NOT well-recieved games that you like and won't stop defending.

[sXeth]

Final Fantasy 8. The story was garbage, but the mechanics were probably my favorite of the 3d Final Fantasies. Admittedly, it was a bit obtuse to figure out the non-grindy way to get magic, but most FFs have had their obtuse moments. I never got why there was so much flak to it when it was almost a return to the series more complex mechanics that had been largely dropped over 6/7.

Destiny. A very flawed presentation in its launch form for the story, but it seemed to get a lot of extra expectations put on it over any other AAA shooter. It had solid gameplay behind it, and the story wasn't that hard to sequence together yourself if you wanted too. The universe lore being buried in lorebooks (admittedly, that should've been ingame) and item descriptions was odd, but a technique thats also been used in fairly acclaimed games too.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Loved the FFXIII games, mainly for the story. I imported them to play them in Japanese and still maintain that the bad dub made them less liked in English because they focus on the story so much that if someone somehow doesn't like it, they won't enjoy the game. Thankfully the learned to add dual audio by the end but by then people were already jaded.

 

[Mister K]

Whatever, my friend's dog probably loved me more than him after a point.

Whatever indeed. Most of the time, the value of childhood/school friendship is overestimated in the long run.

Loved the FFXIII games, mainly for the story. I imported them to play them in Japanese and still maintain that the bad dub made them less liked in English because they focus on the story so much that if someone somehow doesn't like it, they won't enjoy the game. Thankfully the learned to add dual audio by the end but by then people were already jaded.

I am one of those people that didn't like XIII. At first I thought that it was just a bad game. Later, after letting time pass, I started thinking that it was simply the case of a wasted potential, because there clearly was something there that is attractive (I can't quite put my finger on it), but the execution was kind of lacking.

And now you write that dubbing of this game sucked. Maybe this is the reason indeed. I mean, I still wouldn't have liked the game too much because of oversimplified "leveling" system, lack of interesting side stories/quests, "Heroes don't need plans", Hope and Vanille being two awful tropes (i.e. angsty crybaby boy and bubbly airhead girl) and many other smaller things. However, if what you say is true and translation would have been actually good, maybe I wouldn't have disliked it THAT much.

Though I doubt that better translation would've changed the fact that Sazh is the best party member.

 

[FalloutJack]

I actually liked Sonic Adventure games, myself. I don't consider them bad at all. Not exactly something I incessantly defend, but I did enjoy myself.

*Notices three people here defending FF8*

Good god! It's a working analogy of The Eternal Struggle!

 

[Shoggoth2588]

ZombiU. It's a zombie survival horror. In a time where zombies in games weren't much of a threat, zombies in ZombiU killed with one bite. The ambiance was creepy, looking at your inventory or interacting with objects didn't pause the game, the death mechanic reminiscent to Dark Souls (all your stuff is left where you died, and you may try to recover it), and the local multiplayer pretty fun (one player fights zombies in an arena, and the other spawns the with the touchpad). Even with its problems, I liked it a lot.

This was one of my favorite Wii U games back during the first of many U droughts. I've never been able to beat the game but I also enjoyed playing around in it.

---

I genuinely had more fun with Sonic 06 than any of the Sega Sonic titles (including CD). I've never played through those classic games to their ending but Sonic 06 is one of the very few Sonic games I did beat completely (the other being Sonic Adventure). I didn't have as much fun with Adventure so I'll stick to Sonic 06.

I liked Resident Evil 5 and Final Fantasy VIII for essentially the same reason: You can grind in early areas to an insane degree for a long time and essentially power yourself up to a ludicrous degree. In Resi 5 I replayed the first mission or three until I had enough money to buy some really good weapons and a ton of ammo. In FF8 I would grind-Draw before the Fire Cavern until I was able to junction Ara-spells to my stats, thus boosting me to...well, a ludicrous degree. That's my kind of fun!

Back in the N64/PSX days, people wouldn't shut up about how awesome Grand Turismo was...I didn't like the demo but I absolutely loved my N64 arcade racers like the Rush series, the Crusin' series and the Thunder series...well, Hydro Thunder (Arctic Thunder wouldn't launch on consoles until the PS2 but that was a wild improvement on Hydro). I miss arcade racers and it's kinda lame that they seem to exclusively live on mobile now.

I really liked both Marvel Ultimate Alliance titles too. I tried playing X-Men Legends but I just couldn't get into it as much as the two MUAs.

