5 guilty videogame pleasures

The last few years have been a pretty good time to be a gamer. Whether or not you buy the argument that we are living in the greatest period for games since the medium began (and there’s an army of SNES and PlayStation fans out there just waiting to violently and profanely disagree with you), it’s hard to shake the feeling that the current generation has been one of the best yet.

But we’re not interested in that today. Today, we’re going to talk about our guilty pleasures, games that are technically poor but, for some mad reason, linger in the memory, calling softly from our shelves because of their  inanity, idiosyncrasy or just plain old sheer diabolic qualities.

5. True Crime: Streets of LA

There was a time when this game was being touted as a ‘GTA killer’. It was a simpler time, obviously. True Crime got nowhere near that goal (and we’re still none the wiser what ‘Game X killer’ actually means). The world was underpopulated (anyone who has ever braved the post-apocalyptic nightmare of  LA’s actual freeways wishes they were this quiet) and the game took some very strange narrative turns. Still, there was a lot of really cool stuff in True Crime: free-aim shooting from the inside of the cars, a branching storyline (that locked players out of later stages depending on their performance) and a neat-ish morality system. These elements may not have come together as well as they should, but that doesn’t mean that we didn’t enjoy it. A little bit.

4. Rogue Warrior

Here us out, please. We hate Rogue Warrior. It is trash, and not even the kind of gaudy nonsense that could be enjoyed in a ‘so bad its good’ kind of way. But, to steal from Chris Morris, finishing Rogue Warrior (and it won’t take longer than a few hours) is akin to the bizarre euphoria after an hours vomiting: utterly reprehensible but ultimately uplifting. After playing Rogue Warrior and enduring the Mickey Rourke ‘rap’ that accompanies it, you’ll never be down on another game again. And that’s something. Isn’t it?

3. Scarface: The World is Yours

Not pictured: dignity

Scarface is the first of two games on this list to contain a dedicated swear button (we’ll let you guess what the other is), but if you think that this desecration of Brian De Palma’s finest work about  coke-addled midgets in eighties America is going to stop at something as ordinary as that, then you are wrong. Dead wrong.

Not only does Scarface start with Tony Montana avoiding his fate (and thus borking the entire theme of the movie) by shooting his would-be assassin, but there’s also the Balls meter. Yes. You heard. When you kill enough goons, your Balls meter will swell (sigh) and at its peak you’ll be able to unleash absolute fury on your foes. With your guns. Guns. Important  to clear that up.

2. 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand

If you can answer the following question with an answer more coherent than the game’s actual plot, then you are a genius: what could  American rapper Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson possibly be doing fighting an army in the war-torn Middle East?

Exactly. But Fiddy’s inclusion is a bit of a cheat on our part, because despite the fact that the game’s setting is a little iffy, the core mechanics of the game are pretty sound. It’s just hard to take anything in your life seriously again once you’ve heard “Yo, Fifty, jump over that big-ass ramp!”

1. Sneak King

This game is, in no way shape or form, good. At all. But it’s our strong belief that it is not just a piece of barely playable advertorial gaming, but in fact a satirical stab at the dark heart of the capitalist machine. Think about it: The King, who hides in bins and forces balls of heart-attack-in-a-bun into unsuspecting members of the public, isn’t nourishing these people: he’s warning them. Eat this burger, he’s probably saying, and you’ll eventually turn into me, with my rictus grin, massive head and dead, shark’s eyes. No wonder the people he gives the burgers to look pleased by the end of it.

The Deal’s views are not necessarily those of X360 magazine