Ok, here is my guilty pleasure: the newest Alone in the Dark that takes place in Central Park.

Is the plot simple? Yes.
Is the gameplay clunky? Yes.

But my God, walking around Central Par with all these crazy monsters, thick fog and haunting music is just mind meltingly exstatic.

Also, one f the best soundtracks in games ever.

Halo 1 is a game that gets its fair share of fanfare from the console crowd, but according to PC based gamers it's literally the worst game ever and it single handily destroyed gaming blah blah blah. I won't say it's flawless but I liked it quite a bit, enough to have finished it several times.

Gothic 3. One of my all time favorite games, a fantastic open world RPG in spite of its broken engine. Sure it has some changes from the first two Gothics, but I like the new control scheme and the game world itself is perhaps the most immersive I've ever seen in a full blown open world RPG.

GUN got fairly mediocre reviews but I enjoyed it. It's not an amazing game by any stretch, but it's a fun open world western. Its biggest flaw is that it has some of the worst story pacing I've ever seen in a game and it's over way too quickly.

MDickie's Hard Time and Wrestling MPire Remix. Sure, they're ugly, really ugly, and the AI is insane, but they're both really fun games and Wrestling MPire Remix is actually one of the best wrestling games around.

The Sims 3. Overshadowed by The Sims 2, I personally prefer The Sims 3, if only because of the introduction of insane sims.

I don't think that Planescape Torment and Arcanum really belong in this thread.Both game were very well reviewed when they first came out and have become classics since...Planscape:Torment in particular.
Granted, both did not sell very well when they first came out, but if go back a lot of the gaming sites and magazines lamented that they were not selling anywhere near as well as they deserved. But,like the original Star Trek series did not do all that great in the ratings in it's first Network run,these games have found a audience and are surviving much better then most of the games that outsold them.

Good call. I don't actually think I've ever heard a bad comment about this game. RPG fans love it and it's also the 1st game to be recommended to people who have never played RPGs.

Alpha Prime is generally rated mediocre to bad, and I enjoyed it overall. Sure it has a few things that made me consider quitting it forever and ever (and ever) like aimbot enemies, the soundtrack consisting of all of about four songs (and two of them only appear in cutscenes!), aimbot enemies, generally unspectacular level design, oh and before I forget, aimbot enemies. As a fun but utterly forgettable FPS it did its job.

Afterfall Insanity: Extended Edition. Another game that got "mediocre at best" reviews that I enjoy. Let's me be honest, the first few hours (aka the first half of the game) are indeed mediocre, with just a few likeable sequences. I really don't have much praise for the first part of the game, it's just not interesting and it has some highly annoying puzzles. However the second half of the game is outstanding. The gameplay opens up, the story makes a dramatic turn for the best, everything becomes more interesting and the game just continuously gets better and better throughout the rest of the journey. I was legitimately a bit sad when the game ended, I wanted more of it. Never have I found a game that made such a dramatic improvement in the second half as Afterfall Insanity: Extended Edition.

I often see people voicing their dislike of Fallout 3 and Heroes of Might and Magic IV. They're both games I like a lot however, FO3 and HoMM IV are among my most favourite games of all time.

Fallout 3 is often compared to the Fallout and especially Fallout 2 and falling short. For me, Fallout 3 is the only FO game I've played so far so I have no comparison but I like the game a lot. The roaming of the Wasteland, the scraping together of things that might be useful. The Wasteland being seemingly empty but when you look closer it's full of people each striving in their own way to eek out an existence, often in conflict with each other. Lots of grey moral choices or things that seem good to choose but end up with making someone unhappy. The world feels very much alive. The only let down is, at higher levels many fights become walkovers, though once in a while you met very tough opponents (Super Mutant Overlords, Albino Giant Scorpions).