Other than the 2D Castlevania games that we can mostly agree are good, I really only like one 3D Castlevania and it's Curse of Darkness. It's not broken and hilarious like the two Nintendo 64 ones and it's...well, it's a Castlevania unlike the 2 or 3 from last gen (Mirror of Fate almost felt like a Castlevania I guess). I haven't played Lament of Innocence yet so maybe that one is also good but I loved how Curse of Darkness felt like a 3D version of the GBA/DS games.

People love to talk up Mega Man X but out of that series my favorite is X3.

 

[Silvanus]

Dead Space 3 is one example. It's weaker than the first two, but not by that much. I disliked the implementation of microtransactions, but could ignore it without too much hassle, and was still able to build myself some great bespoke weaponry without resorting to it. Still relatively solid.

Final Fantasy VIII is a fantastic game. The junctioning system is far from accessible, but allows for a lot of versatility once you've got the hang of it. It was a perfectly good story, fuck the haters.

Batman: Arkham Origins. Was not nearly as innovative as the other entries in the series, and it's definitely the weakest. Still, its boss fights were perfectly serviceable (more than those in Asylum, honestly). Plays like more of City, and though that's not something to be praised for originality, it's something I was happy to play.

 

[shrekfan246]

Batman: Arkham Origins. Was not nearly as innovative as the other entries in the series, and it's definitely the weakest. Still, its boss fights were perfectly serviceable (more than those in Asylum, honestly). Plays like more of City, and though that's not something to be praised for originality, it's something I was happy to play.

Origins had the best boss fights of the entire franchise, to be perfectly honest. City was a lot better than Asylum in that regard, but it still hadn't quite found its feet with regards to how boss fights should play out. I like Origins too, but the one thing it got right and actually improved upon was the bosses. I haven't really seen any in Knight yet, but given what I have seen, I'm willing to wager that it won't eclipse Origins' bosses either (though I find the game itself a lot more fun in general).

OT: I take it we're not going with critically poorly received games. Since most of my normal ones have been taken (Dragon Age II, Mass Effect 3, Diablo III, most Sonic games), I'm gonna go with... Crysis 2 and 3.

Crysis and Warhead always infuriate me. The nanosuit doesn't feel like a piece of high-tech power armor, enemies are psychic, and the large maps combined with the previous two points felt like the game was actively discouraging its own openness. I'm not the greatest player of FPS' anyway, but the way that enemies would just spawn in and always know where to find you made stealth a chore and the fact that armor mode was essentially useless for actually standing out in the open meant stealth was the only truly viable gameplay option in the first place.

2 and 3 powered up the armor mode and reduced the power drain on stealth mode, which made both of them far more usable in actual gameplay. They were far smaller games, but the maps were still designed to allow the player to travel around through more than just one path, and in many cases you could even just straight up avoid enemies. It was a bit disappointing that the Ceph became just another type of humanoid enemy rather than them actually fixing how annoying they were to fight before, but oh well. Oh, and ammo was actually available, so you could use weapons that you wanted to rather than needing to scavenge off of the enemies you killed because you never got any SCAR ammo ever.

 

[Silvanus]

Origins had the best boss fights of the entire franchise, to be perfectly honest. City was a lot better than Asylum in that regard, but it still hadn't quite found its feet with regards to how boss fights should play out. I like Origins too, but the one thing it got right and actually improved upon was the bosses. I haven't really seen any in Knight yet, but given what I have seen, I'm willing to wager that it won't eclipse Origins' bosses either (though I find the game itself a lot more fun in general).

I did consider placing Origins' boss fights above those in City, but I'm really not sure. Mr. Freeze in City is better than anything in Origins, for my money (including the final boss, who I won't ruin, just in case).

 

[shrekfan246]

Origins had the best boss fights of the entire franchise, to be perfectly honest. City was a lot better than Asylum in that regard, but it still hadn't quite found its feet with regards to how boss fights should play out. I like Origins too, but the one thing it got right and actually improved upon was the bosses. I haven't really seen any in Knight yet, but given what I have seen, I'm willing to wager that it won't eclipse Origins' bosses either (though I find the game itself a lot more fun in general).

I did consider placing Origins' boss fights above those in City, but I'm really not sure. Mr. Freeze in City is better than anything in Origins, for my money (including the final boss, who I won't ruin, just in case).

Okay, Origins' proper stealth boss wasn't as good, you're right, but the encounters with Killer Croc, Deathstroke, Bane, Copperhead, Firefly, and even Deadshot were a lot better than Grundy, Clayface, Ra's al Ghul, or City's version of Deadshot.

