Sorry for playing the echo chamber here, but Alpha Protocol deserves another mention. Yes, it does have its issues, but I'll be buggered if I didn't enjoy the shit out of it. A sequel or spin-off would be nice, Sega.

Another game that was slaughtered in the reviews , but which I really enjoyed is Omerta - City of Gangsters.

Sure, it might have been buggy as hell when it came out and the sandbox-mode was pretty useless at start, but after a while and some patches, it became a really solid TBS game with an interesting story and good combat. Even the multiplayer-mode (which I normally hate) was fun for me.

It's a pity that they broke the game again with another patch (*sigh*) Hope they will repair it soon.

Also known as "fuxing"! :-P

Can't think of any that got bad reviews that I liked.

Ultima 9 seems to draw a lot of ire from players, yet i really enjoyed it. Never finished it or even came close to doing so though, maybe that means something.

On consoles, I don't think Shaq Fu is as bad as some people claim. I've played much worse for fighting games(the SNES port of Pit-Fighter comes to mind), and it has some excellent animation. But the controls really are quite poor. And I'm a fan of the repetitive hack and slash of the Dynasty Warriors series.

Some of the others you guys mentioned, I also enjoyed, such as Alpha Protocol, The Temple of Elemental Evil, and Chaos Legion. I remember the first Halo being a buggy mess when it was first released on PC, though one of my friends swears that nowadays it is the best version of the game.

Also, I remember liking Mortyr back when I played it. It wasn't great, but I don't think it was quite as terrible as a lot of folks claimed.

A "disliked game" that I like is Heroes of Might and Magic IV. Many people dislike it because "it is not like Heroes of Might and Magic III", but I myself am not familiar with HoMM III. The first game of the series I got to know, because the box art and screenshots looked so fine, was HoMM V. I found the 5th a wonderful game but was sad my heroes wouldn't find along and when I tried out the previous one, I was very happy my heroes went in among the army to wield swords, shoot arrows, sling spells and stand in the face of danger along with the troops. It's AFAIK the most critized aspect of HoMM IV, compared with III, but it's an aspect I myself like very much.

Me too. I even prefer the less expansive areas which help me navigate without double checking where I've been. DX1 is just about as good as it gets for me, perhaps along with SS2, but DX IW comes a lot closer for me than most. I agree with this too. The main problem was the difficulty was completely dependent on the character build. It transpired that the optimum build suited my preferences anyway, so it was all good. The timed responses within conversations was done well and I think is unique.

Call of Duty 3 is my favorite CoD, so there's a relatively disliked game I like.

Under liked games I don't like: Any D&D game really, I tried really hard to like Neverwinter Nights and Icewind Dale and Planescape. Planescape was the best, but I only really thought it was okay. Tales of Symphonia counts here too. Now, I actually really like ToS, but the thing is way too loooooong, it should have been cut by fifteen or twenty hours if you ask me.

There is a PC version? How well did it port? Where do I get it? How do I rationalize around my Capcom GFWL grudge boycott?

sigh...do I really have to get my PS2 out of storage now?

Sonic 3D games.

what about the gameplay which at best can be described as poor man's imitation of halo?

I actually like a few of these as well. Adventure 2 Battle is my favorite, and after I decided to get Colors nobody had it.

Serious Sam 2 - While it wasn't critically panned, I have heard a lot of hardcore Serious Sam fans hate this game to oblivion because of the cartoony style of the game. Personally, I actually enjoyed the cartoony style of the game because it made what was already a pretty bad acid trip of a game world even more insane. Plus, it's the classic Serious Sam we all know and love, with more to it like vehicles and more varied environments, which is a big plus in my book.

Deus Ex: Invisible War - This was my introduction to the franchise back in the day and I really enjoyed playing it on the Xbox when that big black brick of a console was relevant. Sure, it is not as expansive as the original game but that isn't really to be blamed on the, "consolized" development of the game but the game engine itself being incredibly bloated. It still has what made Deus Ex great, just in a diet form which is not too bad and if anything it was an FPS game with some form of openness that came out the same year as the first Call of Duty... keep that fact in mind when thinking about what game was panned in retrospect.

Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind - I will get a lot of flak for this, but the first Bubsy game is not too bad once you learn how to control the Bubster and avoid the really aggravating falling damage. It might help that I played this way past the hype train it had back when it was going to be released (I was still an infant when the game was released) and I did not judge the game based on the awfulness that is Bubsy 3D.

Super Noah's Ark 3D - Since I am good at not judging a book by its cover, and do not inherently hate religion, I actually had fun with this Wolfenstein 3D clone. If anything compared to many Wisdom Tree games it has gameplay that isn't fundamentally broken since it is pretty much a Wolfenstein 3D clone. Though admittedly, a lot of my enjoyment of this game was based on the DOS version and how it is indeed a Christian FPS game that is a bit surreal thanks to its style.

Duke Nukem Forever. I've said it before and I'll saty it again, best critically panned game I've ever played. As far as I'm concerned it delivered exactly what I was expecting from a modern take on Duke.

Shadow the Hedgehog. Killer soundtrack, and the over the top grimdark didn't bother me. Plus I liked the wealth of stages, the branching pathways and thought it controlled just fine. It actually felt like a breath of fresh air after just how much I hated Sonic Heroes.

Enter the Matrix. Yes, I think it needed another six months development time and was a pile of bugs, but when it worked it worked beautifully and I enjoyed the supplimentary story elements.

Spyborgs. This one gets unfairly derided because of it's arguably generic appearance, but underneath beats the heart of a really solid, hard-as-nails classic style brawler.
Huh, I assumed 'second encounter' was technically serious sam 2, never knew there was an actual sequel. Now that I've looked it up I really want to play it.