Games you shouldn't enjoy - but do

[jazzotron]

So tell me of your guilty pleasures. Games that by all rights are shit, and yet you are able to wring some kind of enjoyment out of them for whatever reason.

This is my shame: Gothic 3.

This game is a clusterfuck. Bugged to hell and back, appalling combat, poor translation (English version), terrible optimisation. You will never hear me defending this game from criticism because all criticism is deserved. And yet I have completed repeat play throughs.

Elements I enjoy:

* huge world with lots to do
* beautiful attention to detail
* quirky humour on the occasion

For all its faults inducing me to rage frequently at my monitor, I still sink hours into this title. What can I say - I'm a sucker for punishment.

So what games do you enjoy that, on paper, you really shouldn't?

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Possibly Morrowind. It's certainly not irredeemable, it does a lot of things right, but I like it a lot more than I should - it's probably my favourite game, and I enjoy doing things in it that are manifestly not fun. Just solving fetch quests in it can keep me relatively happy and sedated; I guess everyone has something they can't judge objectively, and Morrowind is definitely mine. It was one of the first real RPGs I ever played, and even before I played it, it introduced me to the world of RPGs, and - perhaps having a more striking effect on me than anything else - the world of modding. I was a naive young child, and just reading through pages and pages of Morrowind Summit, all these fantastic additions people had made - new lands, new creatures, even mundane utility mods, making what sounded like a rich, fantastic experience literally endless and with the promise that I too could join in the fun - my fertile little imagination went wild. Mods, reviews, glancing through walkthroughs and 2003's rough equivalent of LPs (which didn't tend to involve screenshots) all had me giddy with excitement when the (delayed) shipment finally came through the door. It was like nothing I'd ever played or heard of; I loved it, I told my friends, soon they all loved it as well. And hell, they all hated Oblivion to a man and they were pretty bad console kids otherwise, so I must have done something right. I stayed in the Morrowind community a long time, getting deep into the modding world, and altogether spent a hideously embarassing amount of my life on that game.

Anyway, mildly tangential reminiscing aside, yeah. Morrowind was so fucking cool to me as an impressionable 12/13-year-old that, no matter what lame excuses about lore and atmosphere I come up with to defend it, I know it's pretty much just a poor man's Gothic and I still love the shit out of it. It's hard to explain - other games, I know I'm playing through, I know that once I've exhausted all the quests in a town, I'm moving on to the next area. Even Gothic's a bit like that, except with chapters and areas of the island. I recognise that Morrowind's lack of that is probably a flaw more than anything, and given that I felt the same way about Oblivion, it's probably an entirely fabricated distinction... guess the game just feels like home.

Also I kind of liked CoD4. Would have liked it more if every shooter made since (that wasn't a Gears of War clone) hadn't been CoD4.

 

[DefJam101]

Turok games, EVE Online

 

[CrimHead]

Majora's Mask for the N64 and Earthbound for the SNES. They were two of my favorite games growing up and I just can't seem to stop replaying them every few years, despite having matured beyond them.

 

[deuxhero]

Final Fantasy 2 (NES). I think it is how badly the game can be broken that appeals to me.

On the flipside, Fallout is of a type of game I normally enjoy, but the interface is complete shit and makes it unplayable for me.

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO COULD YOU BE ANY MORE OF A CONSOLETARD YOU ARENT SUPPOSED TO LIKE ANY OF THE GAMES LOLLOLOL FAGFACE BRO GO PLAY HALO REACHAROUND

 

[Felix]

Games you shouldn't enjoy

Wat? What's wrong with enjoy something?

 

[BLOBERT]

LOLLOL BRO GO BACKJ TO GAMEFAGS YOU ARENT ALOWWED TO LIKE MAMNY GAMES

 

[BLOBERT]

MINE IS MASTRUBATING THE BIBLE SAYS IT IS WRONG BUT IT FEELS SO RIGHT

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Games I shouldn't enjoy but do according to Codex standards would probably be Oblivion and Fallout 3 for the big ones.

