What games have been critically slammed but you really like?

[Push Upstairs]

Super Off Road The Baja - For some reason I love playing this game while listening to ACDC's Song Jailbreak!

I played this game via emulation and I always played it listening to the heavier songs on Smashing Pumpkins "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness".

Much more fun than the original. Sometimes I'd give myself infinite nitro and see how far i'd get using only the nitro before i trashed my truck.

[Neil Koch]

I really like the Driver series, and those (especially part 3) were savaged in reviews.

[Rob2600]

I remember enjoying several Nintendo 64 games that I thought were slightly underrated:

Cruis'n World (6.6 on gamestats.com, 62.8% on gamerankings.com)

International Track & Field (6.6 on gamestats.com, 64% on gamerankings.com)

Paperboy (6.7 on gamestats.com, 67.7% on gamerankings.com)

Waialae Country Club: True Golf Classics (6.3 on gamestats.com, 63.4% on gamerankings.com)

War Gods (5.0 on gamestats.com, 45.3% on gamerankings.com)

Wheel of Fortune (6.6 on gamestats.com, 64% on gamerankings.com)

I know a few of those games haven't aged well, but they were fun at the time. Regarding War Gods, many reviewers missed the point that it was goofy, silly, and over-the-top on purpose.

Wii Sports - Nintendo Wii
The golf sucks, but the rest of it is a lot of fun with friends. ... I also love boxing against friends because of the Mii factor.

To me, the golf and bowling games a lot of fun, but the boxing, tennis, and baseball games could (and will) be a little bit deeper. That said, I understand Wii Sports is a simple showcase of Nintendo's new motion-sensing controllers. Overall, it's great and I'm excited to see the concepts taken even further by Nintendo and/or other developers.

Please note that Wii Sports received an overall score of 8.0 on gamestats.com and 76.6% on gamerankings.com, which are easily above-average ratings.

Back in the PS1 era, Gamespot got their hands on an import copy of Choro Q2 and gave it either a 2 or 3 out of 10 (can't remember exactly).

For what it's worth, THQ published published a Choro-Q game for the Nintendo 64 in the U.S. called Penny Racers. It received an overall score of 5.8 on gamestats.com and 55.8% on gamerankings.com, which indicates the game is average...playable, but not great.


For the record, the games some of you are listing did not receive low scores. For example:

Wii Sports for Wii received an overall score of 8.0 on gamestats.com and 76.6% on gamerankings.com.

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg for GameCube received an overall score of 7.6 on gamestats.com and 71.4% on gamerankings.com.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for Nintendo 64 received an overall score of 7.9 on gamestats.com and 73.8% on gamerankings.com.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies for Xbox received an overall score of 7.3 on gamestats.com and 70.7% on gamerankings.com.

Chibi-Robo for GameCube received an overall score of 8.1 on gamestats.com and 77.9% on gamerankings.com.

All of those scores are above-average.

[Leprakon7]

I liked flat out the first one alot.The magazines didnt give it much on the rating. I thought it was a fun racing game although it took awhile to get your car back on the track.But the mini games were the best. i havent played part 2 but im sure its fun too.

[Leo_A]

I'm going to add Miniature Golf/Arcade Golf for the Atari 2600, I think this game was highly underrated.

And even though it recieved average reviews, I thought Sega Arcade Gallery for the GBA deserved higher scores for the great ports of Outrun and Super Hang-On, even though Afterburner was poor and I didn't care for Space Harrier.

[j_factor]

For the record, the games some of you are listing did not receive low scores. For example:

Wii Sports for Wii received an overall score of 8.0 on gamestats.com and 76.6% on gamerankings.com.

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg for GameCube received an overall score of 7.6 on gamestats.com and 71.4% on gamerankings.com.

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for Nintendo 64 received an overall score of 7.9 on gamestats.com and 73.8% on gamerankings.com.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies for Xbox received an overall score of 7.3 on gamestats.com and 70.7% on gamerankings.com.

Chibi-Robo for GameCube received an overall score of 8.1 on gamestats.com and 77.9% on gamerankings.com.

All of those scores are above-average.

What it receives on gamestats or gamerankings isn't always a true indicator, because they include everything and give equal weight to each source. I'm not criticizing their methods, but sometimes a game is considered critically panned when just a couple of the more famous review sources give it low scores. For example, Chibi-Robo got like a 5 or so in EGM, and that's really the only score I remember seeing; Billy Hatcher was often mocked, including on X-Play's review of Astro Boy PS2 ("between this and Billy Hatcher, Sonic Team has a lot to make up for"). Often, the big-name mags are overly harsh or overly lenient on certain games, for whatever reason, and the lesser-known reviewers are more honest. Or conversely, overall scores can be inflated by smaller review sites who are afraid to give low scores lest they lose their free-review-copies-of-games privileges from the publisher (which actually happens).

Also, you say those are all above-average, but isn't the average score on gamerankings like 73%? People like to say that 50% is "average", but it's definitely not the average score (as in, the mean score) given out.

[AMG]

Mortal Kombat Trilogy - N64
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith - PS2
CastleVania: Curse of Darkness - Xbox

These three games didn't get much love from the press. But I enjoyed them.

[shoes23]

I know I'm a rarity, but I tend to enjoy the majority of licensed games. I really get into them if I'm interested in the in the intellectual property that they are based off of, but even if I've never had an exposure to the original material I can still squeeze a lot of enjoyment out of them. Who would've thunk it.

"ALL HAIL HYPNOTOAD"

[skylark]

What it receives on gamestats or gamerankings isn't always a true indicator, because they include everything and give equal weight to each source. I'm not criticizing their methods, but sometimes a game is considered critically panned when just a couple of the more famous review sources give it low scores. For example, Chibi-Robo got like a 5 or so in EGM, and that's really the only score I remember seeing; Billy Hatcher was often mocked, including on X-Play's review of Astro Boy PS2 ("between this and Billy Hatcher, Sonic Team has a lot to make up for"). Often, the big-name mags are overly harsh or overly lenient on certain games, for whatever reason, and the lesser-known reviewers are more honest. Or conversely, overall scores can be inflated by smaller review sites who are afraid to give low scores lest they lose their free-review-copies-of-games privileges from the publisher (which actually happens).

Also, you say those are all above-average, but isn't the average score on gamerankings like 73%? People like to say that 50% is "average", but it's definitely not the average score (as in, the mean score) given out.

These are my thoughts on the matter, too. Grabbed by the Ghoulies has become, like Azurik and Kabuki Warriors, one of the Xbox whipping boys. GI ended its review with the phrase: "What a terrible game." In a later issue, the same reviewer compared another game to it in order to demonstrate in just how low a regard she held them both. I'd say GI alone offsets most of the positive reviews it may have received on gaming sites. Also, whenever someone wants to show how Rare has lost its touch (an opinion I don't share), Grabbed by the Ghoulies is the first thing mentioned. Whatever the actual average score might be, the final critical consensus seems to be that the game sucks.

I tend to think that 90% of review forums end up damaging gaming more than anything else. The same tiny group of smart-asses passing judgements from month to month making or breaking titles doesn't benefit anyone.