I've been loving the hell out of Deadpool, High Moon knows how to handle existing franchises well.

It's an old adventure game button masher circa 2005 (Reminds me a lot of Spiderman 2), but it is quite unpolished, a bit repetitive, and short for the price.

That doesn't stop me from loving the hell out of it.

I was thinking of making a Let's Play for this now my PhD's finished. It's SUCH a good game.

The sequel 'Take the Rens' is okay, 'The Golden Stirrup Challenge' is too badly bugged.

I can only really think of two games that I enjoyed more than I think the games deserved. First is the start of the Tomb Raider franchise. The story was terrible but man the gameplay was a lot of fun (especially for the time). The other is Wet. It is truly an awful game, but surprisingly entertaining. There is something hilarious and exciting about sliding on your knees across basically an entire courtyard while you shoot bad guys in the face.

I do remember a friend and I spending a weekend playing Dead or Alive Extreme Beach Volleyball, for the original Xbox.

That was definitely a guilty pleasure.

Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball - Be quiet, you know swimming and volleyball is fun. Boobs have nothing to do with it. Get your head out of your ass.
Viva Piñata and Spore - Kids games are the most simple, fun, and addicting time wasters out there.
Metal Gear Solid - I always feel like a weirdo exclaiming my love for Kojima's mind.
World of Tanks - The amount of money I've put into a free game is embarrassing, especially when I'm such a terrible tanker. Oh fucking well. I think tanks are really freaking cute. Yeah I'm kinda ashamed that Girls und Panzer made me obsessed with this god damn game once more. Oh fucking well. Hetzer gonna hetz!
Battle Engine Aquila - Absolutely nobody on this planet played this game. Why? I dunno. It has really cool mechs that can traverse from fighter mode to walking mode in a second. A great cure for boredom.
Perfect Dark Zero - The story was entertaining, the graphics were pretty, and though the guns sucked, fighting bots was a blast.
Dance Central - I love dancing. Anywhere is my stage. But I feel so damn geeky whenever I pop in this game with its weird ass choreography. I will never EVER play this game in front of people who haven't known me for more than a year.
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus - Fantastic games, but I'll never admit that outside of intellectual discussion. Makes me feel like some pretentious artsy fartsy douchebag whenever I go off saying how games will never achieve this level of beauty again.

Aero the Acrobat. I first came across it when I was really little at a friend's house. I don't recall ever making it past the first stage when I was that young, but it was a game and I enjoyed it. It was probably one of the first video games I ever played, and as such, had special meaning to me. Later on, I found a copy of it for the Gameboy Advance and played through it for purely nostalgia's sake, multiple times. Then I punched my Gameboy in frustration one day, and I haven't played it since :(

Other than that I find that the LEGO games are really fun!

Dark Void - My sister randomly got me this game, I'd never really heard of it before. The 3rd-person shooting mechanics are meh (not bad, just not great), and it could have used quite a bit more polish, but it wasn't like anything I'd ever played before. The ability to transition from on-foot combat, to hovering around, to full-on rocket man mode on the fly is so COOL. The person-to-craft/craft-to-craft aerial combat is quite fun, too. For anyone who liked the space combat in Reach but wished they could jump out and hijack a banshee, I'd recommend giving it a try. Also, Bermuda Triangle, alternate dimension/realm, and Nikola Tesla in the same story.

Viva Pinata.

Jurassic Park III - Park Builder (GBA)
Army Men Advance (GBA)
Pokémon Trading Card Game (GBC)

However, even though I have a lot of N64 games, I actually don't feel guilty for any of them. No, not even Buck Bumble. Buck Bumble is the shit.

Oh, wait. Glover. Yes. Glover.

If you own a 360 and haven't looked into the Indie Games section on Live, you owe it to yourself to go check out some of the hilarious turds that reside there. I went through it a while back and downloaded the demos for anything that looked absurd enough to be entertaining. There's nothing better than whipping out one of these babies to show off your entertainment system.

Some of my favorite stinkers.

No Luca No

Baby Maker Extreme

Rocket Girl

Punch That Face

Super Amazing Wagon Adventure (this one's actually a wonderful parody of Oregon Trail)

I couldn't really think of any except maybe Tomb Raider games, but those are 'in' now, right?

(Haven't played the new one yet, but even though they weren't super-innovative, I thought the next-gen trilogy [Anniversary, Legend, and Underworld] before the reboot was full of nostalgic fun and actually showed some interesting character development for Lara.)

But then I remembered the tragic Advent Rising! A game which you WILL find four copies of at every used game store (marked at $3). It was rushed, glitchy, and seemed to be missing huge fragments, but man I thought it was EPIC, especially the Maw-run-like vehicle sequence about a third (?) of the way through the game. Also had some good tracks from Jack Wall.

I guess Enter the Matrix might have also been one. Such a terrible, terrible game, and the most glitches I've ever experienced in one sitting. I remember getting my head stuck in a ceiling and my legs just flailing around as I tried to run away. But boy did I love running up walls and pretending I was Neo for five days on the grace of Blockbuster.

