Games You Both Love and Hate - When you just aren't sure how you feel

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

We all have those games where no matter how much we play, our feelings on it aren't very clear. Sometimes we love it, and sometimes we hate it but it's still not definitive in either case.

For me, the perfect example of this is the original Bayonetta. I adore the game's extremely versatile combat and the over-the-top style that Platinum Games is known for. Bayonetta herself is a fun character; not the deepest sure, but she is a joy to watch and play (in more ways than one uh huh huh huh). At the same time however, the game is extremely difficult, but in a very annoying way. Most of the time when I get hit, it's because of some jagoff standing to the side offscreen who just suddenly decides to attack me. It's a little hard to focus on everything as it is in a game as visually busy as Bayonetta, so getting hit from something offscreen is super irritating. Most of my sessions usually end with me rage-quitting because of some cheap bullshit (chapters 3 and 5 are especially bad for this, and the fight in Route 666 in the middle of the road is terrible).

I suppose the common response would be to "git gud," and that is a valid point, especially for a game like Bayonetta. However, I feel that Bayonetta has too much cheap bullshit, especially when you're trying to go for Gold or Platinum and the game arbitrarily hides certain missable fights. And some of the Alfheims, which are also necessary for completion, are fucking awful.

But I guess the game is doing something right; I've already beaten the game a couple of times and I've logged nearly 30 hours into it. I'm playing through it again and I'm discovering more about the combat system and I've been using aerial moves more frequently. It's an odd feeling, because sometimes I walk away from the game hating it but then coming back to it a week later having an absolute blast.

 

[Hell0]

all video games because
1. they rot your brain but, cool colors
2. thats all :^)

 

[Okkervils]

Outlast 1 & 2.
It's ridiculous story-wise but I like the gore and necrophilia. I kinda like the stealth mechanics too but it kinda tries too hard if that makes sense?

When they come out with another I'll still play it though. I kinda feel similarly about Evil Within 1/2 but I enjoyed it still.

I have a love/cringe feeling towards a lot of semi-recent horror titles.

 

[Black Waltz]

Sonic adventure 2
the story's autistic, the gameplays kinda shit, but I still enjoy it for some odd reason

 

[HY 140]

Rayman 1 on the PS1

the graphics and music are fuckin A, but man are the levels so poorly designed at the halfway point, and it pulls a lot of unfair shit you'd see in a Mario World hack, the worst part is you gotta 100% the damn game to even get to the final world and final boss

 

[Ruin]

I love final fantasy tactics (the PS1 original) but it's terribly unbalanced and the rng is bullshit. Persona 3 is another favorite of mine but it's an extremely ugly game graphically even for it's time.

 

[HomeAloneTwo]

Sonic adventure 2

For some reason Sonic Team never quite understood how to make fast+3d+camera work.

Any pokemon does the trick.
On one hand catching cute, colorful friends that bond with you is nice, but on the other, the game is the exact same over and over and battle tower challenges are implemented with gameshark codes, making your newly bonded monsters pretty much useless and underpowered.

 

[Block Me]

I have a special category in my favorite games list for trainwrecks, which are games that are objectively very poorly made but I love in spite of that (or because of it). Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 and Jurassic Park Trespasser are the king and queen of that category. Both are highly ambitious games that do unique, interesting things and had a lot of good ideas but are just so technically inept and poorly executed that they become a spectacle of badness.

Spoiler: Sonic 06

Sonic 06 was meant to be a reboot of the classic franchise - they even had the stones to simply call it Sonic the Hedgehog, as if it's meant to supplant and replace the beloved Genesis/Megadrive original. This game had it all: HD graphics, open world exploration (sort of), nine playable characters, an RPG-esque story, and those delightful object physics that we just couldn't get enough of back in '06. The early trailers and E3 demo were amazing, and the hype was real. What we didn't realize was that behind the scenes, the game was suffering from a troubled production that saw its budget slashed, its development team cut in half, and its release date set in stone despite it falling far behind schedule. So, corners were cut. A whole LOT of corners.

The graphics were HD, sure, but the characters models were laughably stiff and inarticulate and the environments looked barely any better than an average PS2 game. Furthermore, the game was plagued with framerate issues and artistic oversights. There were hub worlds to explore between levels, but the rewards for doing so were disappointing (mostly just tedious side missions) and there was little spectacle to be seen. There were indeed nine playable characters, but only Sonic and the other two hedgehogs had any real presence; the rest were mostly just half-baked distractions from the high-speed platforming and combat offering by the leads. The story was poorly written, convoluted nonsense featuring time travel shenanigans and a romance between Sonic and a human woman that got downright gag-worthy at points. The physics, perhaps the most vaunted feature of the game, were neat at first but soon proved to be a hindrance. Silver, the new hedgehog, could only attack enemies by throwing physics objects at them, and his attacks would sometimes fail thanks to the objects getting caught on the environment or on other objects. Imagine playing through Half-life 2's Ravenholm armed only with a gravity gun that has a 20% chance of disintegrating the object instead of launching it - that's the experience of playing as Silver in a nutshell.

All of that sounds absolutely excruciating, but somehow this game achieves just the right mix of incompetence and ambition with an occasional dash of actual brilliance to become more than the sum of its parts. I have played through Sonic 06 from start to finish, with all three hedgehogs, twice. Few others have such a knack for presenting really interesting ideas and scenarios and then completely failing to execute them with any degree of competency. The idea of a Sonic game with realistic graphics, open world gameplay, and complex physics is really cool, and Super Mario Odyssey did basically the same thing eleven years later with vastly better results. Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 isn't just a garden variety bad game, it's a good game that was dropped on its head as a baby and now it don't think good. Suffice to say, I love this game.

