Poorly rated games you like
Carmageddon 64: it's unique, looks different, plays different. It is not trying to be a Mario Kart clone or anything like that. Bad controls and confusing track layout but it has its charm
Cruisn USA: it got bad scores but I dont see what the problem was. Perhaps my favorite point to point racer after OutRun 1986
Revolution X (Arcade/SNES/Genesis/Playstation/Saturn/PC): I never even was that big of an Aerosmith fan. I just love it's on-rails shooter goodness. For the time, I never experienced anything else with so many destructible pieces of the environment. Of course the arcade version itself is a masterpiece, but the poorly reviewed home versions have a special place in my heart. I had the SNES version back in the day and it was a ton of fun. I also traded a guy from Brazil my original Gran Turismo PlayStation game (I already had GT2) for a CIB PC version of Revolution X. I don't care what people say, I like it.
I loved Driv3r for several years after it came out. I got it (the PS2 version) in June 2004 and loved it. I got GTA 3, Vice City, and San Andreas (also for PS2) in May 2006 but still preferred Driv3r over all three. Something about a car automatically exploding when it flipped just didn't sit right with me, I knew that was highly unrealistic and cheap even at 13. I loved Driv3r's excellent (for the time) damage modeling and the good vehicle simulation for the time. Okay, the shooting segments were tacked on and the game's story mode was short and shallow, but it was a game where you could just mess around with cars, sort of like Driver 1 and 2. A lot of people say that Driv3r is buggy and glitchy, yes there were a number of glitches but 95% of the time the game ran perfectly, at least my copy.
Once I got GTA V for Xbox 360 on May 13, 2008, my interest in Driv3r quickly faded, but amazing that such a mediocre rated game by the critics could give me four years of enjoyment and it took a game from the next generation to unseat it.
I also found SimCity Societies to be rather enjoyable, for a while, as a totally different game from SimCity 4 (which I also love so much, I still play it to this day, 16 years after it came out). A lot of people said it was watered-down, that it was far worse than SimCity 4, but I liked it for what it was. That is, until my copy crapped out on me. Not all at once, it just stopped working right and started crashing a lot. It ran great in 2008-2009 but ran like crap on the same exact computer by 2011.
Real collectors drive Hondas, Toyotas, Chevys, Fords, etc... not Rolls Royces.
Advance Guardian Heroes
It got mediocre ratings but more to the point it was widely maligned by Guardian Heroes fans as not being the sequel they wanted.
I feel it has a tighter gameplay and isn't so convoluted as the original. It's one of my favorite GBA games, just really fun to play.
I still defend Club Drive on the Atari Jaguar. It was crapped on for having low-count unshaded polygon environments, but I didn't care, it was great to have free-roaming 3D levels I could drive around in.
I will happily play practically anything on the Jaguar; I bought one during the test-market phase in 1993 and stuck with it as my main games machine all the way 'til the end. Even games like the Highlander CD game that was brutally reviewed by magazines I kept playing until I finished them. I'm just an Atari fan I guess.
Some of my favorites that people seem to widely dislike things about include:
Beyond the Beyond - PS1 (they say the story is too generic and don't like having to grind so much to level up... well I think this is like a Dragon Warrior except on PS1 and with better graphics than NES or early SNES RPGs. Good enough for me. There's other choices on the system I get it, but I had this one first. Nothing but good nostalgia for me.)
Dragon Ball Z: Ultimate Battle 22 -PS1 (they don't like how slow the movements are compared to other fighters. I get that but I like how in this one you can see the whole arena unlike the Butoden series where you go off in this split screen boxed in area when you fly. It's disorienting. Plus the UB22 build up mode is fun. I can't think of any fighting games older than this that had a build up mode. It was like adding RPG elements to a fighting game except it wasn't measured in points. Still, I can see why some don't have patience for the loading times.)
Big Nose the Caveman - NES (they say that it's just a generic bland looking platformer. Sure they do reuse a lot of the backgrounds and don't have very many level tropes, but I find the music catchy. You also have to think of this as a horizontal scrolling shooter when it comes to the powerups. If you get hit and lose them, it may be difficult to get your full arsenal back. But like a shooter, I've been able to memorize the muscle memory required to get a perfect run on this game. I think this is one of the best unlicensed NES games. Its sequel Big Nose Freaks Out does kind of suck though - no level music, smaller sprites, weird skateboard physics. Yawn.)
Sonic 3D Blast - Genesis, Saturn, PC (people don't like it just because it's not just a straightforward run through like the four main Sonic games. Myself, I don't mind the Flicky hunting and level exploring. The game has enough core elements to make it a main entry Sonic game in my book. Ring collecting, running and jumping, robot smashing, 50 ring to enter Special Stages with Chaos Emeralds, boss fights with Dr. Robotnik in a variety of weapon attachments, good game music in either version.
Sonic Blast - Game Gear (they say ugly graphics... I didn't hear them complain about Mortal Kombat or Donkey Kong Land)
Most of the ones I like that are more low rated are on more recent consoles, like Fragile Dreams on Wii, Monster Rancher 3 on PS2, or Digimon World 4 on Gamecube.
The only older game I can really think of liking that isn't highly rated was honestly also Link: Faces of Evil. I played it recently with a friend, and honestly? We had a blast. The controls were clunky, the game is damn weird, and it plays like an adventure game more than a Zelda, but once you know what's going on, it's actually quite fun. I'm sure it does help that I'm a big Zelda fan, though. All I know is, I expected to hate it but ended up beating it. I also will probably end up beating the second game at some point.
Edit: I just realized I've also been a fan of the licensed Beyblade games, mostly just due to nostalgia from growing up with the series as a kid. The ones I've played most were the two on GBA and the GC game. I guess the GBA games might count here? Ones a decent isometric maze collectathon game that's actually pretty great. The other is a bad JRPG, lol.
Last edited by pichuscute; 06-01-2019 at 03:39 PM.
goldenband (06-02-2019)
Oh, man, that makes me think of the Beyblade game I recently beat on PlayStation. It was terrible, but at least it was entertaining.
The announcer was so amazingiy mush-mouthed and incongruous! "What a weak launch! Well! Well! Well! (pause) Well! Unbelievable! What's happening here?! Wow! Wow! Wow!"
Haha. I briefly had the PS1 game as a kid, but didn't understand it so ended up getting rid of it. I do believe they use some of that same announcer in the Gamecube game, though. And it's just about as weird there, too. Gotta pick that one back up at some point... since I'm getting a bit of a collection going (will probably end up with all the Beyblade games eventually lol).Originally Posted by goldenband
I'm a 3DO fan so most of the games I enjoy on there aren't considered good, save a few obvious key titles.
I like Seicross on NES.
Romance of the 3 kingdoms 2 on any platform (SNES being the one I owned and played the most)
Destiny of an Emperor on NES
<---- Mighty Bomb Jack
.... come to think of it, it's not so much that these games are considered bad rather they get 0 recognition as good titles.
I was about to say, "Aren't Destiny of an Emperor and Romance of the Three Kingdoms II considered good games?" I could see the latter being seen as inferior to the later installments (I don't remember III and I never played IV at all, but I recall after that the series got so complicated it was unplayable)
Also I just found out that apparently reviewers used to hate the Splatterhouse games. What the hell?
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