Most Boring Game Play Experiences Ever

D.A.Lewis · Post by **D.A.Lewis** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:38 pm

A post started on the GBT about Beyond Divinity got me to thinking about my most boring game play experiences. From a technical standpoint boring games aren't bad. It's just that the game play experience is totally blah. meh. whatever.

Most games, even when slow, have elements that still keep you playing. But boring games take you out of the game world and make you realize you aren't living a virtual world, but messing around with bits and bytes of someone(s) weak imagination. Some boring games still present a challage to finish and then quickly delete off the hard drive. But some are so bad that you say enough is enough. Life is too short. I just don't care if this vitual avatar saves the world or not.

I present to you my top 8 list of the most boring games ever made. TO ME.

8. KOTOR1
7 Mortyr
6 Gabriel Knight 1
5 Korung, Ledgend of the North
4 Armed and Dangerous
3 Paradise Cracked
2 Odium
1 Beyond Divinity

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 5:51 pm

I find it hard to rip on a game for being boring because if I'm bored but keep playing there must be something there. Black and White is one. I was bored the third time I re-started (to get a different pet) because I had to go through the whole damed tutorial and all the cutscenes again. But I wanted to get past it so kept playing. Same with the opening rounds of CIV games or the like.

If you're looking for games that offered nothing but frustration to attempt to overtake boredom (AKA games I quit from the anticipation of bored), what come to mind first, in no particular order:

Mortyr
Codename Eagle
IGI
Sniper
Jagged Alliance 2
Konung Legend of the North (Or Korung or however it's spelled)
Europa Universalis
GalCiv (in fairness I got this right around when I got HL2 and then WoW so probably doesn't belong on this list)
Countless FPS mods
Postal 2
Stronghold Crusader (good game but MOTS in Crusader)

The worst offenders I'm probably forgetting since they were so boring.

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:23 pm

I'd have to dig to put them in order, but on the list would certainly be:

~Divine Divinity
~Daikatana
~Fallout: Tactics (before I realized it wasn't meant to be played in all turn-based)
~Neverwinter Nights - original campaign

killbot737 · Post by **killbot737** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:37 pm

All games I gave a try to but none of them kept me coming back

Ever Quest 2 (demo)
Anarchy Online (demo)
Hitman
Gothic
Wizardry 8

I'm sure there's plenty more, too.

Ralph-Wiggum · Post by **Ralph-Wiggum** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 6:48 pm

I'm sure there are plenty of them, but the most recent that comes to mind is Sacred.

egrudzin · Post by **egrudzin** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 7:11 pm

Pool of Radience: The Ruins of Myth Drannor
Sacred

They just kept going on and on and on with no end in site. The same thing over and over with no real story to compel me to continue. I'm getting sleepy just thinking about them...

D.A.Lewis · Post by **D.A.Lewis** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 7:54 pm

Pool of Radience.

Forgot all about that snore fest. Man, I'm yawing just thinking about that one. Nitey Night.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 8:17 pm

Darklands (it convinced me I'd never want to be a Fedex deliveryman)
Patrician II (loved the subject matter, hated the execution)
KOTOR (I felt like I was on a rail with blinders on)
Panzer Campaigns Normandy 44 (yes, there is such a thing as too many units).
Trade Empires (again, loved the concept, couldn't stay awake 'till end-game)

Wholly Schmidt · Post by **Wholly Schmidt** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 8:24 pm

Doom 3. It was as if they heard the industry crying out against short games and responded rhetorically "What, so you want a long game? See how you like this, suckers!"

JonathanStrange · Post by **JonathanStrange** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:24 pm

Anyone can say that little-played or older or poorly regarded games are dull (what's the point of flogging the corpse of Daikatana or MOO 3), but what about the games with a living cadre of fanatics?

Well, here are some highly regarded games that I am NOT knocking, but which I feel no appreciation for (in other words: I think they're dull):

Patrician II: Have you every dreamed of becoming a leading member of the Hanseatic League? Neither have I. An intriguing idea for a micromanaging player like myself, but I was bored to tears with the slow pace of trading beer, lumber and cattle from Riga to London. All the "exciting" trade empires are generally based on hours and hours of lethargic back-and-forth back-and-forth gameplay.

