"Oh, Mediocre Game, I Just Can't Quit You!"
 

So lately I've been playing a lot of this one game called Nostalgia. I can just run around and level up, grind for skill points, go buy stuff, go do sidequests, and occasionally advance the plot for hours at a time if I let myself.

The thing is though...it's not that great a game. The sidequests and battle mechanics are kind of ehhhh, the environments are uninspired, the music doesn't really stir my soul, and the dialogue is frankly awful. (There're four main characters--an upper-class Brit, a lower-class Brit, a Frenchwoman, and someone who turns out to be from the realm of the gods. But when they don't all sound like precisely the same modern American teenager, they have Chrono Cross-level text "accents". I seriously think I could write better than this game.)

But I just don't want to stop playing it...and I don't have the faintest idea why. Has anyone else ever had something like that happen--where a game just kind of keeps you playing despite the fact that objectively, you know it's kinda crap?

Yeah.
It's called being employed. *rimshot*

Seriously though, I know the feeling.
Honestly, I've got a number of games that are just shitty, but every once in a while, I fire it up, do a few rounds/levels/whatevers, and then feel completely satisfied.
And then it's back to the srs bsns of the AAA games and the likes.

I can't be the only one seeing the gag here.

Ah yes, addiction to mediocre games. My sister and I call this phenomenon the Dynasty Warriors Syndrome. I can't for the life of me describe why button mashing SQUARE SQUARE SQUARE TRIANGLE SQUARE SQUARE TRIANGLE TRIANGLE TRIANGLE over and over, and watching endless armies of idiotic AI walk directly into you without really attempting to fight you makes DW Extreme Legends 5 fall under any definitiopn of "fun." There's really no strategy involved once you level up your character, the voice acting is atrocious, 90% of the missions don't actually require you to follow your commander's orders as long as you kill enough enemies to keep them from accomplishing anything noteworthy (which is incredibly easy, as they all basically line up in front of you and pace back and forth for a good 3-5 seconds before attempting any kind of attack) and they hand out musou coins like candy on Halloween. Yet I still love it for some reason.

I played Maplestory for a fuckton of time.

I swear there's good ideas thrown there, somewhere.

Edit: Oh man, I forgot, I played the fuck out of Devil Kings ( Sengoku Basara 1 ) back when my PS2 worked.

Sengoku Basara 3. Even taking the silliness of it into account I shouldn't find it as fun as I do.

I spent hours playing that stupid trophy collection minigame in Brawl.

Granted, it's a pretty fun game. But still. HOURS. At the end it was like, "Why am I doing this?!"

Earth Defense Force 2017 and IA.

Dungeons and Dragons Heroes

To most people I know, Dead Rising 2.

World of Warcraft.

DOTA and its various runt children.

I don't get it.

What gag?