Broken games you loved anyway

[Nominus Experse]

The premise of this thread is rather simple: post the games that you play(ed), even though you knew them to be terribly broken in the sense that they were testament to how clunky controls could be, how aggravating the camera once was, how unbalanced the units could become, etc... And yet you played them to smurfing death anyway, you masochistic moron.

Posting pictures and other information would also help have the rest of us realize how stupidly broken your games were.



One such game that I played to hell was 7th Legion.

http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/boxshots/1/196521_pc.jpg

7th Legion was an RTS game that implemented a system in which players were dealt cards every so often. These cards acted as a means of "random events during battle". Essentially, the cards let you do godlike, random :skull::skull::skull::skull:, like instantly blowing up units or buildings, infiltration, chaos, super units, and other totally awesome :skull::skull::skull::skull:. However, this lead to the game being primarily about getting the few smurfing awesome cards before your blasted, cheating computer-driven oppenent could.

I mean, yeah, sure my entire infantry would suddenly combust into flames every so often - that just happens during war, you know? That's normal :skull::skull::skull::skull: in real life. But multiple smurfing times in a few minutes? RAAAAGE!

And some missions you, the player, only had a few cards to play with, most of them :skull::skull::skull::skull:ty little things that don't phase the CPU at all. And even though you have an empty hand, the computer has access to the whole hellish deck.

And then there were the units. As a means of making everything seam even, each side had the almost the same units. Almost. And then you got to the awesome mech warriors, and one side's mechs were made of Raptorjesus' fist while the others were insects before RAID. Yay, I shoot maccaroni that makes a zing sound out of my mech's face... smurf YEAH, MAN, I SHOOT A smurfING MISSILE THE SIZE OF AUSTRALIA AND RELOAD IN A CHEAPLY FAST TIME! DID I MENTION I ALSO HAVE A MECH THAT SHOOTS SHELLS AT THE SPEED OF RABBITS HAVING AN ORGY TOO?
http://www.gamershell.com/static/screenshots/2723/42460_full.jpg
...

And then the units' AI, with it being so very incredible, would randomly decide that you, the player, didn't know smurfing :skull::skull::skull::skull:. You wan't me to cross that bridge? smurf no, man, this pathway is better. THE PATHWAY RIGHT THROUGH THE ENEMY'S PRIMARY BASE. Oh, so sorry, lawl, I lead their entire force onto your puny little outpost.

http://www.gamershell.com/static/screenshots/2723/42459_full.jpg

Were there resources in this game? smurf no, you make things with credits. Apparently, in the future, people eat, drink, and breathe credits, whatever the smurf those are. Oh, and no matter how well you did last mission, you will ALWAYS BE A smurfING PRIVATE at the begining. Meaning you earn crumbs. So a year later, if the computer hasn't molested you and your entire family with insane cards you'll never be dealt, you can finally amass an army large enough to make Hitler bounce with joy, and then blitz their asses to oblivion. If your units can ever find their way there TOGETHER, that is.


But you know what? The music to this game was smurfing awesome. It was this that lead me to the genre called industrial, which is - and has been for some time now - my absolute favourite musical genre. All my hair cillia were sexxing each other up to the rhythm reverberating off my ear drum - it was smurfing tripping balls awesome. And even though getting insta-pwned by the smurfing bastard of an AI was the quickest way to incite the rage of incoherant and retarded Nom Nom, there was something amazingly sadistically wonderful in dropping an Immolation II card down on an entire army of infantry and watching them all run around on fire until they tripped and fell to ash.

And a cut scene where a guy gets shot whilst pissing on the wall is... different.


Ah, elementary school, how fun you were....

[Roto13]

Final Fantasy Tactics. That game is so broken.

First off, the difficulty is completely unbalanced for the missions. You'll fight a flurry of braindead easy missions and then all of a sudden you're too severely under leveled to continue without grinding, but only for one battle. Then it goes back to being easy again.

Then, of course, there are areas where that happens where you can't leave and level up. Those goddamn towers. They ambush you with an unfair difficulty spike that you have no way of getting around unless you saved before you went in.

Not that any of that matters once you get Cid or a Calculator. A powered up Calculator is a god. Or, rather, a black/white/time/whatever mage with calculator skills to get around the speed problem. Once you have either of them, you're good to go. You're gold.

