Your favorite games to hate-play

[lacktheknack]

I gotta tell y'all something.

I hate Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.

I. HAAAAAAAAAATE. Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.

Tomb Raider III is one of my favorite games ever. I love Legend, IV, and the 2013 reboots. All of the games are pretty dang good by my reckoning... except AoD. I HAAAAAAATE AoD.

And so, when I found it on gog.com, you better believe I bought that puppy in an instant and binged the hell out of it. It's just so bad, I can't put it down! D:

And now I'm recording it for LP purposes. Because I hate it THAT much.

Does anyone else have a game like that? One you cannot stand, and you play it repeatedly anyways? Whether it's got an addictive quality, is entertainingly bad, or just because you're not right in the head, inquiring minds want to know.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

MOBAs would be the only thing that comes to mind.

I've slowly come to despise everything about them, but it is admittedly satisfying in a cathartic kind of way to watch just how fast a team will usually disintegrate into a filthy war of innuendos, screaming and blame-hurling. Like society in miniature. After the first dozen deaths it's usually time to bring out the popcorn.

 

[hermes]

I never played something because I hated it. I have played things that I ended up hating, but never actively tried to play something after I realized that I hated it.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Like Hate hate? HATE HATE?

Only have a few, so I'll keep is uncontroverstial. FTL: Faster Than Light. What a miserable time-sink of a game. And unlike better Rouge like games like Binding of Isaac, the playthroughs can be hours and hours long only to realize you're absolutely outgunned by the final boss and never stood a chance.
So much rage quit.

 

[Evonisia]

"Modern Warfare 3" - this monstrous mess of ideas and misdirection culminating in a sewer pipe filled with fire, brimstone and children's souls - and I love to hate it, and I love to watch it's baffling nature. I love it, dammit.

When the Master Chief Collection came out I bothered to replay "Halo 4" - a game which triggers more hatred in me than any other game - so I guess that counts as well. I don't think it's a coincidence that it was only one of the four games in the collection to crash either, like the game could detect how much I loathed it and punished me rightly so. I don't even hate-love it like I do MW3, it was just the kind of bad I had to re-experience.

 

[CaitSeith]

Metroid: Other M. Putting Samus' personality portrayal complains aside; it still has big flaws in the narrative that affects gameplay: fire proof functionality activated only at the end of the fire level for no reason, components that help traversal are authorized (activated) only under arbitrary circumstances, and it has the second worst ending (with the most dissatisfying final boss encounter) I have ever played.

But still, I have replayed more than twice.

 

[MCerberus]

Hearthstone.

Oh boy, thanks game. I dumped all those 5 mana cards because I wanted stuff in the 6-7 range, how did you know.
Of course the priest top-decked that entomb.
That guy that didn't need to replace any cards got the perfect combo to kill me in 4 turns. Glad I didn't get any minions.
Oh boy, lost to another Legendary I never have enough luck to get or dust to craft.
Evolve turned my entire 8 stack of minions into all doomsayers.

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

In the sense that i forget how crap it is, convince myself after some absence and bordem that maybe it wasn't too bad, redownload it, play it for 10 minutes before remembering where all that hate came from, quit the game then delete it to begin the next cycle? A couple.

The Evil Within, its' flaws are so frustrating, but i tend to forget them and a curiosity to see how it ends always creeps up after a while. Then i play it, swear at its' ridiculous design choices and stiff, buggy gameplay and destroy the file in a red mist of bitter rememberance.

GTA online. Ugh! "Maybe it improved with time" says stupid me. Or maybe it just gained higher levelled twats, says cynical, yet wiser me.

Broken Age. Ummm...I have no defense here.

But if i know i hate a game, it won't be played. That would be kind of strange, unless it's your job. People are into all sorts though, it may just be a gaming equivalent of BDSM.

 

[SKBPinkie]

I never played something because I hated it. I have played things that I ended up hating, but never actively tried to play something after I realized that I hated it.

Same here.

There's barely enough time for entertainment in general. Spending it on something I don't like makes no sense.

 

[Nazulu]

Yeah, I replayed SSB Brawl a couple of times with friends for the fun of it... and so they can see how much I hate the game.
They get a laugh, and I find out it's still the horrendous shit that made me stop being a Nintendo fanboy.

 

[Eliam_Dar]

I have a copy of Lair, that I play from time to time. Does that count?
I don't "hate" the game itself, I hate what it is compared what it could have been.

 

[Sonmi]

Like Hate hate? HATE HATE?

Only have a few, so I'll keep is uncontroverstial. FTL: Faster Than Light. What a miserable time-sink of a game. And unlike better Rouge like games like Binding of Isaac, the playthroughs can be hours and hours long only to realize you're absolutely outgunned by the final boss and never stood a chance.
So much rage quit.

My opinion here is pretty much the complete reverse from yours.

