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Areas in games that are intentionally not fun

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You need the lull after The End so that you can calm down after that amazing boss fight and also so that you can have a bit of quiet time before The Fury. Without it the next boss fight would come too quickly and although it wasn't "fun" having the snake eater theme in the background made it far less boring.
 
Asscreed 4. The part where you go into some sort of an office.
I want to be a pirate! If I wanted to be in an office I'd go to work innit?
 
Silent Hill 2 made you run around in a seemingly neverending dull and foggy enviroment at the start to make you feel isolated right from the beginning.
 
Any elevator ride in game. I mean, by defenition all you are doing is riding a damn elevator, possibly while the game loads, how can it in anyway be fun?
 
It's never intentional, but ice/movement puzzles aren't ever fun.

You know, these:

ice_cave.jpg


The ladder from MGS3 is the best example I can think of. Like others have said, though, it isn't dull, or bad. It's not engaging and it's not thrill inducing, and its purpose lies in reasons other than having "fun".
 
guacamelee tule tree top

*pic*

this was the most fun part of the game

the only thing I can think of is something like Flower, Sun and Rain

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game purposefully made you do boring tasks and the like. Literally run to and back from 2 characters through the same path to say stuff to each other. More of an experience than a game, it was interesting.



responses here are terrible and it's like people are not reading the OP. Maybe the thread title should read "intentionally designed to not be fun" or something. It's an interesting idea for a thread but everyone's just posting parts of games they didnt like.
 
The entirety of Pathologic and The Void

Suffering and futility in video game form. They are oppressively bleak
 
You know... I don't feel like many people are really understanding the topic here. It's supposed to be areas the are INTENTIONALLY not fun. Not areas that the devs intended to be fun, but completely screwed up on. Nearly all the examples I'm seeing are of the latter.
 
The nightmare segment in Max Payne. Slow, crappy platforming where you sort of need to know where the end is or you just fall to a slow, painful death.
This is the first one I agree with in this thread, that stuff was actually painful.

Edit: but yeah in light of the post above, it probably wasn't intentional
 
Wut.

Raiding is the only reason to play WoW, shits fun as hell.

This. I used to spend pretty much every night in raids on WoW. Loved that shit.

The entirety of Outlands in WoW. It's so dull and depressing I feel like it was intentional.

Outlands is my favourite area :I

The whole vibe of the place was perfect, for what it was trying to accomplish. The raiding scene was awesome at that time too.

You are not prepared....
 
You know... I don't feel like many people are really understanding the topic here. It's supposed to be areas the are INTENTIONALLY not fun. Not areas that the devs intended to be fun, but completely screwed up on. Nearly all the examples I'm seeing are of the latter.

I dont think many people have played games with areas that arent intentionally fun, mainly because most people probably dont even realize there are games whose goals arent to be fun. Its so often touted around as the most important factor in a game.
 
Yeah, I got stuck there, and since there was no way to get out, I quit the game and haven't finished it.

Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
Tule tree is fun.
The fucking DLC challenge where you have to get the chicken to the end of a little maze thing by hitting it around is not.
Still Platinumed the game and got all DLC trophies tho.
 
I dont think many people have played games with areas that arent intentionally fun, mainly because most people probably dont even realize there are games whose goals arent to be fun. Its so often touted around as the most important factor in a game.

Yea, I realise its a difficult topic to actually come up with examples for.
 
This. I used to spend pretty much every night in raids on WoW. Loved that shit.



Outlands is my favourite area :I

The whole vibe of the place was perfect, for what it was trying to accomplish. The raiding scene was awesome at that time too.

You are not prepared....

I didn't mind it at first, but when I was on my 3rd or 4th playthrough, I couldn't stand it any longer.
 
You know... I don't feel like many people are really understanding the topic here. It's supposed to be areas the are INTENTIONALLY not fun. Not areas that the devs intended to be fun, but completely screwed up on. Nearly all the examples I'm seeing are of the latter.
It's because the thread's premise is broken from the start.

I'd feel safe in betting my life savings that no design team ever reached a point in designing their game by saying "OK, now how do we make this part of the game not fun".
 

You need the lull after The End so that you can calm down after that amazing boss fight and also so that you can have a bit of quiet time before The Fury. Without it the next boss fight would come too quickly and although it wasn't "fun" having the snake eater theme in the background made it far less boring.

Yes, it is intentional for a reason, he isn't even saying it is bad.

Also this seems to be about the only example I can agree with. There might be some deliberate endless amount of enemies though in a game that is supposed to tire you out.

EDIT: Oh wait, Nier too, it opens some options if I don't think of it as boring mechanics only.

Of Spec-ops I am convinced they did not try to create a boring shooter. I think they tried to make the shooting itself as fun as they could make it, it would strengthen the message of the game. Of course what it conveys through the rest of the aspects of the game is something entirely different.
 
pmttydwoods.png

That whole chapter is the game saying "You want to play the good parts? Sure, just do this 1,5 hour fetch quest first."
 
Demon's Souls Valley of Defilement. Everything about it is designed to take you out of your comfort zone and rethink your tactics
right down to how the last boss fight makes you rethink the entire nature of your mission in the first place
and it does it perfectly.
 
Water Temple in Ocarina of Time. Also, most areas in Mario 64. Also, 99% of water levels in most games.

Also again, the Valley Of Defilement in Demon's Souls... I am not entirely sure if that area was supposed to be fun? Because it really wasn't to me.
 
this is the worst thread failure i've seen in the gaming side of gaf

I'd feel safe in betting my life savings that no design team ever reached a point in designing their game by saying "OK, now how do we make this part of the game not fun".

there are examples here where that has already been proven wrong. Heck there's one in the actual OP (no russian)

even if we didnt have examples to list, what OP's talking about would be a more interesting discussion to have. certainly more so than "not fun? oh that part in X game where it got hard"
 
It's not an area, per se, but in the BIT.TRIP games, if you perform poorly you enter a state called the Nether. Basically, if you're playing well, the music grows more full and the graphics grow more colorful and rich; if you're not playing well, the graphics become more simple and the music less full until you enter the Nether, which is black and white, blurry and aurally tinny -- on the Wii, all of the sound is reduced to Atari 2600-like bleeps from the Wii remote's speaker. You can get out of the Nether by playing better, and it feels really rewarding to do so.

EDIT: Oh, and I'm not sure if I agree, but you could make a case for the overworld and job-themed mini-games in the first No More Heroes being intentionally monotonous, as sort of a satire of the player who spends his time in a pale reflection of the real world, or as a send-up of both video game monotony and low-wage employment monotony.
 
Games aren't always meant to be fun.

they can be a test of endurance, a test of a patience, etc etc etc.
 
Like every underwater level I've played.. and the modern day parts in Assasins creed games.. really doing their best to kill the atmosphere.
 
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