Favourite games with low metacritic scores

Hey guys!

I was wondering if you had any games that you really liked that recieved low metacritic scores.

For me, its Crackdown 3 at 60 as well as Crimsonland at 69.

I love the freedom and sandbox gameplay of Crackdown and Crimsonland is just a really fun duel stick shooting game. I will never uninstall these games haha.

Also, do metacritic scores matter to you that much? Does it affect how you view a game?

Thanks!

I swear by Lightning Returns. 66 on ps3/pc, 69 on 360

Has-Been Heroes has a 53 on metacritic.

I don't just think this game is good, I think it's phenomenal. It was my GOTY 2017.

It was just reviewed for the completely wrong audience (Switch gamers looking for casual fantasy fun) instead of who it's for (those looking for very deep tactical difficulty that rewards discovery)

When I ordered my Steam games by metacritic score I was surprised by these - as someone who's never really looked at the metacritic score for anything.

The ones that stood out as games I've really enjoyed with low scores were:

Submerged (47)

Chaos Engine (40)

Desert Child (60)

(and for Vinny) Sonic & All Stars Racing (65)

Although a massive chunk didn't have scores so there are probably countless other games I'd be surprised by too.

I think the lowest game I love is Cryostasis at 69.

Warframe on the technicality that the review scores are from 2013/2014, even though I played it in 2019 (by which point it was practically an entirely different game)

Its 2013/2014 scores were in the mid 60s

Genesis Alpha One. Its reviews are more mixed than bad, but its metacritic sits somewhere in the 60s. I think it's a straight up brilliant combination of management sim and rougelite, and my number one podcast game of the generation. Plus they've done a solid job of supporting it with cool updates since its launch.

@liquiddragon: I had a great time with Lightning Returns but it still kind of deserves those scores haha. Such a weird game. I would love them to give it another shot and have the first missions be much better. I think a lot of people got put off by the rune hunt in the beginning.

Baroque on the Wii is around 50 on Metacritic, not a game I love per se, but fascinating and my first experience with anything roguelike.

Also have a soft spot for:

• Velvet Assassin (61, PC)
• Clive Barker's Jericho (63, 360)
• Bladestorm (63, 360)

I suppose low scores sometimes give me pause before buying a game (might do a bit more research beforehand etc.), but otherwise it doesn't matter to me all that much.

I have a soft spot for Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude (59%). The game is pretty awful but I found a lot of the dialogue genuinely funny (at least at the time). I can respect the writers for going all in with a theme. The game that followed it was pure trash though.

Oh man i've never really looked at metacritic before, i have no idea what sorts of scores my favourite games received so i've just done a quick search at a couple i can think of, i actually searched for a handful but most don't have reviews, like Deserter Simulator which i adore.

Resident Evil 6, whos various platform releases vary between 63-69%, i'm actually playing this game again now and diving deep into its bonus modes, it's an incredible game, everyone's out of their f***ing minds.

Dynasty Warriors 5 at 69%, i loved 8 but 5 is probably my soul mate of the DW franchise, the PS2 was incredible and DW5 was just one of the many games i loved on that system so i'm very nostalgic for it, it also has my favourite soundtrack of the series.

Alpha Protocol (63 on consoles, mid 70s on PC). Gameplay makes a really bad first impression, but all the story branching and dialogue systems are still some of the best in the business. None of it's new, but I see very few games go as far as AP did.

Add "Alpha Protocol 2" to the list of sequels to Obsidian properties that'll never happen but I desperately want D:

I liked Ryse (60), but I see why it got the reception it did. It was just awesome seeing any representation of Ancient Rome in (at the time) next-gen Cryengine fidelity.

EYE: Divine Cybermancy (61) is obtuse and overwhelming as hell, but once you sink your teeth into it, it's a classic Deus Ex game that offers more options for combat and approaching situations than Human Revolution or Mankind Divided ever did. Hacking other human beings? Doable. Spec out your guy as a maniac flinging a sword around? Doable. Crazy magic? Doable.

The surreal story and vibe of this game sticks with me to this day.

At a stunning 51% (honestly, I was expecting 20 points lower), Backyard Wrestling. Dammit, that game is a blast, and I'll defend it all day. Yeah, it's trashy, the gameplay is ridiculous, and it's basically ICP The Game, but at its core it's a surprisingly good time. You can set wrestlers on fire at a gas station while "Homies" plays. I mean, come on, that's gold! Now, the sequel? THAT'S garbage.

And of course, I'll always love bad 90s FMV games. I rank 11th Hour among my all time favorites, and even other fans of the subgenre think it's shit, haha.

