Top 10 Bad Games that are Good

Humans love bad things. That’s a fact: just look at McDonalds and most Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. You might not realise it, but there’s probably even some room in your heart for a few bad video games. Here’s 10 of our most least favourites:

The Deadliest Warrior

We’ve all got a bit of a weird love affair going on with The Deadliest Warrior. While it’s completely true that the fighting mechanics are absolute bobbins and the eight characters are mostly terrible, there’s still an unmistakable charm from downing your opponent with a random spear throw. Plus, you can make a Knight fight a Spartan.

Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

Despite the fact it’s only seven minutes long and might as well just be a big, long corridor that you run down while shooting the same three enemy types over and over again, Kane & Lynch 2 actually does a bang-up job of creating its grizzled universe. Forget the dodgy running animations, or the limp bullet sprays of most of the weapons, and focus on the fascinating atmosphere made by the unique YouTube-esque visual filters.

Urban Chaos: Riot Response

Urban Chaos is a cult classic in the making: an Xbox/PS2-era game that is clearly rough around the edges but full of enough charm to make up for it. And when I say ‘charm’ I mean ‘gore’. Plus there’s an impenetrable riot shield which can be deployed whenever you want – can Modern Warfare 2 give you that?

Jurassic Park: Trespasser

Trespasser was in development for absolutely ages, was such a beast it couldn’t actually run on any computer and wasn’t even fun. But, still, some of the things it did were absolutely ahead of its time: regenerating health, ragdoll physics and massive outdoor environments.

Postal 2

Another game that shot to fame via notoriety – look, you can set a person on fire and urinate on them! There’s still a distinct trainwreck quality to Postal 2, and you can’t help but just play it.

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy

Psi-Ops had you killing enemies with telepathic ragdoll physics long before The Force Unleashed ever saw the light of day. It had some incredibly wonky controls and level design, but it’s hard not to love a game where you can kill enemies by throwing crates at them.

Carmageddon

Carmageddon is more commonly known as ‘that game which let you run people over’ and enjoyed a brief spurt of popularity in the 90s when the newspapers were fascinated with it. I, however, like to remember it as ‘that game with the shocking handling and bad tracks that everyone played for absolutely ages anyway’.

Deadly Premonition

Deadly Premonition is an open world survival game with clumsy controls, terrible graphics and horrid voice acting. But it’s also boosted by an interesting story and an atmosphere that’s been completely ripped off from cult classic Twin Peaks. It’s marred by endless problems, but it’s made beautiful by its awfulness.

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand

Blood on the Sand has a profanity button. Seriously. Press it and it keeps your combo chain ticking along. I’m not even joking: blap a pack of fools and insult their mothers for bonus points.

Robopit

Robopit was a terrible game about building robots and having them fight in arenas – kind of like the dumb Robot Wars show that was on BBC2 in the nineties. You fight dull bosses with a boring cast of characters, and trot around cliché environments as you try and get to the top of a tower. Maybe just take the lift next time? Still, we all played it far more than we should because it had robots in it.