Topic: Guilty Pleasure Games?

I always find this a fun topic to discuss with others. The question here is simple- What are your guilty pleasure games? That is, what games do you enjoy playing, despite them not being held in a high regard by most?

I think the first one that comes to mind for me is Pac-Man Party (the Wii version). It was a really bad take on Mario Party, and a pretty lame anniversary celebration for Pac-Man. But for some reason, I can never resist playing it with others. There's a sense of charm and outright stupid fun with this game that I don't think Mario Party can quite boast. The board game aspect is pretty confusing and strange, but the minigames are actually fairly fun, even if some of them rip-off Mario Party (I mean, there's one minigame that's a 4 player version of Heat Stroke from Mario Party 5). And while I don't know half of the characters on the roster, it was nice to have some variety.

Another such game that is a guilty pleasure of mine is the Wii version of the Cars video game, for two main reasons. One- I loved Cars as a child, and two, the glitches are absolutely hilarious. Cars can turn invisible, they can sometimes drive right through solid walls, and the game literally crashed my Wii once. So glitchy, but I would never want it to go away forever.

But what do you all think? I'd love to hear your own!

Yo-kai Watch 1 on 3DS has been a notable example for me recently. The game received mixed reviews because many of its key components were... questionable at best; notably, all of the battle system tends to be a miss for a lot of people I hear, many people do not appreciate the randomness that comes with recruiting monsters. It is a slog to complete thanks to a very grindy post-game, and the super low spawn rates of specific rare monsters (not to mention their very cryptic spawns, I shamelessly resorted to online resources to save me some good time). The little crank that operates on rare coins also yields exclusive monsters... To sum up, it is an RPG that almost entirely lacks strategy.

In spite of all the above, I had a surprisingly good time during my playthrough. Most would label Yo-kai 1 as unilaterally inferior to Pokémon (which admittedly isn't a high bar to begin with nowadays), yet I felt more enthralled playing through it than with the 3DS outings of Pokémon. I think a big reason as to why I felt that way was the decently large sense of freedom when exploring the city and tackling sidequests; while the story is very much linear, you're expected to explore a bunch, clear sidequests, and grind a bit in the process to clear the game — all this really helped to break up the monotony that plagued the 3DS games, which, in my memory, look awfully like a list of chores to sit through in order to complete the game, with few areas where I was allowed to steer of the path laid out in front of me and mess around a bunch. Yo-kai also makes it compulsory to have a full team due to generally higher difficulty (still nothing special) and interesting bosses, unlike Pokémon; I recall in Sun I actually tried to build a full team, but I could tear through the whole game with the starter, Incineroar, and a Slowbro that countered all the story opponents that my starter could not take on. As for the battle system, I found it bearable unlike most players. I didn't mind the huge randomness factor very much.

I never played any of the sequels but I heard they made a lot of changes to the original formula, and some of the new additions seem just too weird to me. I've been afraid to dip my toes into the rest of the series.

Games that come to mind
My Hero One’s Justice
Smash for Wii U
Code Name Steam

@Blooper987 Ii wouldn't call Smash and Code Name: S.T.E.A.M. guilty pleasures myself, they are generally well regarded. S.T.E.A.M. was a flop and everyone loves Smash. Well unless it's from that crowd who consider anything Ninty releated baby games.

@TestudoVilis Yeah, I've never been all that interested in Yo-Kai Watch. It might be because I'm pretty numb to games... inspired by Pokemon, I'll keep it civil. But Yo-Kai Watch, from what I've seen, doesn't seem all that fun. Having cryptic ways to obtain monsters really doesn't sit well with me. Random encounters are annoying, but at least it's simple fundamentally. Now, some things, I can appreciate a bit, like a harder difficulty, as simple as it is. Pokemon is becoming so allergic to difficulty that it's something I can somewhat admire.

@Blooper987 Actually, bringing up Smash Wii U reminds me of another guilty pleasure of mine. That would be Brawl. Yes, it has some stupid mechanics (tripping) but at the time, it was a game of a massive scale, with an Adventure mode that could be considered it's own game, with beautiful cutscenes. It also had tons of other things to do, and, for better or for worse, it introduced online play to the series. Definitely not a bad game, for sure, despite the very polarizing reception it gets from the fanbase.

Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix, 4th Mix, 5th Mix and Extra Mix.
The reason i put those series on my guilty pleasure because there are very upbeat songs that i really like to play and listen but those songs are actually really porn.
The songs i meant was E-ROTIC songs, EuroDance band from German with their 90's Sex and Porn Eurodance songs.
The songs itself was really embarrassing to listen if you know the lyrics but at the same time the songs were so enjoy to listen.
Well, at least Konami still kept it safe to watch on DDR 3rd Mix until 5th Mix.
This one E-ROTIC song i meant from those DDR.

Wow, that's a song right there. XD

For me, it's Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, I know it's a poorly received Sonic game, yet, I still enjoy playing it. Also Smurfs 2 on Wii U, bought this being a fan of the Smurfs and found it a simple platformer, but enjoyed it. Throw in Smurfs Dance Party on Wii as well. There's probably more, but that's three I can think of off hand.

I've found myself enjoying the occasional fanservicy title, such as the original Senran Kagura on 3DS & one of it's sequels, Estival Versus on PS4 (not games that'll light the world on fire, but a decent beat 'em up & Musou-like respectively). I'll go ahead & throw School Girl Zombie Hunters on PS4 into this category as well, though I don't think it's as good as the previously mentioned titles.

Otherwise I thought LBX: Little Battlers Experience was pretty decent. As a kid I was kinda interested in a franchise called Medabots'(a Pokemon-like affair, but with robots), and this reminded me of that so I gave it a go & liked it well enough.

I suppose the Senran Kagura games would definitely fit into that category, I love peach beach splash its just simple mindless fun with a healthy dose of fanservice (really wish the series would get ported to switch)

@Mr-Fuggles777 There's a Senran Kagura game on Switch. I remember the director talking about how inspired he was by the HD rumble on Switch for the implications for the Switch version of Senran Kagura .

Some people definitely have a weird understanding of what guilty pleasure is supposed to mean...

I quite enjoyed Pokemon Channel when it first came out.

To be fair, I'd probably have no interest in it as an adult. But at around 12, it was reasonably entertaining.

Otherwise my tastes are pretty vanilla in gaming circles.

@jump,
Relexions ss just the fan service where you can "massage" the girls with a tagged on VN rather than a full game.
They also released a pinball game which I may pick up, but apparently there are oly a few tables and replay value is a little lacking do waiting on a deep sale

@ThanosReXXX It comforts me to know there are smarter people than I. XD

I've been kinda interested in Senran, even if I've never played a single game. Yumi being in Blazblue Cross Tag Battle got me in the loop, and I watched some gameplay vids of it. The only reason I haven't tried a game in the series yet is because hack n' slash games aren't really my forte. And Peachy Beach Splash just looks... not fun. I can play Splatoon or Overwatch instead.

@GigaMermaid I didn't mean you, but I've now seen several games mentioned which are either well-known, highly successful or not at all frowned upon, so none of those qualify as guilty pleasures, hence the comment.

@ThanosReXXX Ah. Either way, thanks for the reclarification!

Also, to add another game to the list of guilty pleasures of mine, how about a little gem known as Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am? Picture this concept- a game that is a hybrid of a kart racer, a fighter, and a golf game. It's a totally insane game, but considering the cartoon it's based off of, that's really all I wanted it to be. And hey, you can't really complain about it being unoriginal. Honestly, my biggest problem with it was seeing the characters as 3D models. It just seemed really odd compared to how ATHF usually looks like. At least the kept the Mooninites in their flat, Atari-like self. While I wouldn't give the game a glowing recommendation (Aqua Teen Hunger Force is far from a show with universal appeal), I can certainly picture some people really enjoying it the way I do.

@GigaMermaid You're welcome. And I'd say that Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am definitely qualifies. Kinda sounds like something similar to Robot Chicken, from the way you describe it.

P.S.
On the off chance that you don't know Robot Chicken, and if you're a fan of cheesy comedy, then you might definitely want to check it out.

Enter the Matrix. It's a bizarre game that is really fun despite very clearly not being good. Like they spent all their time creating a fun 3rd person shooter with cool Matrix-y game mechanics with like wall running and bullet time, but they didn't have it so they actually fully worked in the game they made? It's weird...

@ThanosReXXX your comment reminded me of this joke