I miss when I was more adventurous about what I played. I take reviews too seriously these days, and I don't take the chance on widely panned games that look interesting like I used to.

How would I find this? I don't know any. Aside from searching through every game I think might not be super popular.

Without doing the serious memory mining required to think of some truly bad SNES (James Bond, Jr. anyone?) or N64/PSX games I played into the ground when money wasn't an option, a quick scroll through my PSN trophies gives the prize to...

A 3-way tie for Wattam, Doki-Doki Universe and Binary Domain at ~72% for Playstation platforms! All simple, janky and uniquely charming in their own ways - makes sense. I always feel like I should play more games like that, but the more the PSN store becomes awash with games I really can't find any information about beyond the promo trailer I just get worried I'll put $40 or $50 into a very, very wrong thing and stick to my little AAA and Polygon/Kotaku-approved indie bubble.

@stantongrouse: Weird, didn’t know you could order Steam games by Metacritic score. Is that just a filter/sorting option on the Library screen now? They keep adding features that are easy to miss, I’ll have to try it when I’m at my PC.

@bisonhero Yeah, it's a part of the new (recent) library setting. There's like, what your friends are playing, metacritic etc. It's quite handy but depending on the version of a game (GOTY, Steam bundles) you bought through Steam it might pull the Metacritic score through.

Not sure how long Metacritic has been around but I just equate this to what bad games did you like that everybody else hated? For me, a lot of older games of the PS1 and PS2 era that I owned were reviewed badly.

I liked Twisted Metal 3, all the Destruction Derby games, Silent Hill 4, Tokyo Xtreme Racer Zero, C&C Red Alert ports to PS1, Resident Evil Code Veronica, Resident Evil Outbreak File 1&2. There's a bunch more lol.

@superslidetail: Code Veronica had a 94 when it first came out

@drbroel: Yea I didn't remember what it actually got, I just remember a lot of people dunking on it or at least in more recent years.

No Man's Sky, I guess. Has a 61 according to the steam sorting thingy. The second lowest is skyrim at 74 which I also love.

No Man's Sky. I played it years after launch and absolutely loved it, so I guess it's kind of a cheat but don't have a better answer.

Remember Me I guess which sits in the mid 60's.

The art design of future Paris is beautiful and once you understand the weird combat they were going for it's actually pretty fun to mix and match your own combos.

I'm glad DONTNOD found their niche with these interactive story games but I think they had a really solid idea here that a sequel could have built upon.

@humanity: Wow, that looks really neat from the screenshot!

@rorie: It's a third person, action brawler set in "Neo Paris" with the two main hooks being that in pivotal story moments you get to "remix" memories of key NPC's using a sort of video-editor like interface to scrub back and forth through the memory and alter it in specific ways to further the story - as well as a combat system that had it's own combo editor letting you mix and match attacks that gave you back life, dealt damage or supplied a power meter for specials - the length and sequence of the combo up to your choosing from a range of unlocked inputs. The combat feels a bit stiff and more like a music rhythm game where you have to tap out the inputs in a specific sequence rather than some DMC-lite with JUST frame inputs.

While the gameplay part is an OK mix of this awkward combat and very on-rails platforming, the level design as seen from the screenshot is really great. The world building aspect of the game itself thats centered around the idea that thanks to a technical breakthrough, memories have been monetized by corporations gives way to a lot of fascinating in-game mechanics.

Based on my Steam library, the lowest Metacritic games that I'll go to bat for are The Yawhg (Metacritic 66) and Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes (Metacritic 71). Neither game has the greatest longevity once you kinda see how the game works, but as a fun novelty to try with different small groups of people, I greatly enjoy both games.

Also, Massive Chalice (Metacritic 73) is shockingly good for that score. No, the game's not perfect and doesn't deserve the Metacritic 85-95 that I assume XCOM and XCOM 2 better fucking have on Metacritic, but I really like Massive Chalice's weird spin on XCOM soldiers. It's a pity it didn't have a few more million dollars to really flesh out some of the features. In Massive Chalice, you're waging a centuries long war against monsters, and attacks only come once a decade. So even if you experience few combat casualties, you watch as your soldiers start as young adults then grow old (reflected in their physical stats gradually waning while their wisdom goes up), then perhaps they eventually retire from combat to become research sages or academy commanders, and eventually die of old age. It's unusual for a fantasy tactics game to make me actually think about aging and mortality so directly. Like XCOM, you become attached to some soldiers, and once or twice it actually kinda fucked me up when they passed away, or even just to think how brief their prime years were. Also it has more or less the random trait system from Rogue Legacy/Darkest Dungeon but in a medieval XCOM, so some of your soldiers will have like better crit chance due to their keen eyesight or maybe they're just a drunk and zig zag around when you give them movement commands. It's great.