Gal Civ The A.I. is sound and the concepts work but there's little sense of awe or drama: planet development is like a spreadsheet, every planet can eventually build every building, space fleets and battles are just tiny blips and bleeps. After three games, it felt like "more of the same" seeing the "blue territory" of my empire increase on the mini-map isn't exciting at all.

Dominions 2 Tons of things to do, great for talking about, and brilliant fodder for internet discussions about how to defeat this race or that spell. Actual gameplay - the maps, the tiny units, etc. - rather dreary. More fun to talk about than to play.

Hey, I'm not knocking these games. I wanted to enjoy them. If your idea of fun is buying wool for $9 in Riga and selling it for $11 in Calais, or increasing the your dreadnought's experience by two percent, or having ninetynine different spells to choose from, then I sort of envy you. Sort of.

(yeah, I know...I'm stupid, I suck, Dom 2 RULES...

)

yossar · Post by **yossar** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 9:38 pm

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is World of Warcraft. Which on this forum is maybe even more blashphemous than saying Dominions 2.

I'm sure there are a bunch more but they were all very forgettable.

jg93 · Post by **jg93** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 10:38 pm

yossar wrote:The only one I can think of off the top of my head is World of Warcraft. Which on this forum is maybe even more blashphemous than saying Dominions 2.

I'm sure there are a bunch more but they were all very forgettable.

Ditto WoW. The game starts to fragment at level 20, and seriously falls apart at 50. Ah well it was fun for a month or so.

I'll up your blasphemy - Morrowind.

D.A.Lewis · Post by **D.A.Lewis** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 10:40 pm

JonathanStrange wrote:Anyone can say that little-played or older or poorly regarded games are dull (what's the point of flogging the corpse of Daikatana or MOO 3), but what about the games with a living cadre of fanatics?

I did say KOTOR didn't I???

Edwardo was the one that made me see the emperor had no clothes. I was trying to like it but it just wasn't working for me. Edwardo posted something about the game not being that much fun and it was like a lightening bolt struck me. Being the Star Wars geek that I am, I kept trying to convice myself I was having fun. But I wasn't. I don't begrudge all the KOTOR fans out here. I envy you.

It's funny but all the years I've watched Star Wars movies, I never envisioned myself slinging a light saber nor ever having any desire to do so. I love the movies, but have never felt compelled to get a Star Wars game.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 10:52 pm

jg93 wrote:I'll up your blasphemy - Morrowind.

Daggerfall was far, far worse. Morrowind NPCs weren't nearly as cookie-cutter.

Padre · Post by **Padre** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:02 pm

Jeff V wrote:
jg93 wrote:I'll up your blasphemy - Morrowind.
Daggerfall was far, far worse. Morrowind NPCs weren't nearly as cookie-cutter.

You're shitting me. I can scarcely imagine more generic NPCs than in Morrowind.

Suitably Ironic Moniker · Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:07 pm

Ditto WoW. The game starts to fragment at level 20, and seriously falls apart at 50. Ah well it was fun for a month or so.

Did you personally play up to Level 50? In a month?!?! Wow, I wish I could find a game that bored me that much

.

Grifman · Post by **Grifman** » Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:08 pm

Dungeon Siege. No interesting NPCs to meet and talk to, robotic party members (no interactivity, stories, or banter), boring automated combat . . . a nice RPG screensaver . . . they automated the life out of this game . . .

JayG · Post by **JayG** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:47 am

Have to agree with Dungeon Siege. Icewind Dale was a another game I really couldn't into, and I loved the BG games.

Mafia is another game that bored me to tears, especially the driving slower then I normally walk sections.

Beyond Divinity just brings back bad memories. I won't be buying another game from those lads.

Basically any RTS game. I used to love the genre, but I got so fed playing the same game. I'd love a new Starcraft type game to reawaken the love.

Any World War 2 FPS. Enough's enough. How about something new.