- Fusion Frenzy, want to take a break from 4 player Halo right after launch? Fire up fusion frenzy for some good laughs.
- Snowboard Kids (N64), so amazing
- I was about to say Harvest Moon (SNES), but there's no reason to ever feel guilty about it

I've been trying to come up with a game that fits the guilty pleasure description and just can't… I like all the games that I like without reservation. The closest thing at all would be Final Fantasy XIII who's storytelling and gameplay I both enjoyed while the rest of the world seemed a bit meh on.

So how about taking it offline. I've got two things I'm hesitant to admit to:

1. I actually really liked Speed Racer (2008). Yes, it was a bit cheesy. Yes Speed's little brother and his pet monkey were stupid. But there was something about it. It had wonderfully exciting racing sequences. It had a neat semi-realistic feel for all those goofy over the top cars. But what's more, the story was about the spirit and integrity of racing that really struck home with me. I saw it in 3D and came home with a smile and I don't care what anybody else says. :)

2. Oh dear… I can't believe I'm admitting this… *winces* Pogs. The only… ultimately unpopular… fad I've ever been caught up in. For a couple of months every kid in school had Pogs and I had to have me some Pogs and I got some Pogs and the fad went pop and I'm never going to mention it again. Certainly not a guilty pleasure NOW, but it was a pleasure I once had that I feel quite guilty about today, so that counts, right?

Here are some that I love for reasons I totally shouldn't:

-Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts
-Doritos Crash Course games
-Any tennis, golf, or kart game with cartoon characters other than Mario
-Any party game with cartoon chatracters
-Old Madden games (what's the difference)
-The Burger King games
-Pretty much any n64 game I buy locally for a $1 (we're up 500% this year already.)

Oldies

• Warrior (vector graphic top-down sword-fighting game)
  
• The Colony (B&W on a Mac--precursor to Marathon in my mind)
  
• Kickman (Think Space Invaders except with balloons vs. a clown on a unicycle)
  
• Carmegeddon (You might actually know this one.)

Xbox arcade

• Uno
  
• Lumines

If anyone remembers the first three I might faint.

Crystal Caves

Way before my time. But it's a favorite to go back and play on my dads old computer.

Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts - People gave this game SO much flak. It's definitely not up to par with the glory of the N64 titles, but how could it be? Those games are considered to be masterworks... I love the creativity and openness of the game, and it retains that B&K humor through and through.

Just Cause 2 - Less of a guilty pleasure, more of a hidden gem. This game rivals even Saints Row for pure, unadulterated open world madness. Story is hilariously bad (in a good way), and it has such a great set of sandbox toys, and it's on the steam sale with all of the additional content for 15$ right now. GO BUY IT. You already missed it for half that price 2 days ago!

Brink - I liked it way more than everyone else seemed to. A bit like a combination of Mirror's Edge and a more objective based MP mode like generator defense. I liked it quite a bit.

Syndicate - I LOVED this game. Such a strong aesthetic identity and the game just FEELS good. It's got crazy tight controls, amazing soundtrack, and a really engaging multiplayer mode, yet everybody seemed to think is was bland, shallow, and "just another shooter".

Dead Island - People seem to rag on it incessantly... I love Dead Island. There's something about throwing a knife at a zombie, walking up to it, yanking the knife out, punching it in the face, and then throwing the knife at the next zombie that never gets old. Sure, it's rough around the edge, but the core of it is strong enough to keep me coming back.

The survival mode in Driv3r is the most hilariously awesome thing I've played. You're in a car in one of three cities, you can't get out of the car, the police are driving ridiculously overpowered cars, and the physics are wonderfully awful. You lose when the police have rammed your car enough to destroy it, but the police cars are so overpowered, the AI is so simple, and the physics are so bad that they'll launch themselves over you.

From a standing start the police cars will do a wheelie when they start after you. If they pin your car agaist something they will just keep piling more and more police cars on top of you like something out of the Blues Brothers. Late coming police cars will ramp off of the pile and go flying into buildings. Sometimes hitting curbs just right will send you flying over skyscrapers.

The game is bad, but I don't think I've laughed as hard playing any other game as I have with Driv3r. I still have a copy, even though I don't have an original Xbox anymore. One of these days I'll pick up another one just to play it again.

Here's a video:

Liking this game is pure shame. It bring out my inner 12 year old. Put that back in the tray last weekend with a friend. Two highlights:

The map Skid Row. Camping our favorite building. I'm lobbing grenades out the window (One Man Army FTW) and he's sniping people through a hole in the wall. After a few kills, I hear from him, 'Just like old times, eh Shepard?'

Finally pulled off a First Blood kill on Wasteland with the n00b tube. Lobbed that sucker up, explosion, host rage quits. 18 months away, and I pull that off my first night back.

What an absurdly hilarious game.