Poorly Reviewed Games You Enjoyed

[The White Hunter]

A LOT of Sonic games.
Seriously. I was in a blind love for Sonic for a very long time.
I even liked Sonic 06 for a time until I started to play better games and realized how bad it was.
But for some reason I still look back on Shadow the Hedgehog as a good time, I don't know why.

The prime example of poorly received Sonic games that are good is Heroes. People hate it and I don't really get whats bad about it, yeah there's a few glitches, the rail jumping is dodgy and every story has the same stage progression, but it is also fairly solid, fun, with decent (if long) stage designs and nice and varied themes to those stages.

Unleashed too was a lot of fun,e vent he werehog levels, their biggest issue was feeling out of place and stuff taking too long to die. Imagine if they'd made a Sonic & Knuckles thing? With Knuckles stages as beat em ups?

Shadow the Hedgehog I wouldn't call good but it has a certain level of enjoyability. The story is complete and total garbage but it's alright.

I love Sonic Spinball too, and Sonic R. Sonic R is amazing

Sonic 4 is just bad though. 06 has a certains o bad it's hilarious going for it, to be honest I'd say it's only marginally more broken than SA1 and 2, those both aged like milk.

Oh and Sonic & All-Stars Racing: Transformed. It's easily the best karting game I've ever played. I wrote a review, it's in the user reviews section and on my website. It's brilliant. I adore it. Go play it.

Sonic aside;

The Sly series gets mediocre reviews and I mostly adore it.

Resident Evil 6 isn't as bad as it's made out to be, it's not great but it's definately better than 5 in some ways, though it's a pathetic attempt compared to 4.

ZombiU is unfairly judged, it's actually easily a solid 7/10 survival horror game, it's just a bit rushed and poorly thtought through. The lack of iron sight aiming for more accuracy really hurts a game with scarce ammo and extremely dangerous enemies. When you have to fire bolt-action rifles with a cone going on it's gonna lead to angry time. Deserves a follow up to fix what was broke.

Singularity is a fun and clever shooter with some unique mechanics and an engaging story. It's formulaic and not necessarily original but it's certainly fun to play and has a decent story. I did have some issue with the PC version though I can't remember what, some option that wasn't there or something.

Medal of Honor 2010. It's a solid modern day shooter with a focus on being relatively grounded in reality, it's campaign was a highlight even though it was rather short, it's multiplayer was kind of poor though and couldn't distract long from the juggernaut Bad Company 2. Nonetheless it's a very underated title well worth a play, it's sequel is, however, utter garbage.

Hmmmm...

That'll do.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

I really liked Hunted: The Demon's Forge.

The opening level was extremely poorly designed and...well, crap...but after I pushed past that, I liked the rest of the title. The gameplay was engaging and I actually grew pretty fond of the characters.

Also, elf butt.

 

[Rush Syks]

The Last Remnant was really fun in my opinion. Reviewers shredded it for generic and nonsensical story and blah blah blah but I had countless hours upon hours of fun with it. It was hard, thought provoking, and just an absolute blast. Not a perfect game by any means but not worthy of the 4-5 most reviewers gave it.

You know what the worst part is? The PC version, which is infinitly better in terms of party and character customisation, technology and content (all DLC integrated into the game seamlessly) and has no bugs I could recall, got the same metascore as the Xbox version (66). Yes this game has weaknesses, but it has a really interesting world and artstyle and some of the more "innovative in a good way" takes on the JRPG fighting system I've seen in a while.

So yeah, this would be my choice as well.

 

[Strelok]

Alice: Madness Returns.

Alice: The Madness Returns got a 7/10 how is that a bad review?

On Topic: For me it was You Are Empty, was very unpolished, buggy, but it had a charm that was lacking in other games at the time. It also had a fairly decent story.

Spoiler

 

[bluerocker]

Nier
A kind of action adventure game with a good cast of characters, a decent story, and some memorable boss fights/stages.
While it didn't get terrible reviews I don't really think they did it justice.

