Weekend Debate: Name your guilty pleasures

calling in sick on the day of a release date, no holiday days taken and get paid to play videogames whilst “sick”

@freddutton

I won a Little King’s Story code last week (thanks very much by the way!) but haven’t received anything yet – I checked my PM folder on the forum and thre is definitely nothing there. Do you know if these have been sent yet or have I been missed out?

You shouldn’t feel guilty about something that gives you pleasure.

Though saying that my gamer credibility is questioned by friends due to my enjoyment of the Lego games!

I eat secretly flowers…

I model my life on Homer Simpson.

Phineas & Ferb Across the 2nd Dimension.

I bought it for my 6 year old daughter but gradually found myself playing it more and more when she was in bed. I played it so much I got the platinum trophy and rather enjoyed it.

Of course by the time my daughter has lost interest in the game I was sick of the sight of it.

My guilty pleasure is true pinball on the ps1 because theres nothings like playing vikings and getting MULTIBALL never gets old my friends tell me to play Zen pinball 2 which I have 2 tables on but nothing compares to true pinball yes the graphics arent as good but the addictiveness to try and beat your high score is out of this world I even went in to a charity shop when I saw it in there just because I broke my original and I still play it now just goes to show doesn’t have to be graphically amazing just addictive enough that someone with a ps3 would still want it now.

Mine is an easy choice its spiderman 3. Lots of people dont like it due to the fact that Spiderman 2 set the bar for web swinging and people did not like the fact that this one was not quite as goodd. Belive it or not I enjoyed taking mj tours of ny and iI also enjoyed the boss battles and looking for collectables around the city.

In all honesty I have enjoyed all the Spiderman games even the ones from benox currently playing and loving the amazing Spiderman.

Wish I could buy a spidey avatar.

Lair. For all of its faults (for which there were many) who wouldn’t want to fly a dragon and spit fire?!

My guilty pleasure is definately singstar! As soon as the wife and kids are out of the house, it goes on and duran duran is my song of choice if my mates knew i would die of shame! Let’s just say, if somebody knocks on then the game is quickly switched to modern warfare 3 and i am happy to talk about k/d and sniper spots knowing three minutes previous i was “hungry like the wolf” hahaha.

my guilty pleasure…gotta be Marvel pinballl-the Wolverine table. I consider this to be a guilty pleasure only because, Im absolutely no good at it, yet I play it in between games of uncharted 3 and tombraider.

Sorry to hear about your man-flu. Getting that way myself. Nose is blocked, and i’ve had no voice for 2 days.

R.E. Guilty pleasures. I have a couple, actually. Both are two of the worst reviewed games of the generation.

Number one? HAZE. The games media hated it, but i never understood why. Sure, it didn’t do anything amazingly different from other games, but what it DID do, it did well. The gameplay was fun (if a little unimaginative) and better than a lot of other games. The drop-in co-op worked really well, too. The story wasn’t great, but again, was bearable. I don’t think it deserved anywhere near the hate it did.

Secondly, received even worse than HAZE…Lair. This game had many problems, but wow it was fun. Who doesn’t want to ride on the back of a dragon and kill people? It mainly got hate for the controls, which i never really had a problem with. The graphics were fantastic in parts, and passable in others. In fact, my biggest complaint about the game was unskippable cutscenes, with checkpoints BEFORE them. Meaning you had to re-watch cutscenes every time you died (i die a LOT). Anyway, it was a really brillianrt game in my opinion, and didn’t deserve anywhere near the amount of critical hate that it got.

Final Fantasy XIII
Everyone seemed to give the game hate for being linear and not a good final fantasy but I loved it. The combat system was awesome and I liked the characters and the journey they went on.

The game that I loved despite negative reviews was PS2′s Auto Modellista. That game was great with cool graphics (I love cel-shading) and nice customizations. It was the first racing game that I played until finished it. I’m still hoping for a sequel or at least, an HD version.

That’s actually quite a hard question! I would say most of my guilty pleasures would be games that I’ve played that really are more for kids than grown adults. Eyepet is probably the stand-out one of them. Getting down on the floor to play with a digital pet is not something that I’d openly discuss with my mates over a pint. The gamer in me was determined to get the platinum trophy, but over the course of 30 days I grew attached to Gary (that’s what I named him). Taking care of him became part of my daily routine.

It was a sad day when my PS3 broke and I realised that Gary was gone. I couldn’t bring myself to get another simian pet.

R.I.P. Gary.

hey hey

Yellow Duckies, Sharks, Sixaxis…..

