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

Ayame Murasaki

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Drakengard.
*ducks flung produce*
Yes, I actually like it. Especially when I'm having one of my...weeks...and need to kill things to work off some anger at the world. I think the little tasks to unlock weapons are interesting, filling in the weapon histories (by, of course, killing hundreds of people and monsters with them) is fun, the endings continue to get more and more mind-blowingly fucked up, and I just love Arioch's child-eating craziness. (It helps that she's a walking elemental nuke in combat.)
...Then again, I'm a bit weird. ^_^
 

Kyrian007

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Xprimentyl said:
Watch Dogs. ?Hype train? debacle aside and taking it for what it is and not what it was supposed to be, Watch Dogs is actually a competent, beautifully realized open world that's a lot of fun to explore. Unlike a lot of open worlds that offer distractions to break up the main story, Watch Dogs' open world actually supplements the story; you are a vigilante and your actions dictate how the people of Chicago interact with you when they see you. Plus, getting hacked by other players, suddenly turning your single-player experience into ?hide-and-seek? multiplayer, is the kind of uniqueness that makes Watch Dogs so worthwhile.
I'll agree. Ubi and their pre-order crap and graphical downgrade totally deserved all the negativity thrown out toward Watch Dogs. But I'll maintain that Watch Dogs was really fun. There are lots of games that I play and pretty much ignore the story of just to play my own version of it enjoying the sandbox and gameplay... which were really good.

Seth Carter said:
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.
I loved FF8. I loved 7 too, but the GRIND necessary to get anywhere hit me at a time when I didn't have as much free time as a middle school or high school or even college freshman student that I had been. 8 was the first time a FF game even made an attempt at lessening the grind and it made it accessible to me where 7 hadn't really been and I wound up enjoying 8 more (even though 7 and 9 are better games.)
 

Samtemdo8_v1legacy

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Mass Effect 3. I was on board with all the hate, but that was when I have not played any of the games at all than I did with all the DLC included and I had a great time with the whole trilogy.

And fans of Mass Effect 1 really exagerate how better that game is, I mean yes I miss the Mako but really there is almost no difference between the 3 games. I mean the whole equipment feature was too Diablo inspired, and it did felt balanced like how it was for DA:O.

But I still hate Dragon Age 2, I tried to play it, I tried to play it on its own merits, but I just could not get over how flawed the combat was.
 

gsilver

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It may not have had a *terrible* reception, but the reviews for Hawken have definitely been at least lukewarm (and very few of them). Despite that, it's probably my favorite FPS of all time, except maybe for the original Descent (when running through DXX-Rebirth, of course)

Freaking love the game. I love mechs. I love the style of gameplay, and I'd be all for someone doing the same thing but better... But as it is, it's the best at what it does (being a more arcadey mech game).
 

Hero of Lime

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Having just beaten it, Metroid Prime Federation Force is actually a good game. Nothing spectacular or mind blowing, but anyone who gave it less than a 7 in their score was likely angry about its existence, and did not give it a proper chance as a standalone game. It's a fun FPS that works on a handheld, which is a pretty great feat.

I don't want to sound like I'm on some high horse, I was unhappy with Federation Force's announcement too, but I know the team behind it is great, and they demonstrated their skill with the final game I feel.
 

happyninja42

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Only one I can think of offhand is Dante's Inferno.

Yes it's a "God of War clone", and yes the marketing for the game had some really shitty connotations to it, but the game was solidly made, the mood of it was enjoyable to me, and it was fun. Storming the gates of hell, to save the soul of my wife, and in the process, having the opportunity to jail break a lot of other souls, redeem them, and let them find salvation. Oh and I also get to punch Satan in the face with a giant cross made of divine light....even for an atheist like myself, what's not to love about that premise? At least Dante acknowledges that he fucked up, and did stupid shit, and was trying to fix it. Kratos on the other hand, just stays a grumbly, angsty douchebag through 3 games, and only at the end does he go "damn, I done fucked up".

I could identify more with Dante's problems, and his weaknesses, and his attempt to attone for them, and his willingness to give himself up to try and make it right. Kratos, he doesn't offer himself up to fix his problems. No, his strategy is "destroy the entire fucking world, because I'm butt hurt."

Plus, the combat was really fucking fun. Something about that brilliantly bright cross, and the powers you upgraded through it that was deeply satisfying.
 

Zombie Proof

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Ambient_Malice said:
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.
Although I'm quite the fan of Human Revolution (and Mankind Divided after it finally unlocked on steam *eyeroll*), I too think that Invisible War get's a bad rap. It's still a pretty good Deus Ex game even if it doesn't match up to the narrative and design of it's predecessor or grace of it's successors.

You mother hoppers want a bad Deus Ex game? Try "The Fall". You'll wish for what Invisible War provides after rolling around in that mess for a bit lol.
 

