones always seemed very shaky to me - sure they could get good dodge rates against heavy units, but any real hits from the heavy unit did a number on them, while they needed a lot of hits to take down the heavy units. And it took until at least mid-game before they were really getting that good dodge rate against the heavy units at all. So I personally always found it best to ignore those for most of the game, focus on medium and heavy units (and your main characters covered most of the medium units you needed), particularly monster heavy units like the Yeti and Cyclops, plus ranged and magic ones as they opened up. The only light unit I recall finding worth a damn is the Dervish, which was mainly due to their immunity to damage from wind-affinity enemies, and they were a late-game unit.

What sucks about Gladius is that it does not work with XBox 360 and never will.

Works just fine on the Wii.

Zevox

[Tiki Snakes]

Sucky games that I love regardless?
That rings a bell.
I'm going to say Enclave.
Uninspired in almost all regards, somehow plays nicely enough that I got a little bit addicted for a while there. Admittedly, the light-side campaign is insipid and uninspiring, (You can keep your gnome, thanks, and the rest of the characters were not much better) but there was a real charm to the dark-side campaign, playing as a goblin swordsman and running around hack-and-slashing whilst listening to the Best of the Shadows. (Don't even remember it's actual soundtrack, unsurprisingly).

I'm sure there was another game I was going to mention but it's entirely slipped my mind now. Rats.

[Mystic Muse]

Sucky games that I love regardless?
That rings a bell.
I'm going to say Enclave.
Uninspired in almost all regards, somehow plays nicely enough that I got a little bit addicted for a while there. Admittedly, the light-side campaign is insipid and uninspiring, (You can keep your gnome, thanks, and the rest of the characters were not much better) but there was a real charm to the dark-side campaign, playing as a goblin swordsman and running around hack-and-slashing whilst listening to the Best of the Shadows. (Don't even remember it's actual soundtrack, unsurprisingly).

Oh, hey this game.

I've been wanting to play this again for a while. I can't though, because the only version I have access to is for the Xbox, and I only have an XBox 360, and Microsoft apparently thought it was a good idea to not have all xbox games be usable on the 360.

[Tergon]

Terraria.

It's a terrible game. It has stupidly crappy graphics, the multiplayer system is ridiculously flawed and often unusable, enemies can get insanely unbalanced and broken, and at the end, all you're doing is basically building a house with Lego blocks except for the fact that you have to spend hours collecting the blocks in question and making crappy blocks into slightly less crappy ones. The game has no victory conditions, no ending, no plot, the bosses are 100% optional and with one exception can be fought over and over again whenever you please, and to cap it all off, are mostly too hard to defeat singleplayer unless you're insanely lucky, requiring you to use the stupid buggy unplayable multiplayer system. And if you somehow get past all of this crap, it's got zero replay value, because all you can do is start this nightmare boring waste of time all over again. It's basically Minecraft only it's a 2D sidescroller and it has even lousier graphics and less to do in it.

And God help me, I love it. I keep building insane castles and then destroying that world and doing it all over again because I just don't want to stop, ever.

[Cespenar]

I think people have started to confuse this thread with "Describe Your Favourite Game And Make It Sound As Awful As Possible" one.

[Mystic Muse]

Alright, I'll go for one that I think qualifies as "That sucky game you love."

Mine is Divinity 2: Ego Draconis (Have not played the expansion). It has one of the absolute dumbest endings in any game I've ever played (Spoilered below),

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What could have been a semi-decent game was rendered null by the way it ended. Basically, you spent all that time running around listening to a dead lady's voice in your head only to find out she's been tricking you. She sends you on a wild goose chase to resurrect the Big Bad's dead wife, Ygerna, saying it'll help defeat him. Turns out that she is Ygerna and resurrecting her actually makes Damian invincible. But you don't find that out until after an unavoidable and tedious boss fight. There are no Multiple Endings. So the story ends with your hero being stuck in limbo and Lucien, the guy who you killed in the aforementioned boss fight*, is happy to inform you just the entirety of Rivellon is down the crapper because of you, and the game ends with a cutscene of Damian and Ygerna raging across the land.

*Technically something like a version of him sometime back in time or something.