Still making me and the kids laugh after all these years

Comment got deleted for being too long >< I seriously hate that about this blog. It all comes down to personal preferance. I loved Socom special forces with its more traditional controlls, whereas fans of the old ones thought it was a travesty. I loved Motorstorm apocalypse with the city breaking down around you and the new vehicle classes, whereas others prefered the olders ones, which were more offroad. I loved MAG with the whole chain of command thing while others stuck to more traditional shooters like COD. It goes the other way around too, I loved the COD series up untill Black ops and that whole Zempella, West, and co fiasco, whereas others think the series started getting better since Black ops.
Some look primarily at gameplay, others look at technical quality, and so on. I'll have to go with Heavy rain though.. You either loved it for being different, or hated it because of that.

I have a few, though they’re still liked by some people.
From the top of my head:

Rune Factory Oceans: This game was just so much fun. A lot of people disliked it because they essentially removed the ability to grow crops but I thought everything else in the game made up for it.
The fishing part in the game was extremely fun and I still find myself going on it for short periods regularly just to spend a day of game time fishing.

And as someone said, I really enjoyed FFXIII. I enjoyed it enough to play through it on both my PS3 and 360.

i actually really liked Lost Via Doma.

as a massive fan of the show lost i really liked interacting with the characters from the show, i liked the fact that using the camera to take photo’s was part of the game.
i liked the fact that it had the feel of the tv show and the soundtrack.
i think the game was rated much lower than it deserved to be but this could be the lost fanboy(should really be fangirl but do people actually use that term)in me talking.

i actually also enjoyed the prison break game which my husband made me play to get him some trophies as he hated it.lol i think i just like games based on tv shows.

now bring on Dallas the game

Alpha Protocol. Who dosen’t love to pretend to be James Bond? Well, most critics didn’t love it. However, this game puts you in the shoes of a spy extraordinaire. You battle your way across several continents… or snake your way through them. If you are of the particularly peaceful chap, then you can even talk your way through them.

Too bad about the bugs and shooting mechanics, otherwise I would have loved to see a sequel!

Oh, and you get to be a womanizer, if you feel so inclined.

Alpha Protocol – a game really bashed in the reviews, but if you set the difficulty at max, a lot of the flaws pointed in the reviews are gone. And a lot of reviewers seems that haven’t understand that the game is an Action/stealth RPG game. You have to max out your stats before you can shoot better (a lot of reviewers said that the shoot mechanic is broken, but is not like that at all). A very fun game, with a very interesting (and different from other games like mass effect) choice system. Stealth play reccomended (you can choose your style)

Watching Hero 108 on the Cartoon Network at 3:00 in the morning

It shames me to say it but……. Terminator Salvation. One of my earliest platinums and although this game is awful I actually enjoyed it due to my love of all things terminator.

Everyone I spoke to about it just laughed at me for it and to make matters worse I paid full price for it……. oh the shame.

Despite all it’s faults, and it has a fair few, my guilty pleasure is the original Naughty Bear. There’s just something amazingly calming about shoving a teddy bears head into a loud speaker and watching it blow up into a pile of fluff.

I call it a guilty pleasure, because of two things:

1) The game annoys the hell out of me in later levels, with inconsistent AI that suddenly catches me all the time on one go, but a retry will see me easily assassinate me target without being seen despite doing the same thing…

and 2) I feel guilty getting pleasure from killing the teddies, as I pretend they’re my sons toys. My little boy has hit me in the face with a Winnie the Pooh on more than one occasion, about time I got some revenge.

@ hfred123 we wrote togheter XD

Quantum Of Solace.

That game received very mixed reviews, but I absolutely loved it. The single player was great fun and I replayed it loads of times. It had a great mix of stealth and all guns blazing gameplay. It was also the first game that I ever played online and I got a bit addicted to it. I think I got in the top 10 of the leaderboards I played it so much.

How could you not like playing as James Bond, anyway?

I’m a 30 year old Psychologist who loves Just Dance Games, specifically, Just Dance 3. I take them a little more seriously than I should, but I love those games!

Thank you for finally allowing me to share this with the world!

The Cursed Crusade. Such a poor mans RPG but damn, after the 300 refrence I had to keep on playing. Honest to god, its that bad that its bloody comical genius.

Duke Nukem Forever.

The gameplay isn’t anything special and the production values aren’t great. But i really like it’s sense of humour. Like when you’re hit with a shrink ray and have to drive an RC car everywhere. Or being able to stop in the middle of an alien invasion to play a game of pinball.

