A game you "didn't know it was bad 'til people told you so"?

Fallout 4. game was pretty decent but the pacing was weird. by pacing I mean the game seemed like it was set out in a way that you wouldn't complete the game until you were many levels up from what I was, so many upgrades that took a lot of caps left unlockable, and by the time I felt I was really starting to get somewhere, the game ended with the Institute ending

Fallout 4 is a great game.

Mass Effect: Andromeda - I knew 1 & 2 were held in high regard, but I hadn't played them. Actually, I'd played about 10 minutes of one of them a couple years before and it just wasn't what I was in the mood for at that time. So, I went into Andromeda without any expectations really and thought it was a perfectly fine game.

Just finishing about a new playthrough of Andromeda and I think it's larger problem is that the good content doesn't open up until a third of the way through the game. For the first third, you have very little to do except follow the Kett and the Angara storyline, and those are the absolute worst parts of the game.
It doesn't actually get good until it opens up and you're dealing with Outlaws, Collective, internal politics of the Nexus, the Krogan rebellion, etc... and your (admittedly pretty lame) companion quests. But at least it's something more than just two new species that aren't nearly as fleshed out or complete as what already existed.
By the time the game opens up and you can do more than just the main quest, you're already friggin bored.

Breath of the Wild. It is such a good game and I really love it and I only have ever heard possitive things about... but than I met a bunch of old school Zelda fans and they don't like the game that much. They say it's a great game but not a Zelda game. Maybe they just wanted to be contrarian but I can also understand where they are comming from.

As a long time Zelda fan I never understood any of the hate for BOTW from other long time fans. That being said I haven't been able to play it since TOTK came out because TOTK is what BOTW was missing for me.
- From seeing discussions among those Zelda fans (which to be clear I am not one), the issue is that the mainline games are now a completely different genre, but treated as though it's the natural progression of the series.
  The classic zelda games are primarily puzzle games, with a little bit of combat and intricate hand-crafted exploration to spice it up a bit. The modern zelda games (BOTW & TOTK) are exploration games with puzzles to spice it up. If you were a classic zelda fan, the niche genre you loved used to have regular releases by a major developer and now doesn't.
  Plus, there's a "all my homies hate skrillex" effect here; the series is massively more popular now, but the newcomers have a different idea of what makes a zelda game a zelda game. By sheer numbers they dominate a community that is now reshaped by their presence. In other words the zelda fan community is itself a different genre.
  For what it's worth, I haven't played that much of the series. Link to the Past I didn't care much for, Links Awakening (new one) I honestly hated, and BOTW I liked but had a couple issues with. All I've written above is based on passively seeing a bunch of discussion.
- Tears is better than Breath in every way, it's true. It's also more Zelda-like, in that you gradually expand your ability to explore the world.
Funnily enough, I heard a lot of people saying that they specifically liked it because it was a "return to classic, retro Zelda." The difference being that their idea of retro Zelda was the original rather than Link to the Past or Ocarina of Time.
I ended up replaying Wind Waker and I still haven't finished Breath of the Wild.
I think BotW is a spectacular game for kids who don't have access to just about any game they want.

Watch Dogs 1. It was quite fun for me, but quite a lot of people expected it to create a spark like GTA 5 back in the day, so when it didn't; they all criticized it to hell.

Same. I think "No Man's Sky" syndrome turned people off, but I thought it was really innovative, and I liked the PC being broody and driven, but not dramatic.
Same and for me watch dogs 2 wasn’t as fun anymore.

Red Steel, actually. I'll admit to having fun memories of it from when the Wii launched.

Path of Exile

Good fun game, but online communities are committing to min/max the fun out out of it. I like blowing up monsters, I don't care about optimising my chaos-per-hour rate.

A lot of games like that end up min/maxed like that, it sucks even more when developers start exclusively catering to the min/maxers forcing everyone min/max or gtfo.
Yeah it bothers me when the community for a game is like "{skill} is TRASH never use it" and when you do some digging you find it's like 2% less damage per second. Or it doesn't work well in NG+7. Some people are really obsessive about this stuff.
Unfortunately the game is specifically designed to waste your time if you want to see everything it has to offer. So it's not really the communities fault for pushing to maximize that time spent. Just a consequence of a deliberately slowed down system
- But the point isn't to see everything. The feeling of FOMO is what's seems to drive people to madness. For a game that's been developed for over a decade with multiple cycles of content release every year; I'm not surprised that people don't get a chance to see everything. I see that as a positive and not a negative.
  Other games do similar things. I play a lot of Dead Cells and can't get beyond 4BC. Most people will never get to end game content to see all bosses or unlock all items. Who cares. As long as the game is fun.
  My first play through of PoE was with no guides. I made it up as I went along. Had a terrible "build". I enjoyed taking weeks to get through the campaign slowly and reading all the lore. Every league I played, I got deeper and deeper into the content....learning to make tons of currency, getting a character to lvl 100, etc. It has been great playing it off and on. The game is fun without experiencing "everything". But if I ever engaged with the online community, all I would hear is "I've played 3000 hours and this game is shit".