Neurotic Void Melody

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Saelune said:
Star Fox Zero. It mostly comes down to people bitching about motion controls cause they are boring people who are boring.
Yeah, I never quite understood the hate for motion controls that aren't the kinect. With well implemented ones (usually solely by Nintendo) they work just fine and can integrate smoothly into certain physical reactions to stimuli. I know some people hate moving and would need optimun efficiency to conserve energy, but that's definitely a them problem, not the said game.

Its only come up when I try to convince my friends to play it with me, but Viva Pinata (mainly the second cause it has online multiplayer). I was a nay sayer until I played it part of the Rare Replay...wow those games are amazing! I want a new one!
There is a poignancy to that collection, as if Rare is an old relative suffering from dementia and you are going through photos of past joyful memories. And then Microsoft peers out from behind them as they sleep and, attempting to imitate their voice, whispers "we can still have these good times...I'm still here and just fine. Now give me all your money and personal details, if you would be so kind." Then they taser the relative awake and into action. Hmm, I should probably pick less weird analogies, sorry!

CaitSeith said:
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.
People didn't like that game? I assumed it was well received. It had an ending that disappointed me though. Probably because it felt far more "gamey" than the rest and because it was an end. They could benefit by added an endless survivor mode really.

Ezekiel said:
I think Max Payne 3 is probably the best third-person shooter ever made and a far better show of Rockstar's writing and gameplay than GTA. It often gets criticized for being sluggish, having too many unskippable cutscenes and being a bad Max Payne story. The only one of those I agree with is the cutscenes. I would have liked more of the cutscenes during the levels to be replaced by gameplay that tells the story.
Agreed, a game hasn't quite poked me in an arousably agreeable manner since. Not too bothered about cutscenes there though, it's nowhere near MGS levels of pointlessness.

Hawki said:
-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)
-Star Fox Adventures (seriously, THIS is somehow worse than Command?)
Never played command. But Adventures was great! I much preferred it to the typical Star Fox on-rails-athons and it did have an alluring world to discover.
Also the Sonic Adventure games (mainly 2) were the highlights before sonic started declining into whatever the hell you'd call it these days

To add my own, though wouldn't really put effort into defending a subjective matter unless someone else's opinion is based on incorrect knowledge or outright stupidity and ignorance...Max p...oops, I mean Mad Max. It was not revolutionary, but I really needed a car combat game that wasn't a pile of half produced shit and Mad Max delivered me these visceral goodies. Bring back car combat, damnit! Attaching chainsaws and spikes to cars and then destroying each other is something that speaks to a primal urge within that may probably get somebody killed in the real world if I don't appease it with said games.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts. Possibly one of the last Rare-like Rare games released. And still a pretty solid, creative, colourful, amusing game. Just not a traditional BK platformer.

Transistor. And Abzu. More an arty, musing type thing that doesn't appeal to seemingly a lot of people.

Metro 2033. It is more a case of this is the game people should have played, not its CODed up sequel. Which isn't bad per-say, it just sacrificed what made it unique to appeal to a certain more profitable audience.

Far Cry Primal: Or as a larger picture; the ubisoft sandbox in general when not shamelessly exploited. I don't force myself to play every new release, so can avoid these design choices when poorly utilised. Assassins Creed still entertains mostly, not consistently, but am a freedom loving stealth sucker. Sucker for stealth? Sticker for stuff! Erm...
 

Dalisclock

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Ezekiel said:
Dalisclock said:
Ezekiel said:
I think Max Payne 3 is probably the best third-person shooter ever made and a far better show of Rockstar's writing and gameplay than GTA. It often gets criticized for being sluggish, having too many unskippable cutscenes and being a bad Max Payne story. The only one of those I agree with is the cutscenes. I would have liked more of the cutscenes during the levels to be replaced by gameplay that tells the story.
I actually really liked MP3 as a game. It's more the story,atmosphere and the character I didn't like. I think MP is better suited to a pseudo-noir atmosphere then the tropical/"Man on Fire" thing they did in MP3(so the New Jersey bits worked a lot better for me then much of the rest of the game).

Of course, the elephant in the room is basically that Max is pretty much forced to stay on the sob train as long as they keep making these games. I liked the whole bit about him being a hollowed out man in MP and the fact that getting his revenge in MP2(and then not getting punished) only made his state of mind worse, but in MP3, they pretty much took that to "MY LIFE IS TERRIBLE. EVERYTHING SUCKS. I CAN'T ENJOY ANYTHING". Each game ends with Max finding some kind of peace with himself, and then by the beginning of the next game he's back to being a broken wreck.

Frankly, it's getting a bit tiresome. MP3 needed to either handle the 2nd emotional reset better then they did or find a way to write his character without it. That's the real flaw of the game.
MP3 is a noir, with its morose dialogue, mystery and dark subject matter.

