Poorly Reviewed Games You Enjoyed

[loudestmute]

Brink. The world was more than brown/gray military junk, the character customization was right around Saints Row in terms of all out craziness, and objective-based gameplay that actually encouraged players to work together as a team.

Shame that the "shooting" part of this first person shooter was pretty tepid, and I can totally understand how the boneheaded AI would get the game such mixed reviews. Still, if you want a gun game that is violently trying to be unlike COD, it's worth a look.

 

[blackdwarf]

Resident evil 5 and 6. There is nothing wrong with 5 mechanically, besides dodgy AI partner, but they didn't make the environment interesting. 6 has huge flaws, but I still enjoyed it. Heck, some of the campaigns had pretty decent stories.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I Love this game, it is for me the perfect 3D-ified version of the original Castevania games on the NES. Sure, the SotN games are pretty good, but they belong are their own thing, and I got almost anything I wanted out of this game.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

Red Faction: Armageddon. Not particularly deep, atrocious story, mechanics tripping one over another and a few really awful scripted sequences (like the one when you were fending off suicide-bombing insects from the back of a moving truck)... and yet I had fun with it. The shooting worked, guns were fun to play around with and the entire affair almost reminded me of Ratchet and Clank. It was fun. Mindless, malnourished fun without much meaning to it but still fun.

 

[Luke_Triton]

The original Luigi's Mansion, which wasn't given as much credit as it deserved. That game was boss. Creepy as shit, it gave me nightmares when I was a wee laddie.

 

[Iwata]

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. I Love this game, it is for me the perfect 3D-ified version of the original Castevania games on the NES. Sure, the SotN games are pretty good, but they belong are their own thing, and I got almost anything I wanted out of this game.

This is one of my favourite games of this generation, but it's by no means gotten poor reviews!

 

[Yossarian1507]

Yeah, add me to the Alpha Protocol bandwagon. In fact, I defended this game since day 1, and 2/5 review on the Escapist. 7 full playthroughs, platinum trophy and loads and loads of fun with exploring new ways to solve the problem (ending the game with Steven Heck on a boat - priceless).

From much, much less obvious spectrum of this topic - Pathologic. Russian game from... 2005 I think. Weird, confusing, but also intriguing story of three completely different people trying to solve a mysterious plague in a rural Russian village, each one with different skillsets, events (which WILL happen, regardless of you being there to witness them, it's an "open world game" with a 1 second real time = 1 minute in game), and even allies/enemies in the town. Add to it a great survival mechanic, when you have to manage budget for food (the prices skyrocket after the plague hits), water and medicine, as well as trying to avoid getting infected in the diseased districts. And if you'll get infected... Then you can't cure it, and have to take care of yourself even more, to not die from it, while still going forward with the case.

Awesome concept, which I really enjoyed. But, since I'm talking about it, it was obviously bashed by the critics. Why? Well... Because it looked like this:

Spoiler

It also sounded like this, it was animated like this and melee/ranged combat was also as crappy as this picture. In fact, things I wrote in a paragraph above are the only redeeming factors. If there's any game that really NEEDS and HD, polished remake, it's this one.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

My best friend Dave insists that Colonial Marines is good fun and is nowhere near as bad as the internet makes it out to be. The fact that he went to it hype free might say a lot. The only problem he has with it is that it's easy. He is really really picky with games so this shocked and surprised me.

This is his view though not mine, I haven't played it.

 

[Zyntoxic]

I don't know what exactly counts as a "bad" review, but I'm gonna go with Enclave, especially the "evil" campaign, it was shorter than the "good" campaign but it was so much fun!
and the delightful shock when I realized while the rest of the game was in English the goblins language was Swedish, it was hilarious when I first realized "hey... I recognize these words!" when they spoke.

But other than that I really loved the setting and the different classes you could level and choose between for different missions, and if you wanted to be able to buy all the stuff you really had to fight to find all the gold coins and survive the mission.

Hm... nostalgia shock, now I have to play enclave again.