Besides the dumb ending, the Xbox version is pretty glitchy. Recently, I can't even play it any more because if I save without making sure there are still doors, there's a good chance every door in the game will just disappear entirely, meaning I can't go in the majority of places and can't progress the game.

Besides this, certain options are stupidly more powerful than others. Dual-wielding is so much better than two-handed (My favored) that it's ridiculous.

But I love the game, because about halfway through, you get to turn into a friggin' dragon and just burn entire enemy fortresses and stuff to the ground with your fire breath.

[Tergon]

I think people have started to confuse this thread with "Describe Your Favourite Game And Make It Sound As Awful As Possible" one.

I stand by my description. Terraria's not my favourite game, and honestly, it's an awful game by any reasonable measure. Highly limited things you can do, zero plot, awful monster scaling, and laughable graphics even by sidescroller standards. I just happen to think it's also a fantastic stupid timewaster!

[Opperhapsen]

As do Obsidian.

Also worth noting that Troika were disbanded 3 months after Bloodlines was released so it's not as if they had a lot of time to keep cranking out the patches after 1.2.

The game couldn't be completed in its "finished" state.
Troika never fixed Arcanum either.

As for Obsidian they really don't, New Vegas is the only case of an Obsidian game getting rid of the launch bugs.

[Cespenar]

I stand by my description. Terraria's not my favourite game, and honestly, it's an awful game by any reasonable measure. Highly limited things you can do, zero plot, awful monster scaling, and laughable graphics even by sidescroller standards. I just happen to think it's also a fantastic stupid timewaster!

Just as one doesn't judge a racing game of not having a good plot, one also shouldn't judge a sandbox building game of not having it.

I mean, games like ADOM, Dwarf Fortress, Terraria or Minecraft are excellent at what they do. They are not sucky games that you love. They are great games that have niche genres. Games that (I think) should be mentioned at this thread are games that sucked at exactly at what they should be doing, but for whatever reasons you still like them. For example, I had mentioned FF8 earlier. It's a JRPG, yet its story is full of plot holes (to say the least), which is not what a roleplaying game should have. Still, it worked, in a campy way. Stuff like that.

[Triaxx]

The blue tunnels, and the first boss zone. The tunnels were JUST, SO LONG. And the first boss zone was hard because you had to remain far away because it was his only dodgeable attack, and your staff was usually your strongest one. I still recall having to use the rubber band trick to boost agility.

Yeah, Aidyn did have a few problems. But once you worked past them, it was a surprisingly deep game. And fun. Was it hard? Sure, until you figured out how alchemy worked so you could make your own potions, and sleeping at an inn would restore your health.

Another one for the list: X-Com Interceptor. No one likes it, but I find it amazing. Even now I fire it up to go blast some baddies. Tons of fun.

[Archonic Energy]

Another one for the list: X-Com Interceptor. No one likes it, but I find it amazing. Even now I fire it up to go blast some baddies. Tons of fun.

I disagree.
I liked it too.
it tried to take the X-com games somewhere new... it could have been better but it wasn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be.
the problem was of course the X-com name they attached to it. by putting a name of that pedegree in it it raised expectations.

*fires nova bomb*

[Mx.Silver]

The game couldn't be completed in its "finished" state.

And Skyrim was unplayable if you'd bought it on a PS3, in it's "finished" state. The Dawnguard expansion was also basically broken on release.

As for Obsidian they really don't, New Vegas is the only case of an Obsidian game getting rid of the launch bugs.

Neverwinter Nights 2 would beg to differ. Alpha Protocol's certainly more stable now than it was on release too, while Dungeon Siege 3 had the PC control problems dealt with.
Obsidian are really not significantly worse than Bethesda when it comes to bugs. What Obsidian do have is the spectre of KOTOR 2 hanging over them, which a fair few people have never entirely forgiven them for.

[Weezer]

I remember beating the game when the Lord of Death came knocking on my Order door.

I just hired 12x mercenary crossbowmen and sniped him. 1 volley = dead. Victory.

Ahh, yes the fact that killing a lord eliminated the whole faction was a bit odd (and frustrating when it was your lord).