"a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity."

Sounds like MP3 to me. The previous games in comparison felt more generic to me.

I also think where the character was emotionally after MP2 is believable. He had nothing and was no longer a cop and had a tendency for abusing drugs. Fitting for him to seek a new purpose thousands of miles away, where he would find new evils. It didn't invalidate the ending of MP2.
The problem is that the previous 2 games had already dealt with Max's Story sufficently. Pretty much all the of the characters had been run through their Arcs, Max had been through his Roaring Rampage of Revenge and the denouement of "What happens now?". And as I said before, the problem is, you can only emotionally reset a character so many times before it gets tiresome. End of MP? Max got his revenge, he's satisfied. Then in MP2 it turns out he's realized that revenge didn't actually fix his emotional issues. So he tries to cling onto Mona and get some kind of atonement and at the end, he apparently has reached some sort of Peace. Of course, can't have a MP game with an happy max, so Max goes back into being in the emotional dumpster. But since they've already told the story already, now they have to invent some entirely new chain of events that have pretty much nothing to do with any of the other games and reset his mood to "Broken, near suicidal". And now, MP3 ends with him reached yet another level of "I'm satisfied with who I am".

Which will no doubt be completely undone if there's another MP game, so I don't know why they even bother pretending anymore, because a new MP game will no doubt require him to go back into near-suicidal alcoholism/drug abuse. It also didn't help that Max spent most of his arc in MP3 pissing and moaning in a way that was far more obxnoious then any of the previous games. Morose is one thing, full blown emo is another thing entirely.

I don't know. Basically I can't help but feel there were 2 MP games and one game that had a super-depressed, violent dude named Max Payne in it, but had nothing to do with the series beyond that.
 

darkcalling

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Mass effect 3 and Dragon age 2. in fact i say DA2 was the high point of the series so far.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning deserved a far better reception than it got.

Duke Nukem Forever was FAR from a masterpiece but I don't feel it's deserving of so constantly being on everyone's worst lists.

Batman: Arkham Origins was a solid entry in the series to me. Granted I don't remember running into many bugs (if at all).

Same can be said for Arkham Knight, though to be fair I WAS playing the console version and i DID see the big reveal of the Arkham Knight's identity coming a mile away.

Watchdogs would not have garnered NEAR as much hate IMO if Ubisoft hadn't managed to work everyone into a hype storm. Even if the graphics hadn't been downgraded (and i don't feel like what I saw was a huge difference but then i've never been a stickler for graphics) there was no chance of it ever living up to the hype.
 

WolfThomas

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Mister K said:
That being said, I think otherwise it was overall better. I liked how it was more personal story. How many times can one save theworld before it becomes boring? In this game, however, we had a chance to experience the story of a refugee, who over the course of years managed to become important and well-known person in the city. We experienced a story which mostly focused on Hawke and their family, friends, hardships and problems. After many games where you tried to save the world, it was nice to see a lower scale adventure
I agree. I really liked that you sort of bounced around without much of a long term goal for most of the game. Dragon Age Origins from the very start you know you'll have to kill the Arch demon and defeat the blight, Inquisition you know you have to close the Rift and then you find out you need to stop that guy who I can't remember his name. And only you can do it in both games because you are special (Grey Warden, Mark of the Rift).

But in Dragon Age 2, it was basicaly Prologue - Survive and get into Kirkwall. Chapter I try and get rich. Chapter II do stuff until you get swept into the Quinari plotline. Chapter III now that you are actually important the brewing mage-templar tensions need to be dealt with. Hawke didn't start as some chosen hero. He just kept ending up in the right place at the right time.

I also liked the companions. In Dragon Origin you can't imagine many of them hanging out together. Which is fine because they don't have to like each other to save the world. It's a bit better in Inquisition, sure some don't like each other but most get along quite well. But in Dragon Age 2 the party was basically a big group of dysfunctional friends. They helped each other out and you could see them all having a drink in the Hanged man together at the end of a hard day.
 

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The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games. Sort of a cheap choice as they have a large fanbase that vehemently defends them but all the same they often receive mixed reviews and a large number of people who do not get them. I have not had one friend that did not openly dis the games but at least I was easily able to make them understand why I loved them.
 

Joccaren

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DA2 was great in theory. Everything about it sounds great on paper. The execution was potentially the worst possibly imaginable though. Characters that were just as stereotypical, but with fantasy races slapped on them instead. Samey maps everywhere. Stupidly simplistic "Mash the A button" combat, outside 1 or 2 cheese encounters filled with an army of mini stuns, story twists that made no sense throughout the game... It had some great ideas that could have made it better than Origins. As is, I'll take the brilliantly executed though still flawed Origin's over DA2s mess any day.

