Yeah, their stealth mechanics and actual gameplay was nowhere near as good as other games in the genre near that time (Thief and Thief 2 before, and Splinter Cell games after). The only brilliant part about the gameplay was when they varied up the gameplay, like in the above mentioned fight against the rollerblading fat man.
A lot of people still play Stellaris.
I’ll see myself out.
Yes, that’s a good point. If you’re just messing around, Goat Simulator is kind of hilarious. If you’ve ever actually tried to do something specific like recreate a particular achievement, it can be teeth-gritting bad.
Deadly Premonition really feels like The Room to me. There are a lot of parts of the game that feel unpolished or unfinished in a way that make it strangely evocative. I think by most conventional critical metrics it is a “bad” game. It’s poorly explained, the controls aren’t great, it’s easy to get lost or stuck because sometimes the signposting is awful, there’s nothing particularly exciting about the graphics… But it does have this strange lingering feeling of being bad in these ways on purpose which I think The Room does as well. (Even if, perhaps, that isn’t the case for them.)
I don’t think I follow film enough to say for sure, but I don’t feel like movies that are bad but strangely evocative like The Room are very common. So the fact that they’re so rare in video games doesn’t seem crazy to me. The other game that comes to mind that’s sort of like this is No More Heroes. It’s open world sections were remarkably poorly made. And the game’s ending hits like its budget has run out hard. Both of those things feel strangely appropriate to the experience of NMH. They may have been intentional. But I think moments like the lawn-mowing mini-game definitely evoke that “so bad it’s strangely evocative” feeling.
That makes sense. I am someone who really appreciates what some might call “bad” movies, and I’m trying to figure out why, or at least explain it. I’ve certainly sat through movies that pissed me off with how bad they were, and I think that’s really all down to expectations. If I go into a movie expecting one thing, and get something different, I’m likely to be disappointed. If I go into a movie knowing it may not be well written or acted but may still be amusing, I’ll adjust my expectations, I’ll be looking for other qualities.
But that’s hard to find an analog in games. I’m trying to think of a game that I went in knowing it wasn’t well made in some regard, so I lowered my expectations and powered through and really enjoyed it. That’s not to say I don’t forgive some flaws of the other things a game brings to the table are satisfying - I’m a strong advocate for Mass Effect Andromeda, which I can’t deny is flawed, but I would never call it a “bad game.” It gets a lot of things right that really worked for me. Not sure if that qualifies.
I’ve enjoyed quite a few games that fit that description. Dragon Age: Origins is one. I hate real-time with Pause battle systems, I don’t really like Fantasy games as much as science fiction, so I went in with appropriately low expectations. And sure enough, I didn’t like the setting, and I didn’t like the combat system, especially since they got rid of the ability to queue up orders like you could in NWN2, KOTOR, etc. But I still got the enjoyable Bioware dialog and characters, so I enjoyed it overall, despite not liking the gameplay and setting.
Yeah imho there’s an element of schadenfreud here. I’ve enjoyed watching bad movies because they can be hilarious…the best are the ones trying to be serious and failing.
The Scream series spring to mind.
I don’t think that counts, because it was well made. The real time battle system with pause is the only way to play RPGs, since any other way is just too slow.
Dragon Age is a funny series for me, in that it maybe could be an example of this. But honestly, it’s probably more accurate to say they’re an example of games I don’t really enjoy but played anyway - I don’t really think they’re bad or poorly made.
So why did I play them (the first two anyway - I own but haven’t played Inquisition)? Peer pressure, I guess. I’m not really a fantasy guy, but I do like BioWare and everyone said Origins was awesome, so I played it. And it was … ok I guess. Not really my cup of tea. But not a bad or poorly made game, not at all. So, I guess I’m no closer to any kind of methodology here.
Well, just like with movies, I think “it was well made” is subjective. I didn’t think it was well made. I thought the art direction was pretty terrible. I thought the background setting and flavor text was pretty poor. Real time with pause was done much better in KOTOR and NWN2 because of being able to queue commands.
I can’t imagine any list that would actually rank the DA games as equivalents to B-Movies. When was the last time some of you saw a B Movie? I mean, you know, the one where some sort of undead mammoth is running around and it looks like they slapped a sticker on the screen and just sort of shoved it around as part of their CGI budget?
There are games which are cult classics because of how terrible they are, things like Desert Bus and Big Rigs (the Awful Games block during AGDQ is full of these.) I think they’re enjoyed in a similar way to something like The Room.
Bennett Foddy was mentioned earlier, and his games (esp. Getting Over It and QWOP) defy conventions in ways that make them terrible at being video games. But this is highly deliberate: a great deal of care and craftsmanship goes into making them just so, and they are something genuinely special on their own terms. They’re less analogous to movies that are so-bad-it’s-good and more like some kind of experimental art film which is deliberately awful to watch.
That’s exactly so. Getting Over It and QWOP are made the way they are very deliberately, and intentionally set out to frustrate you. Getting Over It has a commentary mode with the creator saying that you must have a bit of a masochistic streak to complete the game, let alone enjoy it.
Edit: regarding your remark about games like Big Rigs being cult classics: I’m going to need to see some kind of proof before I believe that. I’ve never seen anything on the internet to indicate the game has a fan base. However, I will refer to my own creation Pogue’s Law: there is no thing, in this case a game, that is so awful that someone doesn’t love it.
I have never played, but I hear good things from the reviews on Amazon.
Certainly, they are ‘bad’ in the sense the controls are difficult and the game is frustrating. But they are exactly what they intend to be.
It has better than fans, it has religious adherents:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120723055217/http://yourewinner.com/wiki/index.php5?title=Book_of_Rigism
https://web.archive.org/web/20120723054625/http://yourewinner.com/wiki/index.php5?title=Rigism
There’s a Thrones of Britannia auto-play ad on RPS right now. Hideous.
That is awesome.
Take me with you.
-Tom