The best terrible games

M76

M76

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jun 12, 2012
Messages
14,030
There are lots of bad games out there that are simply terrible and not worth anyone's time.
But occasionally there are some that are objectively bad or even broken in some sense, but still enjoyable. Have you encountered any such game?

Here are a few examples that I've enjoyed:


  1. The oldest I can remember was Car & Driver all the way from 1992, which was a street racing game published by EA years before The Need For Speed, that was based on the exact same formula, it was just done with a different car magazine, Car & Driver obviously. (The first NFS was made in collaboration with Road & Track). I loved how the game menus were made like pages of a magazine, it gave a lot to immersion. But unfortunately the physics of the game was some of the wonkiest I've seen, it was utterly terrible. But in 1992 that didn't really matter, I've still spent a lot of time with this game.
    An interesting tidbit: This was the first game I played that supported SVGA resolutions.

    1.jpg
  2. The next one that stands out for me is another Racing game, one released 10 years later: Street Legal Racing. This game was meant to be great, but it was published by a budget publisher, and the developers bit off much more than they could chew.
    They wanted to make a game much more complex than what would fit in the publisher's timeline and budget. So the game released unfinished, broken and buggy. What has set it apart was the extremely detailed simulation, the game actually simulated the fluids in the car like coolant, fuel, etc. It had a damage model that beat everything that came before or after until BeamNG claimed that throne. It also had extensive car upgrade and tuning system. The game become a cult classic and still has a very active community with lots of mods available. Most of the games kinks and bugs were fixed in several patches and it even had a re-launch as Street Legal Racing Redline. The developers kept supporting the game long after the publisher bailed. But of course it never achieved mainstream success, and the developers gave up on trying to do complex games soon after. The company is still around but only makes mobile trash since 2009, the original devs on the ground left the company. Fun fact: One of the devs turned up in the credits of Driver San Francisco, last I saw.

    I've had countless hours of fun crashing and harassing traffic in the game, and trying to build the fastest cars.

    2.jpg
  3. Splinter Cell Double Agent This game was probably the most broken AAA game I had ever played, but it had some such unique mechanics and novel ideas that I enjoyed it despite of it being a buggy piece of trash. Since I wrote a full review on the game way back when I'll link that instead of going into more detail here: http://madblog.shacknet.us/splinter-cell-double-agent-2006/

    3.jpg
  4. The last game is Alpha Protocol: The greatest bad game ever made! This is another game I wrote a full review on so click for details:
    http://madblog.shacknet.us/alpha-protocol-2010/

    Alpha-Protocol-04-HD.png
 
M76 said:
There are lots of bad games out there that are simply terrible and not worth anyone's time.
But occasionally there are some that are objectively bad or even broken in some sense, but still enjoyable. Have you encountered any such game?

Here are a few examples that I've enjoyed:


  1. The oldest I can remember was Car & Driver all the way from 1992, which was a street racing game published by EA years before The Need For Speed, that was based on the exact same formula, it was just done with a different car magazine, Car & Driver obviously. (The first NFS was made in collaboration with Road & Track). I loved how the game menus were made like pages of a magazine, it gave a lot to immersion. But unfortunately the physics of the game was some of the wonkiest I've seen, it was utterly terrible. But in 1992 that didn't really matter, I've still spent a lot of time with this game.
    An interesting tidbit: This was the first game I played that supported SVGA resolutions.

    View attachment 446520
  2. The next one that stands out for me is another Racing game, one released 10 years later: Street Legal Racing. This game was meant to be great, but it was published by a budget publisher, and the developers bit off much more than they could chew.
    They wanted to make a game much more complex than what would fit in the publisher's timeline and budget. So the game released unfinished, broken and buggy. What has set it apart was the extremely detailed simulation, the game actually simulated the fluids in the car like coolant, fuel, etc. It had a damage model that beat everything that came before or after until BeamNG claimed that throne. It also had extensive car upgrade and tuning system. The game become a cult classic and still has a very active community with lots of mods available. Most of the games kinks and bugs were fixed in several patches and it even had a re-launch as Street Legal Racing Redline. The developers kept supporting the game long after the publisher bailed. But of course it never achieved mainstream success, and the developers gave up on trying to do complex games soon after. The company is still around but only makes mobile trash since 2009, the original devs on the ground left the company. Fun fact: One of the devs turned up in the credits of Driver San Francisco, last I saw.

    I've had countless hours of fun crashing and harassing traffic in the game, and trying to build the fastest cars.

