Fortnite. No story to catch up on, no true goals besides winning, no long-term strategizing. I'm sure PUBG is the same/better, but my SO is entertained by the cartoonish nature of FN. It brings us excitement when I'm close to winning. With the introduction of zero build, I fair well. I used to feel more guilt for it being a "bad" game and for not giving time to the betrer story/campaign titles, bur you know what? I'm tired and my time is limited as an actual adult. I'll take my dopamine where I can get it, thank you.

I'm replaying Ace Combat 7 right now. I can't believe how bad the writing is. I played it in 2020 and had a grand time with probably 6 runs for the various achievements. Turns out, I remember basically nothing of the story. It's definitely amusing to revisit the AI story aspects now that "AI" is in full swing. I guess AC5 set my standard for AC stories, but maybe that doesn't hold up well either. Regardless, I'm in it for the fun, respectable flight physics. Just don't ask me where I keep 144 missiles stored.

I guess it depends on why you think it's bad, so for me it's Wuthering Waves. I absolutely love that game, but it's "bad" because it's a gacha game and that monetization scheme is absolutely fucking disgusting.

The game itself is actually really good and the story/side stories had me cry like 4 times already lol

Counter Strike 2. It’s a toxic community, but I find it oddly addictive.

I don't play them anymore these days, but for me it used to be the Dynasty/Samurai Warriors series. Dunno what it was with younger me but they just hit for some reason

super deepthroat

Random my little pony and other young kid games. Hate to admit it but even the paw patrol games are entertaining in this way (had a ps+ subscription, wouldn’t have paid for these). They are short and easy, and kinda junk, nice palate cleanser, and often very cute and encouraging. You don’t know a silly morale boost until you play something that says “you’re doing great!” periodically on the easiest thing you’ve done all day.

Wet. The reviews were pretty harsh due to the length and number of loading screens, but the gameplay was extremely fun. It does end with a cinematic and quick time events which was a bit disappointing, but it's one of the few games I've played through multiple times.

Heroes of Might and Magic III, although I don't think the game is bad.
What's bad is that there's really nothing new to it and yet from time to time I sink lots of hours into a new campaign.
It's a kind of time machine bringing me back to more innocent times...
For the same reasons I need to beat some computer opponents in Broodwar on Big Game Hunters every once in a while.

When it comes to games, I have no guilt anymore. I enjoy some games and despise others. I think the only one that comes to mind for this category is E.V.O. The Search For Eden (SNES). I prefer it with a patch to improve the translation.

Escape from Tarkov, but single player (SPTarkov, not the paid upgrade). Lots of controversy surrounding the game, but I quite enjoy it playing at my own pace and difficulty

Lego Tower. It’s a silly game with almost nothing to do. And I put more hours into it than anything else

It’s interesting to see what people genuinely consider to be bad, or maybe they just missed that word? 😅

For me, it would have to be Under The Skin; a solid 6/10 game, in a world where 7/10 is considered average!

Final Fantasy II - not Cecil's, but Firion's. If I could see people's faces in FF circles when I say that, I bet they'd be looking at me weird. e.e"

Vanquish is so idiot and the story is atrocious but damn the shooting is good.

Stranglehold. I friggin love this game. It's the John Woo videogame that is technically a sequel to the movie Hard Boiled and has Chow Yun-fat as the lead. I don't know but I just really dig this game. Similar to it Enter the Matrix I also love. I go back and replay both every so often.

It's also a bit of a comfort type of thing as those came out in the early 00's when I was in my early 20s and still living at home and had more money than I knew what to do with hah.

