While being able to play games for a living is a pretty sweet deal, there are some elements of this job that often make it laborious. Chief among these is when we receive a game to cover that isn’t very good. Playing a bad game can be a real week-ruiner, and the GR team has certainly played our fair share of stinkers in our time. But what about those games that everyone else didn’t enjoy, but we did?
We asked the GR editorial team what bad games they’ve fallen in love with over the years, and you can read the responses below. As always, leave your own response in the comments section below, and we’ll feature our favorite in tomorrow’s Tell GR.
Paul Tamburro, executive editor: “London 2012 is the greatest mini-game collection you’ve never played. A tie-in to that year’s Olympic Games, London 2012 was a genuinely great update to the Track & Field format despite not being rated particularly highly. It replaced button-mashing with timing- and precision-based events, added a much wider variety of sports to choose from, and featured game modes that made setting up a tournament with your friends super easy. Kayaking was excellent, archery was a lot of fun, and it was my go-to couch multiplayer game well into 2013. While I can understand why SEGA later combined the Sonic and Mario licenses for the Mario & Sonic sports series, they’re infinitely worse compared to London 2012.”
Jason Faulkner, senior editor: “Apparently Metal Gear Survive was a bad game from what the internet says. I thought it sucked as a Metal Gear game but I really enjoyed it outside of that. I really liked the base-building and I thought exploring, finding blueprints, and repelling attacks on my base was a lot of fun.”
Michael Leri, features editor: “Deadly Premonition is a flaming toilet of stilted voice acting, early PS2-level visuals, horrific wooden animation, and gameplay that’s a stunted bastard child of Resident Evil 4, but I love it. I hate playing it, but its goofy characters and infinitely quotable dialogue somehow come full circle and become legitimately great. Or it’s just so damn dumb that it is some weird ironic love that has disguised itself as actual love. Who knows but, better yet, who cares?”
Yesterday’s Best Comment
Question: What is the best Resident Evil game ever?
bigtruckseriesreview: “I’m torn between RE2 and RE5. I really appreciated the switch to action and the ability to be accompanied by a partner. That game had some amazing sequences. I only played the mobile version of RE4 because I didn’t have a Gamecube but I can see how most gamers will say that RE4 was the best -especially if they are Generation Z.”
