What games have been critically slammed but you really like?

[agbulls]

I was talking to a friend the other day about what games we choose to buy, and why we select those particular titles. Of course, average review scores often come up in these types of conversations. We often reference gamerankings.com and how we're hyped for whatever is the "next big thing."

However, we then started talking about the games that we bought and enjoyed REGARDLESS of them being critical punching bags. I'm talking games with scores of 6 or less that we've still enjoyed. Is it the liscense? Does the game have new ideas that didn't totally come to fruition but are still cool and fun? Or, are reviews in general just a bunch of bullshit and you ALWAYS have to make up your own mind?

Here are a few games I've enjoyed with their bottom feeding terd sucking average from gamerankings:

Astro Boy PS2 -- 56.7%

I really like this game and I'm not ashamed to shout it out loud. It looks just like the new cartoon series, has a ton of upgradable moves and the rocking Astro Boy battle music and theme. Everyone loves to hate Sonic Team -- who does make their fair share of crap -- and never gave this game a chance. The flying controls are also great. Was it basic? Sure. But a hell of a lot of fun if you love the character.

Superman Returns 360 -- 54.3%

Hands down the best Superman game to date with really sharp flying controls. Hold down the R button and you really feel like you're "cooking." The move set is huge, although the mission variety is sorely lacking. Great implementation of large scale battles -- the giant Braniac battle is a blast throwing giant trucks. The game never experiences slowdown too---which is worth noting due to the sheer size of the city and the open-world genre. A downloadable pack via XB Live could make this game incredible. No joke.

Advent Rising XB -- 67.4%

I never had a chance to play the PC version, but still really like this game. The story was original, the character design totally feels like Gatchaman (which is cool) and the flick controls work better than spoke of in reviews. SO many people slammed the elongated character designs in Advent Rising -- even when it was obvious they were going for a highly stylized Japanese manga look. Oh well, its not for everyone. Slowdown is nasty at times (although fixed on the PC from what I hear) but does not hurt the basic gameplay.

Think of a 3rd person action game + Superhero game + Halo + Psi-Ops+ Star Wars with a more interesting story (Orson Scott Card). That's Advent Rising.

At least that's what the developers we're going for. It's just too bad the game is so full of bugs (sound + music glitches abound) as this was too much to get past reviewers. Apparently the dev team was tiny and had an even smaller bugdet while obviously having HUGE dreams for a monster trilogy. With its terrible sales, its just never going to happen.

What are your guys' favorites that have been critically shit on? This could be a bargain hunting weekend...

[roushimsx]

Headhunter: Redemption -- 64%

I found it to be an excellent third person action game with a nice aiming system and some pretty darn neat level designs. I especially loved the Running Man-esque sections where you're stuck in a gameshow. For whatever reasons, critics found it to be generally average to substandard, which really irked me. Hell, I liked it more than the first game.

ChoroQ -- 56%

ChoroQ was absolutely pure fun in racing form. Most reviewers never bothered to get past the first few races, so all they saw was a bunch of cutsey cars chatting and then a painfully slow race with a poorly controlling car. Anyone that stuck with it for a half hour or more experienced some excellent, imaginative and fun tracks with a wide assortment of car parts to spice things up. No, the "overworld" was not as well done as Road Trip and the racing grids were smaller, but overall it was still a superior experience and a brutally underrated/overlooked/unfairly-panned game. At least, I think so anyway.

[djsquarewave]

Astro Boy PS2 -- 56.7%

I suspect the GBA game had something to do with this.

I was going to say God Hand (brutally difficult, over-the-top bizarre, ridiculously old school beat'em'up from Clover Studio) because the only review I'd read was IGN's 3/10 blastfest...but apparently it's got a 75% on Gamerankings so I dunno.

Ghost in the Shell PS2 -- 65.8%
It's like Bullet Witch only good! Once you get used to the controls, it's extremely satisfying to even just move around in this game, not to mention hacking into enemy soldiers and taking out all their buddies without so much as letting yourself be seen.

WinBack 2: Project Poseidon -- 49.1%
This is about as uncohesive as a game can get. Sure, there's a lot of samey corridors, and it's more or less entirely made up of shoot-from-cover scenarios, and the music is really bizarre for the setting, and the voice acting is pretty bad, and...well...it's not a very good game. But I liked it nonetheless, and actually finished it. The last couple areas are actually rather cool, particularly the airport.

