What's the most awesomely bad game you've ever played? - CHAT WITH THE STAFF

[tendo82]

Want your opinion heard? Have questions for the staff? Now's your chance!

Every week, from Wednesday through Friday, staff will be dropping in and out of the thread to post responses to the question below and reply to yours. From there, feel free to keep the discussion going until next Wednesday when a new topic goes up. We may even respond over the weekend while we're playing Left 4 Dead.

Consider this your chance to join us in some lively debating and hopefully good times. We can't wait to discuss.

This week's question is: What's the most awesomely bad game you've ever played? It's the B-Movie question. What game is so bad it's good or so ridiculous in premise it can't helped but be loved?

 

[tendo82]

I have to go with Mappy Land for the NES. This game was weird when it came out. It was basically a primitive platforming game that was part of a larger Japanese series created by Namco.

There was was no explanation for what a Mappy was, I later found it was the name of the protagonist, and the bad guy was named Nyamco. You were a police officer of some sort although at the time I think I thought I was a security guard. This game is an excellent example of being lost in translation. It seems simple enough now, but at the time it baffled me. The game also wasn't that great so that added to its vexing nature. I thought I was missing something other people were seeing.

Maybe this link will help you sympathize: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG2OZ6jEaxQ

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

Only one I can think of is Wetrix for the N64... the concept was pretty cool, a hydrolic puzzle game. However, I rented it and thus had no manual, and I remember the tutorial wasn't very helpful either. So I spent most of the time just throwing water here and there hoping for something to happen, never quite getting it when something did.

Yeah, not terribly awesomely terrible, but I'll try to think of a better one later.

 

[orangebandguy]

Hmm nice to see the staff taking an interest. I honestly don't know the worst game ever but in recent memory i'd say Far Cry 2 was a huge dissapointment for me.

 

[Sparrow]

Dark Sector. It's all been done before, it was all simple and very cliche...

But it was nice and shiny. Repetitive but rewarding. I should have hated it, but I couldn't. I played 'til the end.

 

[NewClassic_v1legacy]

I honestly think that Typing of the Dead should get honorable mention here, regardless of the fact that it was highlighted by Yahtzee this week. Typing was amazing in a lot of ways.

First of all, the handguns in cutscenes were replaced with backpack-shaped Dreamcasts with giant a Double-A Battery attached across the top. Around the shoulders was slung a keyboard, which was haphazardly pecked at during cutscenes to show zombies being brutally ripped apart by the powers of alphanumerics and the deadly hunt-and-peck method. The attention to detail while still being completely absurd was almost laughable, and the already miserably bad voice-acting and overly-gritty presentation provided for a particularly entertaining endeavor, which actually provides ample challenge for even seasoned typists.

That, and some of the sentences were delightfully absurd. "Susan, can you go to the store to pick up the dried zombie organs?" was a particular favorite of mine. Shame I was being chased, backwards, through a labyrinthine maze by a grotesquely large chainsaw-wielding boss at the time.

Oh, and Golden Hands was just a funny power-up.

EDIT with Link:
Suffer like G did? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuxlPhks2UY]

 

[Nivag the Owl]

Pretty much anything from Videlectrix. Dungeonman 3 is one of the greatest games of all time. They are meant to be jokes though so I'm not really sure if it's an eligable decision. I'd like to think it is.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

Phantsasy Star Universe by Sonic team, (The MMO part was fun but the main story was horrable)it was fun in a "God lord who made this?" kinda way.

 

[DirkGently]

Me and my friend always got a kick out of playing Kane & Lynch together. While the game was a giant pile of ass, we had a lot of fun taking the piss out of it.

I can't really think of that many B-horror type games, honestly. I don't really just play anything, y'know?

 

[Armored Prayer]

I usually avoid bad games, but when i was younger I bought Simpsons:Road Rage. I thought it would be a good game only to find its a horrible spin off of Crazy Taxi (one of my favorite games of all time.) It only had 6 levels (3 were too small) bad graphics, weak multiplayer, and very low replay value. Eventually i was able to sell it for some other better game. Ever since then I never buy licenced games.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

One of my favourites of all time is Heavy Metal: FAKK 2.

Right from the start you're playing a complete Mary Sue of Julie Strain (Penthouse Pet and "Queen of the B Movies") where she hacks, slashes and shoots through the world of Eden.

There are so many things wrong with this game it hurts.

