Awesome avatar btw.
I don't think it was ever actually considered bad by numbers so much as by volume, but I did play Morrowind, then play and prefer Oblivion. Most of the legitimate criticisms (less interesting via more familiar world, hampered spell/enchant/alchemy shenanigans) struck me as understandable choices or necessary sacrifices, and a lot of the more subjective things (dungeon layouts) I either preferred or didn't really mind. And, of course, the game was just technically and mechanically better, having benefited from technological improvements and the possibilities that came with it.
Yeah, Morrowind is by no means a bad game, but only because 1.) the story and setting are interesting, and 2.) you can
mod the hell out of it to fix most gameplay issues. It had awful, boring combat if you weren't playing as a mage, a completely broken magic and potion system (look up "Morrowind speedrun" and watch the system get abused to hell and back), and a million bugs.
I completely understand people preferring later games in the series; some people complain about the loss of complexity, but Bethesda really tightened a lot of things up (except the amount of bugs on release
). For people like me who prefer Morrowind, it's all about the world and atmosphere.
I liked the 3D sonic game where the characters are split into teams of 3. I forget the name but I honestly liked playing it at the time.
Sonic Heroes?
This also helped me think of a bad game that I like: Sonic Adventure. Yeah it's an early 3D platformer in the Sonic series, but the plot was actually really good. Not the acting or writing, mind you, but the idea was cool: each character gets a piece of the backstory, and then you see the whole thing at the end for the grand finale. I feel like a remake could be pretty nifty.
More on topic... I still like Sonic Adventure 2. Yes, I know the story is awful. Eggman blowing up half the moon with a space station that looks like his face, a bunch of anthro furries hijacking the United States President's limousine to figure out that Eggman is in space (orly), the hilarious edgelord that is Shadow, weird awkward furry romance subplots, awful dialog, and plot holes everywhere. I know.
The game itself isn't much better. The engine is truly terrible, with frequent physics issues. For
some goddamn reason the designers decided the Dreamcast controller didn't have enough buttons and added a button to cycle through possible actions, which is just bizarre for an action game. This also means every command that isn't jump is mapped to the
same button. The treasure hunting levels were just painful, the camera tries its best to sabotage you constantly, and it took Sonic Team about a decade after this game to figure out how a Sanic game should even work in 3D.
But I had never played anything like it when I was 13, and the different story paths were intriguing. The Sanic/Shadow action stages were actually pretty fun, and it doesn't play nearly as bad as later games in the series. Oh, and the soundtrack is great. I'm serious. I was actually surprised by how many good songs are on it when I listened to it by itself. Just... skip over the Knuckles tracks.