[bangtango]

I can only think of two. Blowout for Gamecube and Rogue Ops for XBox. Every review I've read on those two said they were very generic and do nothing new in their genres. Personally, I don't mind. I don't know about anyone else but I'd rather play games that are slightly generic than games that are actually poorly executed, riddled with bugs and/or unplayable.

[Slate]

The Great Escape and Sewer Shark.

[Snapple]

Saying "hands down the best Superman game to date" doesn't exactly mean much. Supe hasn't exactly set the bar high. I get what you're saying though.

There are probably some games I love that have been critically panned. I have to think about it though.

[Damaniel]

The first one I thought of was:

- The Nightmare of Druaga (PS2) - 56%

I don't think that any reviewer was very enthusiastic about it. In fact, I don't think any mainstream reviewer gave it more than a 7 out of 10, and some of them gave it much less. However, if you're a fan of challenging turn-based Roguelikes, then you can't go wrong with it. At the time I picked it up, I had stopped playing games for a while, since nothing could keep my attention for more than an hour or so anyway. Between this game and Ys: The Ark of Napishtim (which I got at about the same time), my temporary disinterest in gaming magically went away.

[bazariah]

ring of red on ps2 got low scores of in the fifties somewhere in the uk magazine press, but i realy enjoyed it

[Kitsune Sniper]

Dr. Sudoku (GBA). This game is so cool I even wrote up an Amazon.com review for this. I can't understand why people gave it a score in the 65-75% range.

[shopkins]

Catwoman for Xbox, 49% on Gamerankings. Everyone slammed this for being associated with a bad movie and for being weird, but once I got into it I found a neat Prince of Persia Clone with some interesting combat ideas. It's not the greatest game ever and it could have frustrating objectives at times, including one multi-level climbing room and some places where you have no clue what to destroy to move on, and it has a horrid story, but overall it was a fun experience. I wonder if people would have been happier if the game was a generic side scrolling beat-em up that didn't try something different.

[E Nice]

Battle Arena Toshinden URA - SAT - 56%

This game always gets panned and none of the improvements over Toshinden 2 are ever mentioned. The life bars are bigger, so fights aren't as short as Tsd2. The characters have better animation rather than being jerking blocks. They say this game is 60fps? I don't know if that's true or not though. The only other Toshinden game to my knowledge that had that was Toshinden 3 but it was an option which activated removed the game textures. It even has a mode similar to Soul Calibur's Weapon Master Mode, before Soul Blade came out. However this was a hidden mode and there was nothing to be gained by winning fights under the specific conditions but it did boost the difficulty. There were two hidden menus that added additional features to the game, changes to Sofia's stage lighting, transparency, invisible walls, gravity pull and such. A final quirk was if you jump and then repeatedly press taunt in mid-air fast enough most characters will be able to fly.

D-Xhird - SAT - 14%

This game is always severly slammed. It has flaws, as the above game, but the good is almost never mentioned. I think this is one the Saturn's more graphically impressive games, especially for a 3D fighting game. Several stages were very impressive looking considering it was the Saturn, Izanagi's stage is a case in point. There is weapon trailing better than Last Bronx. There is lots of different types of transparency used, for backgrounds, walls, shadows, stage effects, even Karen's skirt (via code). The music is actually pretty good, albeit extremely short. This has Eiji Shinjo's best music theme since Toshinden 1. The character Boy could turn into his alter ego in a match under a certain condition, which would give him a bit of an altered handling. This game also added the ability to attack an enemies flank with a side attack to get around the constant blocking when you try to circle an opponent. You were able to do attacks off the wall, though Toshinden 3 did this as well but differently. If you fell out of the ring you could air jump back in, so long as you didn't fall below a point of no return. Weapons could break if they take too much damage, which left you with limited bare handed moves. You also had a defense shield that protected you from physical attacks, not projectiles, that acted like a combo breaker that knocked your opponent away. There was also some sort of frenzy mode you could activate that would make you move very fast, so you could combo any hit but you had to connect with the last hit or risk being left open to attack due to the long recovery if you miss.

[BHvrd]

Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon - N64


I loved this game on the N64! One of the few I beat and loved every minute of it. Critics rated like 5-7 in general, I feel the game was a definite 9 just for the sheer amount of fun.