Mainly, if you've ever heard of Heavy Metal, its a amalgamation of RRRRRock fantasies, that makes Conan look wimpy. This also means that Julie (played by Julie) starts off in a skin tight suit and just loses clothes from there on in.
The first main part of the game consists of looking around, catching squirrels and chatting to the other residents on how peaceful it is on Eden since they banished the EEEEEEEEEvil overlord Tyler to the end of the Universe.

Guess what happens next? (No Cookie)

Tyler's minions include a preacherbot, a stick thin guy made from knives, and bad guys so far detached from reality that your head will swim even trying to understand them. That's before you get to the weapons which include a radioactive shotgun, a freezing sword and a hoover bag that sucks up life points.

Riding on the hand of a giant, you reach the forest where carnivourous plants try to devour you and hordes of jumping gremlins pounce on you as you roam through the craziest landscapes ever until you meet with the strangely Jamacian alien pervert who lets you into the gaping temple of all things female.

After you solve that, Tyler goes "Hahaha, I couldn't get in but you could." and appears in a male bondage gear with a ten foot sword.

Seriously, there is no innuendo in this game. It's absoloutely blatant.

Funny thing is...it's actually quite cool. This is Devil May Cry long before it became popular, with uzi/flaming swords combos galore. And the battle against Tyler is truly Epic. One of the best boss fights I've seen.

And Julie Strain really knows how to use her voice. Every sentence has that soft little purr if she's happy and a frighteningly pained scream when she isn't.

It's one of those games that you feel a little creeped out while someone's watching, but still shows FPS's something new to do.

Want to see how bad it actually is? Take a look [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGTuNlQ2AYM&feature=related]

 

[Ago Iterum]

It was a sandbox GTA style game, that was an utter ripoff, and nothing original. It was so bad that there was like a stupidly minimal variation of citizens in the city, you'd see one guy walking alongside several replica's of himself.

It might have been the getaway... Not sure.

 

[ZeeClone]

Oh... without a shadow of a doubt the Bad Boys 2 game.

I usually push through shitty games just to get to the end and see what the story is like. But the gameplay was so consistently crappy that I couldn't even bring myself to do that.

Epic Fail of a game.

 

[xitel]

Dark Sector. It's all been done before, it was all simple and very cliche...

But it was nice and shiny. Repetitive but rewarding. I should have hated it, but I couldn't. I played 'til the end.

Grah, stole my idea. Yeah, Dark Sector was awesomely bad. And yet, despite that, I couldn't find myself stopping playing it... there's honestly something satisfying about following a power-thrown glaive as it slices through someone. And I will say I really did like the character designs in the game, and I loved the idea of the glaive, but the fact that there was NO story to speak of, and the gameplay was superbly average kinda ruined it.

Of course, I feel I should mention Fracture. Not a bad game all in all, and in fact one of the few that I was looking forward to recently, but it turned out really... sub-average. The main distinguishing mechanic, the terrain deformation, was pretty basic, and by the end I completely forgot about it until it came up in puzzles. Some of the weapons were pretty interesting, and there were one or two original ones, but other than that it was pretty standard fare. Although the Vortex Grenade was always pretty satisfying. On the other hand, it's the opposite of Dark Sector in terms of story. I loved the idea of the story behind the game, even though it didn't play out well and thus was unable to reclaim the substandard gameplay.

 

[Frank_Sinatra_]

As I always say E.T. was the most awesomely bad game I have ever played. So bad its immortalized in history and the Earth.

 

[Theo Samaritan]

Small Soldiers for the PSX. That was so bad my mind melted.

And I actually have a copy of the Atari E.T. Game...

 

[Corven]

I've said it before but it's worth mentioning again, Darkened Skye, I picked it up at a used game store, I was having fun with it until I got my first magical power-up, I went into my inventory to equip it and was surprised to find that it looked eerily like a red skittle complete with a white S in the middle, I chocked it up to mere coincidence, until I got to the cutscene where it explained during the time of peace these magical stones rained from the sky, complete with the iconic rainbow showering skittles on the land from their commercials at the time, at that point It couldn't be a mistake so I looked on the back of the game box and sure enough down in the section where they list all the copyright names was the Skittles logo complete with their catch phrase "taste the rainbow".

I returned the game the next day for a full refund.

 

[Adfest]

Mc Kids for the NES. It was bad. I mean how could a low quality fast food chain based video game be good? Somehow it ended up being one of the best platformers of the NES era.