Not counting games that were unfun because of bugs, what’s the most unfun video game that you’ve played and what made it unfun?
Most of the video games I’ve played were pretty good. The only one I can think of that I didn’t like was MySims Kingdom for the Nintendo DS. Dropped that pretty quickly. It was a long while ago, but I’ll guess it was because there were too many fetch quests and annoying controls.
The changes they made to the game mechanics ripped a lot of the roleplaying out of the experience. I kept hoping to find a lot of what I loved about Fallout 3 and New Vegas in it, and never did.
It's not even necessarily a bad game, but the aspects of the games that I found fun were either heavily reduced or removed completely, leaving behind an open world shooter with a bad story.
100% agreed. Not only was the Dialoge Choice system of Yes, yes but sarkastic and no (but actually yes) incredibly limiting, but even the story didn’t really do it for me plus the whole settlement thing.
Worms Blast. I didn’t look at any of the game screenshots and thought it would just be like a normal worms games and not more like that arcade game where you throw the coloured balls up to the ceiling to match them.
I have nothing against that style of game, but I just didn’t like it in the Worms style.
Elite Dangerous is the most un-fun game I’ve spent 1500+ hours on. I want to love it but the developers’ actions, or lack thereof, makes it difficult. The game has so much potential the devs won’t or can’t take advantage of for some reason.
Superman 64 is the only game I tried to return to Blockbuster before the rental window was done. They wouldn’t let me so I had to keep it for the rest of the week.
I had never once experienced this. They WOULDNT let you bring the game back early? Admittedly my days of blockbuster a few, I think they closed when I was 9 or 10, but I can’t see a reason they wouldn’t take it early…
Octopath Traveler. The UI was terrible, the loot was nothing but stat sticks, and most of the dungeons, of which there were too many, were just long tree walk with potions at the leaves. Genuinely the worst game I’ve ever played. The three-directional sprites were also extremely lazy. I think I lost my mind right at the start when the lazy script response saw one of the characters’ childhood friend suddenly develop amnesia and treat him like a stranger because everyone needs generic dialogue.
The music and cast of thousands worldbuilding was fantastic, but otherwise, I hated almost every single of the 80 hours I put into it trying to give ti a fair shake.
I got about 1/2 way through the game, but as soon as I hit the first boss of act 3 I just couldn’t progress. He’d wipe the party every time. Walkthroughs were useless.
Yeah, the game had severe balance issues too with classes not scaling properly and consequently being either completely dominant or totally useless based on what level you were.
I’m glad I’m not the only person to dislike this game! After going through like three of the chapter 1 missions for the characters, the game felt very very samey, and on top of that, it’s probably one of the only story games that I haven’t finished.
From the moment it was announced, I could not contain my excitement for Octopath Traveler from the art style to the graphics to the music. I was even into the name. I was so enamored that I bought the collector’s edition.
Then it finally came out and never have I regretted a game purchase so much; not because it was awful, but it was so mediocre. Honestly, if it were awful, I might have been more okay with it, rationalizing how a game could turn out so bad with everything going for it, mourning what could have been, etc. It did everything it promised it would, I just realized that it didn’t really promise much beyond an art style and being a turn based RPG with 8 main characters. The package was delivered, but it turned out to be Game Gear, not Gameboy.
I think buying that game put me off collector’s editions. The package for it was very impressive, but I think I finally saw the man behind the curtain and realized that what I was buying was just a bunch of plastic and art books that I was never really going to touch anyway. The only physical bonus I cared about from that point on was Steelbooks, but I don’t even buy physical games all that much anymore thanks to my Steam Deck.
Honestly, Octopath Traveler put me off blindly preordering games in general. Now I just blindly buy old games, so if they’re bad, I have no one to blame but myself for not doing the research LOL
Hotline Miami 1 was such a fantastic game. Frantic, high energy, fun, good art style, a confusing at best story but that’s not why you played it. HM2 was full of off-screen instant kill bullshit that you literally could not prepare for in any way other than to die to it a handful of times before you memorized enemy positions off-screen. In the first game, you could always see threats before they could kill you. Not the case in the sequel. “You died and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it” is a bullshit mechanic in any game.
Gloria Victis. It’s an MMO with factional PVP warfare that uses directional combat (like Mordhau). I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of these games, but I gave it a try since a friend of mine was interested in it. And I do like MMOs for the story content and to see what players can do with and within the world.
It was horribly boring. The main draw of the game is its PVP, but they definitely tried to also cater to the PVE playerbase, but the quests and story were generic and forgettable. I never even got to try the PVP, which I think my friend said was just OK anyway. I stopped playing after like a week. Apparently, the game is shutting down end of October, after releasing back in February 2023.
Another is the first Watch Dogs. I had played and completed Watch Dogs 2 and really liked it a lot. So thought to try the first one. I knew it was a very different mood and style from WD2, but thought it’d be OK. I can deal with moody and edgy. But it just wasn’t at all fun or interesting. I think I played for a couple hours and then uninstalled.