And at the end of the day, it’s a game that lets you throw your poo around. I mean seriously, what’s not to like about that.

for me its SUPER RUB A DUB!
lol. i find it compelling and the music is relaxing. im a sad lonely guy lol

#26 care to share a vid of Just Dance 4 Gangnam Style?

the getaway (ps2) because althought it was such a stinker more then smelly bathroom it was so awsome to drive around the streets of london and being someone with a map reading skill i learned on a hiking weekend last summer i used the map and found all the best of what digital london has to offer

tower bridge
london eye
houses parlimint
and a underground carpark that took me 3 hours to find lol

its just like being in london for real but sitting down and not being mugged by a scary gangster called ray winstone lol overall its a awesome game wish it was on ps3 as well

I am Chris Boers, and I’m a Farmville addict.

There, I admitted it. First part of my slow way back to redemption. According to my FA (Farmville Anonymous) at least. By supporting buddy, who happens to also be a neighbour of my farm supports me in time of need, feeding my cows and tending my crops when I’m going through rehab.
In the end, I hope to return back to normal life without the urge to constantly log in to Facebook to check on my crops, seeds and animals.

Now, someone has whispered to me there is Farm Frenzy on PS3 and PSP, and I already feel my hands tingling.
What? There are THREE Farm Frenzies? On Vita? Someone hold me back!!!

Get well soon Fred.

Mine has to be Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

It’s a super little game. Reminds me of being a kid again, the vivid colours were superb and add to that the music…the controls and overall gameplay wasn’t bad either, if a little short, and no re-playability…but for me it still was a great game…which put me into a soothing foody wonderland. Apart from being hit by a Sausage falling from the sky .

If anyone sees this in a Bargain bin for £10 or less it’s definitely worth it.

Xbox (Trololol)

Final Fantasy X-2

Do I need to add more? Id doesn’t get any worse, does it? The “FF for girls” turns out to be yet another great FF game (IMO) and I’ve enjoyed it more that I’ve even expected at first after reading reviews and opinions about how stupid and ridiculous it might be. It’s not.

During my childhood, I used to love playing WWF/WWE games, back in the days of Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant. I’d sit with my older brother who humoured my belief of the whole sport being real. We’d always play a couple of matches everyday, and it was the only time I got to spend with him during his busy work schedule.

All these years later, when I’m at an age where my friends laugh at the silliness of the whole programme, I still enjoy purchasing the yearly entry and pouring a few hours in to it every now and again. Even as the game changes drastically with each entry, each and everyone is filled with nostalgia, and when I sit there body slamming my opponent, I get thrown back to my childhood playing the game on the first Playstation with my brother – a man I love dearly. I owe a lot to the games as a whole, as they are what brought us together and created all those great memories. My friends don’t understand, and often make light hearted jokes, but the WWE series is my guilty pleasure, a series I should have outgrown, but just can’t give up.

my guilty pleasure is not a widespread stinker.No mine is considered something far worse and embarrasing being the single guy i am of my age.
WhaIts my guilty pleasure on ps3 and has been since it launched. Even after 5yrs i still love breaking out that game once in awhile and dusting of my mic for some daunty tune singing.

Mine would be heavenly sword.Critics panned it.

Quality graphics,a good lead,cracking gameplay and motion capture by one of the best guys in the biz plus a ps exclusive.

I agree with the dude that said Terminator Salvation but for different reasons. Firstly, as far as I’m concerned, the Terminator series consists of two films. The game manages to be better than the jokes that followed. To put minds at ease, the game doesn’t involve punching terminators!

It’s far from great, struggles to be decent but what really gets me is the soundtrack and how it gives the sense of grandeur that set pieces are aiming for. It genuinely feels like it improves the gameplay. It’s a trophy hoarder’s game, for sure, but I didn’t buy it for that. I bought it due to the developer being responsible for Bionic Commando. Mix The Terminator soundtrack with Bionic Commando’s and you’ll get the idea.

Easy one for me, WWE, both watching and playing. It is my favourite TV show and only “sport” that I follow. I am a proud John Cena fan and despite the awful character models and repetitive commentary I still enjoy the WWE games.

Cenation!

My guilty pleasure is getting really annoyed with Playstation when they release a broken store, revert it to the old one and then forgot about the UK!

You haven’t even fixed the store yet and you already moved onto other countries. Perhaps you should finish things before moving on to other jobs.

Ninja Gaiden 3 from earlier this year was a birthday present for me, and after playing the initial demo I kinda agreed with the reviews but for me when I get an eye on a game I refuse to listen to reviews and want to play it for myself and ended up finding Ninja Gaiden 3 a surprise, yes the multiplayer wasn’t needed but it is still a fun addition to the game, also I liked how it was different to the earlier games in the series thus far.