[smuchmuch]

I liked NW 1 original single campain.

And to whoever named it, Eversion is NOT a sucky game. it's a pretty decent 8 bit platformer as well as having an interesting gimick. I really don't see what counts as sucky in it.
Neither is EB, in my opinion.

I think people have started to confuse this thread with "Describe Your Favourite Game And Make It Sound As Awful As Possible" one.

(Well they are bound to overlap a bit. Particulary seeing as 'sucky' is kind of subjective)

Obsidian are really not significantly worse than Bethesda when it comes to bugs.

That's still pretty bad when the best you can say is "hey, they aren't worst than another develloper known for their very buggy games too".
Besides the thing with Obsidian game sis tha tthey tend to be alot more scripted than Bethesda so the bugs tend to be a lot more obvious and more painfull when you see them.

[Cogwheel]

I liked NW 1 original single campain.

And to whoever named it, Eversion is NOT a sucky game. it's a pretty decent 8 bit platformer as well as having an interesting gimick. I really don't see what counts as sucky in it.

That was me, but I at no point called it bad. I think it's quite good. I mentioned it in relation to IWBTG, as an excellent game to spring on unsuspecting people.

[MCerberus]

I liked NW 1 original single campain.

I respect your final judgement on whether you like it, but to me and a lot of people there were some pretty deep flaws in it.

Some spoilers if you haven't played it yet

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And this could be summed up in the second act pretty well. For each weird, creepy, or out there segment there was 'kobold cave #438' or 'wizard tower where not much goes on'.

It follows standard fantasy tropes really really straight and dull, and each act was collecting macguffins in order to get to the interesting part of the story.

The pacing really didn't mesh well with the writing, for example 'my mom is lost in a troll cave' shouldn't lead unexplained into a 2-hour megadungeon filled with pretty well every enemy near your level in order to glean information about the baddies.

Death and fear effects still also never work in videogames. They were freaking everywhere. Bonus points for the double-dragon fight, where they force another save each time one of them moves. And that fight was horribly tuned for single player to begin with even if you have an immunity item.

[Mx.Silver]

That's still pretty bad when the best you can say is "hey, they aren't worst than another developer known for their very buggy games too".

I'm not arguing that Obsidian's bugs should be overlooked, I'm pointing out that there is a double-standard at play in the Gamer community when you compare how Bethesda's bug-ridden games are treated to how basically everyone else's bug-ridden games are treated. The reason why 'Obsidian aren't significantly worse than Bethesda when it comes to bugs' is relevant is because it shows that the bugs themselves do not explain why this double-standard exists.

Besides the thing with Obsidian game is that they tend to be a lot more scripted than Bethesda so the bugs tend to be a lot more obvious and more painful when you see them.

This is something of a better answer (although I would note that Skyrim's bugs were not exactly subtle - nor exactly harmless if you bought it for the PS3). You could also argue that Bethesda and Obsidian might appeal to different audiences, although just to what extent this holds true is debatable.

[Cogwheel]

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Bonus points for the double-dragon fight

I don't know, I quite liked it, myself.

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[Daverin]

Games I am pretty sure are "sucky" yet I liked anyways:

- Star Wars: Rebellion. I can't believe I saw someone else bring this up, way to win!

- Aidyn Chronicles: the First Mage for the N64. It was obviously unpolished, unfinished, and could actually CRASH A CONSOLE, yet despite that it was what I consider the best possible open-world RPG experience for the N64 (perhaps not much competition.) Its story was, although not "original", nonetheless a somewhat different take on some RPG staples, and it was surprisingly well told, especially when one went through the books in the game. And it seriously just "felt" like one of the old, truly adventure-y kind of RPGs, in a way that is kind of hard to describe. I bet this game could become rather popular if it were to get a loving remake.

- Two Worlds. Yeah, I said it. Its Narm was charming, and I enjoyed the simplicity of the combat. I actually dislike TWII, at least judging from the introduction, because it seems like its trying too hard to be something its not.

Also, to whoever called Lords of Magic "sucky." No. Just no. Bugs aside, it was a great game by any standards of the time. I know when a game I liked was sucky, and LoM was no such thing.