    View attachment 446521
  3. Splinter Cell Double Agent This game was probably the most broken AAA game I had ever played, but it had some such unique mechanics and novel ideas that I enjoyed it despite of it being a buggy piece of trash. Since I wrote a full review on the game way back when I'll link that instead of going into more detail here: http://madblog.shacknet.us/splinter-cell-double-agent-2006/

    View attachment 446522
  4. The last game is Alpha Protocol: The greatest bad game ever made! This is another game I wrote a full review on so click for details:
    http://madblog.shacknet.us/alpha-protocol-2010/

    View attachment 446523
Click to expand...
To be fair to Car & Driver, nobody had really attempted to try and implement semi-realistic driving physics with the kinds of 3D driving games that were coming out at the time. I certainly had a lot of fun with it. Road & Track Presents The Need for Speed came out just 2 years after C&D did and set a new benchmark for driving games.

On the topic of terrible racing games, Street Racing Syndicate gets a vote from me. It was rather simplistic compared to the NFS Underground games, and I think that made it more fun. To me, the driving felt a lot better than the NFS:U games, too. Fun fact: the game was made by Eutechnyx, who held the NASCAR license for 5 years and put out 4 games with it. They brought NASCAR back to the PC with NASCAR: The Game 2013, which was actually pretty decent.
 
  • Like
Reactions: M76
like this
Turok: Evolution, considered to be the worst in the series but I enjoyed the game so much. It is one of my favorite games of all times.
 
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - Gameplay aside, it's not very well polished and the level design was a bunch of cheesy copy and paste BS to make them longer. However, I enjoyed the game immensely and maybe even more than the first one.
Tom Clany's Ghost Recon Breakpoint - I've liked this game since it was in the beta stages. Granted, I was never a fan of the looter shooter style BS they tried to cram into it and the game was less than polished from the start but there has always been something about the gameplay and many of its systems that made it more enjoyable to me than its predecessor. I still play this game today, and of course its in a far better state after this latest expansion. Unfortunately, the game's reputation is so tarnished that people don't often give it a fair shake despite the fact that its pretty amazing now.
Cyberpunk 2077 - This game was launched as a buggy and utterly unfinished mess. It lacks many of the features and systems one expects from modern open world games but at the same time, it has almost unparalleled visuals, an amazing atmosphere, world, and gameplay that are extremely enjoyable. The game is far better now than it was, but even some simple physics systems aren't complete yet. It still feels like a beta more than a year after release.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - The multiplayer was trash, but the single player experience was solid. I enjoyed the weapons, gameplay and even the story to an extent. The biggest narrative issue is that the game is too short and everyone dying at the end felt contrived and it tries to pull at your heart strings without earning it. That said, the game was a dismal failure because it tried to turn CoD into a science fiction shooter experience which isn't CoD's target audience. That being said, I enjoyed the single player experience in this game more than just about any of the other games since CoD4:MW.
Batman: Arkham Origins - Another underrated title. It was lambasted originally for having a lot of bugs and re-using Arkham City's assets. Still, it was one of the better games in the series narratively and I found it fun in spite of its issues. I dare even say its not the worst in the series either.

To be honest, my tastes are far from sophisticated. I tend to like a lot of the games most people seem to like with a few exceptions. (Fuck Counter-Strike, fuck PUBG, and fuck Fortnite.) However, there are rare occasions where games that get slammed pretty hard end up being titles I like enough to play a lot. I've got almost 900 hours in Ghost Recon Breakpoint and over 500 hours in Cyberpunk 2077 as examples of this.
 
I'd add Boiling Point to the list. Anyone remember that? A kind of janky Far Cry made on a lower budget.
 
For me - probably the first Witcher. Game's premise was so good, and the first three Acts (or Chapters, I can't remember) were great, but the game completely fell apart in the final two acts. That's one game I hope they revisit with a remake at some point.

And as a title that's universally terrible, but I enjoyed (mostly due to my young age) was Captain Comic for the NES. It was one of those unlicensed games with the blue cartridge, and I received the game as a gift (why or from who are lost to me now.)
 
Dan_D said:
I don't remember that one. I almost never play low budget or indy titles.
Click to expand...
In no way do I recommend it, ha. I mostly play indy titles these days bc IMO that's where the most creativity is found. Ubisoft and Ea appear to keep churning out the same old same old.
 
Gavian said:
Turok: Evolution, considered to be the worst in the series but I enjoyed the game so much. It is one of my favorite games of all times.
Click to expand...

What did you like about it and how were you even able to enjoy it? I got it on Xbox and it's the worst game I've ever bought.
The multiplayer was terrible compared to other games at the time, my friends and I played 4 player split screen for about a half hour before we were done. The campaign only had save points at the end of levels which were pretty long and a bit frustrating because you could run out of ammo so easily. And it had weird things where you couldn't keep weapons between levels or something. I ended up borrowing it to a friend and told him not to give it back. He tried really hard to play through the campaign but got frustrated AF and never beat it either.

It was so frustrating because the concept of the game was really cool it seemed like it would have been a good game if they just fixed a few things.
 
