randomuser.833: Throwing
Into the Dark into the Ring.
It is bad in many ways, but there are so many great ideas, that do work (mostly).
And there are so many levels of humor in that game. A lot of it is Nerd level though.
dtgreene: Final Fantasy 2 could fit in this category; many ideas that are actually pretty good (I like the way HP growth works, for example, particularly the way it self-corrects), but it suffers from issues like long dungeons with pointless "trap" rooms, the world not being as walled off as it probably should be at the start (too easy to reach an area where a beginning party can't survive an encounter), the rather serious issue with heavy armor being a trap option (evade is *far* more important than defense in this game), and an important strategically significant mechanic (the way armor interferes with magic) being hidden when it shouldn't be.
It's still not nearly as bad as Hoshi wo Miru Hito apparently is, but even Hoshi wo Miru Hito has some insteresting ideas, like the science fiction setting (and there's apparently a fan remake that's almost certainly not as terrible as the original).
We are talking about different things here I think.
Into the Dark does some things "bad" by decision. For example for changing the not that great keybinds or GFX, you have to go to the INI-files.
On the one hand.
On the other hand some keybinds (so says the handbook) are intentional. For example you got WASD + mouse and use is ENTER. Simply because the character is intended to be more vulnerable if interacting.
The game does use the system GFX-Settings very good too. You just have to go to the ini, if you want to make some things very different (but then you might be able to read very small pieces of paper).
While the graphics is not the best. You get bugs and so on.
The cut scenes are deliberately bad while some things are done very well in this bad manner.
And the dubbing - oh, don't talk about it. It is explained in game and when you take a look who did the game it becomes clear why it is that way. And it will be even more funny.
The game does give you various options what you want to do in a level. You can break them down into fighting and adventure. And the game does react to what you are doing. You shoot, you find better weapons and stronger enemys (very strong ones). Or you get harder riddles instead. Even changing the level when you don't look.
If you don't know, you can hit the wall running though.
And the humor is between everybody can understand it till max nerdlevel.
GoG should try to get its hands on this game for sure.
There is even a DRM-free disk version. The Steam version is reworked to some degree but it shouldn't be much of a problem.
So it is less about bad decisions in game design but more about, that the player can run into walls because he wasn't aware what the game will do.