I couldn't possibly give less of a shit about metacritic and scores, so I'll just assume that all the weeb shit I bought on Steam has a low score, and that my favorite of the bunch is the Senran Kagura series.

As others in this thread have pointed out, the Steam library thing will scrape the wrong score sometimes if the game has been rereleased a bunch. Skyrim's PC Metacritic from 2011 is actually 94:

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim

But there is a separate page for Skyrim Special Edition (visual remaster from 2016) that only has 6 PC reviews, which is where the 74 came from:

https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-special-edition

The awful stuff i liked doesn't seem to be on Metacritic all that much.

I finished Earthworm Jim 3d and had a great time. Earthworm Jim 2 for the GBA has an awful score on metacritic, but i assume that's mostly port-related. I kinda like all these games.

I finished Militato which look absolutely awful now, but i remember buying it on a vacation trip based on the boxart and regarding it as somewhat of a hidden gem :D

I have a fondness for CSI games. (45 metacritic) Just the act of gathering clues and unraveling a plot easily amuses me.

Oh and all these Army Men & Small Soldier games? I can't say i played them all but i stumbled on demo's here and there and always had a good time with those games.

There's also this Rock Manager game a local store had on sale. Not entirely sure how the actual game part worked, but i played it enough that Supermarket Love still plays in my head.

And finally, this educational point n click adventure game where you talk to a bunch of folk in ancient Rome. Caesar's Will is the name of the game. There's absolutely no place for 'a fun gaming experience' in this game and the text is cork-dry, but it did feel real in a way that games are not. Actual historical characters talking with eachother in a game that is made by an educational company?! Yes please!

The rest is a bunch of very region-specific software. Thinking about A2 Racer, the Redcat series., This math game.

Amsterdoom is fun.

@bisonhero: It's wild to me Yawhg is that low. It's a been a really fun thing to play through in groups a few times, and the music is outright incredible. I guess it's pretty niche.

Resident Evil 6. For what it is I think it was great fun and the mechanics worked very well in my opinion. The biggest downside is that, unlike RE5 that brought in co-op, it wasn't a game I played a bunch with a friend or brother. I played it a lot on my own. On the Xbox 360, I played through it twice with each character. I got it again on the PS4, but like RE4 and 5, I played them so much on previous generation systems that I hadn't gone entirely through any of them on current-gen.

I also played through Mass Effect: Andromeda in its entirety (that means, all side content as well) twice. I bought it twice too; once on base PS4, then when I got an Xbox One X, I bought it there. The game had issues, but I liked the worlds you go to. It was a fun shooter, and visually (aside from faces and some bugs) it was a beautiful game. It also sounds great too, even though the soundtrack isn't as memorable as the first three games'. I also enjoyed Anthem, but at that point, it's more about 'these are games people hated and I enjoyed' rather than putting it into a category about 'favorites'.

It HAS to be my favorite "bad game but really it's good, no seriously, just try it out" Drakengard with a glorious and deserved 63

I really like Custom Robo. I dream of the day when this game will get a reboot.

Metacritic: 65/100

@drbroel: I love that game so much! I stumbled upon it pretty much accidentally and was hooked. A very good choice.

Mine is and probably always will be Risen on Xbox 360. It has a 60 and I put over 150 hours into it. Granted, this is a case of pretty good game, just a bad port (it has a 77 on PC), but the port was truly terrible and I loved it.

@humanity: I love Remember Me! It's gorgeous and there's just something about it that captivates me. I wish it had a couple more memory hack sequence.

Speaking of DontNod, has anyone tried Vampyr? Is it any good or is it a garbage fire?

@theonewhoplays: I liked Remember Me quite a lot, and I think Vampyr is better, personally. YMMV depending on the setting (I personally loved it), and it has either some wonky writing or translation from time to time, but it is a good game in the same vein of Remember Me that I thought was well worth the money.

@theonewhoplays: Vampyr is somewhere in between "good" and "garbage fire." Haven't played it, but watched a bunch of streams back when it came out. It's got some cool narrative ideas about being a vampire who might have to feed on named NPCs and what that does to impact the story, but also has some combat that isn't the best. It's the kind of game where some designer clearly had a passionate vision but parts of the game fall short of that vision probably because they just didn't have the time or money to really refine stuff. I'd say it exists in B-game territory, maybe like an Alpha Protocol if that comparison means anything to you.