Dan_D said:
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II - Gameplay aside, it's not very well polished and the level design was a bunch of cheesy copy and paste BS to make them longer. However, I enjoyed the game immensely and maybe even more than the first one.
Tom Clany's Ghost Recon Breakpoint - I've liked this game since it was in the beta stages. Granted, I was never a fan of the looter shooter style BS they tried to cram into it and the game was less than polished from the start but there has always been something about the gameplay and many of its systems that made it more enjoyable to me than its predecessor. I still play this game today, and of course its in a far better state after this latest expansion. Unfortunately, the game's reputation is so tarnished that people don't often give it a fair shake despite the fact that its pretty amazing now.
Cyberpunk 2077 - This game was launched as a buggy and utterly unfinished mess. It lacks many of the features and systems one expects from modern open world games but at the same time, it has almost unparalleled visuals, an amazing atmosphere, world, and gameplay that are extremely enjoyable. The game is far better now than it was, but even some simple physics systems aren't complete yet. It still feels like a beta more than a year after release.
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare - The multiplayer was trash, but the single player experience was solid. I enjoyed the weapons, gameplay and even the story to an extent. The biggest narrative issue is that the game is too short and everyone dying at the end felt contrived and it tries to pull at your heart strings without earning it. That said, the game was a dismal failure because it tried to turn CoD into a science fiction shooter experience which isn't CoD's target audience. That being said, I enjoyed the single player experience in this game more than just about any of the other games since CoD4:MW.
Batman: Arkham Origins - Another underrated title. It was lambasted originally for having a lot of bugs and re-using Arkham City's assets. Still, it was one of the better games in the series narratively and I found it fun in spite of its issues. I dare even say its not the worst in the series either.

To be honest, my tastes are far from sophisticated. I tend to like a lot of the games most people seem to like with a few exceptions. (Fuck Counter-Strike, fuck PUBG, and fuck Fortnite.) However, there are rare occasions where games that get slammed pretty hard end up being titles I like enough to play a lot. I've got almost 900 hours in Ghost Recon Breakpoint and over 500 hours in Cyberpunk 2077 as examples of this.
Click to expand...
I think you are mixing in hated games instead of objectively terrible games that you liked. I don't think Breakpoint, CP2077, or Infinite Warfare can be considered bad games by any metric, they might be divisive or hated, but certainly not the level of terrible that was Force Unleashed II, that game scarred me for life, I couldn'T even enjoy the story, because the fucking game would show a blank screen instead of the cutscenes 9 out of 10 times.
 
M76 said:
I think you are mixing in hated games instead of objectively terrible games that you liked. I don't think Breakpoint, CP2077, or Infinite Warfare can be considered bad games by any metric, they might be divisive or hated, but certainly not the level of terrible that was Force Unleashed II, that game scarred me for life, I couldn'T even enjoy the story, because the fucking game would show a blank screen instead of the cutscenes 9 out of 10 times.
Click to expand...
By that standard, I think Star Wars: The Force Unleashed might be the only one that falls into that category then.
 
Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines is one of my favorite games but without one of the fan made patches it's buggy to the point that I would consider it broken and unplayable.

The original Mafia game was both great and awful at the same time. The best part was how well crafted some of the missions and areas were. The mixed is that it had a nice big open world environment and a lot of variety to the gameplay but most of the world was only skin deep and the clunky controls hampered gameplay at times(like driving) The clunky controls were the worst part but there were also some major balance issues and a few game breaking bugs iirc. (I plan to check out the remake at some point but sounds like a mixed bag as well.)

If we're including games based on sheer numbers of bugs regardless of whether they're gamebreaking or not then all of the open world Bethesda games should be mentioned with Morrowind taking the cake both in terms of greatness(IMO) and amount of bugs.

If the criteria is so "so bad it's good" like a cheesy B-grade horror flick then I think Flat Out Ultimate Carnage fits the bill. It's probably the most arcadey racing game I've played since the Win 9X era, it's a knockout style racing game but has horrible damage physics, and most of the graphics were extremely crude even for the time but they tried to make up for it with extra shiny cars; yet despite all of that it was incredibly fun to play and the graphics somehow worked for the game.
M76 said:
The last game is Alpha Protocol: The greatest bad game ever made!
Click to expand...
That's one of my all time favorite games and it has some issues but I'm not sure I would consider it bad. I think it still has a few annoying bugs along with a couple gamebreaking bugs but they're easily avoided and what it does well is good enough to overshadow any of that. I don't think there's another game out there that has done choices and consequences nearly as well.

I suppose there are some cheesy parts such as
the boss fight with the 80's loving Russian mob boss that basically gets super powers when he's coked up or the German dungeon porn vibe that Albatross and his goons give off
, not to mention the ability to snipe someone from 100 yards using a pistol while completely hidden behind cover. But the campiness is part of what gives the game character and the stealth gameplay is a lot of fun.
 
