Topic: The worst reviewed games you enjoyed playing?

@Tyranexx I'd have said that Other M is only actively hated by a small group of gatekeepers who feel the need to butt in whenever anyone dares to mention that they quite like it.

Metroid: Other M is a poorly told story (if unintentionally entertaining) and a flawed but fun video game.

Honestly the only reason I hated it for a while was because A. it seemed like it killed the series for a while and B. fanboys kept telling me that I hated the story for DARING to have a focus on cutscenes and narrative in general when it was my most anticipated game in the WORLD before release specifically for that approach. **** those people.

But in 2020, it's just an amusing, weird experiment of a game.

I enjoyed playing the Fort Boyard game with my sister last night... one of the only reviews I could find of it gave it 2/10. We were big fans of the show back in the day.

The discussion on Other M has led me to look into how Metroid Prime: Federation Force reviewed. I didn't do so earlier because I didn't think it could have possibly critically reviewed worse than a 7. It did though, sitting at an average of 6.4, and so would be my lowest reviewed game that I have enjoyed. By far the biggest problem with Federation Force has nothing to do with the content of the game, it's the timing of the game's release. The game itself I'm more willing to pick up and play than any other Metroid game besides Metroid Prime Hunters. A majority of the game's missions are at worst all right, and of those there are a decent handful that I would consider a great time relative to what's offered in the overall Metroid Series especially Missions 08 and 09.

I skipped Federation Force. Not because I thought it was a bad game (though a vocal minority raised a stink, as usual), but due to it having a huge multiplayer focus. I was bitten hard by Tri Force Heroes and wasn't keen to attempt to play through another game created with multiplayer in mind.

@Matt_Barber That's probably a more accurate description. XD Like I mentioned, I acknowledge Other M has its share of issues, but to me those aren't enough to catapult it into "This game is bad" territory.

Adventures of Pip got 6/10 on this site, but I quite liked it. Has a neat central gimmick, decent pixel art and a cute, if unoriginal, story. Also, the platforming and hidden secrets are solid.

Heroes of Ruin got average reviews and is in my top 5 games on 3DS.

Also, Samurai Warriors Chronicles for 3DS.

From back in the day; I remember lotr the two towers, on both GBA and Gamecube reviewed really poorly in Nintendo magazines.

The Gamecube version is still visually impressive and deserves a 9/10 imo.
The GBA version was a great dungeon crawler/hack an slash and is also severely underrated. Its probably my favourite GBA game after Minish Cap, Donkey Kong Country 2 and Fire Red/Leaf Green.

IGN decided Donkey kong country tropical freeze earned a 6/10 so I'm gonna put that here.

@SKTTR I’m not sure - I always felt it was a slight game in the era of (admittedly bloated) N64 games. Great for less than £10 though - it’s a shame that it’s never going to see a rerelease due to the name.

Wetrix was absolutely a no frills indie game. I bought that around the same time and I thought (& still do) that it was fantastic. It’s even more slight than Tetrisphere but it’s a more playable concept IMO. (& it did review well at the time so I didn’t put it on my original list)

I’d love to see them revisit the concept again.

Car Mayhem is a piece of crap, but I played the police chase mode for like 10 hours XD. I got it for 99 cents. If you leave lots of light poles and fences in your wake, it hurts the police cars chasing you. It's fun cutting through narrow alleys, and mowing down fences and light posts. Don't pay more than a dollar for it XD.

10 hours I played that game! haha

demolition derby is super weak.
zombie mode is meh.
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/car-mayhem-switch/

For me, it would be the Mario & Sonic series, Star Fox Zero, and Ninjala. These have Metacritic scores that are in between the '50s to '70s (60's for the most part), 69, and 68, for each of the respective games/series.

@WoomyNNYes it was gamespot not IGN, my bad.

@SM3DASislit star fox zero is a tragedy. It could have been so great, even if it really was just a remake of 64. The abysmal controls ruined the game for many people. I do not have the game, so it is not my place to speak nevertheless. I'm not going to ask for an more Wii U ports, but it's a shame that Star Fox Zero wasn't one of them, it would've saved the game. I definitely would have taken it over NSMB U for gods sake.