Damn, Ninja'd!

But yeah, unfortunately for Nier, the graphics weren't the best, so it gets crapped on a lot for that. Otherwise, I adore it's story and characters so much. It's hard to say when I play an Action-RPG and I don't dislike anyone in the main cast!

Now, it's predecessor, Drakengard, has similar flake. I will admit that the gameplay can be a bit repetitive, but it acts like a really good stress reliever after a hard day. I mean, who doesn't love the idea of raining fire on an army from dragonback? Aside from that, it had a wonderfully twisted cast of characters and turned a lot of typical JRPG tropes on it's head. Your silent protagonist is unwillingly made that way and is a sociopathic murderer. The elves aren't all frilly and magical; and the faeries are grating and rude. Golems and wars are going on and even when you think you thwart the big bad everything goes to hell. The Apocalypse strikes and the imagination that went into some of the enemy designs can really make a character cringe! I love it!

 

[Adept Mechanicus]

Alpha Protocol. It's the Saints Row 2 to James Bond's GTA. Then again, the gameplay was completely broken, but I saw past that because the story was amazingly funny.

 

[AT God]

Duke Nukem Forever.

It wasn't worth the 50 bucks I paid for it, I agree it was more of a 20 dollar game, but it was at least different.

Several design mistakes (weapon limit, regenerating health, horrible rape joke level)

Loved the originality (originality being the way macho man Duke makes jokes regarding pop-culture "You're gonna love my nuts").

Also, I think Sonic Adventure 2 was okay, not great but not the abomination people refer to it as.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

God Hand
ADORE this game, but the reviewers shat on it pretty hard.

God Hand wasn't too poorly reviewed. IGN gave it a 3/10 and even other reviewers on the site questioned the reviewer(Chris Roper) on it. Publicly. That review was a legendarily bad one. It drove people from IGN just like Jim Sterling's Assassin's Creed 2's 4.5/10 saw people leave Destructoid. It hurt the site's reputation in a big way.

Other than that, I fucking love God Hand. And I love you for loving God Hand.


OT:The Way of The Samurai Series is one of the most annoying games ever made. But I love it. The combat is very timing based, so it drives a lot of people away, but its the best open world samurai game series out there(along with being the only one I can think of) and the customization of the main character is superb. There are also over 8 different endings in each game in the series and 100s of weapons to unlock. Each weapon has some unique moves that need to be unlocked as well.
I want more of them. Or a PC collection release.


Also a Yakuza PC release would be nice :/

 

[B.U.C.K]

Vietcong!
Got an average of 6.2
But I played the Multiplayer for years and loved every bit of it.
Check out the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XOEvw4y9hc

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

The Last Remnant was really fun in my opinion. Reviewers shredded it for generic and nonsensical story and blah blah blah but I had countless hours upon hours of fun with it. It was hard, thought provoking, and just an absolute blast. Not a perfect game by any means but not worthy of the 4-5 most reviewers gave it.

You know what the worst part is? The PC version, which is infinitly better in terms of party and character customisation, technology and content (all DLC integrated into the game seamlessly) and has no bugs I could recall, got the same metascore as the Xbox version (66). Yes this game has weaknesses, but it has a really interesting world and artstyle and some of the more "innovative in a good way" takes on the JRPG fighting system I've seen in a while.

So yeah, this would be my choice as well.

YES! YES!

YEEEEEEEES!


Honestly more JRPGs need to be on the PC.

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

Dynasty/Samurai Warriors (Insert numeric installment or title here). Those games always get terrible reviews, but I like the arcade-style hack 'n slash with over the top villains and heroes. It's just insanely fun for me, yet those games get abysmal reviews. I'm especially fond of Dynatasy Warriors: Gundam, particularly the first one because it had fun cutscenes. I was sad when Dynasty Warriors took out mid-battle cutscenes. =/

Lost Odyssey got some poor reviews because it was 'too traditional.' Innovation is good, and I get the gripes about today's current JRPGs, but I loved Lost Odyssey start to finish.

