Topic: ~Mediocre games you love~

I personally really enjoy Mario Kart Tour. Even with its uneven monetization (which I did unfortunately give into several times, though with the removal of gacha, it's pretty easy to avoid splurging), frequent lack of polish (I'm pretty confident the game runs on spaghetti code, updates have almost always broken weird things, etc.), and other issues (why is the default control scheme abhorrent compared to the manual drift? It really should be on by default, because I guarantee that's a big part of why many dropped the game soon after launch - it feels so bad), I've remained invested because I like the combo mechanics, I love seeing remade courses and course variants, and there's a lot of really cool driver, kart, and glider designs. I wouldn't consider it mediocre - I mean, I've grinded my way into the Top 1000 highest scores twice, I wouldn't do that if I thought the game was middling - but I definitely get why others do; I just like getting regular content updates and seeing how new courses are implemented in terms of visuals and other changes (and now I get that in 8 Deluxe too, since the Booster Course Pass is steadily improving in terms of visuals and gameplay changes). The game probably won't be around for much longer, as they seem to be trying to get everything made for the game out as fast as possible (they keep introducing at least 2 new tracks per tour while the new drivers, karts, and gliders are often just recolors now), but it's been a fun ride, and there's still a lot to look forward to based on internal data.

cough so dusty -blows dust- cough bump

Over the hedge and Shrek 2 by activision are two surprisingly "good" licensed beat-em-ups that I love to revisit. Over the hedge can be a bit unfair and its environments a bit too dark to navigate properly. But other than that it's a good game that expands the universe of the movie well in my opinion. Shrek 2 on the other hand is more like a party game with a bit o wonky coding and collision. But if can get over that, it's a fun time, especially on gamecube with 4 players at once.

I almost forgot to mention Rango on ps3 and Xbox 360, (wii version is worse with forced motion controls). It's good, but it has some balance issues as rangos "gun" can be upgraded to the point where it's practically the only way you'll dispatch enemies. The game is really fun, but it's surprisingly short, as you'll reach the final boss in probably a day or so.

I’d maybe say Kameo: Elements of Power (Xbox 360), which coincidentally was going to be released on the GameCube, but ended up being an Xbox game, so sorry if this isn’t on a Nintendo console.

Anyway, I find the game more decent than mediocre, but it was this fantasy game by Rare where you play as an elf girl who can shapeshift into these elemental-themed creatures with their own unique abilities that you use to solve puzzles and defeat specific enemy types.

It isn’t anything outstanding or revolutionary really. It has a simple plot where you have to save her mother and three family members from her evil sister and some troll dude she teamed up with, and the attempts at emotional moments (especially the final cutscene and the moments leading up to it) didn’t make me feel anything since you don’t really see the main character interact with her sister and the characters are not developed much, but I thought the gameplay was fun.

Apologies if I can’t explain this well, but there is this mechanic in the game where you can attack enemies in slow motion by increasing this meter with combos, and it was especially fun seeing how much I could keep the meter up until it ran low. I always liked playing as this boulder creature and spinning around and around to slow down time. I also loved the animals you play as when shapeshifting. The ideas and concepts with them were creative to me, and my favorite was the ice gorilla and lava ant, but I really wasn’t a huge fan when using them in the final boss battle; on top of dealing with the boss, different enemy types are repeatedly summoned during parts of the battle, so you really have two things to deal with simultaneously, so it required me to swap between the transformations I chose all the while avoiding losing health and not having the boss hit me. I wasn’t a fan of from how time-consuming and repetitive it was, but I am sure it had something to do with me not getting a lot of upgrades for the transformations.

I also liked the way the game looked. I love how lush and colorful it looks, and since I love art and anything related to images, I am absolutely a fan of visuals that are full of colors and appear vivid, which I feel is very fitting for a fantasy game like this. It really makes it look beautiful. While the graphics are a little bit less detailed than Rare’s final OG Xbox game and their other 360 games that came shortly after, I still love the way Kameo’s visuals look.

The game was intended to get a sequel but got cancelled. Though it was likely unnecessary, I would have still played it, since I heard some interesting ideas for it; apparently it was to carry a darker tone than the first, would have had an art style change, an emphasis on open-world, and give the main character the ability to fly as an eagle, which if I recall would have had some cool perspective with the camera. A lot of the original IPs Rare made for the Xbox didn’t reach the same levels of popularity as their N64 titles and were usually one-offs (sans Viva Piñata) likely because of the audience change that came with Microsoft’s buyout of the company, but I think a lot of their titles had plenty of interesting ideas and settings.

For honorable mentions, one goes to Grabbed by the Ghoulies (Xbox), another Rare game. I did get annoyed at the game more than Kameo because of how repetitive it was, but I didn’t entirely hate it and thought it was more charming. The next one I would say is Fire Emblem Heroes (Mobile) though moreso for its story, which I find some of the writing for it to be so hilariously bad and full of anticlimactic moments.

The Swords and Bones series. It's a super basic level-based Castlevania-lite but they're just fun chill games even though they are sometimes buggy. If they make another in the series I'll insta buy it.

Also, there are like a zillion similar one-room precision platformers out there. Some are bad and some are good, but there are a lot of cheap 5/10 and 6/10 ones which I just find fun. They often only take an hour or two to beat. An example is Pocket Witch. Another is .Cat Milk. There are a lot and I love them as a genre rather than one particular mediocre game.

I have a massive soft spot for Holy magic century (AKA Quest 64 in the US)

game is super simple and has some major balance issues, story is told extremely sparingly and the high encounter rate makes the already long dungeons even longer but for me there's a charm to it, i enjoyed the locations (they kind of felt like an earlier version of what DQVIII went for) and enjoyed the games growth system.

In addition to my previous post...

Hover - This is Jet Set Radio with rpg mechanics. The open world quest structure of this game feels right. Unfortunately, performance on the Switch isn't all that great. And in a 3D platforming / traversal game the not-so-great framerate does knock it down a bit.

Vostock Inc - This is an Asteroids clone with clicker-lite mechanics. As someone who loved Asteroids on Atari 2600, the gameplay loop here speaks to me. Spending a bit of time just letting your Switch run, doing something else IRL while the game currency piles up, somehow feels...good? And when you finally acquire that last weapon, everyone will fear you and your space-unicorns.

Unbox: Newbie's Adventure - A 3D platformer / collectathon. Super Mario Odyssey this is not. However, I think that having to deal with the box physics of your character along with the movement and multi-jump system is interesting. A better game than it's lowish aggregate score belies.