Broken Sword 3. Crate puzzles, very bad interface, awful graphics, why do keep trying to reinvent adventure games by dumbing them down so much that nobody would ever be bothered thinking while playing them. Awful game, and it makes me sad that this was released while Sam and Max are sitting in a warehouse somewhere unloved.

Napoleon · Post by **Napoleon** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:59 am

Doom 3

Dear GOD did I hate that game. It was HORRIBLE.

Dungeon Siege is another good one.

Ummagumma · Post by **Ummagumma** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 6:31 am

Don't forget Europa 1400: The Guild. Talk about tedious.

Falcon554 · Post by **Falcon554** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 8:40 am

jg93 wrote:
yossar wrote:The only one I can think of off the top of my head is World of Warcraft. Which on this forum is maybe even more blashphemous than saying Dominions 2.

I'm sure there are a bunch more but they were all very forgettable.
Ditto WoW. The game starts to fragment at level 20, and seriously falls apart at 50. Ah well it was fun for a month or so.

I'll up your blasphemy - Morrowind.

Amen, I got to 58 and just could not take it any more. Well made game, but holy hell did it die post 50. The idea of raiding for 4 to 5 hours made me sick.

The Meal · Post by **The Meal** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:11 am

Padre wrote:
Jeff V wrote:
jg93 wrote:I'll up your blasphemy - Morrowind.
Daggerfall was far, far worse. Morrowind NPCs weren't nearly as cookie-cutter.
You're shitting me. I can scarcely imagine more generic NPCs than in Morrowind.

Imagine an earlier version of Morrowind, then.

I never played TES1, so I can't comment on the original game in the series.

~Neal

Ralph-Wiggum · Post by **Ralph-Wiggum** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:14 am

I almost forgot the most boring game ever - Star Wars Galaxies. That's probably no surprise, though.

And as much as some people love it, I thought NeverWinter Nights was pretty tedious.

Captain Caveman · Post by **Captain Caveman** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:16 am

Singles.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:42 am

MOO2, from the midgame on. Fleets meet, you click Start, then go watch TV for 45 minutes while the battle slowly crawls to its foregone conclusion. Play for another five minutes until the next combat, and repeat.

YellowKing · Post by **YellowKing** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 9:47 am

A couple of recent ones:

1. EQ2 - this was at launch trying to get my harvesting skills up for crafting. Spent hours running around newbie zones fighting over nodes since everyone else was doing the same thing. They've since fixed all that (doubled the skill increase rate, made resources more plentiful) but man was that a grind.

2. Doom 3 - towards the end I was just going through the motions. Dark room, walk in, scary monster behind me, kill it, rinse repeat. Overall I enjoyed the game, but it went on about 6 hours too long IMO.

Butterknife · Post by **Butterknife** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 11:19 am

I'd agree with the following games being boring:

Neverwinter Nights -- You levelled far too slowly, as in "nothing new happens very often", whether that is levelling or finding valuable treasure. All D&D games suffer from this to a point. Uber-loot in a D&D game adds 1 to your chance to hit an enemy, for crying out loud.

Dungeon Siege -- Enough has been said about this already

Galactic Civilizations -- Thoroughly agree with Jonathan on this one. Felt too "spreadsheet"-ish.

Sacred -- Probably my most played "boring" game. It is boring, but I still play it all the time. And I'm constantly thinking to myself, "This is sure boring", but I keep playing.

Black and White -- "We need more wood!" Uggh. The height of excitement is your creature pooping on something and you spend all your time tossing trees into the lumber yard. You can tell you are going to destroy an enemy city roughly an hour before it actually happens.

The following games are not boring, we should burn the heretics at the stake!

Dominions 2 -- How could you malign my beautiful strategy game? It's different every time you play! What's boring about that? The graphics?

Morrowind -- Blasphemer! I'm still not bored with this game, years later.

World of Warcraft -- Is nothing on these boards sacred?

Blackhawk · Post by **Blackhawk** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 11:31 am

JonathanStrange wrote:Anyone can say that little-played or older or poorly regarded games are dull (what's the point of flogging the corpse of Daikatana or MOO 3)

I'm actually the only person who has flogged the Daikatana corpse, and I actually finished the game (unlike most of its detractors), so I have some basis beyond band-wagon-jumping. The game was just entirely too long. Too much. If they'd shaved a third off of each of the four acts, it would have kept the pace up more.