On the flip side, DmC: Devil May Cry was reviewed well, but got smeared in the user reviews. I'm not going to spark that flame war here, but suffice it to say, I enjoyed it quite a bit.

I get so tired of every AAA game netting a 9-10/10. A lot of great stuff gets swept under the rug because people follow MetaCritic like it is some sort of deity that imparts the wisdom of which game to play next unto the masses. Videos and community can take you pretty far, but you'll never know just how good a game is (or isn't) unless you pick it up and play it for yourself, because video games are an interactive media.

 

[amuasyeas]

EYE: Divine Cybermancy

 

[Vhite]

Many, but the one I remember most for this reason is Keepsake. Keepsake is adventure game from 2006 and only place I ever heard about it was in local gaming magazine where it got 6/10 score. I'm not really into adventure games and review scores don't sway me unless it's +90% but for some reason it caught my interest. It must have been the graphics since I love classical fantasy settings and nothing is more classical than magical university. In short, while game looked good, voice acting hurt and puzzles were too often and too difficult for my taste and were ruined by hint system that could basically solve the entire game for you and was too tempting to use after a while. Still, I loved the atmosphere of giant empty university with dreamy music in background with only your dragon/dog as companion.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Too Human.

Thoroughly enjoyed my time with it.

It had a few glaring problems, but they were outweighed in my opinion by it's unique gameplay. Plus I love stories soaked in mythology, it just does something for me.

 

[archabaddon]

Star Trek Online. Like a lot of MMOs, it didn't start out strong and got poor reviews early on. Obviously, MMOs change over time, and although not a lot of people have re-reviewed it since launch, keeping its Metacritic score around 66, it has become a lot better, with new starbase systems, ships, overhauled skill system, and a Romulan faction coming out next month. I came back to it a month or two ago after a brief hiatus and play it every day.

 

[Pink Gregory]

OT:The Way of The Samurai Series is one of the most annoying games ever made. But I love it. The combat is very timing based, so it drives a lot of people away, but its the best open world samurai game series out there(along with being the only one I can think of) and the customization of the main character is superb. There are also over 8 different endings in each game in the series and 100s of weapons to unlock. Each weapon has some unique moves that need to be unlocked as well.
I want more of them. Or a PC collection release.

I played about twenty minutes of Way of the Samurai 3. A passer by was impressed when I told him that I'd pooed behind a nearby bush. That's at least a 7/10 right there.

 

[DiabloBub666]

It's already been mentioned already, but Mirror's Edge... I was really into parkour at the time and it held a lot of sentimental value. I probably couldn't have powered through the indoor sections and still have been in good spirits if I hadn't been really into parkour. That said, if you get a feel for the levels, the flow of the gameplay improves massively (though, few people really liked the game enough to get to know the levels well)

Another would be Matrix: Path of Neo. I LOVED the combat in that game (the aesthetic and feel was just like a kung fu movie), but it was reviewed as poorly optimized and a bad example of a video game movie (the altered story bits felt out of place). I was young when I played it, so I didn't even care

 

[MarsProbe]

Mirror's Edge. Yes, the gunplay was terrihorribad, but if you look past that, the gameplay is new and refreshing with some amazing aesthetics.

You don't need the guns (though trying to get through the final sections of the game in the highest difficulty was quite the challenge)! But yeh, Mirrors Edge is still one of my favourite games, it's a blast to play and can't find fault in the aesthetic. To think I almost passed the game by entirely because it happened to get a 5/10 in Edge Magazine.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

God Hand comes to mind.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

I actually had a lot of fun with P.N.03.

Yeah, it had a lot of issues with repetition, and yeah, the combat got a bit samey, but the gameplay felt fairly unique, the character was fun, and the setting was interesting, if under-utilized. I even had a really good time going back through every level to complete challenges.