That sucky game that you love

[Gnoman]

[QUOTE=Cespenar;13497656For 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.[/QUOTE]

Funny thing about that game. The plot holes, for the most part, aren't actually plot holes. Square just tried too hard to make the plot subtle and complex, which rendered many, many plot points hard to comprehend, while making the characters, in many cases, into caricatures of themselves. Squall, for example, is one of the most convincing examples of an emotionally crippled person I've ever seen. The presentation does a lot to make it seem like simple "Wangst is cool!"

[Cespenar]

Funny thing about that game. The plot holes, for the most part, aren't actually plot holes. Square just tried too hard to make the plot subtle and complex, which rendered many, many plot points hard to comprehend, while making the characters, in many cases, into caricatures of themselves. Squall, for example, is one of the most convincing examples of an emotionally crippled person I've ever seen. The presentation does a lot to make it seem like simple "Wangst is cool!"

Arguable, but I see your point. Then again, complexity for its own sake is not a good thing to do with plots and general writing.

[Daverin]

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.

Much delayed, but WOW I had no idea someone posted Aidyn before me; search check fail. Also, you now are on my list of the top 5 awesome people in the Playground!

And I didn't have either of those as causes (had expansion, never tried cheating the system. It was simply walking into a random house. Still, it wasn't an important one, so no big deal.)

Also, what was your favorite character? I would say mine is either Abrecan or Godric. Abrecan just was a beast to work with early game, while Godric... needs no explanation.

[Grue Bait]

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.

I'm afraid I can't comment on it being unfinishable on PS3, but how was Dawnguard broken on release?

[Zevox]

Also, what was your favorite character? I would say mine is either Abrecan or Godric. Abrecan just was a beast to work with early game, while Godric... needs no explanation.

Wow, you actually remember the names of characters from that game? All I can recall at this point is their character stereotypes. Big Guy the warrior, Hot Chick the mage, Unstable the alchemist, Childhood Friend the thief, Dashing McSwordsman, Flirty Rogue Chick, Benedict Bard, Blue Skinned Girl I Could Never Figure Out How to Recruit - I'm sure there others I'm forgetting, but those ones stick out to me. Oh, and Generic Hero Guy the main character, of course.

Zevox

[Bouregard]

Command & Conquer: Renegade.

Technically it looks like a game made by people who have never made a shooter. The characters were facepalm-worthy, had some weird balance issues that made you pistol a tank for money, it looked awful, had features cut for the release.


But it combined so well. It had something that really hasn't been done again in a shooter, the bad characters transcend into parody letting you play as GI Joe characters, and there it just played well in multiplayer as a team game.

And I thought I was alone out there!

First the singleplayer: It had the most horrible escort mission in history, a wierd story only loved by people who liked the whole NOD/GDI situation and more LARGE HAM situations then you can shake a stick at, but it was still enjoyable.


The multiplayer. Unique. I still play it today and I love it. No flags, no caps, no checkpoints. Just two bases and whoever has the last building standing wins.

Also it was a game more about tactic then about "skill" (the ability to hit half pixel halfway across the map after a split second)

You're a world class sniper? I have tank. And guess what my tank is less expensive than your sniper.

You bought a 1000 credit ramboesque character? My 0 credit shotgunner reduced you to 20% health before dying to one bullet from you. So what do you do now?

[Bearpunch]

No love for Deadly Premonition? The plot is a twin-peaks like acid trip, the combat is awful, the voice acting is horrendous and the driving is pointless and wastes time.

But its awesome. I love the plot, and the characters are hilarious. The game is perfection in bad video games.

[Artanis]

Minesweeper.

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

Hah, mine is 68 seconds!

[polity4life]

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.

I primarily used lights to try to tank or CC heavies as I mopped up the other units. For fights against nothing but heavies I used only ranged and heavies. It worked well enough for me to beat the game a few times but I understand what you're saying about light unit value in early game.

Works just fine on the Wii.

I can't shake my fist at you hard enough.

[Mx.Silver]

I'm afraid I can't comment on it being unfinishable on PS3, but how was Dawnguard broken on release?

IRRC there where a number of significant problems actually getting it to run when it first came out.

[Gorfnod]

Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest

Yes I know the game didn't make any sense half the time and there are countless puzzles that were basically unsolvable without outside help or an insane amount of luck but this game still captured my heart as a young lad.

Dare I say, I liked it better than the original.

[Gnoman]

Arguable, but I see your point. Then again, complexity for its own sake is not a good thing to do with plots and general writing.

Quite true. I don't deny that the game has problems, I just prefer that the criticisms be valid. The complete lack of difficulty is, to me, a bigger problem than a few storytelling problems.

[Grue Bait]

IRRC there where a number of significant problems actually getting it to run when it first came out.