Spoiler: Trespasser

Trespasser is easily one of the most ambitious games ever made. Using the beloved Jurassic Park IP as a launching point, it was meant to be an extravagant first-person thrill ride showcasing graphics technology that was unheard of in the year 1998. At the time, Quake 2 and Unreal were the cutting edge, and the original Half-life had yet to hit the market. The time was ripe for Dreamworks Interactive to make their mark on the PC gaming scene by revolutionizing 3D game development. Trespasser was going to feature high resolution graphics that could scale from low to high detail in order to reduce strain on the processor, allowing even low-end machines to run it smoothly, as well as procedurally generated animation that would us AI routines to manipulate the dinosaur enemies, making them look and act terrifyingly realistic. More importantly, Trespasser had physics; object such as guns, doors, boxes, and other interactive paraphernalia could be moved freely, and they had weight and mass.

This all sounded pretty amazing at the time, but it turns out the dev team's ambitions far outstripped both the capabilities of current consumer PC hardware and their own programming ability. In their devotion to making the game world seem realistic, they decided to make some very unique changes to the typical FPS interface. Rather than have a disembodied hand hold a gun in front of the player's view, the arm and hand of Trespasser's protagonist, Anne, is a fully modeled 3D object which can be manipulated by the player at both the shoulder and the wrist. To grab an item, you must reach out her arm in the item's direction and press the grab button - better make sure her wrist is orientated correctly or she might miss. Aiming is accomplished through the same clunky system, as is the use of every other item. The game's devotion to realism is downright comical; you can't just pick up a heavy object and carry it to where you need it, you must drag it there with your floppy 3D hand and hope it doesn't snag on the environment or Anne will drop it and you'll have to perform the hilarious hand-item rendezvous all over again.

The physics themselves, while certainly impressive for 1998, have loads of quirks. Objects have a strange tendency to spawn an inch or two above the floor, only to clatter to the ground once Anne touches them. If two objects collide in a way that causes them to become wedged, the resulting physics calculations will crash the game. Since the game is absolutely rife with physics-based puzzles and combat, this can happen quite easily. Even something as innocuous as dragging a box through a doorway or throwing a rock at a raptor can cause a crash. The dinos' movements are also controlled by the physics, and the results are downright comical; they falter and flop around like muppets controlled by a drunk puppeteer. Furthermore, the physics calculations that the game performs constantly, even for basic actions like walking, are incredibly bloated and put such a strain on the CPU that even modern computers have difficulty running it. A typical PC in 1998 was nowhere near beefy enough to run Trespasser at a playable speed.

For all of it's baffling flaws, however, Trespasser has many virtues. It was ahead of its time in many ways, particularly in terms of presentation. The story is delivered through voice-overs that trigger as the player explores the environment, a narrative device that is now a cliché in the indie gaming scene. Anne is voiced by Minnie Driver, and her observations of the dino-infested island she is stuck on are supplemented by anecdotes from Sir Richard Attenborough, who played John Hammond in the original Jurassic Park. The environments themselves are enormous and loaded with detail, and there are plenty of easter eggs for curious players to discover, including some tantalizing leftovers from early prototype versions of the game. It's plain to see that the developers really wanted Trespasser to be something special, and it was, but for all the wrong reasons. Although its technical difficulties give it a steep learning curve, once I wrapped my mind around its eccentricities I had a great time with it. Trespasser exists now as a derelict monument to failed ambition, and it's beautiful.

 

[Street Cannon Johnny]

Payday 2 is a disgusting train-wreck that I detest with all the decisions that were made for it. Yet I sheepishly install and play it every once in a blue moon.

 

[aFairlyOddFaggot]

Sonic adventure 2
the story's autistic, the gameplays kinda shit, but I still enjoy it for some odd reason

it's because of the chao, that's the best part of any sonic adventure game.

though speaking of sonic, a game i love and hate is knuckles chaotix. it has no doubt in my mind, the best soundtrack/presentation in any Sega game ... but the game is boring as FUCK.

 

[Draza]

Sonic the Hedgedog: Game was glitchy as hell, but has good music and somewhat decent story to back it up.

 

[aFairlyOddFaggot]

i like how 4/12 of the post so far are about sonic games.

 

[Annie Housewine]

Chess.
It's psychological torture for hours.
But one cannot live without it.

 

[PantsFreeZone]

Chutes and Ladders because sometimes you get to climb up a level but other times you slide all the way back down.

 

[Nien Nunb]

Bioshock Infinite.

Swinging around on the rails, shooting the shit out of everyone and everything, and also hearing people use the hard r is really fun, but then you play Burial at Sea which was so poorly written I'm pretty sure it's the actual reason Irrational Games shut down.

 

[NOT Sword Fighter Super]

Mousetrap.

Don't get me wrong, it's fun to set the trap off, but setting it up takes forever and you're fucked if you lose a single piece.

 

[AssRock]

I don't think I've ever finished a game of Monopoly without someone ragequitting.

 

[Morbility]

Mass Effect Andromeda.

It was a glitchy, ugly mess when I got it. Hated those bugged out quests, awful facial animations and cringy backstories/reasonings some of the characters had. I especially hated Cora.

However, I did end up having fun when I played it and the combat mechanics are interesting enough to keep me engaged for a little bit before I fall asleep in my chair from boredom.

 

[Dr. Kaufman]

Ghosts N Goblins. Great gameplay, great music, and a great sense of accomplishment, but you have to go through a lot of pain to get to the end.

 

[Desire Lines]

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is one of my favourite RPG's of all time, but it's clunky as shit and demands a basic fan patch not to break. And the sewers. FUCK THE SEWERS.