@theonewhoplays: I’ve played Vampyr and it’s very much a Remember Me situation in that they try a lot of new and interesting things but a lot of it doesn’t feel like it’s quite there yet. The combat is more dynamic but still feels somewhat stiff in execution. Instead of memory remixing you are more of a detective this time around as you go around and interview various folks to piece together the bigger story. This requires a lot of running back and forth through the same areas so you can ask someone a question, get a clue on another person, then run back and talk to them again.. At times it can feel like a long checklist to fill out more so than an interactive story as you know that you’ll miss out on key dialog if you don’t explore all options. In a way it’s very similar to the Frogwares series of Sherlock Holmes games as far as the pacing goes and it’s absolutely a lot more Interview with the Vampire than Underworld.

I personally prefer sci-fi so the Victorian aesthetic gets a bit stale after a while and at the time when I played there was no fast travel. For a game so heavily laden with dialog a lot of the performances are ehhh questionable? Bad..even.. but also endearing in a goofy way.

I’m sure you can get it on a pretty good discount now so it’s worth checking out. A lot of the rough edges mean that your love for the setting can definitely make or break your enjoyment.

Remember Me is a super strong contender, it has a top tier aesthetic and some cool narrative devices mixed with some ho-hum combat, but I'd love to see Dontnod come back with a sequel with what they've learned from their storytelling experience so far. The Neo Paris setting is some really gorgeous cyberpunk design

More recently, I still had a ton of fun with Anthem and enjoy booting it up for a game or two every so often, which guarantees making me a social pariah. I find its core mechanics more satisfying and structurally different from the games it was constantly compared against. Personally, I can latch onto a satisfying loop more strongly than I do against on-paper discussions about content longevity etc.

Remember Me is a great game. One of the few games I've actually considered to learn how to speedrun (a weird urge I get sometimes even though I suck at speedrunning).

I remember enjoying my playthrough of Hunted: The Demon's Forge (61, PC). One of those games I dug out from the bottom of my backlog pile when I was bored once. Can't even remember when I bought it but I used to buy a lot of dirt cheap games on the Steam Sales. It's a ridiculously generic copy of other edgy power fantasy titles, but the gameplay was solid and fun enough to keep me going.

Thanks guys. Vampyr is heavily discounted so I'm considering picking it up. I bought RDR2 yesterday and after an hour of holding X, shooting stuff, and sloooowly opening cabinets I'm already pretty sick of it, so maybe Vampyr might be more to my liking.

@humanity: Hey i loved that game, but i was hesitant to play it at first because it doesn't show very well in trailers, animations are quite janky, voice acting is iffy in places, but when i finally got around to playing it i found it to be very very good. Thanks for bringing it up, and yes, it screenshots extremely well :P.

Of recent games, for me would be some Sword Art Online games, specially Fatal Bullet and Alicization Lycoris, both games which I enjoy a lot. Both don't have high scores.

Now on older games — Romance of the Three Kingdom XIII (which is around 67) and Elminage Gothic (which don't even have a score, I mean it got only place review it and it gives it a 60) are two which I remember right now.

Has to be Matt Rorie's Alpha Protocol for me. The gameplay has a lot of serious issues, but the way that game handles its story, as well as the story and characters themselves is still unmatched, even today.

Lowest games that I own and enjoyed include Ryse (61), Puzzle Agent 2 (63) and Lord of the Rings: War in the North (66)

I am surprised the lowest rated one I own is Star Trek (43), although there are a few docens games not listed that are likely worst...

Legit stunned to see Abyss Odyssey has a 69 on Metacritic. That's a dang good game

I loved Gods Will be Watching (64). The art style, weird storytelling, and consequences for your actions just really came together for me. If they would've tuned the difficulty and RNG to be a little less punishing i think it would have been better received.

@slag: Hah, That's interesting. Like if i had to rate it, i would probably give it a 7-7,5, but i would stress that despite this.. 'low-ish' (?) score it's still a game that i enjoyed all the way through and wanted to see through. At the same time i'd rate a game like Mad Max as a similar 7.0-7,5 game, but i could immediatly tell you that it's a game i would never complete and get bored with at some point.

Sometimes you just encounter these games that are fun at heart, but you can't look past the blemishes that come with a title made by a small team on a limited budget. I do love how Ace Team does an incredible job at supporting online coop in their campaigns, and most of the time i end up seeing their games all the way through.

I think Mission Impossible for the Nintendo 64 is pretty good, and it has a low score there, I can't remember what the score is but I guess it's in the 60's.

@liquiddragon: @humanity: I really need to go back to Remember Me, I bounced off the combat real bad though. I got way into Lightning Returns, that game has crazy replayability.

Secret best choice in this thread, Jericho is delicious.