Fallout 76 and Dark Souls 2: Why I am fascinated by bad games

Fallout 76 and Dark Souls 2

Spending hours playing a game that you don't like is something that fans of FIFA and Call of Duty are likely to know all too well. And I also sometimes notice this phenomenon in myself, spending far too much of my valuable free time in games that I don't even find particularly good. While a Red Dead Redemption 2 is still unfinished on my pile of shame, I have completely finished Homefront: The Revolution. I didn't see the final of Witcher 3 either, but invested 80 hours in Biowares Anthem. And I haven't even unpacked my Complete Edition of Horizon Zero Dawn, but the platinum trophy from Call of Duty: Ghosts is emblazoned twice on my PSN account.

Table of contents

1 Through thick and thin, or: Recognizing the really important things 2 Disaster tourism and the "podcast game" 3 Buying regret and trash factor Depending on whether you think the games mentioned are just as mediocre as I do, you now ask yourself: What's going on with him? Is this masochism, or aberration, or an unhealthy mix of both? And believe me, I ask myself this question quite often. So often, in fact, that today I want to get to the bottom of the matter. I take on three games that I've devoted far too much time to by how bad I think they are, and try to figure out the big "why" in the process. And who knows, we might even find a few like-minded people, and we can set up an anonymous self-help group - the secret taste reluctants, maybe?

09:06

Junk Games: Why Fallout 76, Dark Souls 2 & Co. fascinate me! loadVideoPlayer ('84240', '& sAdSetCsategory = article_featured', 12, '16: 9 ', false, 1378095, false, 239104, 260, false, 0,' ',' ', false); We'll start with what is objectively probably the best title on my blacklist. With a game that I had to finish with internally in order to be able to appreciate it in any way. With a sequel that still hurts my dark fan soul somewhere. Clear the ring for Dark Souls 2!

Through thick and thin, or: Recognize the really important things

Love-hate and catastrophe tourism in Fallout 76, Dark Souls 2 & Co. - Why me bad games fascinate! (4) Source: From Software If you wanted to pinpoint my complicated relationship with Dark Souls 2 to a single situation, it would be as follows: It was spring 2018, Dark Souls Remastered was just around the corner and I was sitting, probably with an unhealthy high pulse, before the sequel one of my all-time favorite games. At the same time, I heard a nine-hour (!) Review on YouTube in which Dark Souls 2 is dismantled piece by piece with surgical precision. My mission: To win all the trophies in the game and hopefully finally understand Dark Souls 2. So I spend hours playing a game that I don't like listening to people who don't either? That most likely sounds pointless and counterproductive. So let me explain!

Love-hate and disaster tourism in Fallout 76, Dark Souls 2 & Co. - Why I am fascinated by bad games! (5) Source: From Software What made me want to start the game again and again and look at critical analyzes of it for ages was this feeling that it was still in there somewhere: the magical Souls formula, that for me is among the best that video games have produced in the last 20 years. I wanted to understand what exactly went wrong with Dark Souls 2, and what makes the other games in the series so much better for me. In short: I wanted to be able to put my finger on it! And in the midst of all the lazy boss recycling, the brain-cracked level design and the artificial level of difficulty, I found ... an overall quite decent action role-playing game, in which the developers got a lot right, but also misunderstood a lot. And the realization that you should also take a look at the weakest representatives of your favorite series and genres in order to be able to appreciate the good ones even more!

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Disaster tourism and the "podcast game"

When the gaming world collectively tramples on the latest bugged disaster, then sometimes I just can't help it than giving in to my inner disaster tourist and seeing the matter with my own eyes. This is what happened most recently with Fallout 76, the atomic bomb among the unfinished service games. Fixed by countless meme videos, angry reviews and the publisher's never-ending PR faux pas, I just had to know what was going on with this game in the world.

Recommended editorial content Here you will find external content from [PLATFORM]. To protect your personal data, external integrations are only displayed if you confirm this by clicking on "Load all external content": Load all external content I agree that external content can be displayed to me. This means that personal data is transmitted to third-party platforms. Read more about our privacy policy . External content More on this in our data protection declaration. And my dear, contaminated swan, I was not disappointed: As I trudged through ruined West Virginia at 15 frames per second, the game made me laugh at every corner with a new, bizarre glitch. Every few minutes the completely overwhelmed engine fell apart in front of my eyes. And of course, while I sympathized with the players who paid full price for the title, I felt wonderfully entertained - if not for the reasons Bethesda had originally planned. Fallout 76 was like a strangely fascinating wrecked car that never stopped burning.

Love-hate speech and disaster tourism in Fallout 76, Dark Souls 2 & Co. - Why I am fascinated by bad games! (3) Source: Bethesda I only invested the majority of my playing time after the Wastelanders update, with which, in addition to a few hours of the good, old Bethesda feeling, fixes for the grossest mistakes had also made it into the game. So ironic disaster tourism turned into serious gaming, and the perpetual resource treadmill of Fallout 76 kept me going longer than I would like. Because, and that is the second reason why I invested so much time in the game, it is ideal for simply being virtually showered. For hours, exploring the varied game world, collecting all sorts of stuff and letting my playlist run with kitschy Fifties-Pop was my favorite evening activity for a while. I am not challenged in terms of play or narration, and while I am listening to something without feeling guilty about not paying the necessary attention to the game. Sure, mostly of course I prefer demanding games with depth - but sometimes virtual junk food like Fallout 76 is just the thing! (2) Source: Bethesda Finally, we come to a game where I can easily answer the question of why I fell in love with it: A weakness for trash and the guilty conscience of having flipped the full price when buying blind on the day of publication. Left Alive, these are your few lines in the spotlight!

Buying regret and trash factor

Love-hate speech and disaster tourism in Fallout 76, Dark Souls 2 & Co. - Why I am fascinated by bad games! (6) Source: Square Enix As a fan of Metal Gear Solid and combat robot action in general, Left Alive was one of the more exciting titles of 2019 for me, despite the barely any marketing and little interest from the gaming public The day before yesterday and the dubious dialogues I was able to forgive the game, you have to expect that sometimes with Japanese AA goods. The fact that the title was designed as a stealth game and did without features such as takedowns, functioning enemy AI and sensible level design, on the other hand, nipped any fun in the bud. So I rolled around blindly like a newcomer to Souls in the first boss fight, was riddled by hordes of opponents and, in short, was dissatisfied with the overall situation. I had spent 60 euros! And not even a certain, worn-out chain of games stores wanted to buy the thing from me again for a bad price! (7) Source: Square Enix Well, then I just had to go through. Any claim was out of the window anyway, I just wanted to see which game design and story abysses would open up in the course of the game. And there were quite a few. Where a Dark Souls 2 only loses out in comparison to the rest of the series and Fallout 76 was unlucky to be released an estimated two years early, Left Alive is a bad game of a kind that is rarely seen these days sees. Not a monotonous service game with a successful gameplay loop. Not a rough gem that will eventually get better with enough updates. No first attempt by an indie developer and no asset flip on Steam either. No, it's a title from well-known developers and a major publisher where everything just goes wrong that can go wrong. Old school junk game if you will. And that somehow makes it worth playing again for me!

Be it because of fan loyalty to my favorite franchises, just to be virtually showered again, or because of the simple fascination of horror: Me will probably never stop playing bad games on purpose.

But how about you guys? Do you only play the best of the best or do you also purposely reach for the bin? Write me your very personal love hate in the comments!