@ThanosReXXX As a non-native speaker, I had no clue that a "guilty pleasure" is by definition something that is not well-known — in the context of games, I've always taken it to denote an unpopular opinion for a game that's commonly considered to be bad. Sometimes I tend to assume the exact meaning of a word while not knowing about the small shades of meaning. Thank you, at least I learned something!
Considering Yo-kai is decently well known, a completely obscure pick I liked in the past was some Hot Wheels game for the DS — Hot Wheels Track Attack I think? Little racing game for the DS. I'll be the first to admit it's really bad and not particularly interesting to discuss, but I really enjoyed the track editor feature that came with it. There was a decently large selection of set pieces available that could be combined to make decently complex, but flat tracks. Not many 3D racing games have robust track editors. What I really enjoyed in particular were all the bugs that came with the mode; I recall it was possible to glitch through basically all of the walls, and several anti-grav track pieces led to very amusing interactions by taking them in weird ways. I spent more hours just messing around with the editor than playing the rest of the game, only because it was just that funny to me. (The rest of the game was Hot Whinge mind you.)
Guilty pleasure would be something that's considered uncool by your peers, that you secretly like anyway.
So there's no hard and fast rule, as to what counts as a guilty pleasure, as it very much depends on who your friends are.
Basically something you like, but are not shouting from the rooftops about.
For me its the Xenoblade series, or most wrestling games really. The first one is just too anime for most of my friends(even me at some points), and Wrestling games because then you have to have a conversation about why you like wrestling.
@Wargoose by that context if you mean peers as in my friends, basically anything with the closest relation to anime would count. Literally everyone one I know hates anime and says it’s for nerds (except for my best friend who lives down in Florida) I’m into anime, visual novels, Vtubers, vocaloid, etc. and all of my friends basically hate them or have no opinion on them.
@TestudoVilis Well, actually it isn't so much something that is unknown, but the "guilty" part of it, is that you could/should feel ashamed of playing it, for a variety of reasons: you yourself being the only person that you know that likes this game, it not being a game targeted at you as an audience, it being horribly bad, but still entertaining to you or it having questionable content. The Senran Kagura game on the Switch, which was mentioned earlier in this thread definitely comes to mind in that regard, but there are definitely some worse offenders out there...
So, yeah. It's not all as black and white as it initially sounds like, and in some ways, I can also find myself in @Wargoose's explanation, because it most definitely also depends on your social circle what's cool and not cool to play, but in general, it's all of the above.
'The console wars are like boobs: Sony and Microsoft fight over which ones look the nicest and Nintendo's are the most fun to play with.'
I see I see, thank you both for the thorough explanation. Always happy to learn. In light of that, the Hot Wheels game I had touched upon in my second post should fit the definition better, 'specially considering I don't even like the brand.
@Zuljaras Finally, someone else who likes Simon's Quest! I played it all the way through for the first time over Christmas, and I enjoyed every bit of it, barring the jumps over the river. Platforming isn't my strong suit haha. It's definitely a 'guilty pleasure' of mine too.
As for other games, one is definitely Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games. I still whip out the old Wii once in a while to play the campaign mode. Honestly, that game was a huge part of my childhood. I still haven't beaten the high score set by 9 yr old me.
I'd say the only other guilty pleasure of mine is the entire Yakuza series. I love it to pieces, but it's just an oddball compared to most other games I play. It switches from making me tear up to making me laugh my ass off in the span of a few seconds. I highly recommend it to someone who hasn't played them, I believe most of them are on Xbox Game Pass and last I checked Yakuza 0 was only five bucks on PlayStation. It isn't everyone's cup of tea, but they've got something for everyone.
Harmony of Dissonance is not the best Castlevania, but it was such a perfect introduction to the series for me and probably a lot of people after Circle of the Moon made the worst impression it could. There's a lot of weird dislike to it and Dawn of Sorrow from some fans that I do not understand.
The OST is not even bad like people say. It does sound way weirdly dated even compared to the other 2 GBA games, but GBA's never been the best for vg music anyway.
Konquest mode in Mortal Kombat Deception. It is a totally garbage, overly simplistic action rpg, with a gen 5 draw distance. And yet I played through it several times.
Dead or Alive series. While not on the level of Tekken or Virtua Fighter, still a solid fighting game with some unique mechanics. And look, I'm not against stripper ninja in video games, but the amount of sex appeal put in this series makes it feel cheap. Like the devs lack faith in the quality of their own product. They seem to think I wouldn't keep playing if they didn't throw some cartoon cleavage in front of me every few minutes.
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@TheUltimateFaker Don’t know how you could describe Yakuza as a guilty pleasure - that series owns! Just started Yakuza 0 yesterday, and it’s incredible. Maybe it could trim a few minutes of cut scenes here and there, but it is a fantastic game. I’m a complete convert.
Not sure what my guilty pleasure would be. All games, to a certain extent, feel like a guilty pleasure. I play a lot of RPGs, though, and there are definitely some I am less proud of than others. I can empathise with @Wargoose - I loved Xenoblade Chronicles 2, but I wouldn’t exactly brag about it. Even without some of the fan service, the shonen story made me cringe.
‘Guilty pleasure’ is definitely a very fluid concept. Back in the GameCube era, I probably would have said something like Animal Crossing, because it was a game about bumbling around a colourful village of quirky animals at a time when the only cool games were grey, brown and sportsy. If you weren’t playing FIFA or CoD, you weren’t cool.
But now Animal Crossing is a global smash hit and considered to be the game of lockdown, so I’m not sure it really counts anymore. In fact, it almost definitely doesn’t.
But there we are. The mainstream is a fickle beast. Sometimes you try to follow it. And sometimes it diverts course and crashes right into where you’ve been standing for the last ten years.
Runescape was much more popular back in the day, though I find that game full of tedious tasks and grinding to progress that level bar. FunOrb, on the other hand, was a 2003 miscellaneous games site made by the same company, which hosts a variety of free-to-play games with much more inventive gameplay styles. I admit, a lot of the games are pretty low budget, and some of them are derivative platformers or shmups, but games like Arcanists, Miner Disturbance, and Armies of Gielinor became niche cult classics by fans of the website. The site was discontinued in 2018 due to lack of site traffic (its honestly amazing it lasted even that long), but I was still able to download a client that can play a lot of the single player games, so I revisit it pretty often for the nostalgia.
Don't laugh at me, but Barbie Explorer on PC. My sister and I had a blast playing through it when we were kids, so I think it might be more nostalgia than anything because I remember the game being awful as well, but we still enjoyed it!
Other candidates would have to include, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, Rugrats Scavenger Hunt, Invention Studio, and the 3DS port of Rayman Origins (which I only found out recently is considered a terrible port, so of course its the only one I've played lol)
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I'm playing Danganronpa for the first time at the moment and I think that kind of fits. It's darker than anything I would normally play and the way some of the characters are treated/portrayed is somewhat questionable, but I'm enjoying it anyway.
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Topic: Guilty Pleasure Games?
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