10 Guilty Pleasure Video Games No
One Admits They Love
http://www.gamebasin.com/news/10-guilty-pleasure-video-games-no-one-
admits-they-love
Video games aren’t as quick and easy an activity as watching a movie, so as a result we tend to be
a little more choosy about which ones we devote our spare time to. That said, some games manage
to pull us in despite every instinct we have as gamers telling us that what we’re playing is not, in
fact, a particularly good game. What helps create a classic guilty pleasure video game? For starters,
we don’t like to admit that we enjoy them, and typically won’t play them in the presence of our
friends: we’ll play them in secret on a lazy Sunday and in some circumstances even stay signed out
of PSN or Xbox Live for the sake of our reputation. But why do we feel the need to deny our
enjoyment of these games? Because we know they’re not great games per se: they’re the video
game equivalents of a Michael Bay movie, disposable junk food that nevertheless has a briefly
nourishing value, even if you won’t remember it in the days that follow. These 10 games, governed
by their outdated graphics, clunky gameplay mechanics, absurd levels of camp, flat‐out weirdness
and utter lack of originality, have kept us coming back for months and maybe even years, all while
our backlog of critically‐acclaimed indie masterpieces grows ever larger by the day. Of course, the
term “guilty pleasure” is wholly subjective, so what to you defines a gaming guilty pleasure? What
games are you afraid to tell your buddies you play? Let us know in the comments!
10. WWE Games
Even though many of us “grow out” of watching the WWE’s product as we get older, who can resist
2K’s (formerly THQ’s) series of WWE games? Still, what makes them a guilty pleasure exactly? For
starters, the graphics are always several years out of date (though 2K are adamant that this will
change with the upcoming WWE 2K15), and as technical as they’ve tried to make the brawling
seem over the years, it’s pretty simplistic stuff, as it absolutely should be. Many wrestling fans
struggle to pluck up the courage to talk about their favoured past‐time when meeting strangers
because of the popular perception that it’s a non‐sport that anyone over the age of 12 should
probably have grown out of. That same stigma penetrates through to the games: when you can
play something as bada** and grown‐up as Mortal Kombat, why would you want to control an
underpants‐wearing, oiled, muscle‐bound guy as he attempts to resolve his latent feelings by
tussling with similarly sweaty, burly men? The games aren’t high art and they lack the visual fidelity
of, say, an EA Sports title, or even 2K’s other sports games, but there’s something tremendously
entertaining about taking control of Stone Cold Steve Austin, delivering a few Stone Cold Stunners,
drinkin’ a few beers, and high‐tailing it out of there before anyone knows what happened. In many
ways these games are a call‐back to the nostalgia many of us associate with wrestling from our
childhoods, and given how most of the recent WWE games have milked the Attitude Era nostalgia
for all it’s worth, our gravitation towards them actually makes a little sense, even if we don’t like
to talk about it at parties…
9. Lego Games
Lego video games are an absolutely huge commercial enterprise right now: some of the more
famous and acclaimed iterations include Lego adventure games based on Batman, Harry Potter,
The Hobbit, Indiana Jones, Marvel, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, and even the recent Lego
Movie itself. Most of us have probably played them at one time or another, but these games are
typically pawned off as games aimed largely at children, as indicated by their laughable lack of
difficulty (most of them furnish the player with infinite lives) and short length. These charges are
undeniable, but that doesn’t mean these games are bad or not worth playing. The majority of
the Lego titles have cleverly combined the mechanics of Lego building with some of pop‐culture’s
most iconic worlds, and though the gameplay is simple, there’s an undeniable joy in swinging from
vines and traversing traps as Indy, or dicing up battle droids as Luke Skywalker. The games may be
marketed primarily towards children, and they’re the core market for sure, but as adults we
shouldn’t be embarrassed to enjoy them either, as they’re usually intelligently‐crafted and bursting
with heart.
8. Pervy Games (Dead Or Alive Beach
Volleyball, Bayonetta & Lollipop Chainsaw)
Now we’re onto something a little more…adult. These “pervy” games essentially wrap gameplay
around one thing: man’s insatiable need to sexualise and ogle as much as humanly possible in
his scope of vision. To cater for this, Tecmo commissioned the absurd Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach
Volleyball, a volleyball game that devoted at least as much development time to the physics of the
female players’ breasts as it did the mechanics of the sport itself. Then there’s action‐orientated
games like Bayonetta and Lollipop Chainsaw, which feature absurdly scantily‐clad women kicking
lots of a**, though undeniably focus on tight latex suits and threadbare cheerleader uniforms.