Huh. I, personally, haven't had a problem with it. Was it the beta, or the actual release?

[PallElendro]

Wizardry: The Forsaken Land.
Its story is alright. Character creation seems fine. Combat is fine. The monsters are fine.
Fine is too mediocre.

[Pie Guy]

Sonic Adventure 1 & 2

When I was younger, I was just content to repeatedly play these games, but I played through 2 recently and...

[Zevox]

Sonic Adventure 1 & 2

When I was younger, I was just content to repeatedly play these games, but I played through 2 recently and...

Er, Sonic Adventure 2 is a good game. Probably the only good 3D Sonic game prior to Sonic Colors (I presume - I haven't actually played Colors, but I've heard only good things about it, and I know the gameplay is similar to Generations, which was good).

Zevox

[Triaxx]

Godric. Always Godric. Abrecan is cool and all, but Godric is hilarious. He makes the game.

[Crow]

I have to add Master of Orion 3 to this thread. Oh yes, it was bad, and probably not worth the MOO name.

However, I spent more time on this one than any game in the series. It was built more on a macromanagement and "broad strokes" style of gameplay, which is one of the reasons so many people who were used to getting their micro on didn't enjoy it.

But wow did it give you the feeling of truly being a real emperor, especially in your first couple playthroughs. Though it didn't do it how you expect. It was more of a "I don't know what the hell I'm doing, but somehow the empire still runs itself." feeling. Like many of the less popular emperors of old! Then in the later stages, it was more in the good "I'm setting general policy for my viceroys to take care of" way.

On top of that, the galaxies you could play in were vast. Research wasn't as certain, and you really had to break up the empire into different principalities and manage them as separate entities sometimes, because you couldn't always just move a fleet from here to there and be sure it would get there on time.

On larger galaxies, processing turns took forever. Like hours sometimes. You click turn and go to bed for the night in the later stages of the game. It sucked, but it also gave every turn a weight of responsibility that you can't replicate when loading a previous save doesn't cost you 4 hours.

Then there were the Ithkul. Basically it was a race that would assimilate the races around it, and if you weren't vigilant, the Ithkul could infect your colonies, which wasn't neccessarily a bad thing if you knew how to manage it. But with some setups, you would be forced to "glass" the colony and start over. Also, every race would be in a perpetual state of war with the Ithkul. You had to run recon on your allies to make sure infection wasn't spreading through their colonies enroute to your own. Sometimes this would lead to having to make the tough decision of making a preemptive strike on your own allies to wipe out the infestation, or blockade your own systems so no infection could make it in.

I did an AAR for that game that was truly epic. I finally cut it off when it became clear I was in the mop-up stage, but it see-sawed back and forth like nothing else, finally culminating with me in full retreat, glassing my own colonies before the Ithkul could arrive and take them, and bracing for a giant Ithkul fleet at my home planet. I'd just rushed a new ship design and had a sizable fleet of them waiting to die valiantly, but we won! Then a gazillion turns of payback ensued before I hit the mop-up stage.

God that game was fun.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I don't think FFVIII was specifically bad about plot holes so much as it had the same problem every Final Fantasy does - a really strong, tightly-plotted first half and unexplained crap coming out of nowhere for the second half, and a bad localization. (Hell even VI has unexplained crap coming out of nowhere, it just plays the shock value really effectively). It also starts focusing on Squall and Rinoa without managing to make most of the audience (or at least me and the vocal part of the audience) give half a **** about either of them.

[Raimun]

Tribes 2

Now, this game is freaking awesome. Power armor. Cool futuristic weapons. Everyone has a jetpack. Ground and air vehicles. Wide battlegrounds with actual terrain and cool forts. Tactical multiplayer missions. Probably invented class based shooters... without using actual classes. All this in 2001. Is very fun and I don't even like FPS-games that much.

The problem? My current (and more powerful) PC refuses to open the game installed from the original (and scratchless) CD (yes, as in singular).

Of course, back in the days, the game didn't really work that much better. You'd play it for a couple of matches and then blam! Unhandled exception! After that, it would occur more and more often and you'd (hopefully) quit when you still had some sanity left.

On subject.

[Klose_the_Sith]

Star Wars Demolition

The controls were fiddly, it was ugly even by the standards of PS1 games, there was no internal consistency or logic (Jabba the Hutt has rented an oversized Chess Board in Naboo/a trench in the Second Death Star to have vehicles splode each other up!) the AI was incredidumb and there was no internal game balance.

But a rancor tore that chicken-walker limb from limb before being annihilated by oversized missiles fired from Boba Fett. Because logic can go and **** itself, presumably.

Also the defeat cinematics for some of the characters terrified me so much when I was young.

[Raimun]

And Arcanum doesn't even need introduction on a board full of fantasy nerds, does it?

Whaddya mean?