Noita, it’s the most sadistic “normal” game that i’ve ever played, barring those troll game that’s meant to be rage inducing. It’s a good game, but dang this game is bloody hard it become unfun the more i play as i couldn’t make any progress.
I’m really into games centering around magic or being a wizard. Noita regularly got recommended on r/gamingsuggestions for that kind of thing. I think it might have also gotten recommended for some other kinds of things I browsed r/gamingsuggestions looking for, like deep mechanics or having lots of different ways to solve problems. And the idea of spell creation, which Noita has, really appeals to me.
I’ve also heard of how infuriating this game can be, and I know I don’t like roguelikes or roguelites, so I didn’t pick it up.
I know, i’m enjoying the first few hours just learning thing and then the fun-ness just keep plunging afterward because i keep getting bad rng after bad rng for a few days and just decided to quit.
Download the mod that allows you to infinite respawns, and explore the outer bounds of the game. I really don’t understand the point of the roguelike nature of the game, except to purposely put itself into meme/streamer culture as one of the hardest games ever made.
It’s a fuckton better than spending four hours of prep on a run, securing all of the buffs, HP, and weapons to try to figure out some deep lore in some complicated area, only to die to a single pink pixel of Polymorphine. Roguelikes are meant for short and quick playthroughs, not hours-long doomed runs.
Yeah, i get games like binding of isaac or risk of rain 2 that the first level i can already know whether this run is gonna be shit/fun/sure-win, or game like rogue legacy where i can slowly upgrade my stats, this one i feels like i can be ultra careful but i can still get destroyed instantly without it being my fault. It’s what makes me give up
Final Fantasy 15. I’ve never been a fan of the modern (post FF7) games but fell for the hype around 15, purchased it, played it, actually finished it constantly wondering when the game would suck me in, and was left wondering what all that hype was about. The game had literally nothing I wanted in a JRPG as I found the story bog standard and the combat and traversal piss poor. That game officially made me give up on Final Fantasy since the only recent-ish game I’ve liked is FF Tactics. Make a sequel to that and I’ll reconsider.
This 100℅ I even bought a ps4 to play it. It was a really dull game and the character movement felt clunky. I finished it too, but I do not care to play it again.
I wouldn't necessarily say unfun, but "not for me". Stardew Valley. I went in ready to relax and farm, but oh God, time moves quickly! And I only have limited energy per day. That wombo combo when I was starting out just stressed me out and I didn't get into it immediately.
I know there are mods for it or that it's a good game even with the time, but out of all possible farming type games there were plenty more my speed than Stardew.
The first days are indeed really short. You have to upgrade your tools and your player to have days long enough to explore. It is still a limiting factor for big explorations. You have to pack your stuff. I can understand that it can be unfun.
I wasn’t interested in it at all but then my partner (who has played it a ton) and I started a co-op game. Stardew is way easier and plain more fun if you’re playing it with someone else.
The Last of Us. Over-hype definitely didn’t help, but it looked brown and dreary, seemed to mainly involve walking around waiting for press X to do thing to appear on screen, and having plot thrown at me when I actually wanted to play a game.
I dropped that game when I couldn’t cross a bridge because it was blocked by an invisible wall broken down bus. It was so egregious I got annoyed and went outside.
MLB: The Show. I used to really enjoy these games because they felt like a sports game that actually cared about making a very realistic simulation while still keeping it fun. Now everything is about Diamond Dynasty, the fantasy baseball mode. All the other modes only reward you by giving you packs and giving you a gentle shove into Diamond Dynasty. One of my favorite modes was “March to October” where you play select innings in select games over the course of a whole season. Each game’s outcome determines your team’s general ability over the season. The better you do, the better you win rate and the higher chance of making it into the post season. Your rewards? Card packs. SMH.
Ghostrunner. The levels were fun and had big Hotline Miami vibes but the boss fights were far too difficult and just utterly boring. Yeah, I really liked wall running in circles for minutes on end because the floor was lava. That was great.
Atomic Heart. Bought it on a whim while high. I liked the bioshock influence and the level design is really cool. It just suffers from being a “survival horror” without the survival or the horror, so most of the gameplay involves you scrounging around for bullets and then dealing ultra light blows to enemies because you ran out of your 3 bullets. Pretty much none of the combat was fun and the stealth was a relentless ultra punishing slog. As a lover of stealth games, please if you’re considering making a stealth game do not take any notes from this game. It did it all wrong.
Dying Light 2. I loved the first game but this game just sorta felt overwhelming in a way? I really don’t know how else to put it. I like open world games but developers just need to calm the fuck down. I don’t need 10 map markers.
