Worst mini-game you’ve played in a video game

So I came across this old segment of Jeff Gerstman describing his utter distaste for Blitzball in FFX.

This lead me to the question. What is your most despised mini-game in a video game? It can be both mandatory or optional.

I recall many of the mini-games in the Danganronpa games not sitting right with me, as well as the catfight in Yakuza 0 and any mini-games in Kingdom Hearts. What are your most hated mini-game?

Bitzball is really bad it's kind of hard to think of a better off the dome example with that up there.

The weird little persuasion game in Oblivion that I didn't understand then and don't think I do now, it was a lot of clicking and confusion and hoping it all worked out.

First thing that comes to my mind is the lockpicking mini-game from Oblivion, so many people love it and I just hate it and never can become good at it, it's just bad in my opinion. The lockpicking system that was introduced in Fallout 3 and used in all later BGS titles is miles better. Elder Scrolls Online has a kind of reverse version of Oblivion's lockpicking and even that is just so much better.

Breath of Fire 3 is an amazing RPG, but there's a sequence where you have to get vinegar for a rare meal. To get it you have to go through the most obtuse minigame, there's no feedback, and the animation of your character isn't tied to the rhythm you're to supposed to keep. You're also pulling the vinegar out of a well, which is weird.

I had to give up on Ni No Kuni 2 for a handful of reasons...one of them being a weird army/battle simulation mini-game that was just awful. I can see what they were trying to go for, but it just didn't work. It felt like a total war mobile game.

I've always hated Gwent from The Witcher 3. I know it's a well made card game and I imagine the actual seperate game is much better. But the one that was inserted into TW3 really broke my immersion when every character regardless of the situation wanted to play it and the cards were all character models of people you meet or have met in prior Witcher games. I would have been fine with it if there were specific areas in taverns or around town where people played the game and it used fictional characters or even monsters.

As for actual badly made mini-games most of the ones in the Banjo Kazooie games are pretty terrible. (they make the ones in Mario Party seem good by comparison)

I'm a fan of Mario Party, but there's no excuse for those purely luck-based mini-games in every single one of them. If they really just want to pick a random winner for the turn, then forego the load, the tutorial, and the game itself, and just put a "+10 coins to <player(s)>" as one of the options in the mini-game roulette.

Blitzball is especially bad because it's designed in such a way that I can only assume the vast majority people are supposed lose that first tournament which seems like a weird way to introduce a minigame. It's also just clunky and has next to nothing to do with skill until you learn how to cheese the broken A.I.

Sudoku in Mass Effect Andromeda. I guess Blitzball would get my second place pick since the chances of winning the first match are extremely slim, but I was having some successful matches after leveling up the boys and getting some new players. But Sudoku in Mass Effect just gets in the way of me shooting things, which is the only thing that's redeemable about Andromeda.

I've been replaying Okami and jesus christ I HATE the digging mini-game

It actually might be Blitzball for me. FFX is one of my favorite RPGs and the idea of playing Blitzball again keeps me from playing it.

Blade from the Trails of Cold Steel game is also not great. Thankfully it's completely optional so you never have to touch it.

Tetra Master from FF9. Too complicated to explain the full rules here , but the calculations at the bottom of this post shows the main problem with this cardgame. A cardgame that requires so many random numbers to calculate who wins is awful. You can have a card with a 2 for attack beat a card with 10 for defense because of it. Blitzball was an incredible step up in ambition & competence compared to the garbage game that Tetra Master is. Yes, it might not be a minigame that you play over a real sportsgame, but it was well fleshed out, had a neat transfer system in place and interesting tournament prizes. Also, the enemies become better over time and get more moves. And if you don't like it at all, it's completely skippable apart from 1 match. Sounds like a great implementation of a minigame to me. I remember booting up the PS2 specifically to play some Blitzball tournaments & get a better team instead of actually playing the game.

