Over the decades I've collected many games - all the best ones that I've played. But there are a few that for some reason I've kept despite them not being good. I don't mean games that other people think are bad but I think are good - I mean games that even I think are bad. Here are a couple of examples:

Darkstar One. Space sim along the lines of Freelancer. It has an unconvincing story, bad voice acting, tedious gameplay, and it's graphically unimpressive. Nonetheless I've replayed it more times than the far superior Freelancer.

Devastation. An FPS. Terrible story, ridiculous characters, and it offers nothing in terms of gameplay over the many other FPSes of its time. The only novel thing about the gameplay is that they incorporated respawning as a mechanic in the single-player campaign, which didn't make it any more fun. Despite that, I've replayed it quite a few times. Unfortunately not on GOG.

Does anyone else have any games like this? Ones with no redeeming features at all, maybe even objectively bad, and yet there's somthing about them...

Incoming Forces for me.

I got it, many many years ago, as a free game that came with a gaming magazine. I played it and finished it once, straight after I got it, and I didn’t like it at all. I still have it though! As I remember, you take the role of an alien, whose race is being attacked by humans, so you have to defend your homeland against them (something like a reverse Duke Nukem, I guess, but you only pilot vehicles. You are never on foot, I think). Now, that I remembered it, I think I should see it again! Thanks!

A couple games that are commonly disliked, but which I happen to like despite their flaws (though both feel like rough drafts):
* Final Fantasy 2. I like the way stat growth works.
* Castlevania 2. I really like the game's structure; it's not common in platformers.

Descent to Undermountain. Guilty pleasure of mine.
It's buggy, broken, not even close to rule accurate yet it has that mid 90s Interplay charm i love.

(Plus i can poke Khelben Blackstaff until he snaps at me.)

Firestarter
I know it's objectively a chaotic mess, yet I still finished it 2 or 3 times. I guess my like of arena shooters beats everything else.

Played Darkstar One, way back in the day when modems were still a regular thing in my country. Got it on a CD, with a virus that couldn't do anything because it needed an internet connection.

...

What come to mind are Neverwinter Nights 2 and The Bard's Tale ARPG. Mostly linear, with superficial features. But I played the NWN2 campaigns many times and I couldn't help but choose the evil ending for the bard.

This.

I could add many more, but I will stick with games available here. I think my list is not complete yet. Maybe never will!

I often like some poor shooters, sandboxes and managerial games for some reason. Most are cheap anyway.

I like Incoming Forces because it looks like the games from the same developer that are great, such as the prequel and Hostile Forces. I still recommend because it is very cheap.

I like Parkan 2 because it is a space shooter with sandbox that has a degree of freedom I had never seen in its age. You can conquer, trade, have missions, manage states, command drones in a randomly generated universe... But if you try to do too much, you will end repeating the same "retake your post from the attacker" over and over. I still think it would be good if it were finished. Instead, it is a buggy mess, crashes all the time (frequent autosaves make it almost tolerable because I never lost anything important), unbalanced weapons, eye hurting backgrounds. You often cannot really tell who is enemy or friendly because they all look the same until they start shooting at you. I don't know if this game can be played through the end at all. It is often very cheap, I recommend trying, but not loving it.

I like Crime Cities because it has a very fun gameplay and some management concepts. It is also extremely cheap here, I recommend trying. But you will soon notice that it is very unbalanced and the visuals are too bad: similarly to Parkan 2, it is often hard to understand the scenario and who are the enemies. I honestly think that the reviews for this title are biased here, I don't mean to offend anyone! it also makes you dizzy because your view keeps shaking all the time.

I played Space Trader: Merchant Marine until the end because I found it interesting. You can make money from trading, from missions and if you fail a mission is not game-over. Yet, it is often repetitive and frustrating. If you run out of money or fail to meet a demand you need to start over... yourself. Maybe not having a game-over is not so good.

I played Red Dust until I decided to cheat to finish it. I got it because it allows you to manage the clip of your gun MANUALLY! After you learn how to handle the weapons, it feels immensely rewarding! And play on a random map! If the developer could talk to me, I would have many suggestions to improve it. Seemed like a good deal for a cheap game, until I found myself on a messy junk-yard full of landmines and unbalanced enemies. To make it worse, someone thought it was nice to make it a permadeath without save-games. Can't recommend to anyone at this state.

I like SimplePlanes because it lets to mix planes with cars. You can simulate takeoffs, dogfights, landing, races and.... is that all? After a while you notice it often becomes very boring, maybe because the scenarios are dull.

I like Seven Cities of Gold because it lets you manage a ship to build colonies and trade with natives. After a while you notice how poor the gameplay is, you need to check everything manually or everyone dies. You must write notes yourself of things the game should be keeping track itself.

I like SuperPower 2 because it has global proportions that mixes economy and RTS. But it is often bad with a poor GUI that makes you confused all the time. There are important messages that disappear. Sometimes you think you are dealing with one nation and then the other one was focused and it becomes a mess.

I like Police Stories because it looks like a fan game for Police Quest/Swat3/Swat4, but it is very clunky. I played until the end, but maybe because I gave the SWAT series the same treatment. It is not even cheap. I recommend playing on easy mode only, hard level is unbalanced and frustrating. If you haven't played Swat3 or Swat4, you will probably be lost because the tutorial is very shallow.

I like Mad Games Tycoon because it is the best game development managerial game I played. it has several options and possibilities. Still, the GUI is as clunky as possible. It seems like they made it on purpose to make it hard to guess: You cannot see the concept sliders correctly, you have to write down manually to compare if you were actually better or worse than expected. If you copy the concept, it doesn't show where you copied it from. If you need to go back to the published games, it doesn't keep track of what you were seeing before... and then you have to keep scrolling all the time until you find the title... Actually feels like it is a memory training application. The workers are either mindless robots that do anything or randomly start asking for nonsense furniture.

I like Startup Panic because it is a managerial that looks like Mad Games Tycoon. It has many upgrades and branching options! I tried with random name and random country at first and got me hooked until the end! However after a while I notice everything is scripted: the competition only gets hard once you reach a milestone. Also, I cannot really create new products. I need to "comply" with the standards defined by the game devs. It kind of feels like an adventure game dressed as a managerial instead of a sandbox.

Noostalgia addict like LGR. ;)

Tomb Raider Angel of Darkness

Shouldn't the title of the thread be different then, something along the lines of "games you keep playing even though you actually don't like them"?

One can like a game even if it has almost no redeeming features. Might be nostalgia, might be that it was something one needed at that point in life, something that was played with one's friends or it had well crafted dark patterns that caused a pseudo-addiction which trigger a happy memory. Doesn't really matter why, just that the feeling exists.

I love Fuel for giving me more map than any other sandbox I've ever played and nobody will ever take that away from me, but I'm not going to call it a good racing game.

I unironically enjoyed Shadow the Hedgehog enough to 100% the campaign.

Also the SNES port of Rise of the Robots, I even owned it back in the day. It's still shallow and jank as all hell but it feels better than the other versions and quite tecnhically impressive on the console. Plus the soundtrack absolutely slaps.

Have a couple of those, but I guess that for "special mention" deserves Space Trader: Merchant Marine.

Looking from perspective of average gamer, it's a title that doesn't have especially sophisticated any of the gameplay parts (trading, missions/sub-quests and fighting sequences) and is extremely repetetive. So I totally get it, why it didn't had very positive reception.

I'm quite surprised, but by some reason I was hooked to it and very determined to finish it.

Corridor 7

have played and finished that game more then the game it uses the engine from Wolf3D