Games you Love Despite Objectively horrible gameplay?

[scorptatious]

The first two Fallout games.

I wouldn't say the gameplay is horrible. In fact I do like most aspects of it, but it's far from perfect.

A lot of the skills seem useless. Medicine and Doctor are kind of redundant when you can just travel across the world map and regain your health that way. And how many instances can you actually use Traps or Gambling anyway?

2 also had probably one of the worst tutorial levels in any game I've played. What's that? You want to play as someone who's good at speech and can handle small guns? Here's a spear, go fight some ants with it's shitty RNG, and beat this guy up in a fist fight. At least 1 had the decency of giving you a gun and only having to deal with easily avoidable rats if you just want to get to the main game.

Also, the bottom of the tanker. FUCK. THAT. PLACE. Seriously. Friggen aliens and mutants everywhere and they all bum rush you as soon as you step foot in there. Doesn't help that most of them are bullet sponges as well.

So yeah... kinda prefer how they handled the gameplay in New Vegas honestly. COME AT ME FALLOUT PURISTS!

 

[Mister K]

Brutal Legend has one of the most unique atmospheres in gaming, it has great units, hell, it has great story and characters. Plus riding your car feels simply wonderful. But it has a really bad mixture of generic hack'n'slash with really bad strategy elements.

If it wasn't for the atmosphere, etc., this game would have been a disaster.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

Kingdom Hearts.

I love the first game to death, but every time I play it the camera and jump controls, combined with some occasional awful level design make me completely understand why some people can't stand it.

 

[Nomadiac]

Mass Effect 1. Possibly the worst shooter I've ever played, but it's one of the best RPGs I've ever played too. The cover system is teeth-grindingly bad and the shooting mechanics nonsensical, but the setting is just so compelling that I couldn't help being drawn in, and the story is suitably epic (regular saving the world from an all-powerful enemy, but well-executed.) The characters don't really get interesting until ME2, however.

And I forgot to mention the Mako.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bqBnYBmcPaE

 

[Darquenaut]

Deadly Premonition has already been mentioned, so I'll let that lie.

Instead, I guess I'll add Earth Defense Force 2017. This game is out and out stupid, but in its own blissful way amazingly fun. The world is being overrun by giant bugs, UFOs and robots that look like they fell out of a Gumby cartoon. Instead of any quantifiable strategy to the game, it's essentially run in in your super fantastic crash helmet and red and white jumpsuit and kill anything that moves.

I'll let Rage Quit explain/show it better than I can (warning to those of you who are sensitive to those who don't use indoor voices)

 

[Jeyal]

Suikoden I or II. Or III. Or IV.

 

[snappydog]

Kingdom Hearts.

I love the first game to death, but every time I play it the camera and jump controls, combined with some occasional awful level design make me completely understand why some people can't stand it.

Going back and playing the original after having spent some time with later games in the series reaaaaally made it seem aged. I mean, I loved it at the time, but it's only once you've played the others that you realise how rubbish the combat actually was, with the standard hitting combo being all you could ever really have and no abilities that changed the animation or anything... Blimey, hitting stuff to death was boring in that game, but I still love it.

I also love Shadow of Memories (Shadow of Destiny if you're from the US, I believe) despite having truly appalling gameplay. The best way I can describe it is a brilliantly plotted game that unfortunately tries to be a point-and-click adventure in 3D, which doesn't really work as well.

 

[ATRAYA]

Wow, a lot of people REALLY didn't like the gameplay in the KotOR games... I loved that gameplay.

OT: While I'm one of the few people that enjoyed the combat elements in the original Mass Effect (sniper class with an upgraded rifle was insanely fun), the Mako was... just... yeah. It was pretty unbearable a lot of the time. And yet... I had to keep landing on planets because loot/lore!

Skyrim as well, I suppose. The gameplay is not that great, let's face it, but you just get lost in the world so much, it doesn't even matter.

 

[Comocat]

Dead Island. I love the concept of a zombie RPG but with scaling zombie levels, item decay, and well my list goes on for awhile it really becomes a fairly terrible game. It's a game really want to love but can only spend a few minutes playing it every now and then.

 

[ASan83]

alpha protocol for me. you would get stuck on corners, the game was poorly optomised, and pistols were extremely overpowered to say the least but most of all the hacking minigame was next to impossible, im glad you can avoid it with an emp grenade

despite all the bugs, issues and problems with the game its still one of my favourite RPGs ever

This. Despite its myriad of flaws, one of my favorite games this gen, and proof that sometimes story alone can carry a game.

