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The Worst Minigames
Professor Snugglesworth
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
We all gripe about it: You're steadily playing through a game, getting the hang of the mechanics, when all of a sudden you're forced to engage in an unskippable minigame, in which you're forced to adapt to a new control scheme while controlling your character to balance a goldfish bowl in his head in order to defeat the next boss. Instead of, you know, fighting the boss like normal.
So in this thread, you vent about it. I foresee the majority of posts pointing to Final Fantasy games, but especially FFVII in particular. Let me get the worst out of the way.
1. FFVII: Quit Slappin' Me, You Old Hag!
In this scene, you're given control of Tifa, who's spent the last hour or two in utter hell. She's just recovered from a seven day coma, was slated for a public execution, escaped during a Weapon attack after inhaling an unhealthy amount of lethal gas, falls about 5 stories while escaping Shinra guards, and is cornered by Scarlet and a dozen infantrymen on the edge of the Mako Cannon.
It looks bad, but Tifa is a capable martial artist with superhuman strength. She should have no trouble knocking out Scarlet in one blow, then using her unconscious body like a human club while she makes short work of the other Shinra guards.
Instead, this happens.
Maybe Tifa is incredibly fatigued from the coma and the gas. Maybe her womanly instincts impaired her judgment and forced her to retaliate the way she does.
Or maybe someone at Square thought this would have been a really funny distraction from the last four hours of angst. Or maybe someone at Square thought this would be really, really hot. Heck, why not both.
While even though the minigame is incredibly easy to finish, the unnecessary inclusion into what was meant to be a tense situation put it at my top choice for worst minigame.
2. FFX-2: Yuna in Disguise
So Yuna is disguised as one of Leblanc's servants, and the disguise pays off until....
Pfft, like I need to explain this. Just watch.
Just about the worst thing Square ever forced players to do.
So in this thread, you vent about it. I foresee the majority of posts pointing to Final Fantasy games, but especially FFVII in particular. Let me get the worst out of the way.
1. FFVII: Quit Slappin' Me, You Old Hag!
In this scene, you're given control of Tifa, who's spent the last hour or two in utter hell. She's just recovered from a seven day coma, was slated for a public execution, escaped during a Weapon attack after inhaling an unhealthy amount of lethal gas, falls about 5 stories while escaping Shinra guards, and is cornered by Scarlet and a dozen infantrymen on the edge of the Mako Cannon.
It looks bad, but Tifa is a capable martial artist with superhuman strength. She should have no trouble knocking out Scarlet in one blow, then using her unconscious body like a human club while she makes short work of the other Shinra guards.
Instead, this happens.
Maybe Tifa is incredibly fatigued from the coma and the gas. Maybe her womanly instincts impaired her judgment and forced her to retaliate the way she does.
Or maybe someone at Square thought this would have been a really funny distraction from the last four hours of angst. Or maybe someone at Square thought this would be really, really hot. Heck, why not both.
While even though the minigame is incredibly easy to finish, the unnecessary inclusion into what was meant to be a tense situation put it at my top choice for worst minigame.
2. FFX-2: Yuna in Disguise
So Yuna is disguised as one of Leblanc's servants, and the disguise pays off until....
Pfft, like I need to explain this. Just watch.
Just about the worst thing Square ever forced players to do.
Why couldn't it be a minigame where Yuna gives Rikku a massage? That would be hot.
Professor Snugglesworth on
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As for X-2, yet another reason to avoid like the plague. What the hell is wrong with that game? o_O
Wario de Mambo.
Anyone who has played WW Twisted! and almost killed themselves over that minigame knows what I'm talking about.
Also the Goron dancing minigame in Oracle of Ages. Same principle, same excruciating execution that makes you want to throw your Game Boy out of the window.
DON'T BELIEVE ONDORE'S LIES
But in general I will say that any RPG or whatever that has a stealth segment can just eat my ass.
You have to do 1000+ jumps to get a missable item, and it's right at the beginning, so a lot of OCD/completionist types pulled their hair out over this one.
this guy, however, seems to have no problems
The only consolation Blitzball offered was that I wasn't required to catch wild players and spend hours breeding them to acheive a certain color.
Also, the funeral in Lost Odyssey. That may have been the most poorly placed minigame I've ever seen.
