Europa Universalis: Rome has a really cool mechanic that causes troops to become loyal to a general, and that support causing the general’s loyalty to drop until he rebels. Too bad about the rest of the game, though (including the soundtrack, Battle of Zama is one of my favorite from Mr. Waldetoft).
I guess I wasn’t clear enough. I meant games that weren’t really well received, or that were received in very mixed fashion. Or games that were outright subjectively bad or broken.
I just had another idea… Heavy Gear. The first one. It had the most fantastic hit sound when you managed to nail someone’s armor with a projectile. This sort of… plink plink plink that to this day still stays with me. Also it was one of the first games to try and do some kind of persistent multiplayer as part of an action game. But OH GOD the cutscenes.
Nailed it. I think some of the early arcade games (Robotron, Asteroids, that sort of thing) are also pretty flawless, though their scope is quite limited.
International Karate
The music was the best part of IK? You, sir, are dead to me.
Nailed it.
I find the music in most Tetris games to suck pretty harshly.
Sure, and I think that’s key. You’ll see little disagreement on Tetris and Portal, as suggested above, mainly because they limited their scope and focused on doing just a few things extremely well. It’s like a two minute punk song, leaves you wanting more.
I’ve never been able to care for a ragged band of mercenaries like I did when playing Jagged Alliance 2. I’m having a hard time coming up with flaws with the game, though.
Red Faction. The “GeoMod” realtime terrain deformation engine was pretty cool. Unfortunatley, in absolutely every other regard it was an uninspired, barely-competent Half-Life ripoff.
“Follow me! I’m with the Red Fac-AGGHGHH!!”
Again, I am not deliberately trying to be argumentative…But Morrowind received an 89 according to Metacritic. So it was not poorly received, not received in a very mixed fashion…
TimeShift may be a rather generic shooter, and the plot, level design and setting leave much to be desired. But the time controls and the ways you could kill guys was just excellent.
That doesn’t seem fair to apply to Morrowind then, which as a PC game got an 89% overall ranking at gamerankings. Assassin’s Creed PC, by comparison, got 79.9% at gamerankings.
I also thought Morrowind was awesome and played the shit out of it, but I can see Charles’ point. He means what games did you personally hate almost entirely except for one aspect, and what was that aspect.
Obviously terms like “flawed” or “bad” are subjective to some degree and if we try to deal in absolutes this thread will be useless.
I’m probably going to hell for posting this, but Postal 2. Graphics suck, game sucks, quests suck… But goddamnit, peeing on Gary Coleman and lighting him on fire just never gets old for me. That, and dropping a big ol’ stinky rotting cow head in a room full of people and laughing as they all wretch and throw up on each other.
Bad game, excellent gross sandboxing.
Best example on this thread so far.
Hah we were just talking about this. Legendary does nothing well.
Other examples:
- area-specific damage in Soldiers of Fortune;
- Max Payne’s bullet time, back when that was a novel feature;
- Arcanum’s incredibly diverse character creation/development options;
- Black & White’s creature training was fun for a bit;
- Red Faction for being the first shooter with destructible walls/environments
- Tachyon for Bruce Campbell.
That’s the best BobJustBob imitation I’ve ever seen!
Trying to think if I’ve mentioned Assassin’s Creed in this thread. Seems like a no!
My argument against Morrowind is this: Oblivion: Game of the Year, or Disappointment of the Year? - Games - Quarter To Three Forums
Plus this is a horribly subjective thread to begin with. I apologize that you have a problem with me not liking Morrowind.
I really enjoyed combat in Full Spectrum Warrior. That seems to be the only thing it did (since the levels were mostly bland, there wasn’t much story to speak of and the graphics were pretty standard) and I thought it did well.
I agree with Charles, I hated Morrowind and Oblivion. Hated them HARD.
Flying eyeball stab will never get old.
Bet on Soldier comes to my mind, though I only played the demo. By all rights a bad FPS with lousy code and a laundry list of aesthetical and technical problems. Yet, it had a mechanic in MP that let you challenge another player to a 1 on 1 duel. Great concept and fun to do.