There’s an instinct to scoff at these games and insist that they’re just embarrassing to be seen
playing once you’ve actually ever spoken to a girl. Though nobody wants their mother walking in
on them while one of Dead or Alive’s bikini babes falls to the floor with her heaving breasts acting
as a cushion, these games are legitimately fun to play on their own terms, and you know what? It
has almost nothing to do with sex. Once you get past the silly gimmick, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach
Volleyball is a fun volleyball game on its own merits, while Bayonetta is an exciting, frenetic shooter,
and Lollipop Chainsaw, though no classic, is camp and daft enough to have us coming back for more.
If one admits they enjoy these games, they open themselves up to being judged by gamers and
non‐gamers alike as perverted, sad, or at least in sore need of some female attention, but they do
in fact offer more than initially meets the eye.
7. The Sims
Few serious gamers will admit to owning or even having played Maxis’ mammoth life‐simulator
franchise The Sims, largely because it is a game absolutely not aimed at the militant, hardcore
gamer who holds gaming to be a sacred, misunderstood art. Rather, The Sims is designed with
casual and non‐gamers in mind: it’s a completely undemanding game that nevertheless allows
players to live out wacky fantasy lives in gigantic houses, allowing players to pretty much drop in
and out whenever they have a spare 15 minutes, rather than need to remain glued to their screen
for an indeterminate period. Basically, it’s perfect for those with busy lives, and as a result, it’s no
surprise that all three main Sims games to date are among the 10 best‐selling PC games of all time.
But here’s a newsflash: even self‐professed “hardcore” gamers might enjoy a bout of The Sims from
time to time, and they might even find their time swallowed up by the wealth of opportunities the
game affords you. Progressing to a bigger house, a better job, marriage and kids proves ridiculously
addictive, and then there’s the darker side of the game, where murdering as many of your Sims as
possible (along with their neighbours) becomes a sick hobby all on its own. The Sims games aren’t
especially complex or impressive from an AI perspective (though great improvements are promised
for the upcoming The Sims 4), but they’re akin to a young girl playing house or a young boy with a
train set: pure fantasy that we all want to be a part of.
6. So-Bad-It’s-Good Games (Goat
Simulator & Octodad)
Sometimes a game knows that it’s basically garbage, but through the art of irony, manages to spin
that awfulness into something outrageously entertaining. Two recent examples are Goat Simulator
and Octodad, two titles that in any other circumstances would be savaged by critics for their clunky
physics and absurd bugginess, but because their respective developers are clearly in on the joke
and molded the gameplay around the fact they couldn’t code their way out of a paper bag, the
tawdry lack of quality somehow becomes charming. Octodad’s terrible controls are infuriating, but
they are also what makes the game challenging, while Goat Simulator’s craptastic physics are what
makes it so hilarious to behold as you catapult your goat from a great height. These games
transcend their inherent badness because they have personality: they’re absolutely unlike anything
else we’ve ever played, though at the same time, to other gamers not in on the joke, you’re
probably better off just lying and telling them you’re playing something else. Some gamers are just
destined not to get the joke…
5. Mindless Mayhem (Dynasty Warriors, Dead
Rising & Dead Island)
Sometimes we get home from a hard day at work and just want to switch on our games console of
choice and mindlessly slaughter a horde of enemies in order to wind down. Games such as Dynasty
Warriors, Dead Rising and Dead Island are the definition of “instant gratification” games: within a
minute or so of loading each game up, you can be dueling with Samurai or taking on a huge fleet
of zombies with a massive chainsaw, and you aren’t really required to think about much else. We
all love video games with great stories, but sometimes we don’t need that: sometimes the visceral
experience is enough, and that’s where games such as this find their niche. Nobody plays these
titles for the emotion or the characters, but for the sheer fact that wanton murder on a huge,
ridiculous scale is a stupid amount of fun. That said, due to the fact that we as gamers like to prop
up gaming as a “mature” and artful medium, many of us tend to downplay how much time we put
into games like this, because it’s just supporting the gamer stereotype that non‐gamers like to
believe, right? Still, these games totally serve their purpose, to provide bursts of violent catharsis
while vegging out after a long day.
4. Final Fantasy X-2
In fairness, even admitting that you play the Final Fantasy series is becoming a grim prospect these
days, given how unbecoming the whole Final Fantasy XIII saga has been. That said, the most
infamous game in the main series is without question Final Fantasy X‐2, which is the only title in
the series to feature an all‐female main cast, consisting of Yuna, Rikku and Paine, and unsurprisingly,
they’re all kitted out in the most absurdly skimpy, fanboy‐baiting clothes. In addition to this, the
game is extremely campy, opening with a corny and widely‐mocked song and dance sequence and
never really letting go from there on out. On the other hand, X‐2 does feature one of the better
battle systems in the series, and is also one of the funnier Final Fantasy games to date, moving
away from the somber self‐seriousness of Final Fantasy X. Plus, we can’t lie: that opening song is
pretty damn catchy, and pretty much defines the phrase “guilty pleasure”. Does the girl power vibe
mesh awkwardly with everything we’ve come to know and love about a Final Fantasy game?