The Quarry. I get that it’s supposed to be a rip on teen slasher movies but that still didn’t make it very fun to me. I loved Until Dawn and played it probably 5 times so I was super hyped for this but just really let down. I hated the way the game ended and I hated pretty much every second that I played it.
The Hunter: Call of the Wild. It was just boring. I guess that’s what hunting is like in real life, but so is truck driving and I like truck simulator games…
In recent memory the two that have stood out to me are Risk of Rain 2 and Halo 4. I thought some 3rd-person action in the former would be fun but I found the core loop and overall shooting boring after a couple run attempts so I guess it just didn’t click for me.
Now Halo 4… I think gameplay in that title is an exercise in tedium. Add on (what is in my opinion as:) poor AI, a bit too much melodrama, dumb retcons, “do X three times!” a bit much and I got a campaign that felt like a chore and haven’t touched it since I left off at the level with the Mammoth. The Prometheans are a pain to fight and I felt funneled into making do with Forerunner weapons to take ranged potshots at Watchers above all other targets and then rushing to kill the one Knight I was targeting before it regenerates, also above all other targets. Yuck. (Update: Coming back here since it occurred to me that I could sum it up as: my ability to make mid-combat decisions and play in the sandbox was kneecapped by poor enemy and maaaybe level design respectively.)
I tried playing Blasphemous recently and had to drop it in a couple hours. I might’ve stuck with it had I tried it when I was younger but I’ve discovered that nowadays I don’t have the patience to play games that require you to beat your head against a brick wall until it breaks. So many frustrating enemy placements and insta-kill spikes, the movement is slow, the combat is unsatisfying, I just didn’t feel like I had much incentive to continue playing (minus the art style which is absolutely gorgeous).
I felt this with Elden ring. Once I got past the starting area, it just felt like everywhere I went I’d find enemies that kill me in 1-2 hits if I made one wrong or mistimed move. I wish I had the skill or patience to get through it, but I just found it too time consuming to try those tough enemies again and again. Definitely may just be a skill issue on my part, so I don’t necessarily want to dissuade others from giving it a shot.
That’s the point of the game. It’s definitely not an easy game, but it is the easiest game of the Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring series. And it’s okay if that’s not for you! It requires a different approach than your usual hack-and-slash game, and that’s certainly not for everyone.
I don’t know I had relatively little problem with Dark Souls 1 and 2, so I don’t get the people saying it’s the easiest game in the series. Something about the combat just didn’t mesh with me. No big deal though.
I began playing it after so much praise from all over the place and it just uses predatory tactics to hook the gamer. I only had fun with the game for maybe a day or so but overall clocked in many more hours of hate-playing. The only good thing is that the developer (who's background is developing gambling games) does not use those tactics for microtransactions.
Once I deleted the game, I was never even tempted to go back.
Really? I guess you could consider the game’s visual flair to be predatory that way but I always felt that stuff was a joke because it doesn’t have microtransactions
Predatory usually implies that you’re being lured in to buy something, but the game has no microtransactions. At its worst the mobile version (which is free) has the option to watch an ad to get 1 revive per run. Don’t watch the ad? The game is the same as the console/PC version.
I think the lights, sounds, slaughtering massive hordes of enemies with overwhelming damage, and constant dopamine rush from them could certainly be predatory in nature if they were used to bait you into buying microtransactions, but that’s not the case here. I see where they’re coming from, but I can’t necessarily agree.
What’s the difference between predatory tactics to hook people into a game, and “normal” gameplay, whatever that is? If neither cost any money or have microtransactions in any way?
Is Diablo 2 using predatory mechanics? Is Counter Strike? Is Factorio?
Games are artificial constructs. If you deconstruct them entirely, unless they got some story to tell as the center point of the game, their mechanics and goals are entirely artificial and constructed to get you to keep playing, be engaged, and have fun, whatever that means and implies.
Because, well, in the end, games do not have a grand purpose. Their purpose is entertainment(or be art, but not all games have that goal). And so if vampire survivors keep you engaged and enjoy the game… Is that really that much different to other games? Another example to this are idle/incremental games, as a pure distillation of what games are. Are they predatory? Is there really much difference from the very core of other, more “proper”, games?
A game can offer an experience that leaves the player feeling satisfied or at least content with how they spent their time. There is a large space of possible interactive experiences that extend far beyond the simple dichotomy of fun vs educational or productive.
A game can certainly be considered predatory if it exploits psychological vulnerabilities to hook someone on engaging gameplay that gives the player very little in return in terms of fulfillment or mental recovery. Whether or not it takes the opportunity to swindle the player on top of that is a matter of degree in severity. Wasting a player’s time (or worse, induce stress or other harmful mental states for no good reason) is not a particularly nice thing to do.
Sure, he worked in the sector, but that’s because he couldn’t find better jobs. What you’re implying here is really unfair, especially considering there aren’t even any microtransactions in the game. As far as I know, he just made a game that he felt was fun.
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