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Most of the reviews couldn't get past the (only somewhat) terrible story and unlikable characters, and never bothered to mention that the game is an absolute blast to play. The series' battle system was completely overhauled and I honestly couldn't get enough of it. I loved this game so much that I bought it twice: Once for the 360, then again when the International version was released on the PS3, mostly because I hated all the end-game disc swapping.

 

[Requia]

Yeah... most of the games on here (althought I often agree they are good games) are not what I would call poorly reviewed.... Maybe I'm just incredibly jaded by how people demand a 90 instead of an 80 but that doesn't really cut it for me. Below 60% on metacritic or it isn't really "poorly reviewed" I say!

An 80 is a really low score, reviews numbers are heavily skewed toward 70-90, in a less deranged review environment than we have that 80 would be a 50.

 

[lord canti]

The new splatter house for me.Don't know why but I just had alot of fun with that game.

 

[Uhura]

Lately I've been playing Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh with my boyfriend and we both have been really enjoying it. It's cheesy in a really endearing way.

 

[Googenstien]

Marvels Ultimate Alliance 2 - Found this game super fun to play and finished it a bunch of times.

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny - bit grindy, but I like the style and world.. find it fun

White Knight Chronicles - Fun game with weird online that I could never find groups for but I had a blast playing it.

Nier - Great underrated RPG

Tom Clancy's HAWX - good mindless arcade flight fun

The Saboteur - great sandbox game and setting

 

[Giver]

Orion: Dino Beatdown

That's right folks, it had a metascore of 35... and it was FUCKING AWESOME... They recently fixed it and now it's good. They even renamed it Orion: Dino Horde because they didn't want the old reviews to mess them up.

 

[Olivia Zaheyal]

Deadly Premonition - Mindfuck extraordinaire. Totally immersing in its insanity.

Fallout: New Vegas - Buggy, yeah, but built in a consistent world with convincing characters and high role-play potential.

Psychonauts - Double Fine's attention to detail made Psychonauts a playground of inventive fun for me. Even backtracking was fun because of how convenient traveling was with the tree-stumps. It's a game meant to be explored, not rushed through, and I think all the flak the Meat Carnival level got was because people were playing it wrong. All you had to do was think it out.

Silent Hill: The Room - Combat sucks ass, but it's very emotional and well-crafted.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. That game is pure gold.

 

[Daniel Park]

Other games, I really liked The Saboteur. Love open world games and this just had lots of fun to be had, a cool art direction, kind-a campy like bad action flick but still pretty fun.

I was also going to say Saboteur. It was a trifle unpolished and the VO was spotty, but also loads of fun, especially if you like blowing shit up. It's a shame it had to be Pandemic's swan song.

 

[Infernai]

Dark Messiah: Might and Magic is a game i had fun with. One half a difficult, tactical and stealthy first person action game. The second half just a hack and slash after the introduction of the "Fuck you" mode (aka. Demon mode).

 

[Saelune]

Every Dynasty Wariors game ever. I keep buying them cause they are reliable, something people complain about.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Most of the reviews couldn't get past the (only somewhat) terrible story and unlikable characters, and never bothered to mention that the game is an absolute blast to play. The series' battle system was completely overhauled and I honestly couldn't get enough of it. I loved this game so much that I bought it twice: Once for the 360, then again when the International version was released on the PS3, mostly because I hated all the end-game disc swapping.

Yeah, that game is definitely underrated. I listed it in my first post in this thread, too.

The story is definitely a lot better than people give it credit for. I'll easily take it over Star Ocean 3. And while the characters aren't that great I enjoy several of them.

The combat system is what all RPGs should aspire to. It destroys most of the competition, but Japanese RPG and Western RPG in terms of combat. You don't hardly get better than this game.

Tri-Ace and Namco Tales Studio learned something together about combat mechanics during the early days when they worked on Tales of Phantasia. Because everyone at Wolf Team, the people who worked on Tales of Phantasia, went on to hone some of the best combat in the entire RPG genre. Wolf Team is the stuff of legends, to me.