Binding of Isaac, because of how miserable and repetitive playthroughs can be. You'll either end up way too powerful by the end of your run, or way underpowered due to having been hamstrung by a shitty power-up (or having missed out on a power-up due to the shitty one spawning). I feel like you can always make it work in FTL, in comparison. Sure, the Rebel Flagship might be extremely challenging to bad runs, but it's never impossible unless you've purposely raced to the end, or have had terrible, terrible luck.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Binding of Isacc can be very frustrating and obvious in how well you're doing from an early point, but its so easy to die and the runs are so quick that I feel it balances out really well compared to FTL.

Like I've had runs in FTL where I thought it was doing great! Good shields, full crew at decent levels, missiles, drones, lasers, the works. Only to get absolutely curb stomped by the Flagship in phase 2.
Whereas in Binding of Isaac if all I got is incontinence and a sad puppy by the 3 map I know which was the wind is blowing.

 

[Dalisclock]

"Modern Warfare 3" - this monstrous mess of ideas and misdirection culminating in a sewer pipe filled with fire, brimstone and children's souls - and I love to hate it, and I love to watch it's baffling nature. I love it, dammit.

MW3 feels like part of an excellent game mixed with part of a terrible game, and it's jarring how they are bound together by a plot that makes next to no sense at all(even by CoD standards).

I mean, sure, MW2 had issues but it kind of all sort of gelled in that FPS plot sort of way, and even the missions that didn't really make sense were still fun to play(the Gulag, the Oil Rig). MW3 is just a mess where delicious chocolates sit next to stinky turds because reasons.

 

[Sonmi]

SNIP

Binding of Isacc can be very frustrating and obvious in how well you're doing from an early point, but its so easy to die and the runs are so quick that I feel it balances out really well compared to FTL.

Like I've had runs in FTL where I thought it was doing great! Good shields, full crew at decent levels, missiles, drones, lasers, the works. Only to get absolutely curb stomped by the Flagship in phase 2.
Whereas in Binding of Isaac if all I got is incontinence and a sad puppy by the 3 map I know which was the wind is blowing.

I don't know, man, while I agree that it's easier to evaluate how well you are doing in Isaac, I feel like you can always do "good" in FTL as long as you prioritize the right, defensive stuff. As long as you have maxed shields and powerful engines, you should have a chance against the flagship. Get a cloaking device, and the fight becomes a joke. Get yourself a teleporter, and you can now disable the flagship's main offensive capabilities at any difficulty on the easier difficulties.

Phase 2's overwhelming drone power surge is sure to tear you a new one if you haven't upgraded your defences properly though, that I very much agree. You don't have standing chance then. Luckily, most ships start with shields, and all have engines, so you can limit the lethality of phase 2 pretty early on.

 

[Harlemura]

I used to go back to Street Fighter IV whenever I was getting annoyed with other fighting games, because remembering why Street Fighter isn't fun quickly reminds me how much I prefer almost all other fighters.
Like, Skullgirls can get pretty annoying with how you can lose just by being cornered because every 20-second-long combo ends in a reset, but at least stuff is actually happening. I'd much rather face a Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 touch of death combo than have to fight a Balrog or Honda that just sits there, crouched, for like half the round, just waiting to stuff my attempts to get in. God it was dull.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I guess my experience with Two Worlds kind of fits this.

The dialog is so hilariously bad and poorly delivered that it ends up being enjoyable.
The combat is ridiculously broken and allows for you to essentially become a god among mere mortals. It becomes fun to run around the world shooting green death lasers from the sky and one-shotting anything that dare get near you. I once murdered an entire city and then resurrected everyone because of a character I needed to complete a quest. Because of this, that entire city fights for me if I lure enemies closer.

It's so bad that it becomes fun to be a god in a dysfunctional, weird talking world.

 

[shteev]

I'm not quite sure what hate play means, but 2 games spring to mind:

Electronic Super Joy, which I loved the early levels of and I really like the style and the music but I'm clearly not going to get to the end of cos it's so goddamn hard.

Magic Puzzle Quest, which is ludicrously unbalanced and with every passing week devolves further and further into pay to win nonsense but I'm invested in it now and I quite like playing Bejewelled.

 

[Fat Hippo]

I guess my experience with Two Worlds kind of fits this.

The dialog is so hilariously bad and poorly delivered that it ends up being enjoyable.
The combat is ridiculously broken and allows for you to essentially become a god among mere mortals. It becomes fun to run around the world shooting green death lasers from the sky and one-shotting anything that dare get near you. I once murdered an entire city and then resurrected everyone because of a character I needed to complete a quest. Because of this, that entire city fights for me if I lure enemies closer.

It's so bad that it becomes fun to be a god in a dysfunctional, weird talking world.

You should watch the 2 minute speedrun from the latest Summer Games Done Quick which displays just how wonderfully broken that game is.