Games that everyone hates but me: SNK vs Capcom Card Fighters DS

I still don't have any idea of a certain format for this blog, so I don't know if this is something I'd continue or not but the idea came to me browsing several video game forums.  Everyone would say "X game is shit" and "I hate Y game" and people would flame each other over their choices in gaming.  To be honest, it was something I never really did understand as I don't think I ever ran across a game that I ever really truly disliked, I was always able to find some form of fun in any video game out there.  So today, I would like to talk about a game that got a lot of heat from online gaming communities, and perhaps rightfully so.  The negative press didn't stop me from enjoying the game though, so without further ado:

SNK vs Capcom Card Fighters DS is, as the name would imply, a card battling game along the lines of Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic: The Gathering.  It featured 300 cards, split down the middle featuring characters from capcom such as Ryu, Mega Man, Phoenix Wright, and Morrigan and characters from SNK such as Kyo, Ryo, Iori, Shermie, and of course, Terry Bogard.  The basic plot is, admittedly, very stupid as it just focused on an evil computer brainwashing a bunch of card battlers in a tournament and it's up to the main character to save the day by playing children's card games....somehow.  The plot and dialogue often made no sense at all as it was full of typos, grammatical errors, and just weird "Engrish".  This doesn't really come as a surprise though, to anybody who has ever played an SNK game before.  In fact, SNK fans are pretty much used to it, but it's still pretty jarring for anyone else not used to shoddy localization.

The A.I was also not too bright, as you can pretty much construct a deck of nothing but pure junk and you'd probably win within the first 3 or 4 rounds.  I found this amusing however, as it let me construct a deck of my favorite cards and I could still win.  I cleared the game four times (yes, FOUR TIMES when most people wouldn't even play through it more than once) using this "strategy" and the game stopped counting my wins at 255.  Or, if you want to win ASAP you can just load your deck full of cheap cards and effectively "zerg rush" your opponent in a swarm of cheap cards that he can't possibly afford to defend against.  So you could argue that the actual story campaign was broken gameplay-wise, but I found the broken element fun if only because you can steam roll opponents in the stupidest way possible.  Needless to say though, if you can convince a buddy to get this game, the 2 player vs mode is an entirely different beast all together.

If you read this far, you can obviously tell this game technically isn't very good.  It even SHIPPED BROKEN.  The first print of the game had a game breaking glitch in that you couldn't even beat the game as it would freeze when you reached a certain floor and talked to a certain character.  Thankfully, SNK offered to replace those cartridges with a fixed copy, and even released a second print of fixed copies into stores.  However, these copies are also mixed in with the broken copies, so if you ever see this game in a store keep that in mind.  There is a way to tell if you got a fixed copy or not by looking at the cartridge, though.

The grey copy on the left is fixed and good to go.  The one on the right with the color background is broken and you're out of luck.  So, why would I bother defending this piece of shit game, right?  Story is retarded, the gameplay is broken, and the game has a game breaking glitch.  Well, there is only one redeeming value that made my experience with the game worth all those frustrations:  The Cards. 

I found the card collecting to be incredibly addicting.  The art is splendid, with rare cards being drawn by special guest artist, and the variety of characters is great, you are going to see characters that you never even heard of or characters that you'd never expect anyone else to remember but you!  The sheer variety of portraits combined with the prospect of constructing decks based around certain themes proved to be a lot of fun for me.  I kept playing so I could collect all the cards, and sure enough I did around the second playthrough,  but I kept playing because I craved doubles even quadruples of the same card to make a certain deck.

Of course, this is probably not worth the time of most gamers out there, and I'd even feel a bit guilty recommending it.  The game's saving grace provided a ton of enjoyment for me to overlook a lot of the game's flaws, but I realize that not everyone would see that in the same way.  So in conclusion, yeah...everyone hates this game and with good reason.  But I don't....