Phase 1:

• The challenging card's power value is randomly chosen within the stat range.

say, 85 (stat 5 = between 80 and 95)

• The defending card's defense value is randomly chosen within the stat range.
• The challenging card's battle class is physical so physical defense is chosen.

say, 23 (stat 1 = between 16 and 31)

Phase 2:

• Next, a random number is chosen between 0 and the power value chosen for the challenging card (85).
• This is the actual attack score.

say, 71

• A random number is chosen between 0 and the defense value chosen for the defending card (23).

• This is the actual defense score.say, 3

Any sliding block puzzle.

The snowboarding section in FF7.

My answer is probably still Blitzball. I can actually understand it (well, somewhat) nowadays, unlike when I first played it when I was younger, but it still just feels like a mess of arbitrary rules and random bullshit that aggravates the hell out of me. Gwent from Witcher 3 is also not very fun for me, but I at least appreciate the straightforward logic it uses.

@thisoldeconsole said:

I don't think I'd really call that a minigame. Don't get me wrong--I really don't care much for the RTS sections of Brutal Legend either, nor the bait-and-switch they pulled with the true nature of the game. However, the RTS stuff is a major part of the game, so it's really just half of the standard gameplay, with the other half being the action/adventure stuff.

This used to be my answer, until I read a post here on GB that really simplified them and made me have a better understanding of how to easily solve one. I still don't love doing them, but they are much less frustrating than they used to be. Unfortunately, the ones without numbered tiles are still a huge headache.

This won’t be a popular one, but the asteroid shooting in Dead Space 1. I failed a bunch of times in a row and quit the game. Never went back (I might, one day), and never played another Dead Space game.

It wasn’t the core gameplay, it wasn’t fun, and I was just failing repeatedly.

Can't think of any that I hate, if there's a mini-game that I don't like I just avoid it. The most recent one I can think of is the clan battles one from Yakuza 6. Just bored me to tears, really sucked that the story with the Japanese wrestlers was tied behind it.

All that weird shit in FFXIII-2, the line drawing puzzle is probably the worst. The clock puzzle could be a decent brain exercise, but way too long for its own good as a filler, at least a computer generated guide can get you through it. The disappearing platform isn't too bad, again a guide can give you the idea how to get pass each puzzle, some of the timing section gets annoying, but a detail guide can tell you how long to wait. The line one is just terrible, it pretty much exemplify the game's less than ideal movement and camera which would have been a non issue if they never brought that into attention.

I never got the handle on fallout computer terminal hacking, but many people seem to find it engaging enough. I feel like I have to read up on how it works every time.

Depending on how you slice it, Persona card shuffling could be kind of a annoying.

I don't remember Blitzball being too bad, it is long and tedious, but...that goes for a lot of things.

All of Metal Gear Solid.

@omgfather: Yeah, the only knes that really get me are ones that are bad, difficult, AND required for mainline progression.

Two of those three? No problem. All three? I’ll stop playing.

Came here to post this. That was so freaking terrible. I managed to get through it by the skin of my teeth, but it did take a lot of wind out of the sails for that game. Still need to go back and beat it.

@toastburner_b: Were there two of those?

I don’t quite remember if I beat one and just said “screw it” at the second, or looked into it while suffering through the first and discovered the existence of the second and said “ screw it.”

All of Mario Party?

Granted, I haven't played FFX since I was about 13, but even then, I remember just being completely baffled by the Blitzball minigame. It made zero sense and wasn't any amount of fun.

The Bioshock hacking minigame starts out alright, but by the end of the game, you're doing so fucking much of it that it becomes a chore and takes you out of the game completely. I also hated Caravan from New Vegas because I didn't understand it at all. I know I probably have a few more that I found really infuriating, but apparently I've scrubbed the worst offenders from my memory.

Every mini-game in Danganronpa 2 that isn't an Endless Debate sucks ass, but the two that take the cake are the Rebuttal Showdown and the Improved Hangman's Gambit, which I believe features the worst recorded use of the word "improved" in the history of time.

