10 Video Games You Know Are Bad For You (But You Play Anyway)

The video game industry is home to some of the most passionate and opinionated fanbases in the world of entertainment. And whilst that can create headaches for developers and publishers when it comes to creating a title that is going to be universally acclaimed, these fanbases can also be amongst the most loyal ones going.

Even when it comes to games that are poorly made, this loyalty can still shine through. Player bases can still be found hopping into the servers, keeping a game's legacy alive online, and investing both their time and money into titles that the community have long since forgotten.

Gaming is unlike a television show or a blockbuster hit in the fact that there are so many more hours worth of entertainment to extract out of them, and it's certainly the case that gamers will sink ungodly amounts into the titles they become invested in.

With all of that in mind, here are ten of the best/worst games you know you would probably benefit from putting the controller down and walking away, but just can't stop yourself returning to.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla was released in 2020 as the twelfth entry to the series, but crucially the first one in the ninth generation of console wars. Thanks in part to the new direction its predecessor Assassin's Creed Odyssey had taken the series down, but also due to the game being launched with the biggest amount of marketing the franchise had ever seen, Valhalla was hyped up as one of the most hotly-anticipated titles of the year.

And, the results in terms of sales and reception largely justified this hype, with Valhalla being seriously praised for its gorgeous visuals, strong acting performances, and the open-world centred around the Great Heathen Army's invasion of Saxon England.

However, the game is certainly far from perfect. With the base singleplayer mode featuring lengthy parts of its campaign in Norway and then in England, the storyline alone can take up to sixty hours to fully complete, creating a bloated feeling across Valhalla at times.

Couple this with a very public series of criticisms aimed at the game's online microtransactions being prioritised over in-game updates, and Valhalla is one of the best examples of a frustrating and potentially even wasteful way of spending hours and money, but still a video game you can't help but love all the same.