Someone else said "The Great Escape", I think i'm confusing that game with another game where you escaped from prison, and went under buildings and listened to conversations, etc, that game was better than rated, can't remember the name though. Was it The Great Escape? I dunno I think it was called something else. It was on Xbox.

Good topic btw.

[Ze_ro]

Wild Metal (DC) -- 53.5%

I've always been a fan of "tank" games, and this one was probably my favorite. The physics in the game are a little wonky, but exploiting them is part of what makes this game so fun in my opinion. The enemies are pretty varied, and have their own methods of attacking you (some of them will ram you as their own way of exploiting the physics), and the levels are quite large and well done in my opinion. I ended up playing this game long into the night, always telling myself "Okay, just ONE more mission...", which always seems like the hallmark of a great game to me.

--Zero

[Slate]

Someone else said "The Great Escape", I think i'm confusing that game with another game where you escaped from prison, and went under buildings and listened to conversations, etc, that game was better than rated, can't remember the name though. Was it The Great Escape? I dunno I think it was called something else. It was on Xbox.

Good topic btw.

I meant the game based on the movie. When I checked on gamefly, It was rated 5 out of 10 stars.

[skylark]

Grabbed by the Ghoulies - Xbox
I actually think that this is a really good game. Instead of pointing in the direction of an attack and pressing X, you just pointed in direction. It's simplified and ingenious. I loved the graphics, the setting, and the variety of things you could use as weapons. Sound was good too.

Chibi Robo - Gamecube
This is a great game. It made me feel good every time I played it.

@BHvrd: Are you thinking of Prisoner of War?

[BHvrd]

Grabbed by the Ghoulies - Xbox
I actually think that this is a really good game. Instead of pointing in the direction of an attack and pressing X, you just pointed in direction. It's simplified and ingenious. I loved the graphics, the setting, and the variety of things you could use as weapons. Sound was good too.

Chibi Robo - Gamecube
This is a great game. It made me feel good every time I played it.

@BHvrd: Are you thinking of Prisoner of War?

Yeah Prisoner of War. Liked that one myself.

[Push Upstairs]

Predator: Concrete Jungle I admit I still don't like the idea of having a set "level" to roam around in as opposed to free roaming an entire city. But this game did have some pretty good "Predator" moments and that is really all that mattered. It's a shame is has no replay value though.

Bonus points for not tying itself in anyway with the "Aliens vs Predator" movie.

[mEgAsHoT]

Some that come to mind for me:

Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller- Xbox

This game was slightly slammed due to the fact that it was "more of the same" or it "was more like a collection of Crazy Taxi games than a new game." Or maybe they were sick of Sega? Anyways, this is the underrated, awesome sequel to Crazy Taxi 2. Too bad Sega didn't follow this one up with Crazy Taxi 4. I LOVE this game! It's quite possibly the best in the entire series of Crazy Taxi games. Quick gameplay, cool cabbies, and a great soundtrack. If you like Crazy Taxi, then by all means get this game. The controls take a little bit of getting used to, but after that, it's great.

Smashing Drive- Arcade, Xbox

I don't know what the big deal was with critics slamming this game. Sure, it may look like a poor Crazy Taxi knock-off, but it sure did had its moments. The shortcuts in this game are crazy (no pun intended). From going up a skyscraper to going through a theater, the shortcuts were crazy. Sure there wasn't a whole lot of modes (it's an arcade game, remember?), but it was fun for quick bursts, like Crazy Taxi. My brother and I are probably the only people who actually enjoyed this game to an extent.

Crusin USA- Nintendo 64

While the arcade version was met with great reviews, the N64 version quickly got butchered by critics. They said that the pop-up was horrible, the sound wasn't up to par, and the game just sucked. Well, I loved the fast paced racing in this game. It is pretty much a direct port of the arcade original. I found no noticable flaws in the gameplay that would warrant such poor reviews from video game critics for this version. The controls are a little sensitive, but once you get used to it, it's an easy game to play. Maybe the reviewers just sucked at the game?

[diskoboy]

Full Auto - Xbox 360.

I'm sorry, I thought Sega did a great job with Full Auto. There were a few graphical hiccups, but the gameplay was intense and the destruction was so much fun!

I wish that Sega didn't abandon its small fanbase and put the sequel on the PS3. Boy, that sounds familiar...

[retroman]

Shenmue 1 and 2 for the Dreamcast.....Loved em, and am still hopeful that a 3rd one will come out. But the games scored mixed reviews.