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A lot of bad games exist in this good world. Without a little guidance from a review or friend’s recommendation it can be easy to stumble upon a pile of turds before finding a golden prize. Sometimes a game doesn’t click with reviewers and most of my friends give me fair warning, yet I’m still pulled towards the title and end up finding something very special. Sometimes you just need to find your own games to love and not worry what others think.

Earth Defense Force 2025 had me thinking about this. It’s a game that people tell me is “fun because it is so bad”. But isn’t it just fun because it’s so fun? So I’ve compiled a list of games that people tell me are bad – Whether it be reviews or peers – which I actually love. Let the “bad” games begin. 
 

Earth Defense Force 2025

Since I mentioned it already, let’s start with… EDF! EDF! The chant you’ll hear from dedicated fans of the series. EDF is a game where you shoot giant insects and robots, destroy cities, and do so with a massive array of guns and weapons spanning over 4 unique soldier classes. That is all. There is no other objective than to shoot your guns at mass amounts of enemies, over and over again. Repetitive? Yes, but for some reason it doesn’t get old quick in EDF. I have found 3 or 4 hours pass me by without even noticing because I’m having so much fun. The presentation is also pretty terrible – The graphics look a decade old, the frame can drop to the point where you think your console is crashing, the voice acting is B movie quality, and the aiming controls are clunky at best.

Despite all that “bad”, the core of this game is so good. Its shiny coating may be an old polish, but it is undeniably fun to play and I can’t completely explain why. I think that’s more impressive than a really good looking game that lures you with pretty looks but generic gameplay. So is EDF a bad game? I’d say not at all. Its such a good game that the “bad” elements don’t even matter.

 

Lord of the Rings: War In The North

This 3D, 3-player co-op Hack and Slash from Snowblind Studios was often voiced with a big “meh”. A mediocre game not worthy of much praise, but not bad enough to trash talk. Snowblind Studios made Champions of Norrath – one of my favorite PS2 titles – so it was a no brainer that I had to give War In The North a try. The game is very simple – hack and slash your way through stages in Middle Earth as a Ranger, Dwarf, or Elf. The story follows three characters doing their own adventure while Frodo and Aragorn’s main journey is simultaneously happening. For fans of the LOTR movies and books alike, this is a nice detour and it does a good job of building on the world of Middle Earth without meddling with Tolkien’s work.

While on the surface the game is completely average, it is a treat for any LOTR fan to dive in to Middle Earth again. The Co-op element also pulled me in as I played the entire game online with 2 friends. There was a good amount of customization and Level progression for your characters as well – letting you try out tons of different skills, weapons and armor. This was not the best game, not the worst game, but one of my favorite games to play through this decade.

 

MotorStorm Apocalypse

The original MotorStorm had eye dropping visuals but was plagued by the “glorified tech demo” status that Heavenly Sword and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune also fell ill to. The original was visually beautiful but short on races and features - I think the series publically got tossed aside as a result of this. This is unfortunate because every title after the first was extremely good. Apocalypse in particular was great. By this point in the series, there was a ton of vehicle types, robust multiplayer options, and a unique flair on the racing genre. Apocalypse added even more by having dynamically changing courses. You race through cities while natural disasters are happening, so as the race progresses roads shift, buildings will collapse and cause new obstacles, and you watch this all happen directly above and below your racer. It’s visually phenomenal and amazing to swerve in and out on the ever-changing roads.

There’s one race in particular where an earthquake causes the bridge you’re on to start waving like a sound wave as it collapses. It is unreal. I think it’s a huge shame that MotorStorm isn’t more popular amongst peers.

 

El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

There is no game like El Shaddai. I say this as a positive, while a lot of people see it as a negative. There is no in-game HUD, so you’re left to watch for visual cues to understand how much health you have left. There’s a “simple” rock-paper-scissors style 3 weapon combat system, but if you don’t realize that combos require rhythm-based button pressing then the game can seem like a button-masher with unfair enemies. Admittedly the game does a bad job emphasizing how combat actually works, but once I figured it out I highly enjoyed fighting.

The game’s visual style is completely unique. Every area having a new abstract look – from empty white space, to a Tron-like futuristic city, to an overly bright and colorful world with balloon people, and to what looks like the depths of hell. Your eyes will never get tired of looking at El Shaddai.

The story is also unique. It is an abstract look at a biblical story. There are a lot of unanswered questions and a ton of things left up to interpretation. A lot of people didn’t seem to enjoy the lack of clarity the story brought, but I found it intriguing and it kept me always thinking about and dissecting what was happening before me.

El Shaddai is one of my favorite games of all time. Though it didn’t resonate with most, I think it is an artistic masterpiece unlike any other. It is a game brave enough to try new things in almost every aspect.

 

Monster Tale

This is a little known and rare to find hidden gem on the Nintendo DS. Monster Tale is a great game made by a small company who clearly had no marketing budget. I can’t even remember how I heard about this game, but I’ve never mentioned this game to someone else and had him or her have any idea what I’m talking about. The game is a Metroid-vania style adventure where you have platforming mechanics reminiscent of Mega Man, sidekick aid characters similar to Pokemon, and a beautiful and colorful world brought to life by an amazing soundtrack. This is the pinnacle of the 16 bit era brought to life on the DS.

This game wasn’t disliked by public or reviewers as much as it was just completely overlooked by everyone. It’s an amazing hidden gem that surely would have picked up steam if people just had a chance to play it. If you ever find this I highly recommend picking it up. I own a copy but have never seen another for sale since.

 

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

The Prince of Persia reboot on PS3 and Xbox360 was met with mixed reviews and confused crowd reaction. Scrapping most of what the Sands of Time trilogy laid out, the PoP reboot left a lot of people cold. The series sort of disappeared after that, but along side the Sands of Time movie release, The Forgotten Sands was also released.