I had to make sure if someone here would be crazy enough to hate Gwent. At least one person is 100 % factually wrong and their opinion can never be trusted again. I thought you were better than this GB community.

@nutter:

Yeah, as someone who really loved the Dead Space games, that asteroid segment was definitely one of the weaker parts of the series. I don’t think there’s anything like that in the series again after that, fortunately.

Blitzball is a fucking atrocity. I can't think of anything else, though.

@castiel: My problem wasnt with Gwent itself just how it was inserted into the game. Immersion is important to some people, especially in an RPG.

I almost quit playing Uncharted 4 when it made me play a Crash Bandicoot level.

Monkey Kombat in Escape from Monkey Island is the dumbest thing in an otherwise pretty good game.

@whitegreyblack: Damn, that’s a first!

I'm playing Kingdom Hearts right now and those Gummi Ship sections are the worst.

For some reason those cards existing in that world doesn't seem all that weird.

Star Wars KotoR might be my favourite game of all time, but it had 2 of the worst mini games ever. The gun turret sequences on the Ebon Hawk and the swoop bike races were both awful and totally got in the way of what I was enjoying about the game.

@efesell: I'll grant you it's a weird fantasy land where a lot can happen but the idea that everyone wants to play this card game that seems to only feature characters that Geralt has met just seemed dumb to me. I realise it's a problem a lot of games have but it made it seem like the world revolves around you. Which in a single player video game it does, sure. But the best RPGs make it feel like it doesnt.

Pictures that are divided into tiles and then scrambled. Slide the tiles around to sort them into the completed image. I would have expected any game designer to know that those bloody things are barely any fun in their physical form, let alone as a gate to something in game.

That's kinda not what the majority of Gwent cards are though which is why it doesn't really stand out all that much beyond the simple idea of a card game featuring 'real' figures in that world.

Also the only people who I can recall having Geralt specific cards were always his friends in-game which was pretty funny anyway.

The only issue I ever had was that Geralts card is really good which does seem off brand considering how everyone treats him like shit.

@efesell: If all 'real' figures of characters were famous (and a lot of them are) that would make sense but there are people like Ves and Thaler that really arent that famous outside of 'they bumped into Geralt that one time, remember?'

@boozak: Sure but even then Ves is a higher up in a well known outfit which has other representation through other lower level cards so it works out. I forget Thalers renown entirely beyond being a spy though.

It's not a perfect system or explanation, Ciri having a card as an adult doesn't really work at all, but it does a remarkably good job of justifying the idea of an in-universe collectible card game for all those actual factions.

Any mini game from Nickelodeon Party Blast.

Chocobo race in FFX

@efesell: Thaler was a fence in the Witcher 1 who ran a shop, and in The Witcher 3 he was cobbler and went by the name Clogs. His Gwent card acknowledges the fact that he's a spy even though that isnt public knowledge.

I know i'm being very picky but there a lot of dumb things like this in Gwent and the fact that most NPCs acknowledge it made it hard to ignore.

To the point I played to there was only one, but I know there is a second one. It's a boss fight rather than another asteroid sequence, but I haven't played it so I don't know if it is better or worse.

I don't think I've played any MMOs with good mini-games. Star Trek Online's frequency matching thing was kinda inoffensive, but in the last few years they've added a whole bunch of absolutely awful ones, like the Omega Particle Stabilization one which appears as a rhythm mini-game but which is too laggy to actually be played that way, and where the score you get at the end seems entirely random (also, the score doesn't seem to affect the reward you get either, so I guess they kinda realized that the mini-game was shit, but for some reason didn't feel like just giving you the "reward" for the initial scan of the particle).

Elder Scrolls Online's lockpicking mini-game also comes to mind. I think the ones in the rest of the Elder Scrolls series are fine, but the one in ESO doesn't seem to adhere to the same rules, but also doesn't give you enough time to figure out the rules it uses instead. I've never successfully completed it.

Pretty much all the hacking and lockpicking mini-games from Alpha Protocol were horrible.