The original iteration of no mans sky. Absolutely lied a shit ton about what was in the game but I really enjoyed my initial time with it.

There was something about the infinite emptiness that struck an emotional chord with me. That's gone now, for the better overall, but I'm glad I experienced it.

Deus Ex 2 - on PC.

Who told you this masterpiece of a game was bad?
- Maybe they mean before the stealth rebalance.

Unironically ET on the Atari 2600

Had a lot of fun as a kid, sure it wasn't Pitfall or F1 Racing but it was one of the few adventures on the 2600 and it wasn't terrible

Digimon World 4.

Granted, I was a child when I played it, but it was fun.

Years later I found a few YouTubers shitting on it due to bugs, recycled assets, lack of digivolutions, shitty camera angles, spammy gameplay, etc etc.

I agree with all of these criticisms and in hindsight yea that game was really lazy. However, I still had a good time.

I am one of the 10 people on earth who really enjoyed playing Starfield. The space combat seemed like a love letter to the old Wing Commander series, the art design was beautiful, there was a lot of fun content. I think i made it to NG7 before they took it off the free to play. When it's on sale i can't wait to grab it.

by comparison i hated The Outer Worlds which was the first 'it's like fallout in space!' that was promised so i was tickled when Starfield actually was like fallout in space.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience with Starfield. I just wish I didn't spend half of my time trying to build the optimal bases for trading hubs. Apart from that, everything was good
- I can understand someone complaining that it wasn't Fallout 5, but I definitely think it deserved a higher Steam rating.
- The bases were interesting! Getting an interplanetary production system going took some figuring and i never got an inter-system network up. If the mod scene keeps going for it they sure have a lot to work with!
I really like it until I started having problems with what I think must have been save bloating, making it more and more difficult to save. Which in turn made me quite until a possible fix as I didn't want to risk the save becoming unplayable.
Then I played other things and sort of forgot to check if it was fixed, but I still really liked the game.
I tried The Outer Worlds but couldn't stand it.
I felt that Starfield was good with the potential to be great (with enough added content, which they haven't done yet, but here's hoping).
The Outer Worlds, on the other hand, feels like it pretty much reached its limit. It's a better game vanilla, since it has more content and far less empty space, but I don't think that there's any more they could really have done with it. Not quite great, but definitely worth playing.
And the "Fallout in space" line references the overall vibe of TOW, with '50s-'60s style culture and advertising. Starfield has Fallout's mechanics, but it's more of a Star Trek or Firefly aesthetic, depending on where you are.
Oooo now you have me interested in Starfield by comparing it to Wing Commander, damn you.
I loved Outer Worlds. Rough around the edges, sure, but it wasn't much different than playing Fallout 3 in terms of gameplay. Also the setting made for some great satire. My only real complaint was the small maps. High hopes for the sequel.
I enjoyed it for a while, but the whole ng+, while pretty cool, really killed it for me. My first playthrough I made bases, upgraded weapons, etc. Then I learned about all the cool perks you got from ng+ and did that. The problem is you lose all your bases and material farms. So you're in this weird spot of having to bum rush all 10 universes to get the maximum benefit before actually setting up any significant settlements. I burned out quick. Also a bunch of the powers are underwhelming, and space travel is DOGSHIT. NMS, elite dangerous, hell even star citizen are space games. Starfield is NOT.

I remember some people in Reddit not being too happy with It Takes Two.

We loved it and look forward to playing Split Fiction when we find the time.

I remember some people in Reddit not being too happy with It Takes Two.
They’re just mad they don’t have any friends or a partner to play it with.
My kids played this co-op and loved it
Seemed like a pretty solid coop game to me!
Loved playing It Takes Two with my wife, such a great game I wished they made another one. The more couch coop games the better.
People don't like it takes two? Was the book too over the top or what?
- IIRC it was a minority, but the critique was gender stereotypes and misogyny.
  They are entitled to their opinions, and I'm glad I read it after playing the game so it did not affect my experience.
I don’t want to dissuade you, because Split Fiction is just as fun, game-play-wise, as It Takes Two.
But the story is not as good. And the characters are even more teeth-grindingly frustrating sometimes.
But still play it, it’s a lot of fun.
- Cheers mate, appreciate the advice!

COD Ghost. I loved the singleplayer storyline. Everyone hated the game for the storyline.

I'll upvote for the honest answer, but that game is what made me quit CoD lol
- The next few games were bad, so you didn’t miss out on anything
Is that the Call Of Doggy one? To be honest I've only actually finished COD4.
- Yes

Interestingly, the two example you shared (Sonic Unleashed and the whole Sonic franchise being bad) are likely a good example of "hanging with the bad crowd". Unleashed is… not great, in my opinion, but the whole franchise? Please. We're not talking Sonic06 level of horrible decisions.

Another view on this is, if you enjoy something, and people have to tell you it's bad just so you know, it can't be that bad. People enjoy different things, and seriously, the toxicity of large communities is the worst thing ever. At this point, even with what seems to be "unanimously loved", you'll be able to find a large enough group of people happy to tell you it's shit.