 

[Drops a Sweet Katana]

I'll second the combat of Morrowind and Mass Effect. Both games have clunky combat to say the least, but the worlds they create are just so compelling you just can't help but being sucked in.

 

[Blunderboy]

As far as I'm concerned there is only one correct answer.

Vampire The masquerade - Bloodlines.

Everything about this game is amazing. The world building, the atmosphere, the level design and the quests. At least until about 3/4 of the way into the game. Though to be fair, the World of Darkness (which the game is based on) does have amazing atmosphere anyway, but it was good to see it translated fairly well.
But the game play itself is bloody atrocious.

 

[BrotherRool]

Planescape Torment and Alpha Protcol, two of my all time favourite games but there's a lot of non-good about them (although Alpha Protocol is mainly just not exceptional, rather than bad)

EDIT: Oh and the sidequests of ME1. I can't remember when I last saw AI that bad leading to gameplay so unfun. As soon as you step into the room all 30 enemies would zerg you. The only way I got past some of the sidequest was standing outside the tunnel and using the buggy Ai to slowly pick them off one by one.

(And I say 'the room' and 'the tunnel' because there was basically only one base layout for sidequests which they reused again and again)

 

[OldKingClancy]

The Uncharted trilogy.

(Ducks)

Hear me out, I love the games, they are gorgeous to look at, exciting as all hell, the characters are well-voiced and well-characterised and I cold jump around the environments for hours.

That being said the gun combat is some of the absolute worst I've ever played, frustratingly difficult to the point of fiery hatred. It gets so bad that I actually have to think if I want to play the game again.

 

[afroebob]

Gonna have to be one of the people who go with Mass Effect here. I'm replaying the entire series and its actually painful through parts of the first game due to its terribad combat.

 

[Techno Squidgy]

Brutal Legend has one of the most unique atmospheres in gaming, it has great units, hell, it has great story and characters. Plus riding your car feels simply wonderful. But it has a really bad mixture of generic hack'n'slash with really bad strategy elements.

If it wasn't for the atmosphere, etc., this game would have been a disaster.

The Brutal Legend universe is fucking fantastic. But yes, the gameplay, while serviceable, does not do it justice. Bring on Brutal Legend 2 or hell, even just something in the same universe, I don't need a direct sequel. Not sure I even want a direct sequel, everything was pretty wrapped up.

 

[Dosbilliam]

The thought of making KOTOR play like Amalur, or Dragon's Dogma is an amazing thought.

WANT.

Mass Effect 1. Possibly the worst shooter I've ever played, but it's one of the best RPGs I've ever played too. The cover system is teeth-grindingly bad and the shooting mechanics nonsensical, but the setting is just so compelling that I couldn't help being drawn in, and the story is suitably epic (regular saving the world from an all-powerful enemy, but well-executed.) The characters don't really get interesting until ME2, however.

I actually liked the Mako probably more than I should have, but glad to see I'm not the only one who HATED those cover mechanics.

alpha protocol for me. you would get stuck on corners, the game was poorly optomised, and pistols were extremely overpowered to say the least but most of all the hacking minigame was next to impossible, im glad you can avoid it with an emp grenade

despite all the bugs, issues and problems with the game its still one of my favourite RPGs ever

This. Despite its myriad of flaws, one of my favorite games this gen, and proof that sometimes story alone can carry a game.

That's why my own game design uses a heavily-improved version of the gameplay as a base for my own story.

 

[Rickolas Walrus]

GT Final Bout for the PSX. Horrendous controls, crappy graphics...but I loved that game to bits. Also, I was 13.

To quote what someone once said to me on this site, right in the nostalgia. Completely agree too

I'd like to add that Godzilla game for GameCube, not sure what it was called though. The monsters were slow and it felt like they took a 2D fighter but then decided at the last minute to let you move around more and the controls were complete crap, but being a Godzilla fan since I was like 5 I played that game just to see who would win between my dream match ups

 

[The Wonder of the net]

Aliens colonial marines. I love how broken it is. Being able to push allies one minute then as you try to kill a ally by pushing him off a cliff and going right through them.

 

[Thebazilly]

As far as I'm concerned there is only one correct answer.

Vampire The masquerade - Bloodlines.

Everything about this game is amazing. The world building, the atmosphere, the level design and the quests. At least until about 3/4 of the way into the game. Though to be fair, the World of Darkness (which the game is based on) does have amazing atmosphere anyway, but it was good to see it translated fairly well.
But the game play itself is bloody atrocious.

Excellent game overall.

But those sewers. And that werewolf. And all the ending sequences.

The first time I played, I made a social character, since you could talk your way out of a lot of stuff in the beginning. I quickly traded in for an idiot Brujah with a big axe.