Embracing The Bad

This post is a celebration of the terrible. Plenty of attention is directed at the best of the best titles, the AAA’s, the flagship system sellers. But what about the bad games? Well, plenty of attention is directed at those too; look at the infamy of SEGA’s greatest miss, Sonic The Hedgehog for the Xbox 360 (or Sonic 2006).

It is well-known by this point that Sonic ‘06 was an unmitigated disaster of a game. Initially promised to help revitalise the blue blur’s success, this game instead catapulted Sonic the Hedgehog further into infamy as the much-mocked meme we see today. The game is filled with glitches, difficult to control, has a terrible camera and long, long loading times that test a gamer’s patience.  

But can we find enjoyment in the badness? Is there fun to be had with gaming’s worst? Sonic 06 may be one of the worst games ever made, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have fun mocking and riffing at the title. Any Let’s Play will tell you that much.

In film, there is a lot of love for the bad. People deliberately go out of their way to make bad movies. Look at Sharknado; a hilariously insane and goofy B-movie that embraces its craziness as its singular selling point. There is almost an art in making a bad movie in itself that lends itself to appreciation. It is admirable to see when directors know how to handle their material and embrace its identity wholeheartedly. There is a whole segment of entertainment directed at mocking the bad, and that is so beautiful.

Look at the Game Grumps play Sonic 06, and you will see what I mean by ‘so bad its good’ in the context of games. Many hilarious situations happen as a result of just how badly-designed the game is, by how easy it is to break. Glitches happen and screw over the player but in the most funny of ways. With an entertaining host and a willingness to laugh at the bad and even mock it, I would go so far to say that I enjoy Sonic ‘06, having played it myself.

The games industry is coming around to the idea of ‘so bad it’s good’ gaming. With the success of Goat Simulator and Surgeon Simulator (oddly, a lot of focus seems to be in the sim genre), it is clear that there is good entertainment in the bad; these games have even been well-received, because of the inherent comedy value that they found in embracing their terrible controls and using it as a mechanic to drive the gameplay.

Why are bad things so good? It could be any number of factors, but primarily it is about being able to mock, and enjoy laughing at the surrealism that being a bad game leads to. Knuckles humps a wall over boiling lava because he suddenly lost all ability to jump, a goat flops around in mid-air having been catapulted by an exploding car, a left-handed surgeon carves with hilarious incompetence at a poor patient’s innards with a plastic spoon. Embracing the weird and laughing at it is all part and parcel of enjoying games that we would not traditionally call ‘good’.

This is why Sonic 06 is an enjoyable experience. Mocking the surreal aspects of the game as a result of the strange glitches and broken gameplay allows us to laugh and enjoy the game for what it was, even if it wasn’t that good. I wouldn’t buy it at full price but there is entertainment value in enjoying a bad game.

We need bad games in our lives. If not just to mock and laugh at, we need them to show us what not to do in gaming. If a game is unsuccessful, we can look at those mistakes and know what to avoid. Thanks to Sonic 06, we now know not to have a blue hedgehog kiss a human princess.

Be it mocking, or by learning from the mistakes made, bad games are vital to the industry. So maybe, instead of putting down full retail price for the latest ultra-polished, AAA experience with a 90-plus Metacritic score, instead consider spending a little less to pick up a title that you might consider bad. Maybe you will find enjoyment in it that you didn’t expect to find, or maybe you will just have a lot of fun mocking the bad aspects of the game, either way, you will be brought out of your comfort zone.