10 Guilty Pleasure Video Games No One Admits They Love

Square EnixVideo games aren't as quick and easy an activity as watching a movie, so as a result we tend to be a little more choosy about which ones we devote our spare time to. That said, some games manage to pull us in despite every instinct we have as gamers telling us that what we're playing is not, in fact, a particularly good game. What helps create a classic guilty pleasure video game? For starters, we don't like to admit that we enjoy them, and typically won't play them in the presence of our friends: we'll play them in secret on a lazy Sunday and in some circumstances even stay signed out of PSN or Xbox Live for the sake of our reputation. But why do we feel the need to deny our enjoyment of these games? Because we know they're not great games per se: they're the video game equivalents of a Michael Bay movie, disposable junk food that nevertheless has a briefly nourishing value, even if you won't remember it in the days that follow. These 10 games, governed by their outdated graphics, clunky gameplay mechanics, absurd levels of camp, flat-out weirdness and utter lack of originality, have kept us coming back for months and maybe even years, all while our backlog of critically-acclaimed indie masterpieces grows ever larger by the day. Of course, the term "guilty pleasure" is wholly subjective, so what to you defines a gaming guilty pleasure? What games are you afraid to tell your buddies you play? Let us know in the comments!