The Mad Hatter · Post by **The Mad Hatter** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 1:31 pm

Divine Divinity broke down completely in the final chapter and became a chore to finish. Act 2 of Diablo 2 with those super annoying jungle fetishes was pretty tedious too. To go way back - Loderunner bored me quickly after the first few levels.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 1:44 pm

NWN - The original campaign was a boring chore. The expansions tended to be tighter and "stuff" happened faster. Several user mods were interesting in they took a different spin on D&D or told an interesting story

Morrowind - Found the world sterile and boring. I suspect I'm the type of player that likes the idea of freeform, but prefers to have some sort of "rails" to move the game along

Dungeon Siege - Game played itself and no real interaction with the world I could find

jg93 · Post by **jg93** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 1:52 pm

Butterknife wrote:Morrowind -- Blasphemer! I'm still not bored with this game, years later.

World of Warcraft -- Is nothing on these boards sacred?

And I've played WoW since the second round of closed beta. It took me about a month after release to hit 35 - when I just couldn't take it anymore. Prior to the wipe I had a 50 something mage (when leveling was about 3x faster). Two thing contributed to my demise - the dismal reports of the high level content (and the major game change from fun/exploration/questing/soloing to hellish grouping/repeated raids/item collection.) That, and I don't really think timesink MMO's are for me. When a game is designed to keep you playing, long and often, they're not designed for 'fun in the moment.' And though WoW made great strides over ealier MMO's in this regards, they still built the foundation on the same model.

Oh and SWG wasn't boring - it was just plain bad.

ChrisGwinn · Post by **ChrisGwinn** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 2:11 pm

Suitably Ironic Moniker wrote:
Ditto WoW. The game starts to fragment at level 20, and seriously falls apart at 50. Ah well it was fun for a month or so.
Did you personally play up to Level 50? In a month?!?! Wow, I wish I could find a game that bored me that much .

I've played a lot of solitaire over the years. Passing time isn't the same as fun.

For me, the standouts are Lords of Magic (unpatched release), Imperium Galactica 2, and the demo for GalCiv. Daggerfall might come close, since it had all the problems of Morrowind, plus a randomly generated world.

Cylus Maxii · Post by **Cylus Maxii** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 2:17 pm

Lets see.. "boring" gameplay - well there are a lot of games with a grind - I liked WoW and EQ2 up to a point and now just can't go there. Though I have gone back to CoH since some RL friends play it while chatting.

NWN - ditto on the OC commments above - I bought the expansions to play MP with friends and just couldn't bring myself to do it. I hear they are much better, but I can't bring myself to install it again. Its been off the last 2-3 builds of my PC, so I'd guess 3 years of dust on the shelf. I did enjoy the humor in some of the community modules. But I'd have to say that the gameplay never lived up to my mildest expectations.

Dungeon Siege - still sometimes play it with my 9-year old. Thank god he has a short attention span. Automation blues could easily be fixed by changing the default settings, but I never cared one wit about the main or the NPCs. I don't even remember any of the names.

Morrowind - Yeah I own the expansions. Like NWN above, I really want to love it and just can't. I thought I liked it, and then I played Gothic II and learned the error of my ways. Most of the fun has been installing and experimenting with mods. As for gameplay (the issue at hand), meh -- I can't say that I've really been engaged by the overall story or any of my characters. I've started like a dozen characters, trying to get hooked. Oh, and TES:Arena and TES:Daggerfall were about the same - but it was excusable at the time since they were so revolutionary in other ways. (Arena for size and Daggerfall for random 3D dungeons). Still - I'll probably buy TES:Oblivion.

The Mad Hatter · Post by **The Mad Hatter** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 2:20 pm

Cylus Maxii wrote:Lets see.. "boring" gameplay - well there are a lot of games with a grind - I liked WoW and EQ2 up to a point and now just can't go there. Though I have gone back to CoH since some RL friends play it while chatting.

