For a bit of fun, I thought it might be interesting to see what games people find boring. Did you push yourself to finish it or just give up? Share below!
For me, one of the most boring games I’ve ever played was The Stanley Parable. I’ve heard all the reasons why people think it’s amazing but after seeing three endings I was done. So, so dull in my opinion.
The one game that comes to mind right away is No Man’s Sky. I remember hearing about it while I was deployed and a few people I had talked to during that time were extremely excited about it. When it came out, I held back and am glad I did as the game from what I saw, heard and experienced with the endless memes, and just bad press wasn’t all that great, and failed to deliver and outright lied on many initial promises. I waited about a year and rented it and found it to be boring. I have played Stardew Valley and quite a number of JRPG and RPG games which generally take an average of 50+ hours to complete so you would think I would be accustomed to the grind, but the slow pace and there not being an ending or goal at the time really threw me off. I bought it off Steam earlier this year when I was on sale and tried it again and still, could only make it a few hours before having to call it quits again. It looks to be much improved from what I played originally but the pacing did not do the game any favors.
Another game when I think about it more, which I quite enjoy actually but can admit it can be a bit boring at times is Kentucky Route Zero. I thought that the story, when broken and digested into chunks was excellent, akin to a good podcast, but there were moments strewn within that didn’t hold my attention and I wound up just forcing myself to push ahead for the sake of the overall story and because the game had received so much acclaim. Also, I wanted to see if the ending made up for the slow parts I wasn’t enjoying as much as I would’ve liked.
I have never played The Stanley Parable, but any game that has an achievement that doesn’t activate unless you stay away from the game for 5 years says all I need to know about how exciting and interesting it may be, but that is only what I can assume from what I have seen.
Every time I’ve tried to play an Animal Crossing game, I found it really boring. The thing is I’m not even against the core concept of it–I’ve played “chillax” games of the sort before and enjoyed them for what they are. (For example, this year I played and loved Slime Rancher.) But I feel Animal Crossing kind of just fails to be engaging even at that level it’s shooting for. I think the biggest issue is that the characters are all very dull and uninteresting, though I’m sure lots of people (millions, even) will disagree with me there. I suppose the general aesthetic never clicked with me either–it’s all super-cutesy, but not in a way I find actually all that endearing.
I’ve also always found the Pokemon games to be quite dull, but in the past I just chalked that up to me being outside of its target audience (I was in middle/high school when it exploded in popularity). I figured it was just a fad for kids that would last only a few years, ha ha. Everyone young and old loves those games to death to this very day though. I still can’t see the appeal, personally. If I’m going to drop a ton of hours into a turn-based RPG, I’d like there to be a good story I guess. Have also never had much of a completionist mindset when it comes to games, which I think is one of the franchise’s main selling points.
Looking through my “played” list, I think I find it boring when the gameplay and the story/concept feels disconnected from each other. The most obvious example I can give is Thomas Was Alone. Yes, there is a story going on but I felt like I was playing a generic platformer. The other example is Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Other than that, I used to play point and click games in the past but now I find them almost unbearable. It’s good that the genre evolved into “interactive movies”.
Ditto here. Except that I was never hooked into the hype. My first thought after watching a trailer which touted it as having 15 quintillion planets was that they probably were all basically the same planet with slight differences. No generator algorithm can realistically generate so many interesting and unique places. On top of that, if the devs had spent so much time in planet generation, it probably had completely underdeveloped gameplay and story.
Eventually I played it and felt exactly that. Every planet felt the same and there was nothing of note to do except gathering resources and building stuff to get more resources. Even now, with so many updates, I see screenshots coming up on the Grouvee feed and they all look like palette-swapped versions of the same place.
Heh, I probably posted some of those screens.
Syberia… I hear such great things about it, but I just can’t get hooked.
I don’t know if it’s considered boredom but The Witcher 3 did not click with me. I was so hyped for it and it’s why I bought a PS4. After playing a couple hours I just was not interested. There was too much crap going on so maybe I was overstimulated but not in a good way.
I didn’t like the open world, stupid side quests, overly complicated combat with too many sub menus, stances, buttons that do multiple things, and just too much damn shit.
It’s really disappointing because I believe it’s still the top rated game here on Grouvee and I thought it would be amazing. What I found was a cluttered mess.
I overall enjoy No Man’s Sky but it seems like most of the game is searching for resources, running, building a wonky house, and playing the inventory management game of moving crap from my suit to my ship.
I’ve not played the third game but the combat put me right off the first. Found it completely unintuitive.
Ha, that is kind of it. Inventory does get better as you go along, but you’re always managing it. It’s really about the exploration and I can understand how that could get old after a while for people. I still love it though.
Wonky house? I’ll have you know that each of my thirty bases is a work of art! 
To be fair, we probably all take shots of similar planets because those are ones that are aesthetically appealing in some way. There are many planets that look quite different, but I know I don’t always post images of them. That said there are a bunch of truly weird planets that I should really be posting more images of.
Batman Forever and the Rocketeer are Super NES games that come to mind.
I remember The Rocketeer being a fun movie when I was a kid, nothing special, but fun with a solid and campy performance by Timothy Dalton. I tried playing the SNES game a few times and it just came off as a poor man’s Pilotwings for the flight sections and just boring for everything else.
I don’t mind inventory management as a gameplay mechanic as I have found it works quite well with the survival horror genre, with the original Resident Evil games being shining examples. I just think limiting it artificially just to waste the player’s time in the case of No Man’s Sky just annoys me and doesn’t add anything of value to the game.
A smaller inventory can ratchet up the tension in Resident Evil, with you needing to make very precise decisions on what to carry, what to store and what to leave behind, with the “wrong” decision possibly costing you your life, whereas the same mechanic in No Man’s Sky, just means you have to waste more time going to and fro with no real consequences other than that, and with the game being designed around such a mechanic, it really irks me that it is even a thing.
I think you’re looking at it wrong. No Man’s Sky is all about exploring and building up your resources. The more you explore, the more you find, the better your resources are. So yes, it can be annoying at first when your inventory is limited, but then you have to make hard decisions about what to carry, as you mention is the case in ResEvil. As you continue to explore and find more things, you can sell these to upgrade your inventory. Every extra inventory slot is a huge help, it’s basically like levelling up in an RPG.
It also really helps with the sense of progression in becoming a “real” explorer. If you don’t game the system and buy the upgrades naturally its a big feeling of accomplishment to finally unlock the full inventory. You finally feel ready to fully explore this huge universe and your journey is only just beginning.
But then, that’s just my take.
This is my take on it as well. Once you are well into the game with max or close to max storage slots, inventory management is no longer a concern.
Question for you, what do you mean by the following when you say game the system? What does gaming the system look like to you?
Lol, my houses are wonky, sometimes the floor doesn’t even touch the ground its just floating there. I want to shovel some dirt under and seal the gap.
I do like the game in many ways and I really should give it more time. I’m still pretty early on (less than 10 hours) and there have been some very fun and memorable moments in those hours.
I remember thinking, at the time, that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles [3DS] was one of the most boring I’d encountered. A far cry from its predecessors
I’ll have to replay it at some point