Despite all of these colossal failures in game design, though, the game still sucked me in forever. But I wouldn't forgive them if they did it again. (Even though there are some abilities in FFTA2 that really remind me of the calculators.)

[LunarWeaver]

I think Diablo II was pretty broken D: There has never been a time when all the characters were balanced. With each patch another simply rises while the previous usually falls.

Naruto: Rise of a Ninja is also broken :bigsmile: Yes, I own a Naruto fighting game. Let's all point and guffaw. But anyway, the characters are horribly unbalanced, and some abilities can wipe you out even at full health while others are complete garbage. Oh well, I love it anyway.

I played Nightmare Creatures all the way through when I was younger, and I was so in love with it. Later I realized just how awful that game actually is. The controls are totally Willy Wonka. Nostalgia makes me caress it anyway.

[Dragonsoul]

For some reason I liked Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus. :)

[ReloadPsi]

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, though I'm not sure what its proper title was. It was localised as this in English-speaking territories as one of the few Ganbare Goemon games to get outside Japan.

The camera sucked, the game was glitched to death and even despite all this the game was actually intensely easy; I beat it in about two days because there's a guy you can always pay 10 coins to find out where to go next and what to do. Each character has like maybe one weapon or special ability that's ever useful more than once and in the end it'll just be down to which skin you'd rather have on your player.

I've played this game an unholy amount of times because of its hilarious plot and awesome soundtrack, amongst other things.

On a side note, does FF8 count? The only thing "broken" was its Junction system, which made the game impossible if you didn't instantly work it out, then ridiculously easy once you did.

[Slothy]

Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon, though I'm not sure what its proper title was. It was localised as this in English-speaking territories as one of the few Ganbare Goemon games to get outside Japan.

The camera sucked, the game was glitched to death and even despite all this the game was actually intensely easy; I beat it in about two days because there's a guy you can always pay 10 coins to find out where to go next and what to do. Each character has like maybe one weapon or special ability that's ever useful more than once and in the end it'll just be down to which skin you'd rather have on your player.

I've played this game an unholy amount of times because of its hilarious plot and awesome soundtrack, amongst other things.

This is my answer. Goemon is actually my favourite N64 game and I started playing it again the other day. It's just so rediculous it's awesome.

[Dreddz]

Shenmue. 90% of that game was broken to be frank. Moving Ryu felt so awkward and the forklift driving was glitched up the ass. There's other little annoyances throughout the game but the rest is gold.

[Roto13]

I wish more Shenmue fans would accept the fact that even with it's giant budget, Shenmue really could have used a lot more polish. xP

[Old Manus]

I liked Star Wars Episode 1 BECAUSE the game was so retarded. It was way too difficult, and there were so many glitches that I somehow managed to kill the final boss AN ENTIRE LEVEL EARLY. I still can't figure out how I did it.

[Jowy]

Once I decided to change the sound in Lufia II from Mono to Stereo and it killed one of my characters and when I revived her, she was level 99. Amongst numerous other glitches, it's still my favorite SNES rpg tho'

[Shoeberto]

Alundra 2.

Time hasn't been quite as kind to it. Going back to play it again is a little difficult. But I loved it when it was new.

[Moon Rabbits]

On a side note, does FF8 count? The only thing "broken" was its Junction system, which made the game impossible if you didn't instantly work it out, then ridiculously easy once you did.

I'd just like to point out that the Junction system is not "broken," people are just idiots. I honestly don't understand the difficulty behind grasping the Junction system.

In *FACT*, I thought it was pretty rad, maybe if'n the enemies dropped magic after battles instead of having to draw it. Etc. etc.

Anyway, on topic:

http://www.indiegames.com/blog/images/timw/romch.png

I win the thread.

[Krelian]

I wish more Shenmue fans would accept the fact that even with it's giant budget, Shenmue really could have used a lot more polish. xP
I do, too. I still love the game, though. I wish there were a huge compilation of Shenmue I, II and III, the former two remakes with polished gameplay and graphics and III the long awaited conclusion to the saga... What? I can dream, right? ;_;

On topic, I guess Blaze & Blade kind of counts as a broken game. The camera was awful and the AI controlling my other characters was atrocious, I still found it highly enjoyable.