NWN - ditto on the OC commments above - I bought the expansions to play MP with friends and just couldn't bring myself to do it. I hear they are much better, but I can't bring myself to install it again. Its been off the last 2-3 builds of my PC, so I'd guess 3 years of dust on the shelf. I did enjoy the humor in some of the community modules. But I'd have to say that the gameplay never lived up to my mildest expectations.

The original campaign had some very tedious aspects to it, like the constant traps and smashing of barrels, henchman management, etc. They really did improve on it though, particularly with the last expansion (which was really good).

Totally agree on Dungeon Siege, would have mentioned that if I remembered it.

edosan · Post by **edosan** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:35 pm

Dungeon Siege was awful, especially after all the hype about how it was going to fix all the boring stuff about Diablo 2. I especially liked how it forced you into one narrow character type that you had no control over.

Speaking of Diablo 2, I would have liked it more if the single player mode was about 25% shorter. That would have made it more worthwhile to play the nightmare and hell modes. (Play it through AGAIN? TWICE? Augh!)

I liked Prince of Qin for a while, but the bizarre magic item system (I got this bonus now? Huh?) and the backtracking made me give it up.

The "mopping up" phase of most strategy games (RTS and TBS) bore me as well. If only the AI would just surrender instead of forcing me to hunt down every last city, base, and unit.

I would also add most modern FPS games and RTS games that assume you're the gaming master. Where are the entry-level games anymore? I like RTS games for the first four or five ("training") levels, until the AI pulls out all the stops, them it isn't fun at all. Similarly, I usually end up playing FPS games until the point where I have to enable God Mode to get past that one room/guy/whatever, then it's God Mode through until the end.

It's funny, because I wouldn't think I would be an advocate for shorter games, but too many games put in stupid stuff to prolong a game for no real reason but to pad out the game time:

-- Adventure games: mazes
-- RTS/TBS games: the "mopping up" phase
-- FPS games: jumping puzzles/bosses with trick strategies
-- RPG games: FedEx quests

In the end, I say: harrumph.

quantum · Post by **quantum** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 3:50 pm

I think Bethesda's TES trilogy is the king of this category. I literally have no idea why that vapid series has survived this long and been met with such critical acclaim.

Faldarian · Post by **Faldarian** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 4:48 pm

Far Cry. Boring Half-Life wannabe with no suspense and predictable everything.

The Temple of Elemental Evil... RPG with no RP, the story isn't worth bothering with, the combat takes forever even for small encounters, blargh. And I do normally like turned based games, and I like D&D. Pool of Radiance was all around bad, this one was all around boring.

Wizardry 8 is an incredibly boring game. I loved 6 and 7, but this one I just couldn't play since it, like TOEE, took forever to do even a small and simple combat.

I like almost every game I try... I even like most of the games listed here that other people think were boring. Dungeon Siege was a great game, if you played it as a local multiplayer game with just your character. It played like Diablo, there's no automation, etc. The ending blew chunks, though, and is maybe one of the worst I've ever seen.

jg93 · Post by **jg93** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 6:07 pm

quantum wrote:I think Bethesda's TES trilogy is the king of this category. I literally have no idea why that vapid series has survived this long and been met with such critical acclaim.

I think they're actually one of the few games where the sum is actually LESS then the total of its parts. And yet, for god's sake, I will buy the 4th one anyway.

ChrisGwinn · Post by **ChrisGwinn** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 6:10 pm

quantum wrote:I think Bethesda's TES trilogy is the king of this category. I literally have no idea why that vapid series has survived this long and been met with such critical acclaim.

Because it's the best thing for that sort of thing.... Some people like the wandering around.

killbot737 · Post by **killbot737** » Tue Apr 19, 2005 6:31 pm

ChrisGwinn wrote:For me, the standouts are Lords of Magic (unpatched release), Imperium Galactica 2, and the demo for GalCiv. Daggerfall might come close, since it had all the problems of Morrowind, plus a randomly generated world.

Do you mean the original OS/2 Gal Civ or the 10 years later Gal Civ? I played the original to no end. It and MOO are glued together in my brain as the best 4X games ever along with SMAC, but not SMAC+expansion. weird, eh?