[Triaxx]

I found after playing quite a bit and doing some research that the two worst flavors of crashes were narrowed down to two causes. Cause one was not having the Memory Expansion. The other one was trying cheat the system, by using the Strength Spell, or a strength potion to equip a weapon you couldn't actually use. Once the game realized it, it would crash out on you.

[Opperhapsen]

And Skyrim was unplayable if you'd bought it on a PS3, in it's "finished" state. The Dawnguard expansion was also basically broken on release.

One thing is a buggy game, another is one you can't complete.
Even with the patch there's a 50/50 shot you can't complete the game anyway.

[Zombimode]

Ahh, there are quite a lot of sucky games I'm inexplicable attached to.

1. Lamentation Sword

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A Diablo clone from... Korea? This game really fits this thread because it sucked as a Diablo clone. The loot system wasnt very developed, there were no skills or anything, just some basic stats to build the characters, the spells were mostly useless and you had use try-and-error to see what they do, the production value was extremely low and the game was basically a huge grind. The story wasn't exactly noteworthy but it was difficult to follow anyway, because the german localization was very poor (I've heard that some crucial exposition was simply left out).
But maaaan I loved it. It was the topic #1 for me and a friend. We played it all the time. No, scratch that. Oftentimes, we placed our characters at a monster spawnpoint, left the game running, while we were out doing other stuff for a couple of hours, and then come back and pick up the massive amounts of loot. And stunts like this were necessary to complete the game.
Yeah, it sucked, but I fondly remember it.

2. Ultima 9

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I really like this game. Not just back then but even today.
Hear me out on this:
It was the first Ultima game I actually played in a serious manner. As a kid I tried myself on Ultima Underworld 1&2 but I couldn't understand english at that time and was new to video gaming in general so I just stumbled around on the first maps before giving up. But I memorized the manuals (which were localized). They were my favorite peace of prosa. When I started playing U9 I already knew the basics: the virtues, the history of britania in brief, the Avatar and Lord British. But the UW manuals, while great, are not sufficient to really understand Ultima. For that, you will have to play most of the games.
With my knowledge, Ultima 9 appeared familiar: there was Lord British, the Guardian, the Avatar, the runic script, spell circles, a similar style of writing and illustrations in the manuals, and so on. But since my knowledge was so limited, I just didn't noticed the inconsistencies, the canon-butchering mess that is U9. All the numerous, and valid, nitpicks U9 received over the years just peeled off of my ignorance. This had put me in the unique position to judge the game on its own merits:
- the manuals were very flavorful; I really miss this style of manual
- the dungeons were varied and unique, much more then just locales of monsters and loot
- it managed to invoke a sense of wonder and magic that no other game can match so far
- the music is absolutely gorgeous. It is by far the best music in the Ultima series and I would say one of the best in the history of video games at large
- I felt it really fulfilling to go out and literally fix the world. The game gives you a strong feedback on your actions, they have lasting consequences. When you ie. restore the Shrine of Compassion you have quite noticeably made the world a better place. Yeah, it's simplistic, but I can't deny the appeal.

There are some points of critique raised against U9 that do not concern its status as an installment of the Ultima series. Yes, even on its own, the game isn't without problems, but I always felt they were exaggerated by critics out of their (understandable) hatred for the game. My bottom line is, that Ultima 9 is a horrible Ultima game, but a passable game with some strong points on its own. Still, I think very much fits this thread.

3. Army Men 1&2

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I didn't care at all for the series after its first two installments. In my view, the later games focused on the "wackiness" part to much and by that they were undermining what made the first two games great: despite the ridiculousness of the premise it was (mostly) played straight. Mind you, the first two games had their wacky stuff, but the characters in-game treated it with all seriousness. For me this created a very inspiring setting.
Furthermore, a war between plastic soldiers was one of my big fantasies at that time. One of my day-dreams (hey, this was before puberty ) made into a video game was dream made true.
Gameplay-wise both titles were rather mediocre. Rather simple, not without bugs, but not without merits too.
But still, the games were carried almost completely by the (awesome) premise. If they were just normal war games, that is without the whole plastic deal, I wouldn't have touched them with a 10ft pole.
After the very disappointing 3rd installment and the apparent shift to consoles I lost track of the series, but from what I've heard, the games were getting worse and worse. A shame, truly. Nowadays I lament the inability the get Army Men 2 running on my computer

