8 MORE Video Games Critics Hated (But Players LOVED)

While any art is bound to be subjective and video games are no exception, there are generally trends where the majority agree that a game is good or bad, the critical and commercial success or lack thereof align, or by and large, the critics and players were mostly in agreement in their assessment of a game’s quality.

This list is not about those times. This list is about the times where a lot of critics thought a game belonged on the trash heap but a lot of players insisted they were chucking away a treasure and went off to have a grand old time with it. 

Jules ran you through a list on this very topic a year ago but it became clear we’d only hit the tip of the deeply unappreciated video game gem iceberg, so we got you some more entries.

Coming in at a not awful 61 rating on Metacritic, 2003’s Kirby Air Ride wasn’t exactly critically panned, but as any fan will tell you, it deserved better because this game is sick. The good sick. I was going to say ‘the s***’ but I can’t say that word, anyway let’s talk about the pink ball.

Users were far kinder to the game on Metacritic evening out at an 8.1 and elsewhere rained love on the cutie pie racer leaving it with a 96% approval on Google, and 5 stars on eBay. I know that’s a weird place to get user reviews, but this game came out on GameCube in the early 2000s, no one was really keeping track of these things. Fortunately it’s not hard to find just how beloved Kirby Air Ride is en masse. Players praised Kirby mastermind and game director Masahiro Sakurai for the pitch perfect mechanics, design choices, and modes that provide a surprising amount of variety and replayability. 

In particular, the City Trial mode which sent up to 4 players zooming around a city including various biomes seeking power-ups, vehicles, events, and other assorted secrets was a big fan favourite.

While many Western critics claimed Kirby Air Ride was overly simplistic both in its control scheme and lack of direction in telling players what to do, it turns out plenty of people didn’t need firm objectives or complex systems. Many were just stoked to jump into races with friends, check out the different settings, and get a kick out of the racing mechanics and level design. In short, whether you played this as a kid or an adult, players were just happy messing around and basking in the sheer joy of it all.

That’s also the exact same reasoning for a game I’ll mention later. Except in that case there’s less flying around on a star and more pissing in your own face.