The game didn’t seem to receive a ton of publicity and was reviewed just above average from most gaming outlets. The Prince of Persia series was no longer relevant in the gaming world and the game clearly seemed like a cash-in considering most games released along side a movie tend to be sub-par. I loved the Sands of Time trilogy (not including Warrior Within… that game disappointed me a lot) and The Forgotten Sands was a very welcome return to form. It was full of a lot of creative and challenging platforming puzzles. It also introduced a new water freezing mechaning to go along side the time freezing mechanic. This made for an entirely new layer of challenge to platforming – one that I definitely love. The combat was still a little boring, but Prince of Persia has never really been about the combat. Nobody I know showed any interest in The Forgotten Sands, but it’s a nice hidden gem for me.

 

Game and Wario

PS: I didn't a Game & Wario video as that game NEVER looks good in a video. Seems boring until you play it with friends. 

Game and Wario is not a WarioWare game. I think that confusion caused a lot of reviewers to go into this game with the wrong expectations. It is less ADD and more controlled than the WarioWare series. It’s better looked at as a series of casual mini-games instead of intense one-off 5 second games.

My friends and I have pulled this game out at almost every casual party scenario, and it has always been a hit by the crowd. The actual amount of content is pretty short in the game, but it’s a really good party game with a really low learning curve. Games like it aren’t really developed anymore, but Game and Wario I think is an essential party game, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

 

Lost Planet 2

The Lost Planet series is definitely a bit lost itself. Every entry in the series has changed the gameplay focus. The first title was a single player 3^rd person shooter, while the second was a completely co-op shooter with the intent of always being played online with others. The third title reverted back to a single player experience but seemed to be more story focused rather than gameplay focused. With this flip flopping its easy to see how the series hasn't gained a huge following. However, I think Lost Planet 2 is worth a good look as long as you can play it co-operatively.

Lost Planet 2 controls a little different than other games in its genre, has a unique approach to online, and isn’t afraid to play around and change the standard gaming tropes.

Point is, I’ve possibly never enjoyed an online co-op game as much as Lost Planet 2. I had a couple friends who would play LP2 with me all the time, and the amount of co-operation and strategy required to beat some of the levels is truly impressive. In particular, there’s a level where you hijack a huge train with a huge cannon on it. While in motion you have to destroy a gigantic sand monster with the cannon. The cannon requires multiple people to operate with ease. One person mans the cannon gun and shoots. One person helps turn the cannon’s aiming. Another person gathers the ammo and loads it into the cannon, and the last person can help all around and put fires out on the train if it gets attacked too much. It’s teamwork teamwork teamwork and I absolutely loved it. I actually showed this game to a kid last week and I’ve never seen that kid so hooked to a game before.

 

Final Fantasy VIII

 

There are favorites amongst Final Fantasy fans and FF8 is almost never at the top. As a matter of fact, it’s usually one of the least enjoyed entries and sometimes the one entry that people completely hate. I, on the other hand, consider it my favorite, only behind Final fantasy 6. People hated the junction system in FF8, the new visual style, how much of a wuss Squall was as a main character, and many thought the love story was extremely forced or just straight up not entertaining. I actually loved everything in this game that everyone seemed to hate. I thought the characters were more realistic, I thought the love story was strong, I loved the military school world they created, and the battle system is amongst my favorites in the series. I actually wrote an essay (for real, an essay) for Julian and some of the PixlBit staff to read once explaining why I actually like FF8. Point is, I like it, and it is always a bonding moment when you meet another FF fan who likes it as well.

I also think FF8 has the best art style and cutscenes of any FF title. It was a very cool blend if sci fi manga and fantasy. Definitely my preference.

 

Nier

The game loads, the screen stays black and you hear the following, “Weiss you dumbass! Start making sense you rotten book, or you're gonna be sorry. Maybe I'll rip your pages out one by one, or maybe I'll put you in the goddamn furnance! How can someone with such a big, smart brain be hypnotized like a little bitch, huh? Oh, Shadowlord, I love you Shadowlord. Come over here and give Weiss a big sloppy kiss, Shadowlord. Now pull your head out of your goddamn ass and start fucking helping us!”

This is how Nier starts. An action RPG not quite like any other, Nier is a game that is over ambitious in concept, easily scaring many people away. It has a story that requires three playthroughts to fully understand. Reviewers often referred to the story as lackluster, but its just different, complex, and not review friendly, as no reviewer is going to play the game 3 times before reviewing.

The gameplay is a pretty simple RPG hack and slash, and the graphics aren’t exactly state of the art. The world is infused with heart and soul though. The characters are extremely likeable and interesting. It’s a world filled with good people, confused people, corrupt monsters, while a f simply wants to save his sick daughter. It was impossible for me to not care about Nier and the world around him.

The side characters include a wise talking floating book that aids you with magic, and a crazy woman... absolutely insane woman. She also understands the world and its monsters way more than you, so she extremely interesting to watch and listen to.

The bosses are unreal in Nier as well. Often infusing boss attacks that resemble patterns from a sidescrolling bullet hell shooter, it creates a hack and slash experience unique only to Nier. The game even gets crazier when you find a village full of text adventure games you can play in order to restore the village back to normal.

I’m mostly just rambling about Nier now, but this is one of my favorite games of the last generation and I find it too bad that the public reception wasn’t as good as it could be. Sure the game is a little over ambitious in its concepts, but you can feel the spirit of Nier just packed into this disc.

Oh yeah, Nier's soundtrack is unbelievable as well. One of the best in a long time.

 

What about you guys, do you have any generally disliked or underappreciated games that you treasure?