It's not even that they were significantly different, they just did more interesting things with them than City did (I guess depending; the way you defeat Clayface is thematically very awesome and the fight against Ra's is visually incredible, they're just not quite as cool during the actual gameplay, which I think is something Origins handled a bit better).

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Whatever, my friend's dog probably loved me more than him after a point.

Whatever indeed. Most of the time, the value of childhood/school friendship is overestimated in the long run.

Loved the FFXIII games, mainly for the story. I imported them to play them in Japanese and still maintain that the bad dub made them less liked in English because they focus on the story so much that if someone somehow doesn't like it, they won't enjoy the game. Thankfully the learned to add dual audio by the end but by then people were already jaded.

I am one of those people that didn't like XIII. At first I thought that it was just a bad game. Later, after letting time pass, I started thinking that it was simply the case of a wasted potential, because there clearly was something there that is attractive (I can't quite put my finger on it), but the execution was kind of lacking.

And now you write that dubbing of this game sucked. Maybe this is the reason indeed. I mean, I still wouldn't have liked the game too much because of oversimplified "leveling" system, lack of interesting side stories/quests, "Heroes don't need plans", Hope and Vanille being two awful tropes (i.e. angsty crybaby boy and bubbly airhead girl) and many other smaller things. However, if what you say is true and translation would have been actually good, maybe I wouldn't have disliked it THAT much.

Though I doubt that better translation would've changed the fact that Sazh is the best party member.

Sazh in Jp was voiced by Shigeru Chiba, legendary anime va veteran, usually does bad guys like Pilaf from Dragonball or Buggy from one piece, he actually did a lot of great ad libs, so while he wasn't bad in the dub (cause of just being a good char overall) he was just so much better. Although he too got overshadowed cause of the baby chocoboin his hair, half the people not givin him a chance.

Vanille and Fang were the prime casualties of the dub, with the former especially being butchered, while in Japanee she was done by the VA of Nia from Gurren Lagann. Ultimately though, Serah was the char that people didn't like nerly as much as I expected them to. She was my fav char and from readin the prequel novels where she, not Lightning, is the protag, I was just elated she got her main game while the popular opinion was one of complete disregard for her in the west. When there's such disparity between east and west a lot of stuff will get lost, sadly.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

-Sonic Adventure 1/2 & Heroes (I'm sorry, but I've never got behind the idea that 3D Sonic games are inherently bad - I certainly liked these games more than Shadow, '06, and Unleashed for instance)

I loved the Sonic Adventure games. Although watching a YouTube video on SA1 a couple of months ago made me realize that I'd forgotten how terrible the voice acting was in SA1. Sonic Heroes had good gameplay, but the story and dialogue were nauseating.

 

[Amigastar]

Rise of The Triad 2013

Love this game although it has something like a Score of 68 and is not very popular, but whateva.

 

[Silvanus]

Okay, Origins' proper stealth boss wasn't as good, you're right, but the encounters with Killer Croc, Deathstroke, Bane, Copperhead, Firefly, and even Deadshot were a lot better than Grundy, Clayface, Ra's al Ghul, or City's version of Deadshot.

It's not even that they were significantly different, they just did more interesting things with them than City did (I guess depending; the way you defeat Clayface is thematically very awesome and the fight against Ra's is visually incredible, they're just not quite as cool during the actual gameplay, which I think is something Origins handled a bit better).

I can't really argue with this. And, either way, City feels far more original and atmospheric, both, than does Origins.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I came t defend DA2, but you already did. However I disagree about Origins, which is one of the best games Bioware ever made; DA has been on a downhill trajectory since then. DA2 is a great concept that diverges from the standard Bioware plot in structure, but the final result is badly compromised by the ludicrous development cycle they were forced to meet, meaning that game that had the potential to be better than Origins ends up being bland looking and painfully repetitive. To me DA2 is a case study in unrealised potential and management greed/interference hobbling a potential classic. Don't even get me started on all the things wrong with Inquisition...

 

[shrekfan246]

Okay, Origins' proper stealth boss wasn't as good, you're right, but the encounters with Killer Croc, Deathstroke, Bane, Copperhead, Firefly, and even Deadshot were a lot better than Grundy, Clayface, Ra's al Ghul, or City's version of Deadshot.

It's not even that they were significantly different, they just did more interesting things with them than City did (I guess depending; the way you defeat Clayface is thematically very awesome and the fight against Ra's is visually incredible, they're just not quite as cool during the actual gameplay, which I think is something Origins handled a bit better).