Games I shouldn't enjoy but do to my own standards, MMOs. And it's a weird love/hate relationship because as I'm playing them I keep thinking "God this is boring as shit, I could be playing other games and having a better time" and yet I keep playing the damn things. I played Soul Calibur on a Dreamcast while I was doing Dark Age of Camelot for fuck's sake. Fortunately I've been kicking the habit, and these current free to play MMOs help me keep off the smack. I can take a hit of LotRO for half an hour and remind myself how much I dislike them and then I don't start snorting lines of WoW off a nerd's fat pimply ass.

Edit: And even reading that, I never mentioned enjoying it. And mostly that's true. Even in my longest running MMO (WoW) moments of enjoyment were few and far between, and mostly involved playing with buddies which I could do in other games. Well, could do in other games if the buddies weren't already in the clutches of MMOs and actually played other games.

 

[jazzotron]

Games you shouldn't enjoy

Wat? What's wrong with enjoy something?

I guess I didn't express it clearly, but Multi-headed Cow clarifies:

Games I shouldn't enjoy but do according to Codex standards

***

Morrowind

Thats another of mine - I think I've sunk 100's of hours into that one, traipsing about, exploring every m^2. I had way too much time on my hands back in the day.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Morrowind

 

[Grunker]

Final Fantasy VII maybe. Pirated it when it came out for PC, and liked it.

Also, I fap furiously to the Baldur's Gates, which I think are some of the best games ever made.

Also, I don't think Bioware is a horrible company

 

[Lesifoere]

I can take a hit of LotRO for half an hour and remind myself how much I dislike them and then I don't start snorting lines of WoW off a nerd's fat pimply ass.

LOTRO is enough to cure anybody of MMO itch. That shit is horrible and tedious, it's almost as bad as going back in time to play EverQuest.

 

[denizsi]

I've so badly wanted to play EQ when it came out. Thank god I never did.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Fuck your retarded concept of guilty pleasures.

Oh God, I shouldn't enjoy it, I'm gonna lose cred, nooooooooooooooooo

 

[Grunker]

Fuck your retarded concept of guilty pleasures.

Oh God, I shouldn't enjoy it, I'm gonna lose cred, nooooooooooooooooo

Not so much that (for me at least, since I've always admitted it). It's more about myself; when I play FFVII for instance, it's hard for me to explain why I enjoy it, and I can find 50 things about it I hate.

Therefore = guilty pleasure.

No matter what, I think a little peering into the self-realization pool would be good for the Codex

 

[entertainer]

this is one retarded thread

 

[Topher]

this is one retarded thread

Probably.

I enjoyed Morrowind immensely and I also really enjoy Bioware games the only exceptions being NWN and Dragon Age.

 

[ChristofferC]

All games I've played except for Fallout, Deus Ex and Thief.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Majora's Mask for the N64 and Earthbound for the SNES. They were two of my favorite games growing up and I just can't seem to stop replaying them every few years, despite having matured beyond them.

Majora's Mask is a brilliant game with only a handful of childish trappings. You don't mature beyond that kind of shit any more than you mature beyond Grimm's-style fairytales.

Fuck your retarded concept of guilty pleasures.

Oh God, I shouldn't enjoy it, I'm gonna lose cred, nooooooooooooooooo

It's not a guilty pleasure if the Codex thinks it's bad and you genuinely think it's good, it's a guilty pleasure if you know it's shit but you get an unexplainable enjoyment out of it in a way anyway.

 

[Stereotypical Villain]

I actually liked Prisoner of Ice, and I finished it without updating my LP thread.

This is my shame, now tell me yours.

 

[Trash]

Apparantly a great many games I do like are considered bad by people here. Fuck them.

 

[CrimHead]

Majora's Mask is a brilliant game with only a handful of childish trappings. You don't mature beyond that kind of shit any more than you mature beyond Grimm's-style fairytales.

Woman.

Yeah, I guess you're right. It just seemed like I needed to include it because of the general consensus around here that console games= auto-faggotry.

My opinion is that while there is certainly a larger percentage of good games on PC compared to good games on consoles (I don't think anyone here would dispute that), I still think consoles can produce some pretty amazing stuff.

 

[Freelance Henchman]

Clive Barker's Clive Barker's Jericho, by Clive Barker. It's just fun SHOOTAN TEH MONSTARS using any of the ridiculous characters in the game.