Can't say I feel guilty about liking these but if we're talking about mediocre games I love that would be:

• Drakengard 3 - simple, repetitive gameplay, huge amount of asset reuse and terrible performance if you're crazy enough to play it on PS3. It also has a really engaging and tragic story, full of weirdness unique to the series (well, the first game anyway, haven't played D2 yet).
• Kane & Lynch (both games) - they're rough, gritty and don't pull any punches. Pretty divisive in terms of gameplay though I personally think it's thematically consistent and adds a lot to the atmosphere. My favourite games from IOI despite not being as well designed or polished as the Hitman series.
• Oni - 2001 action game by Bungie. Really cool hand-to-hand combat system, huge empty levels, simple story with wannabe Ghost in the Shell elements.
• Starbound - lots of hype about Terraria in space, lots of wasted potential and cool features that didn't make to the final release. I tend to prefer beta versions (mainly "Glad Giraffe" beta) but the final one also seemed alright based on what little I played of it. Definitely not as good as it had chance to be during development.
• Scarface: The World is Yours - budget GTA clone based on the 1983 movie with Al Pacino (it's actually a sequel). It looks bad even for the time but it plays well enough and has some neat mechanics which made it stand out, if only a little.
• Tresspasser - the infamous Jurassic Park game with full control of your arm and focus on physical interactions with the environment. It's a bit clunky and far from polished but it's an interesting experience nonetheless.

That's all that comes to mind for now, I might update the post if I remember anything else.

For a bit it was Destiny Rising, I quit D2 over a year ago but DR does genuinely do a lot of things much better than the base game and directly addresses a lot of my core complaints that made me quit after 10k hours in the first place. Stupid mobile gacha game with predatory monetization out the ass, and I was shrugging aside the handful of AI NPC voicelines.

Needless to say I came to my senses and dropped it entirely on a whim. Can't support the AI bullshit, I found I'd spent much more than I thought on the game already, and the endgame is entirely just p2w or get a handful of mats you need every 2 weeks. The core of the game and a lot of the systems are legitimately really good, but the gacha core really brings it way down.

That entire franchise is just a warehouse full of monkey paws.

I recently picked up Warframe which I've shrugged off for a long time because TPS almost never clicks for me, but it pulled me in hard, and it's wild going from FOMO-ridden powercrept anti-player D2 and gacha hell DR to a game that actually treats the players with respect.

Polarity

You're essentially just trying to make less mistakes then your opponent but the semi-hovering magnets have an awesome table presence

Pretty much most of the CoD series... But then again I'm mostly a multiplayer guy, and I only really buy CoD games if I like the beta enough. BO7 is something I kinda do like (MP only with the occasional Zombies) but I have to agree with the fact the campaign is absolute cheeks. It's like Treyarch wanted to make a horror game campaign but they're stuck making Call of Duty so they just shoehorned it in. Which sucks, cause I KNOW they're capable of much more, the BO6 campaign was actually quite great.

I've been playing the android version of Bit Heroes. It's terrible for multiple reasons but I've been playing it because the game can be played semi-passively, meaning that I can multitask while playing it. In fact, I'm actually playing it right now while I'm typing this comment.

For me is Dragon Ball Dokkan Battle. Its a Gachal so it has its share of nasty monetization strategies and dark patrerns but since its PvE only, its not as agregious as other titles focused on PvP.

Dragon Ball was the first anime I warched so the Nostalgia factor is very high. I really enjoy the Character attack animations and the team building.

Recently it's been Chaos Zero Nightmare on my phone. Yeah, it's a gacha. Yeah it has some absolutely ridiculous gooneriffic character designs that makes me roll my eyes. Yeah it's poorly translated and the story is garbage.

But you know what? The actual roguelike deckbuilder game mode is actually a ton of fun. The characters are well balanced enough that I've never felt like I was behind on power even with comparably "bad" pulls from the gacha. The game has been generous enough anyway that I have a lot of pulls saved up too. And the mutability and variety in the roguelike mode is just amazing. Tons of combos, tons of variations of every card and tons of opportunities to make niche builds work just because you happened to get one specific rare upgrade variation on one specific card while also stumbling upon one specific neutral card to add to your deck and stuff like that.

And all for the price of free? I can't complain.