But, on to the main point of the thread;
Mass Effect 1. While yes its a darling in many people's eyes at the time, these days most ME fans tend to look down on it as too clunky to be enjoyabel. I was actually amazed the first time I played the game. Combat never bothered me, it was fine, functional and at times still fun. At least it wasn't GoW in space like 2 and 3, that was disappointing. It also had a concept of range. Sniping enemies from 3Km away so I don't have to engage with shotgun Krogans was great. You could take more than 5 hits, which was awesome too. The worlds had continuity, and there were - outside of space travel - no loading screens. If you got somewhere, it was you that got there.
Inventory wasn't that bad. Yeah, it could have used some UI improvements, but overall it worked and didn't exactly detract from the game. Mako was fun. It didn't handle that badly, and it didn't die faster than Shepard on foot either [Goddamn Hammerhead].
It was internally consistent for the most part, made sense for the most part, and had excellent attention to detail. It was the last even semi-real RPG Bioware made [Or was Origins released afterwards?], and Bioware suck at making action games.
Even now, when I want to play Mass Effect, its ME1. Never finished a second playthrough of 3, it was just so poorly made. 2 I've done maybe 5 playthroughs of, because it isn't offensively bad, and has its good moments, but its mostly just bland and mediocre, but 1? Well over 20 runs. And every time I play it I enjoy it just as much.

Moving outside Bioware as that is the largest focus of this thread, Spore. You heard me, fucking Spore. I didn't follow it all that closely before release, so I wasn't expecting miracles. Yeah, its evolution ain't entirely accurate. Yeah, I wish it had an ocean stage. Yeah, the space stage is really grindy and samey. It isn't the deepest experience. Things like the vehicle designer don't make a ton of sense. Know what though? I still loved it for what it was. It was relaxing to play. It was great being able to follow the evolution of my creatures, find lots of parts and such, create cool looking creatures, unify my species, the local area, the planet. Running into problems and deciding how to solve them. Facing off challenges like Titans in the creature stage. There was a lot to do and it was genuinely enjoyable. I don't play it if I'm looking for an extremely polished, deep, traditional game, I play it when I want to relax and have fun in a cool cartoon world. I honestly wish they would make a Spore 2 some day. Fix up a lot of the problems in the original, and release it. Spore as is though? Still love it, though I can understand why many don't.
 

stroopwafel

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I really enjoyed Arkham Origins as well. Though the game was spread too thin and the side-missions were crap. However the main story missions were really, really good. If they made Gotham smaller and reduced the fluff it would be on a similar level as the Rocksteady ones.

I also really enjoyed Watch Dogs. Hype is what killed an otherwise pretty good game. Before Watch Dogs I played Splinter Cell Blacklist (loved that game) and WD pretty much played like an open-world version of this. Driving felt clumsy, shooting was a bit flimsy but gameplay in general felt tight and responsive. The missions were fun(even, despite their repetition, the side-missions) and moving in and out of cover mixing action and stealth was awesome. The 'hacking' was another fun part of the game that didn't really felt tacked on.

Other (fairly recent) games I love which could be considered divisive are: Evil Within, Alien Isolation, MGS5, Fallout 4 and Arkham Knight.
 

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Onechanbara Z2: Chaos

Almost every professional reviewer was getting their panties in a bunch, because half of the playable cast were in bikinis or you could put them in skimpier outfits. This is despite the fact that there are costumes that were conservative and not revealing. There is even more variety of outfits if you buy some of the DLC packs.

Yes, the combat is not as "deep" as Devil May Cry or Bayonetta, this new installment is mission pack sequel (65% old content to 35% new), and the series had crappy games up until Z: Kagura, but I was impressed that it was not overly long nor over bearing. This is games is more fun than the DmC Reboot, or all of the God of War clones that came out during generation seven. This game, similar to DMC classic & Bayonetta, know how to have fun without being super serious and grim dark about it. Z2: Chaos is basically those games combined with Dynasty Warriors. Not mention all of the cool unlockable artwork, and I reserved my copy that came with an art book (that brings you up to speed on all of the plot or characters, if you don't know the backstory) and a soundtrack CD.
 

Fieldy409_v1legacy

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Starting to feel like Im the only guy in the world who enjoys No Mans Sky. But not sure if it counts because I cant honestly defend all of the marketing.
 

Hawki

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Fieldy409 said:
Starting to feel like Im the only guy in the world who enjoys No Mans Sky. But not sure if it counts because I cant honestly defend all of the marketing.
I'd say it counts. Two games that I defend include Diablo III and Colonial Marines. The former had properties advertised (e.g. PvP) that never made it into release. The latter arguably outright lied to consumers as part of its advertising. However, I do feel that both are good games at the end of the day, though I will admit I'm less inclined to defend CM. I like it, but I don't lose any sleep over people slagging it.