With that said, some games are really, really bad. But these games usually don't need to be pointed out for people to know.

edit: dang, that was full of typo.

Jumping on your last point, I was in a local Game store and a woman who clearly knew nothing about games was birthday shopping for her son, she asked the owner what if he thought Superman 64 would be a good gift.
To the man's credit, in complete deadpan, he said "that game is absolutely terrible, it's the worst game on the system"
“hanging with the bad crow"
That's my favorite Sonic mission.

None. I couldn't care less about people hating the games I enjoy.

Sonic Adventure 2

There's a lower budget game by Spiders called Technomancer that came out in 2016. It came up in my XBox game pass, so I played it before I read any reviews on it, and I honestly enjoyed the hell out of it.

I didn't find the combat stilted. It felt quite fun to work between three different fighting styles. The storyline was interesting and (to me anyway) original. And the Universe was pretty fun to play around in.

I also quite enjoyed that one! Definitely a bit janky, but I had my fun for the price.
Holy shit someone else who played Technomancer and enjoyed it!
- Very much so. I wish there was more in that world. The lore was really interesting to me. It's not often you get a story set on Mars that actually has something unique about it.

Killzone. I really, really loved the story and level design, but everything was shit. Someone pointed it out to me and I suddenly seen everything wrong with the game hahha.

There was this one glitch where the first shot from the Helghast rifle was 100% accurate which I used and abused to absolutely destroy people in multiplayer games.

The GBA game for Avatar: the Last Airbender. Tried to revisit it as an adult, couldn't find any reviews for it online. Apparently it was so obviously shovelware thay nobody gave it the time of day.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II. Bought of for 9€ and had a lot of fun with it. Sure, the story was not as good as the first one and it's a lot shorter, but the new gameplay was great and it has a much better final boss than the first game.

I was just really really disappointed with the controls on the Wii. The first one was so intuitive and they just went and changed it for no reason.
- I have to admit, I never tried the Wii version of either game. Only PC and Xbox.

Dark Souls 2 was the first and only Soulslike game I played... Was a great experience and a good time killer during my summer break (when I still had one). Only later did I learn how poorly ppl thought of the game

they only hate on it because it wasn't the exact same. DS2 is a great game but really should have been a stand alone title

Industria, I really really love it but it turns out it's not particularly well reviewed. I've always wanted a game that felt like Simon Stålenhag's paintings and that game is actually specifically inspired by his work.

"we have hl2 at home"
- I've played half life but I don't really like it, same with fallout and bioshock which are the other obvious comparisons

RuneScape 😅

The first Deus Ex game I played was Deus Ex: Invisible War on the original Xbox, which I loved. It's the first foray into cyberpunk for me and sparked a love of it I've had since. It was not well received, and considered a dumbed down version of the original game.

Still love it. The Arcology in Cairo was my favorite part.

The Sniper Elite series, and to a lesser extent the Sniper Ghost Warrior series. Also, the True Crime series. I think all of those games are a ton of fun, I enjoyed playing them all and still do sometimes but they had very mixed reviews.

Mass Effect Andromeda. I plaid it well after launch after the initial "problems" were fixed, and I think it's a good game. I just wish we'd get a sequel.

Drakensang 1

call of duty world war 2. my favorite one (mostly cause its the only one im actually good at haha) but a lot of people hated it

That reminded me that Sonic Unleashed was the only game I ever got refunded.

I bought the game to play with my kids, expecting a colorful and fun Sonic game. I quickly realized it was quite different, much more violent than I expected. So I traded it for Sonic Colors, which was a bit more kid friendly.

The last actually ambitious Sonic game imo
- If it was for me I'd welcome with the darker mood, but the game was for my kids.

Battlefield 1, I liked its slower-paced combat and need for teamwork for things like ships and the heavy bomber (original, not the super heavy).

It was different than almost all contemporary shooters, and I really found that refreshing. It also had a strong art design and really looked the part for WW1, even if some of the weapons were prototypes or team weapons (which should have been cut, imo) or vehicles were tweaked for gameplay (understandable, the German tanks were extremely tippy, and the French tanks were slower IRL)

Shadow the Hedgehog

Megaman X7

Looking back, I know why. I was just so happy to play as Shadow/3D Zero, I really didn't care about the many faults these games have.

On the topic of Sonic Unleashed, I played it as a kid on the Wii and actively disliked it because it just seemed sad and freaky to see Sonic effectively become mutated.

To give some idea, back then I had no internet so whatever games we had, I always gave a good go and I'd always play even the most mediocre of games.

We also had Sonic Colors and that game just felt the total opposite: very positive, lots of eye candy, arcadey, very much enjoyed it as a kid.

Some 20 years later and I'm speaking to a Sonic fan and they bring up how they've played every single game including Unleashed, and it was the only one they hated, which made me realise I'm not the only one.

To answer your question, I'd say Shrek for the Xbox - I did enjoy Shrek 2 more than the original game as a kid, but I also didn't mind the original either.

Once I had internet, I saw plenty of references to the original game as the butt of jokes and an example of what games should not be, and honestly those criticisms were valid.