March has barely started, and we already have 2022’s Game of the Year. Fans of one of Japan’s most beloved studios have waited years for its newest game, and it’s finally here. This action RPG may seem like a major departure from the linear, single-player experience fans are used to, but it retains the core action gameplay that players love while exploring brand new forms of storytelling, explorations, and character progression. The game I’m describing, of course, is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Babylon’s Fall from PlatinumGames🦋, the mo♉st highly-anticipated game of the year.
I hope you enjoyed my silly little joke. What wonderful misdirection, right? Now, picture the distracted boyfriend meme. I’m the boyfriend, obviously, and the beautiful woman I can’t be bothered with is Elden Ring, the most well-reviewed game of all time on Metacritic. Meanwhile, the blurry-faced woman I can’t take my eyes off of is Babylon’s Fall, an absolute disaster that our reviewer 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Santi Leguiza called “a poor attempt at a cash gra🅰b”. Why am I more keen to play the game I know is terrible over the one that is universally loved, and aꩲm I the only one?
I have a feeling my affinity for low-quality games has more to do with nurture than nature. As a 30-year-old, I was raised on a steady diet of terrible video games. We tend to look back fondly on Chrono Trigger and Super Mario 64, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, but games like that were few and far between. Once a year you’d get a Donkey Kong Country or a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil 2, but the rest💙 of the year was filled with rushed, low-budget movie-tins, pseudo-educational garbage, and low-effort rip-offs of the most popular gamesꦆ.
As a kid with no money or sense, I would rent every game that featured a recognizable cartoon character or movie poster. If it was good enough for Bugs Bunny or the Rugrats, it was good enough for me. My gameboy collection was especially dire. Rocket Power, Animaniacs, Beavis and Butt-Head, Ninja Turtles, and so, so many Batman games. I had the Jackie Chan Adventures game. I had all five Powerpuff Girls games. I played and loved all of these games because I didn’t know any better. There’s a good reason nobody talks about Taz-Mania 2 or The Berenstain Bears&rsq🔯uo; Camping Adventure anymore, but there was a time when these were my favorite games. Apparently, I never really outgrew my love for trash-tier video games.
There’s an underdog quality to a lot of bad games too. It’s easy to cheer for Elden Ring, but isn’t it getting enough love already? I have a contrary instinct to wave a flag for all the games no one cares about. This is common among niche fa💙n communities as well. SWERY’s Deadly Premonition series is borderline unplayable and a total mess of a game by any possible metric, yet it has a cult following of people who find all of its flaws charming. Liking bad games can make you feel like part of the in-crowd - the gamer equivalent of hanging out in a dingy grunge bar to watch some local band no one has ever heard of. It doesn’t matter if they suck, it just feels good to be part of something.
Then there are games I like playing because they’re bad, and I can already tell Babylon’s Fall is going to be one of those games. It’s the same masochistic impulse that compels people to watch Sharknado or eat earwax-flavored jelly beans. Every 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ark: Survival Evolved player knows the euphoric torture of playing a buggy, broken game 🔯that’s so uncooperative and unpredictable that it seems like it hates you. Cringe is cathartic and some games are just the good kind of bad.🍷
I’ll be playing Babylon’s Fall for more academic reasons. I’m ▨looking forward to exploring its flaws as a critic and trying to come up with reasons that would explain how a revered studio like PlatinumGames could deliver something so pathetic and soulless. I like understanding how things work and digging to the core of what makes a game good or bad - or both, usually. But I also think there’s a good chance that, despite its obvious flaws, I’m going to really enjoy Babylon’s Fall. Call it 💎optimistic, call it foolish, or call it a waste of time, but I love playing bad games, even when I hate them.
