10 Bad Video Games With ONE Great Level

Ten great levels you should play in ten bad games you probably shouldn't.

By Christian Higley /

There are countless great games that are unfortunately dragged down by a particular level, chapter or sequence. Often this comes in the form of a platforming or stealth segment in a title not built for such, but sometimes it's just an annoying boss or quest, or a maddening difficulty spike.

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Rare though are the bad games that inexplicably have one great level. Plenty of bad games have good ideas, but plenty more are also just bad all around bar one standout moment that boggles the mind as you try and imagine how just this one thing could go right for the developers. As if in the entire primordial soup of bad time management, bad budget management, and bad business management that gives life to bad games, somewhere in their DNA was a tiny bit of perfection.

Whether the game has a bafflingly good spike in writing or a level that manages to escape the bugs and poor design choices of its siblings, the occasional diamond in the rough can make playing at least part of a bad game worthwhile.

So with that out of the way, here are ten bad games you shouldn't play, except for these great levels.

10. The Light That Failed - Marvel's Avengers

When publisher Square Enix showed off their upcoming Avengers game on stage at E3 2019, reactions were mixed. The spectacular Golden Gate Bridge fight definitely made it feel like being in the movies, but once we got a good look at the characters, we came back down from that excitement pretty quickly.

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But the gameplay matters most, right? And what we saw of it looked excellent. Better yet, when we played it, it was. Fighting your way through rubble and wreckage, switching between Earth's mightiest heroes as they work together to stop the assault by Taskmaster and his cronies made it seem like this game could be poised to sit right beside Insomniac's Spider-Man. (Which, let's face it, also had some slightly off-looking character designs.)

Sadly, the rest of the game wasn't like that introduction at all. Almost immediately it became clear that this was basically a repetitive beat-em-up and that first major level was designed specifically to demo well, rather than accurately represent the game. When you throw in the grinding and microtransactions that made this title notorious, The Light That Failed is a shining example of a great Avengers game that doesn't actually exist.

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