D/P: 2621-2512-5050
Also any minigame in Donkey Kong 64. I still have nightmares from that flyswatter. And the beavers.
Oh, this and that.
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It's enough to redeem FFVIII all by itself.
I was just about to say that i couldn't really think of anything, but then you remind me of this. That minigame was so horrible. It is one of the few things in videogames that have made me want to break the controller (Game Boy in this case).
If that Blitzball minigame had been in real time it might have been fun. Since it wasn't well. . . some of us are still seeing a Shrink.
I don't know if this counts as a minigame, but in Star Ocean 3 when you had to play that flute thing and had to press the buttons ever so slightly on that damn Dual Shock controller to play the correct notes was a crime against God.
If they included it as an online card game with FFXI, I'd forgive them.
But they thought it was a good idea to include Tetra Master instead, so no.
And come on....I liked Bliztball.
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I...um...I...liked it?
Unless the game is Super Mario RPG.
In Kingdom Hearts there was that shooter minigame whenever you traveled between worlds, that sucked balls.
Also the dancing minigame from Pirates.
Same. It annoyed my brother no end that while he went on and finished the game, I just sat and played Blitzball on my save. I'm such a sad person:(
Also, my least favourite minigames.. A B A B Y X Y A Y X B A Y B A
yesss, I played a cutscene!
all of them
especially that miserable fucking lightning shit and that cheating fucking chocobo
FUCK THAT SHIT
Scary. I was exactly the same. My friends were all telling me, "Dude, the ending is incredible!" and I would shoot back with, "Oh yeah, well I got Nimrook to level 99!" That suckaface could catch ANYTHING. One time he caught a fish fired out of a Colt .45 from the top of mountain while freefalling from 30,000 feet.
But not really.
Oh man. Yes. That and "press alternating buttons as quickly as possible!" I'm like, "IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP UP THE PATTERN AT THIS SPEED!!!! AGGGGHHHHH!!! I HATE YOU!!!!"
Man I hated that shit in NES games like Track & Field.
It felt so juvenile, nobody other than a horny 13-year old could've liked it
Where you can win them all by doing nothing but holding the fire button.
Doesn't this apply to the whole game?
They also pop up in the dumbest motherfucking places.
Including: RE4, Castlevania, Star Ocean, Pokemon, some game where you had to do it timed in like 10 seconds to earn something, etc.
An absolutely major pet peeve with Naruto: Rise of a Ninja.
So Kakashi is about to use Lightning Blade, charged up to the max. You have about 0.2 seconds to read the corresponding button to press so you can catch it.
But even if you do catch it, you still have to mash that same button like mad, keeping the attack from hitting you.
If you fail in either situation, kiss 3/4 of your health goodbye.
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The dancing bit in Pirates! isn't really bad, though: the only problem is that they give you fuck-all lead time on what buttons you have to press on anything but the easiest difficulty. I'm kind of miffed that people's had plenty of time to spend making the various daughters look like sluts and putting shitty lewd photos in the taverns, but not fixing what's universally accepted as the worst part of the game.
Yeah, it's utterly rubbish but also utterly easy. I just don't see the point in it being there. And it's not just there for unlocking, it's also there for salvaging, hacking, surveying, 'recovering' (in some cases, recovering amounts to rifling through the pockets of dead aliens, apparently and yet you can still potentially fail this ask if you don't hit the right sequence) and a bunch of other generic 'things'.
I still can't decide if I prefer Mass Effect's 'so easy it might as well not be there' unlocking minigame or Oblivion's 'actually rather difficult and requiring a lot more real skill than any other element of the game and you could end up breaking all your lockpicks and genuinely not be able to open this chest or door' minigame.
In the end, I guess I'd probably rather that neither of them were there - I didn't sign up for this shit. Why does unlocking something require incredibly fiddly micromanaging while casting a spell, notching and firing an arrow or modifying futuristic firearms can all be done with the touch of a button?
"Test Your Might" from Mortal Kombat was also quite annoying, but I enjoyed it at the same time.
Let's just say God of War challenged this view.
Which leads me to nominate every QTE ever for Worst Minigame.
They were probably copying Thief, where the unlocking is rather fun, and adds an element to the game, since guards can catch you in the act.