Absolutely. Do a lot of “hardcore” FF fans hate this game? Totally. But the game’s breezy appeal
when compared to the overt seriousness of most games in the series is undeniable, even if we
don’t tend to shout about it too loudly…
3. Guitar Hero & Rock Band
Who wouldn’t want to be a rock star? Activision’s Guitar Hero became an overnight smash hit in
2005 by feeding that desire, allowing gamers to play out their grandest musical ambitions by
clacking away on a plastic Fisher Price‐esque guitar peripheral without the requirement to have
any actual musical talent. For around four years, Guitar Hero and to a lesser extent Rock Band were
the words on everyone’s lips: the games appeared heavily in movies and TV shows, and we just
couldn’t get enough of them. Then the bubble burst in 2009, with an over‐saturated rhythm game
market killing both franchises stone dead. As such, playing Guitar Hero just isn’t seen as “cool”
anymore (and in some circles never was), and if you’re caught jamming away on your fake guitar,
you’re going to be viewed as almost as much of a relic as the dusty hunk of plastic you’re holding.
The series’ favour may have died for the most part, but we can’t resist getting the guitar out every
so often and having a play, and you know what? We’ve still got it, and though the satisfaction of
showing your skills off at parties is pretty much long gone, it’s still tremendously satisfying to host
a concert for one.
2. Call Of Duty
In fairness, there are a large portion of casual gamers who will unashamedly admit their love for
the Call of Duty franchise: these are primarily the sorts of players who only buy CoD every year,
spend 3 hours per day playing it, and hit Prestige 10 before you even managed to cross it once. To
gamers who play a healthy, eclectic mix of titles per year, CoD is something of a dirty word, a symbol
for the medium’s creative stagnation, where churning out similar fare year after year is not just
acceptable but tremendously successful, helping CoD to be one of the highest‐selling video game
franchises of all time. As much as we whine about the series’ lack of innovation, though, how many
of us still bought a copy of Ghosts last November, hoping that the next‐gen leap might’ve resulted
in a distinctly different experience? And with how visually impressive the upcoming Advanced
Warfare looks, how many of us will end up buying it on release? The thing about CoD is that though
it in many ways represents what’s wrong with the gaming industry, and the single‐player campaigns
are for the most part utterly useless, the online play is ridiculously addictive, and it’s something
you can dependably guarantee most of your buddies will also end up buying, so you’ll always have
someone to play with. CoD games aren’t too far away from the aforementioned “mindless mayhem”
titles we mentioned earlier: they deliver basic thrills and have kept us glued to our consoles for
hundreds of hours over the years, even as we spend each passing year decrying the latest
installment.
1. World Of Warcraft
And now we come to the winner, the game that holds such a stigmatic status in society that its
mere mention in polite conversation will cause you to be judged by those around you, be they
gamers or not. World of Warcraft is, of course, the world’s most successful MMORPG, a game which
has its popularity attributed more to its Crack‐like addiction level rather than the actual nuances
and mechanics of the gameplay. Like most MMO games, grinding is a big part of play, and that
repetition ultimately leads to the reward of gaining another experience level, at which point you
repeat the cycle again and hand even more of your life to the Blizzard overlords. A lot of us play
World of Warcraft on the quiet because, while Nintendo in particular have helped gaming enter
the mainstream over the last decade, some games are still perceived as “nerdy” and “sad”, and
WoW sits right at the top of that pile. Some of us are even self‐aware enough to realise that WoW
isn’t a particularly great or well‐designed game, but can’t fight that ridiculous addictive quality that
it has: after all, how many of us have quit the game only to come back a year later and just start
from scratch? Whether we like to admit or not, we love the game, but only as much as we also
hate it.
PC Game CD Keys:
EA Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/publisher/ea.html
RPG Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/rpg‐game.html
ACT Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/act‐game.html
FPS Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/fps‐game.html
Adventure Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/avg‐game.html
Racing Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/rac‐game.html
Sport Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/spt‐game.html
FTG Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/ftg‐game.html
RTS Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/rts‐game.html
SLG Games CD Key http://www.gamebasin.com/pc‐games/slg‐game.html
Top Related