Deus Ex: Invisible War...I didn't find it to be terrible or the best but I enjoyed it much more than most
 
Lords of Magic (Special Edition) - I think this was actually my first PC game. It was incredibly buggy but I still spent many many hours trying out the various factions, classes, and scenarios. The SE release supposedly fixed most of the serious bugs but I distinctly remember random crashes and points where the game just stopped progressing turns.
1645507743696.png
1645507715908.png


Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines - played this on release before any fan-made/community patches and it was quite a bugfest. Still one of the best games I've ever played.

STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl - also played this on release (actually started with one of the many leaks prior to release). I spent a huge amount of time playing this game in it's hilariously buggy vanilla state.

Mafia III - I don't know what it is about this game, the setting and soundtrack just really "clicked" for me and sucked me in despite all the texture glitching, bugs, and repetitive gameplay.
 
Last edited:
Agreed on Double Agent; there was a good game with interesting ideas in there, but it was functionally (and sometimes literally) broken.

I'll throw a game I keep going back to every so often: Mask of Eternity.
 
Duke Nukem Forever

I pretended like it was a fan made game by a couple people in a few months and the 15 years of hype and development blunders didn't exist.

Playing with that mindset it felt like an average FPS. The single player campaign gameplay was OK, the multiplayer was fun for a bit even though it had major flaws, the humor was entertaining.
I played through the campaign and did a bit of multiplayer. I got about 13 hours of gameplay in before I got bored and that was worth it to me for whatever heavily discounted price I paid.

It was definitely a bad game compared to what it could have been. But it was hilarious seeing a reviewer claim it was a bad game because of the offensive humor and misogyny. That was some classic "game journalism".
 
sharknice said:
Duke Nukem Forever

I pretended like it was a fan made game by a couple people in a few months and the 15 years of hype and development blunders didn't exist.

Playing with that mindset it felt like an average FPS. The single player campaign gameplay was OK, the multiplayer was fun for a bit even though it had major flaws, the humor was entertaining.
I played through the campaign and did a bit of multiplayer. I got about 13 hours of gameplay in before I got bored and that was worth it to me for whatever heavily discounted price I paid.

It was definitely a bad game compared to what it could have been. But it was hilarious seeing a reviewer claim it was a bad game because of the offensive humor and misogyny. That was some classic "game journalism".
Click to expand...
Part of the problem with Duke Nukem Forever is that it's design was almost a decade out of date. It was kind of like playing a retro shooter almost. It's humor honestly got me through it even though its far more juvenile than I remembered Duke Nukem 3D being.
 
Dan_D said:
Part of the problem with Duke Nukem Forever is that it's design was almost a decade out of date. It was kind of like playing a retro shooter almost. It's humor honestly got me through it even though its far more juvenile than I remembered Duke Nukem 3D being.
Click to expand...
DNF was pretty poor honestly. Having recently replayed Duke3d and the expansions I can say it's still a fun game and the humor/quips are nothing special. Bulletstorm certainly had way more juvenile dialogue than duke3d.

Also I enjoyed Alpha Protocol and agree that DX2 was terrible compared to the original. Was just a console port mess when it came out.
 
Furious_Styles said:
DNF was pretty poor honestly. Having recently replayed Duke3d and the expansions I can say it's still a fun game and the humor/quips are nothing special. Bulletstorm certainly had way more juvenile dialogue than duke3d.

Also I enjoyed Alpha Protocol and agree that DX2 was terrible compared to the original. Was just a console port mess when it came out.
Click to expand...

Duke Nukem 3D came out in 1996 on ms-dos. You were lucky it had any voice lines at all. Bulletstorm came out the same year as DNF. I enjoyed Bulletstorms humor, but I would definitely rank DNF as more juvenile. Do you remember "capture the babe"? Bulletstorm didn't go that far.
 
Midtown Madness.. back in the lan gaming days. First time driving around in open world against and with others. (before og Halo) Not sure why that game wasn't more popular but guess "not being able to play multiplayer unless on lan or through MS and constant disconnects" prob was an issue. It took a lot of effort to play (esp with carrying CRT's to lans) but worth it when it worked and a bunch of friends to play cops and robbers. It would have been horribly boring single player or against the pc.
 
sharknice said:
Duke Nukem 3D came out in 1996 on ms-dos. You were lucky it had any voice lines at all. Bulletstorm came out the same year as DNF. I enjoyed Bulletstorms humor, but I would definitely rank DNF as more juvenile. Do you remember "capture the babe"? Bulletstorm didn't go that far.
Click to expand...
I compared it to duke3d not DNF. I can't even remember much about DNF tbh, it was such a forgettable game and it's sad that's what they released after many years of development.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top