Your guilty pleasures in gaming?


Although I never have been a huge fan of the DS in general and rarely play mine, another guilty pleasure for me is I like zombies on Call of Duty Black Ops for the Nintendo DS. A lot of people don't like it and given how the graphics are, how you can be downed in a single hit, and how it lacks a lot of what the console and PC versions have, I can easily why. Despite this, however, I actually enjoy this one because rather than making a vain attempt to copy everything from the other versions of the game, it instead provides a unique experience you can't get anywhere else. While the maps are very simplistic, I think they're pretty neat and actually kind of scary. It's definitely not perfect and I do wish it wasn't so hard, but as a fan of COD Zombies, it's a game I am glad I bought!
 
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Not sure it counts as a 'guilty' pleasure since its not inherently embarrassing, but playing something like GTA or an open world racer and following real world traffic laws is strangely cathartic.

Also not an actual guilty pleasure (more a confession of a sin), but I do own a few of the more lewd titles that were physically released for the Switch; more so because I'm amazed that they actually exist and can be bought and played, totally uncensored on a Nintendo system. There's a ton of that garbage on the eShop, but the fact some publishers took a risk and released some of them into shops on cartridges is fascinating to me.
 
I feel like I have plenty of games that are guilty pleasures, but can only think of a few off the top of my head.

Mortal Kombat 4: A messy janky game during the series transition to 3D. My brother and I grew up playing it quite a bit on our PS1 and it's always hilarious with how broken combos can be, the voice acting for both gameplay and cutscenes, etc.

Perfect Dark Zero: Understandable that lots of people were rather disappointed in the Xbox 360 reboot of Perfect Dark. The controls were not great and physics felt terrible. But my brother and I enjoyed the co-op campaign and multiplayer bot matches, despite it's missteps.

Most of the games I can kind of think of were a bit of a mess, but always made more enjoyable when playing with someone.
 
Mentioned this in my post for the top 10 racing games but Test Drive 6, specifically the Game Boy Color version, is a guilty pleasure. An isometric racer a la R.C. Pro-Am, with tracks very loosely based on real locations and licenced cars which don't really have that much different apart from their speed generally. It's difficult to see upcoming corners, collision detection is all over the place, the AI rubberband is some of the worst I've seen in any racer and the sound effects can be grating - yet I wouldn't change anything in it for the world. It's totally nostalgia based as it was my first ever personally owned game, but I still occasionally pop it in my Game Boy Player, play through all the championships in one sitting and have a blast.

I suppose the main console/PC version of TD6 applies here too. I imported the Dreamcast version from the US at great expense as I have weird memories of looking it up on YouTube in its early years (around 2006 or so). I always mentally told myself that if I ever got a Dreamcast, I'd buy it since I loved the GBC version so much and wanted to experience the full fat version, so to speak. It's one of the worst looking and sounding games on the system (the PS1 version is actually better overall) and the physics do this great thing where they just flat out don't exist at times, but I love its overall 'feel' and still enjoy the ridiculousness of it, even if its not very polished. Great soundtrack and car list too... even if the cars do look like shoeboxes. The below pic is apparently a Subaru 22B:

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INEEDNAWZZZ
I suppose the main console/PC version of TD6 applies here too. I imported the Dreamcast version from the US at great expense as I have weird memories of looking it up on YouTube in its early years (around 2006 or so). I always mentally told myself that if I ever got a Dreamcast, I'd buy it since I loved the GBC version so much and wanted to experience the full fat version, so to speak. It's one of the worst looking and sounding games on the system (the PS1 version is actually better overall) and the physics do this great thing where they just flat out don't exist at times, but I love its overall 'feel' and still enjoy the ridiculousness of it, even if its not very polished. Great soundtrack and car list too... even if the cars do look like shoeboxes. The below pic is apparently a Subaru 22B:
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I get where you're coming from. I grew up with Test Drive 5 on the PS1, so I naturally wanted to play Test Drive 6 as well and eventually, I got it for that console. While I like the idea of the game, like you, I am not a fan of the physics either and the handling and cheating AI just makes it so hard, it prevents me from wanting to actually progress in the game. Granted Test Drive 5 wasn't flawless either and had similar problems, but I swear 6 is even worse about it. Yet, despite this, I can still find a reason to play it and get some kind of enjoyment from it anyways, though I do want to like the game a lot more.
 
This might be a weird one, but I love seeing the outside of boundaries or far off level assets that look terrible, as they should for areas you aren't supposed to look at in games. As a kid, my brothers and I would spend hours venturing off the normal path of a level in games like Test Drive Offroad, Need for Speed II, Jet Moto, Motor Toon, or Twisted Metal to see if we could leave the game's boundaries or find secrets.

Still today, with games that have much better graphics, I still try to peek around the game's boundaries or look far off into backgrounds to see what there may be and always get a laugh when there is a obvious skybox, poorly textured walls or poorly rendered shapes. It's just weirdly fascinating.
 
DiRT Showdown is definitely my guilty pleasure in gaming considering it being the least liked (to put it nicely) DiRT game among fans, or atleast that’s what the consensus seems to be.

Played through Showdown for the third time a short while back and it's still a blast. Great soundtrack that fits the game perfectly, nicely repurposed tracks & locations from previous titles and a fun selection of knock-off cars.

Just another underrated arcade racer in my opinion.
 
I've always maintained it should've been a spinoff of GRID rather than DiRT, since that at least had demo derby in it, but they probably hoped marketing it as a DiRT game (with Gymkhana in it too) would help it out. I agree though, it was great fun. One of the few games I really got invested into the online as well.
 
Playing as a female character whenever the option to do so exists: Kassandra, V, Fenyx, FH/TC2 drivatar, female Outrider, etc. Let's be honest, they get the better clothes and often the best dialog delivery/interactions!
 
My guilty pleasure is Dynasty Warriors 9. I love that game. I play it almost as much as I play GT7. It is the consensus worse DW game along with DW6. My people don't like the "empty" open world or the poor Ai but I enjoy it. I can play for hours on end.
 
INEEDNAWZZZ
Not sure it counts as a 'guilty' pleasure since its not inherently embarrassing, but playing something like GTA or an open world racer and following real world traffic laws is strangely cathartic.

Also not an actual guilty pleasure (more a confession of a sin), but I do own a few of the more lewd titles that were physically released for the Switch; more so because I'm amazed that they actually exist and can be bought and played, totally uncensored on a Nintendo system. There's a ton of that garbage on the eShop, but the fact some publishers took a risk and released some of them into shops on cartridges is fascinating to me.
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Japan is far away from america in the porn/nudity side of things. There's always panty shot and **** like that even on "kids" anime.

I'm curious on what you consider actual lewd game tho ? Because I didnt saw anything really lewd on any console that wasnt pirate content or 18+.
 
Waifu Discovered and its sequel being a good example. A couple of fairly generic shooters with some graphic art as unlockables. Crawlco Block Knockers (yes, really) is a puzzle game with the USP being you see certain 'things' uncover as you progress. There's the Pretty Girls Collections as well; compilations of previously digital-only, innocent puzzle and card games, but the physical releases make some X-rated changes to the girls in them.

As above, it's just surreal to me that they got a physical release on a Nintendo system of all things when such stuff is usually reserved for PC only, as you said.
 
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