Heroes of Might and Magic III is often compared to Heroes of Might and Magic III, the most liked game of the HoMM series. Heroes of Might and Magic differs mostly from the rest in that the heroes don't stand aside from the battle, but are actually on the battlefield and can take damage and die to. If a hero dies I reload, as reviving a hero is only possible on some maps and takes the effort of dragging your army back to an Altar, but the fact a hero fights alongside his or her troops and can die as well makes the game feel much more alike. Another thing I like is the page-long texts from the squire's diary in the main campaign exposing the story at key-points in the Lysander campaign. The point of view of a nobody telling the story of a hero is really refreshing and the long texts add a lot of colour to the campaign.


On the contrast, a game that most everyone likes but that I can't get to like is Planescape Torment. I've started a PT campaign twice, but each time I lost interest by the time I did escape from the Mortuary and stood in the city square of Sigil, with my inventory full of blood cogs, pieces of metal, dirty rags, like a beggar who delved in the trash can and only found junk but still took it along. Not a very encouraging start of a game.

Yup, B-quality FPS's generally get low ratings. I don't know what those people were expecting but a lot of them are not bad at all. I liked Alpha Prime because it has nice leveldesign and an older protagonist, which you don't see that often in these sort of games. It did have a case of cringeworthy voiceacting, but that is rather hilarious to experience.
If you get the chance, play Mace Griffin and Pariah as well.

I really liked playing Kane & Lynch and that reviewer that got fired because of bashing it was completely deserved. :^P
No really, the office heist and escape were the closest thing to playing a scene from the movie Heat, though the story is at points throwing sand into their own gears, like WTF were they doing in Cuba at some point, which detracted a lot from the whole experience. It's a game with highs and lows because of that.

I'll check those games out, thanks! I agree, B-quality FPS's have their place can be plenty of fun as long as you don't expect a AAA game. Legendary is another B-level FPS that got mediocre at best reviews, but I've found it to be a good bit of fun, save for a small glitch that makes textures fail to load sometimes, and the fact that it uses checkpoints.

One last note on Alpha Prime: Although the voice acting in generally was pretty bad (in a hilarious way), I actually really liked the voice acting for the main character. His voice acting (unintentionally) gave the game a bit of a noir vibe, to me anyway.

This reminds me of how surprised i feel each time someone dislikes Far Cry 1. I find it immensely enjoyable and infinitely replayable.

Likewise, i love Assassin's Creed 1. More than its sequels. But again, a lot of people seem to see it as a bland repetitive tech demo of sorts. The same sort of criticism attached to Far Cry 1. I'm confused in both cases.

Well, there's Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace for the PlayStation 1. Especially this level. I still don't know why everyone hates this game oO

Indeed, I remember how back in the day it appeared pretty cheap compared to some of the earlier "bigger" Star Wars games like Jedi Knight and Shadows of the Empire but personally I actually have fond memories of it. I would gladly play it again and hope that GOG will get around to release the PC version.

From what I remember Alpha Prime had overall solid voice acting, the case I was refering to was that Italian NPC guy.

That reminded me. I enjoyed Alpha Protocol which had pretty mediocre reviews. As for games that are so bad, they're good, it's got to be Goat Simulator where the bugs and glitches are encouraged by gamers and developers alike.

Just started Crusaders of Might and Magic and find it pretty fun so far, despite the negative reviews. My only gripe is that it doesn't seem to fit M&M universe and shouldn't have included it in the name. But as a game it's good.

Another game that I really enjoyed despite negative reviews, though that was more than 10 years ago, was Prince of Persia 3D. But that might have been because I didn't experience any bugs (other than a rare bug of platforms not moving on reload, for which all I had to do was save and reload the game).

It's funny because I don't even like this genre (3D action/platformers) much, and only played these 2 because I wanted to play all the games in the franchise).

EDIT:
Also, Teenagent. It really wasn't all that bad...

Velvet Assassin, admittedly I didn't pay much for it so my expectations weren't that high. The story is a bit of a mess but the atmosphere is very dark and one where the protagonist descents into insanity. Also the game isn't very long so it didn't get boring.