Lollipop Chainsaw was panned by almost everyone, i absolutely love it, costume collecting, sparkle hunting, cheesey joking, sexual innuendoing. Its just alot of fun high scoring and zombie killing.

Also Resident Evil 6 cannot be a guilty pleasure, you should be ashamed to admitting to playing that AND enjoying it.

DUKE NUKEM FOREVER

Yes ok, It hasn’t changed much since the PS One games, but thats what I love about it. It has improved graphically but its still the same rude, butt kicking, explosive, insensitive and offensive game ever. And Duke’s one liners still make me laugh.

Thats my guilty pleasure!

Deadly Premonition – I know it has a directors cut coming out soon and is a bit of a cult favourite but a game with subpar graphics and the most surreal conversations outside of an LSD trip and the best of all auto aim crotch shots and you can not bathe for days, have flies flying around you and no one notices, not to mention the driving the worst ever in a game…and that’s before you really start to encounter the back bending “I wanna be in The Ring gombies”(think ghosts + zombies = gombies).

and then there’s Harvest Moon – ah the joy of farming and looking for marital possibilities with immaculately conceived children

but if not that then it has to be something like Sengoku Basara or any other Japanese pocket money game. My husband swears there is a young Japanese boy living inside the body of his middle-aged wife. Not many middle-aged women do a happy dance at the prospect of playing a samurai in the Sengoku period

The Bouncer on PS2, people complained it was to short, and a whole lot of other things. But I really enjoyed the story and gameplay.

I’ve still got my gamesave in which I’ve completed the story round 279 times, but sadly I never played it any further then that. Not because I didn’t want to.. It was because I couldn’t defeat Dauragon at the end, no matter how many times I tried!

The round before that I only JUST defeated Dauragon after heaps of tries.. I know the game got harder the higher rank you were but not sure what happened when you reached top rank. Did it continue to get harder or did I just get worse?….

My guilty pleasure is singstar with my 2yr old daughter when I sing she looks at me if I’m crazy and to say daddy u can’t sing so shut up. Lol
But we love it.
Also my first weekend debate

I have a few, but two that stand out…

Final Fantasy X-2
Even as I admit to it being a guilty pleasure of mine, I truly hate how this is a canon sequel to the brilliant Final Fantasy X. I can’t stand the girl-power theme, the singing and dancing, basically everything in the first ten minutes is a nightmare to see as a sequel to a game I and many others love, but the one thing that redeems FFX-2 in my eyes is the battle system. The ‘dress sphere’ battle system is great, it’s got elements of the job class system from earlier games (like Final Fantasy V) but it just works in a really, really fun way. In a lot of JRPGs I get tired of random battles and grinding and I’d just want to explore the world and follow the story, but playing FFX-2 I feel the opposite, the battle system is hella fun.

Seaman
Seaman… in a game narrated by Leonard Nimoy, you raise fish with human faces. Not only can the fish talk, but you can talk to the fish via microphone. You can take care of it, or, well, you can *^$& its &#£% up and insult it, though it can even insult you back. If you’re ever feeling down or stressed then getting drunk and torturing a talking virtual fish as you verbally abuse it is 100% guaranteed to make you feel better.

From ps3 games my “winners” are Age of booty & Hoard .
Both games are awsome by me. I loved them all . Age of booty is mindblowing game with size just 46 MB . I still remember update for that game which was 48 MB .
Only problem was and im pretty sure that still is online lobby
I spend hours there just waiting with friend to get some enemy players plus voice chat was manytimes with horrible echo . Im still wondering how can gigant like capcom release such brilliant game with such lame lobby . Hoard have same online issues luckily with some improvemnts cos otherwise i want be abble to go throught that again. In AOB was our “record” 2&1/2 hours in lobby without any game
Maybe its caused by amount of players who found those diamonds in such big and mostly briliant offer which psn store getting us .
I can just reccomend those two games to all of u cos its like summer storm among those AAA supergames . Just first find someguys to buy it aswell otherwise u will waitttttttttttt
Btw u should give those for + users .
If i find some time ill write about ps,ps2,psp &psvita games aswell.
PS: Im sad i didnt won last week good rpg should be in my vita collection . Can u spolier + vita line up PLS

@Izorpo I also love Deadly Premonition, but there’s no way I’d call it a guilty pleasure, I feel no guilt or shame playing that amazing game! It’s brilliant, I can’t wait for the Director’s Cut