I can't really argue with this. And, either way, City feels far more original and atmospheric, both, than does Origins.

Truth. And I'm certainly not saying the bosses in City are bad, I rather enjoy them too especially in comparison to the hilarity that makes up the bosses in Asylum. Just, for all the floundering in City it did, Origins at least managed to grapnel launch off of one aspect. Also, for as buggy as it apparently was on release, I had far less glitches when I played through it in comparison to when I recorded Arkham City for an LP (which was actually kind of hilarious, because every other time I'd played City it had been relatively bug-free).

 

[Silvanus]

Truth. And I'm certainly not saying the bosses in City are bad, I rather enjoy them too especially in comparison to the hilarity that makes up the bosses in Asylum. Just, for all the floundering in City it did, Origins at least managed to grapnel launch off of one aspect. Also, for as buggy as it apparently was on release, I had far less glitches when I played through it in comparison to when I recorded Arkham City for an LP (which was actually kind of hilarious, because every other time I'd played City it had been relatively bug-free).

City played mostly fine for me, and still sits in my top ten games of all time. It deserves the spot, for my money, despite several explicable faults.

Out of interest, are your LPs easily accessible?

 

[Misterian]

Batman: Arkham Origins (I honestly don't know why people look down on that game)

In addition to what you've already been told, the developers flat out said they were too busy working on DLC to work on the bugs.

Well, I must have been very lucky in my playthroughs 'cause I rarely stumbled into any bugs.

Batman: Arkham Origins (I honestly don't know why people look down on that game)

For missing out on doing anything new or interesting, gameplay-wise, with "early day" Batman. Game plays like Arkham City 2.

So? I personally never found a video game sequel (or prequel in Arkham Origin's case) I didn't like that was just "More of the same."

If anything, I consider games really really good when my reaction to finishing a game is to simply; "What? it can't end! I want more!" And if a sequel is released promising 'more' of what I like, all the better.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Batman: Arkham Origins (I honestly don't know why people look down on that game)

For missing out on doing anything new or interesting, gameplay-wise, with "early day" Batman. Game plays like Arkham City 2.

So? I personally never found a video game sequel (or prequel in Arkham Origin's case) I didn't like that was just "More of the same."

Look no further than to Arkham City for how a sequel that can be both "more of the same" but also new in exciting ways. I liked Origins myself (bugs notwithstanding) but it's easily the weakest in the series. Felt derivative and less inspired than the others.

 

[shrekfan246]

Truth. And I'm certainly not saying the bosses in City are bad, I rather enjoy them too especially in comparison to the hilarity that makes up the bosses in Asylum. Just, for all the floundering in City it did, Origins at least managed to grapnel launch off of one aspect. Also, for as buggy as it apparently was on release, I had far less glitches when I played through it in comparison to when I recorded Arkham City for an LP (which was actually kind of hilarious, because every other time I'd played City it had been relatively bug-free).

City played mostly fine for me, and still sits in my top ten games of all time. It deserves the spot, for my money, despite several explicable faults.

I love all of the Arkham games. Best Batman sims. I'd love to see Rocksteady tackle other DC heroes (specifically the Flash, because I have a real soft spot for him).

Out of interest, are your LPs easily accessible?

Depending on how you mean "accessible"! If you google "let's inflict", they're the first Youtube results that come up, and there's a group for them here on this website. They're pretty standard as far as LP content goes, I think, because I don't find myself particularly interesting.

Buuuut, different series are categorized by how they're titled; if they're inflicted on [me] then it was @lacktheknack recording and we did dual-commentary, inflicted on lack/"let's suffer" is me recording and co-commentary with lack, inflicted on the Toaster is co-commentary with @Fiz_The_Toaster, inflicted on "ourselves" is me solo, and everything else (I think?) is co-commentary with @Aerosteam. There was also co-op of Portal 2 with lack and Battleblock Theater with Aerosteam, and "let's babble" is for podcast-y type stuff. (We are unfortunately not on the first page of results for "Let's Suffer", which is a shame because those are some of our higher-viewed videos. People really like them some awful games, apparently. People also apparently were really interested in seeing Shark Attack. Or they thought they would be getting furry porn, I'm still not sure.)

Jesus. It's only been, like, a year and a half.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Deus Ex: Invisible War is a significantly more "Deus Ex" game than Human Revolution is. It has some glaring flaws, but it brilliantly encapsulates the freedom and emergent design of Deus Ex in a way the fan-fictionish Human Revolution never did.