Guilty Pleasures Or Pleasant Surprises

I'm curious about geeky entertainment you thought you wouldn't like but ended up really enjoying. Books, comics, games, movies shows, whatever.

For me a few things come to mind.

I ignored Breaking Bad for years, thinking it sounded like just another TV drama. But I kept seeing fandom for this show grow, specifically in geek culture. So I finally checked it out and discovered one of the most captivating shows I've ever seen.

In comics, I took one look at Gail Simone's "Batgirl #1", with the title character smiling and dolled-up with lipstick, blush and mascara, and said "this looks terrible. A complete betrayal of the Batman legacy. What's next, Bat-puppy?" But when I gave the issue a shot, I was struck by how wonderfully grounded and character-driven the story itself actually was. Somehow I bought into the whole thing and it became one of my favorite reads each month.

In video games, I gotta say "Bioshock and all action games", both of which I avoided for years, thinking they'd be too hard and frustrating. But like Rumplestiltskin (sp?) I woke up one day and discovered the world had changed, and difficulty settings in many action games now make it possible for me to play and deeply enjoy them! I'm not a big fan of what I call "story-shooters", that emphasize immersion in the world rather than smooth gamey strafing. (Current favorites include the Bioshock series, Singularity the Far Cry series and Wolfenstein The New Order)

Finally, also in video games, the Assassin's Creed series. This series should irritate me beyond belief. Action oriented, some challenging platforming now and then, with insta-fail timed missions and escort missions sprinkled here and there, and a story that flies in the face of biblical truth. And yet the gameplay is just so stinking fun. Just finished #2 and am waiting for "Brotherhood" to come in them mail next week. Woohoo!

Harry Potter comes to mind. My mother bought my son book 3 when it came out, and I was pretty much set against it. I read it to vet it for my child and was taken in by it. I think the series went downhill from there, but overall I was pleasantly surprised.
Rekoeition/Kou Shibusawa Productions. That is: old school Koei strategy games. History was boring to me: only sports mattered, when I was a kid. My best friend and I would play Dusty Diamond's All Star Softball, or any iteration of football there was, until we couldn't stay awake any longer. But when he got appendicitis and was stuck in bed for weeks, he got bored and tried Genghis Khan. Despite his dad, my "Uncle Doug" saying "Mikey wont like that, it doesn't have any sports in it", I tried it as well, and it was love at first sight (of the Noriyoshi Ohrai cover art). I am still hooked on those early Koei games, and their simple, but often hauntingly beautiful music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtJ5OjxE5XY)
The Arrowverse. I was initially turned off by the second rate quality of The Arrow, The Flash, and Legends of Tomorrow, especially coming off of Daredevil Season 2. However, the fact that they don't really take themselves too seriously is a bit refreshing. Kind of like "light fare" or sitting down on the couch to eat pizza instead of sitting at the table for a meal.

For guilty pleasure, and this one I actually do feel guilty about: Deadpool. Lewd, crude, rude... and blasted hilarious. It really was as bad as advertised (I didn't believe them) and that is a shame because there is a fantastic movie hidden under all the excrement.

Edit to add: World of Tanks, the online, free to play (but you can purchase premium) mmo-ish style competition based tank game. I have avoided mmo's since the original Dark Age of Camelot, and its ability to suck people in. But I saw my son playing WoT and I gave it a shot. Three and a half years later, and I have an on-again-off-again love affair with it. (sometimes I just need to step away for a couple weeks ...or months to gain perspective, but overall it is the one game I play constantly)
I thought I would hate playing with other meat players, instead of AI, but I've made friends and just generally enjoyed being part of an online Christian gaming community.

mikel.withers wrote: I've made friends and just generally enjoyed being part of an online Christian gaming community.

Sweet! What are they called? Do they have an online presence somewhere I can check out?

http://cs7clan.com/index.php
This is my group, the Christian Soldiers 7th Division, although for EULA reasons we are only CS7, which stands for "CS7" and not in any way "Christian Soldiers 7th Division", on World of Tanks.
The members play a wide variety of games together, we have our own Dischord channel, um... I've been a bit absent lately so I'm not up on whether or not the weekly Bible study is currently running...
We also have friendly clans, like 4HIM and ISI (Iron Sharpens Iron) that we associate with, as much as such things are capable of doing in game. (in fact there is quite a bit of players going back and forth depending on how competitive they want to be in their stage of life)

Pleasant surprises?

Skylanders. My kids love every version of this game. I finally gave it a try when the TurboCharged edition came out, because I wanted a good cart racing game. As a racer goes, it's pretty good and using the toys to unlock the different vehicles wound up appealing to more than I thought it would. But the main game is really just Gauntlet and that's ... awesome. I just haven't got any kind of time to devote to video games these days.

My Little Pony, the comic book. Dragged into this by my daughter, I'll be doing a review of this in my comic book segment later. I was really surprised at the depth of the writing and the subtlety of the humor. And it turns out they don't shy away from some really dark themes.

Guilty pleasures?

H2O: Just Add Water. It sounded like a sitcom gimmick but it stars Phoebe Tonkin and Claire Holt. Turns out to be a smart, snappy, light hearted drama with some spectacular underwater filming. And I *still* can't get the theme song out of my head. Add to that the fact that virtually all of the mermaid shots are practical gags and I'm doubly impressed with the production work.

Harry Potter books for me, too. I used to be in the anti-Potter camp because of magic and witchcraft, and because I just wasn't interested in kids flying around on brooms and making things disappear. But my friend told me about some of the spiritual and Biblical analogies, so I decided to give them a shot. I ended up hooked on them while I was reading them (though my fandom has died off quite a bit since finishing).

Recent stuff I've had a lot of fun with:

Horizon Zero Dawn: Loved this game. Beat it and discovered pretty much everything about a month ago. Great story, awesome art style and beautiful setting. Thought the robot storyline, while similar in some aspects to what we've seen before, was still interesting and unique. I'm wondering if they will have any download content for it - possibly some new areas?

Rewatching Star Trek The Next Generation: I grew up loving this series, and doing a re-watch. Still holds up very well I think, and makes me miss those days of having a show you would look forward to at a specific time on TV, and then talking about it with your friends the next day.

Rewatching Babylon 5. This has been a lot of fun. It looks a little more dated than TNG, but still has a style and feel that takes me back. Plus a great story-line. One of the first (if not the first) show to do a story of this type on TV. I even picked up a bunch of the Babylon 5 books and read those while watching the show. The Technomage series of books was really good.

I really enjoyed Stranger Things, and looking forward to the next season of it. Bought the soundtrack, as it has a great 80s synth feel to it. Story was amazing, and felt very authentic to the time period, which was very cool.

My son and I have really liked playing Minecraft and Rocket League on PS4. Both are great couch co-op games. Even read all the Diary of an 8-bit warrior books with him, which was fun as we were able to talk about it. And they were easy to read books that had a good story.