Arcanum isn't sucky. Sure, it could be better and has room for improvement but it doesn't hit me that often.

[Winthur]

Arcanum isn't sucky. Sure, it could be better and has room for improvement but it doesn't hit me that often.

It's just bug-riddled and the programming isn't polished, I guess that's why you could say it's sucky. And it never really got that popular, it has a cult following but that's it.

[Raimun]

It's just bug-riddled and the programming isn't polished, I guess that's why you could say it's sucky. And it never really got that popular, it has a cult following but that's it.

I'll give you that it could have been on the workbench a bit longer before release but it still delivered a great story in a great setting.

The combat was actually really, really unbalanced for a video game. Let's just say that a sword wielding mage knight was everyway better than a gun totting professor marksman.

You either hate or love Arcanum. Or thought it was ok but not great or bad.

Edit: Aw, what the heck. The game is horribad for most of the character build combinations but it's really awesome if you can accidentally figure out the perfect build that doesn't use the buggy features and doesn't leave you shafted but invincible. Like I did.

Edit2: Great setting and story either way.

[Terraoblivion]

I'll give you that it could have been on the workbench a bit longer before release but it still delivered a great story in a great setting.

The combat was actually really, really unbalanced for a video game. Let's just say that a sword wielding mage knight was everyway better than a gun totting professor marksman.

You either hate or love Arcanum. Or thought it was ok but not great or bad.

Edit: Aw, what the heck. The game is horribad for most of the character build combinations but it's really awesome if you can accidentally figure out the perfect build that doesn't use the buggy features and doesn't leave you shafted but invincible. Like I did.

Edit2: Great setting and story either way.

Don't forget the graphics that made Fallout 1 look colorful and polished and the weird pacing of the plot.

[Raimun]

Don't forget the graphics that made Fallout 1 look colorful and polished and the weird pacing of the plot.

... They were totally features?

[Drasius]

Submarine Titans.

For all the bugs in the game and somewhat unbalanced combat, it is a very novel take on the RTS genre that I have not seen since.

This.

I liked NW 1 original single campain.

And this.

5. War Wind 1&2

Spoiler

Show

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.

And that. To the point where I was thinking of War Wind when I read the title but couldn't remember the name until I spotted it in here.

[Rake21]

I'm going to preface this one a bit. I don't like a lot of anime. Sure, some old Toonami stuff like Dragonball, DBZ, and Outlaw Star is good, and I absolutely love Cowboy Bepop, both Fullmetal Alchmist's, and Samurai Champloo.

But other than that, anime, for me, runs from a resounding "eh" to pure hatred. And one that I hate? Naruto. It's obnoxious, it never ends, and the majority of the main cast drives me insane. I tried it, and no thanks.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and I'm playing "Asura's Wrath" from CyberConnect1, the most absurdly awesome game I've played in a while. Fantastic the whole way. Not to mention the boss fights, which are some of the biggest and baddest fights in gaming.

Well, a friend tells me to try another of their games. A fighting game called Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm 2. I initially told him no, because I can't imagine a game based on a show that I hate can't be any better than the show.

Well, by the name of the thread, you know where this is going. He kept bringing it up, and I eventually caved in and gave it a shot.

The controls are ok. A little flighty, but nothing awful. The story is... not good. And I still don't like the main cast. But then I got to the first boss fight, and I kind of changed my mind about the game.

See, boss fights are probably one of my favorite selling points on any game. And this game does them amazingly. The villians, who run the gambit from obnoxious to actually competent, all have a unique battle to go with them. They'll start off as a normal beat-um up, and then you'll suddenly have a rail shooter. Or a turret section where a pedophile is launching demon snakes at you. Or a guy will reveal that he's actually an eldritch horror made out of thread. And they are awesome.

I don't know why, but I ended up really loving this game. Enough that I tried the show again... and I still hate it.

But the game's good.

[smuchmuch]

Forgot this the first time, but:
I liked FEAR. Much more than Half Life 2 or Halo. Possibly because I dind't found the storry that awfull (it wasn't good but not that terrible either) and it's the only FPS where I felt the ennmies gave me a genuine challenge (if you don't spam slomow too much, that is).
Haven't tried the 2 or the 3, but frankly they look awfull AND unlovable.

@V I don't know the level design and the main campain storry have to count as 'sucky' for some. And Nortoooon Maaaapes.

[Grif]

Forgot this the first time, but:
I liked FEAR. Much more than Half Life 2 or Halo. Possibly because I dind't found the storry that awfull (it wasn't good but not that terrible either) and it's the only FPS where I felt the ennmies gave me a genuine challenge (if you don't spam slomow too much, that is).
Haven't tried the 2 or the 3, but frankly they look awfull AND unlovable.

FEAR isn't exactly sucky so I'm not sure if it qualifies. (It's actually very well polished.)