Now I'm not talking about bad as in completely soulless and creatively bankrupt games like Gollum or (insert zombie survival asset flip here) but more like the games that promised the world but missed their mark massively and became commercial failures.
Tomb raider angel of darkness widely known as what killed the franchise and Core design for me is actually a really enjoyable and completely absurd experience. The game has a fever dream like quality to it that i find quite mysterious and alluring. I sense an attempt at an immersive sim but eidos didn't seem interested in letting the team finish it.
Sonic 06. I can't explain it but it has an allure i can't quite explain. On all fronts its bad but I can't stop thinking about it. With better controls this game could have been a lot better than it was.
Operation winback on the ps2. Brilliant game, my favourite third person shooter with a really high skill ceiling its just fun to master. Subtitles are in comic sans which means its perfect.
Drakengard. The monotonous gameplay and ear grating music amplify the games core themes and the general madness as the story unfolds.
Goldeneye rogue agent. An odd one considering the era had no shortage of brilliant bond games yet this one seemed to ensare me more than others.
Ff14 1.0. 1000 polygon flower pot need i say more? I really want to have some private server snapshot of this game to play because it just doesn't look real.
Haze. Thematically quite an interesting game but executed very poorly, the game that killed free radical and why timesplitters will never come back.
Alone in the dark 2008. Its a stupid game filled to the brim with such brazen stupid I can't help but adore it. It's definitely unique I'll give it that.
Two worlds 1 and 2. Honestly somehow my favourite RPGs there's something deeply wrong with me.
So these are the most notable bad games I enjoy. Anyone else got any?
I don't have much time to game anymore so I don't play a ton of "bad" games per se, but just a few I've played and like.
Deadly Premonition - The prime example. Legally distinct Twin Peaks. The graphics are bad. The controls are stiff and the combat sections were tacked on at the last minute. The music varies, but there are some hilariously mistimed cues. The voice acting is comical. Somehow, the game succeeds in telling a truly moving story that had me crying at the end. I don't even think the PC version is able to be completed due to technical issues, but if you can play it, you should.
Final Fantasy Origin: Stranger of Paradise - Probably the most recent good "bad" game I played. It has some pretty great combat mixed in with some very strange story telling and dialogue. The game is a lot of fun if you embrace the nostalgia of treating Jack, the main character, like the edgy 2000s video game protagonist he is.
Indigo Prophecy AKA Fahrenheit: I remember getting drawn into this one from the premise alone and not knowing anything about the devs. The game starts strong with you playing a character, Lucas, that comes to in a bathroom of a diner in NYC during an endless snow storm with a dead guy on the floor and the knife in your hands. It immediately has you try to hide the evidence. You play both sides of the story, Lucas and the police. Shit goes off the rails though when Lucas starts becoming more powerful and the unhoused are like a secret network of helpers and there's something with an Indigo Child or whatever. It ends with Lucas literally doing a Matrix 3 style fight flying through the air against the main bad guy.
The Guild 2: A Eurojank medieval dynasty simulator. It's pretty damn good and delivers an experience I haven't seen in any other games. You control a dynasty in medieval England and have you get married, have kids, do politics, run businesses, etc while dealing with rival dynasties.
Space Station 13: Jank upon jank. An absolute dumpster fire of a game written in a very obscure language. It's a multiplayer space station simulator where the players take roles as crew of a space station each with their own duties. It has bad pixel art, its laggy, and it's unnecessarily complex to the point of pain, but I've had some of the most emergent gameplay experiences in my life in it. Though how fun it is really depends on other players.
Space Station 13 is legendary. As a game? Horrible. As a sociological experiment in the limits of human chaos?
Barotrauma took a lot of it's inspiration from the wild emergent possibilities of Space Station 13. Electrical engineers can re-wire the whole submarine, automate the sub's nuclear reactor, or accidentally cross-wire the air locks, flood the sub, and send everyone down to the abyss. Clowns return as seemingly useless crew members with a reserve of hidden power. The doctor can perform illegal genetic experiments on the crew, in secret if they're careful. Trying to survive wild emergent death spirals is about half of the gameplay.
One time my buddy went outside the sub and got attacked by something. On a hunch, when he came in the airlock, I beat him to death with a crowbar while he yelled at me. Sure enough three seconds later tentacles started exploding out of his corpse and I was like "Told you so" as the thing started banging on the air lock door.