I forgot about Star Fox Zero. In spite of all its problems i really liked it quite a lot. I'd rather a game be somewhat bad with a few interesting bits, than be generically good without anything remarkable.

Yeah, there are some really good things about Star Fox Zero. I can't think of much else in the way of 3D games that maintain a steady 60fps across both screens on the Wii U, so it's incredibly slick to play for those of us who can get a handle on the controls.

Also, you can turn the motion controls off, although I find that it just makes the game harder as you're left without much in the way of fine aiming.

The way it uses both screens at the same time though pretty much ensures that it's not likely to get ported to the Switch or indeed anything else. At least, by the time they fixed it to work on a single screen with sensible controls, you'd be looking at a very different game.

Also, Star Fox Guard was great. Although it says it all when the bundled minigame got better reviews than what was supposed to be the main event.

Star Fox Zero makes me so sad. Because if you can get past the control difficulties, it bizarrely somehow also plays EXACTLY like Star Fox 64. Far more than even the arwing levels in Assault did, like you can tell. It's actually incredible how much they nailed that element. And I'm always gonna be suspect of the control complaints, since I got into it fine during a few minute long demo at PAX before the game came out.

That being said, I don't know why they compromised the replayability of it. You're supposed to be able to game over and forced to reset and forced to play it at least 3 times to play all the levels. That's how the game works. Changing that fundamentally breaks the appeal of the game and I'm astonished no one thought about this. Like two playthroughs in and I had done nearly everything outside of admittedly a decent chunk of medals (and the extra levels I missed I could just go back to, even though much of them were underwhelming extra missions instead of actual new levels). The original game by contrast I've replayed more than 50 times. There's also a very good Gamexplain review that perfectly explained how unfit a "difficult to master" controlling game works for a shorter single player only video game and badly needed a multiplayer mode.

They were SO close to getting it, and that's upsetting. Way more than if it had been as bad as people had said tbh. It shouldn't be this difficult to live up to an early N64 game.

@GilbertXI
Yeah, I can see why people didn't like the motion controls in Star Fox Zero. It isn't my favorite Star Fox game, but I still like it though. I did feel like the motion controls did somewhat mess with the "flow" of the game. 🤔
If you have a Wii U, it goes for really cheap these days (at least from Gamestop). I mean, I feel like a Wii U port of SFZ could still happen.

@Losermagnet
At least you were to like it, despite its flaws. That's definitely an interesting view to have on games. 🤔

@Matt_Barber
3D World didn't play in 60 FPS on both screens? I believe Smash Wii U didn't do that, but I thought 3D World did (for some reason). 🤔
Technically, the motion controls can't be turned completely off, but are only used when ZR is pressed.
I feel like they would just make it to where you would just switch between the cockpit view and "normal" view, so I feel like it's still possible for them to bring it to Switch.
Yeah, Star Fox Guard was good, but also tough as nails (IMO). I don't see any way that they could bring Guard to Switch.

The motion aiming in SF Zero is great. It's the dual-screen conceit, where you have to simultaneously keep track of the feed in two different perspectives that doesn't work out well.

Even putting that aside, though, the game's real sin is how it destroys the basic flow and balance of Star Fox 64 by loading it with bizarre transformations that are difficult to control and bog down the game. There are also too few levels dedicated to linear rail shooting setpieces, which made up the majority of SF64's levels.

@SM3DASislit Unless I'm mistaken 3D World is just showing the same image on both screens, where SFZ shows different views and consequently has to do twice the processing.

Regardless, you're looking at a very small set of games that give 60fps for 3D graphics on both screens.

Federation Force ended up being a better game to experience alone, and I think Nintendo should have marketed the single player aspect more so following the initial backlash. The game is less rewarding in multiplayer with mission rewards (Mech mods) being halved, in thirds or in fourths depending on party count. As I played, it made less and less sense for me to play multiplayer to progress the game. I don't think it's quite like Tri Force Heroes. In that game if you didn't have two other players, did it substitute players for computers?