4. Demonworld 2

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You probably don't know this one. Demonworld is a defunct-but-maybe-soon-to-be-revived franchise of a table top miniatures war game, made in germany. I personally think it is a better tactical war game than the Games Workshop offerings, but thats neither here nor there.
At some point a PC-port was made for the game. It contained only two factions, but the focus lay on the singleplayer campaign. The gameplay had some problem but was overall enjoyable. What truly stood out was the music and overall incredible atmospheric presentation and storytelling. It is one of the best games ever in that regard.
Of course a sequel was made. But since it was the year 2000 (or something close) RTS was the big thing while turn based strategy was regarded as dated. So the decision was made to make Demonworld 2 into an RTT (thats RealTimeTactics, to differentiate this genre from Command&Conquer/Starcraft RTS), which was a recipe for disaster. Nothing really worked. There wasn't much tactic involved. The game was riddled with bugs. The level design was sometimes simply insane.
Even the strongest point of the prequel, the atmospheric single player campaign, didn't quite measure up. The story wasn't as compelling and the presentation not nearly as atmospheric.
The game also looked quite cheap.
But still despite its numerous flaws that made it in all honesty a bad strategy game, it grew on me and I played the campaign several times. And I enjoyed it, even the insane dungeon levels. And I can't even say why.

5. War Wind 1&2

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Riding in the wave of fantasy RTS' in the wake of Warcraft War Wind was born. It came with an unique an inspiring setting as well as its own spin on the genre. The first game doesn't really belong in this thread, since while it had its problems gameplay-wise, it provided its intended gameplay reasonably well. Together with its very compelling setting and quite clever scenarios it was a good, but not a great game. It had two major problems: 1) some of the mechanics and ideas of the game were quite complex but rather poorly implemented into the game; 2) the gameplay required precise controlling and timing, but due to how the game worked in practice larger battle were very chaotic and micromanagement of units was very difficult if not outright impossible.
A sequel was made, and with it came the chance to correct the issues of the first game. But as you can guess it didn't happen. The setting was still great. The inclusions of humans felt heavy handed but I think it worked out pretty well. The issue of adaptation to a new and unfamiliar world as well as the impacts of a new species on an ecosystem was treated seriously by the writers.
The game grew more ambitious in scope: the factions were more diversified, new mechanics were added, all while almost everything thing from the first game was retained. This would be all fine and dandy if the two major issues of the first game had been addressed. Most of the new mechanics were implemented poorly and the now even more important requirement of precise unit control was as bad as ever. The game teased the player with all the different and sometime unique strategies and tactics that are theoretically possible with the features of the game, but could not translated into practice.
It did not help that the game had even more bugs than the predecessor. It also looked quite cheap. Really, the graphics, animations and effects were just sad.
Nevertheless the setting and the games ambitious and unique game concepts fascinated me for a very long time. War Wind 2 is not a good game, but I'm still very fond of it. If any old RTS would benefit from a remake it would be War Wind 2.

[mucco]

Minesweeper.

I got so addicted to it once that I trained until I could bring my Expert record down to 73 seconds.

[Green-Shirt Q]

There was this game called Whiplash for the original Xbox. It was about lab animal testing in a giant corporation, and the heroes were two escaped animals. A weasel chained to a talking rabbit, which was used as a weapon to beat the crap out of human scientists and smash stuff. This game was glitchy as ALL HECK, and the game was really broken sometimes because of it and forced you to restart the game, hoping you didn't get stuck again. Also, had some really confusing level design. But it had just the most hilarious writing!

Then there's Destroy All Humans: Path of The Furon. The final sequel of a great series, the last installment suffered from graphical bugs, pretty noticable ones, too. And several distracting glitches, though none gamebreaking. But, because of it's incredibly streamlined telekinsis-and-raygun-at-the same-time combat system which was freakin' genius and I hope crops up in some other game, it worked it's way into my favourite game slot for a long time.