So what video game genres are your least favourites?

Demographic time? Not much to say. I've noticed there's several "wars" over video game genres in recent year, I thought this would be a civil way to state one's tastes without being a blatant "stop liking what I don't like" thread.

1. Point and Click Adventure. Most of these games I have played are not good. I played them when I had nothing else to play and they made me feel like console games were better when I did. It just felt like a "poor man's video game" most of the time I played them. Of course, that's a little bit biased of a thing to say, so I'm sorry point and click fans. I really don't like the controls. I am used to and prefer a controller, and when I play a game with the mouse only, or near only, it feels like there's hardly any gameplay at all. I like wandering around and clicking things on the net, but it's hard to pull off in a game. If you pull it off right, it's like a better version of a Visual Novel. If you pull it off wrong, it's as bland as gaming can get.

2. First Person Games. I could say First Person Shooter. But what I dislike about First Person Shooters is the First Person Perspective. It's disorienting and feels claustrophobic.

3. Sandbox games. Most of the time, instead of being in awe that there is "so much to do", I get bored quickly at the lack of narrative. This is especially true like in MMORP Gs where "Questing" consists of fighting a few non-aggressive monsters in the field and claim they're "harassing" citizens. I at least play MMORP Gs while FPS I tend to stay away from altogether(perhaps my most favourite FPS game I've played is Hexen, even though I really don't like the genre), those boring sandbox worlds in many MMORP Gs drive me nuts. Especially since the driving force is grinding(prepared to be mocked if you actually do something enjoyable, like roleplay or decorate your house, instead of min/max).

4. Sports games. Now of course, there are many sports games I like. The Mario Kart series, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, Pangya, and many others, but with Madden games being released every year, it's hard to be a "Sports game" fan. Or rather, all of EA Sports, whom have never made a game I'd want to touch with a 10 foot poll. Problem is, "Sports" encompasses a lot of games, but most people think of "EA Sports" when they hear of Sports games. And that's not a pleasant image.

5. I'm guessing party games. Most games in this genre just seem insincere and have boring gameplay. I like playing games with friends. But I don't want to play games of this type with them, maybe aside from Mario Party.

edited 21st Feb '11 12:40:49 AM by Ukonkivi

Games with zero storylines and no end to their gameplay...like tetris, bejeweled, pac man, and games along that line. And sports game...especially the "reality" ones.

edited 21st Feb '11 12:40:34 AM by Signed

1. Seconding Point And Click Adventure, though for different reasons. Even the best of them have too much pixel hunting, to the point where I usually turn on the hint system right away only to discover a required item right in front of my nose- which I would have seen if it had been a pixel larger and not surrounded by many identical thingamajigs.

2. Visual Novels and Dating Sims. I try to steer clear of PWP and for games with particularly strong or intriguing stories I prefer to look up the canon or fanon universe bible.

3. Seconding Sports Games. I've never been a sports buff in general and my racing skills stink.

4. Seconding Party Games. They're just not my type.

5. I do somewhat enjoy playing FPS games but I often get frustrated by my own inability to aim accurately without spending a few seconds steadying my crosshair.

edited 21st Feb '11 12:44:00 AM by Recon5

• Cover Shooters. I've tried Gears Of War, Mass Effect, and the demos for Killzone 2 and Uncharted, and I'm really not impressed with this style of gameplay.

• Real-Time Strategy. Eh, I prefer actually driving to commanding. Plus, I'm too impatient to really enjoy these.

• PC Action RP Gs. The kind like Diablo and such where you click to do everything.

And in a bizarre twist, I thoroughly enjoyed the demo of Dawn Of War 2, which included elements of all three.

I never could get into racing games. Or sports games, even ones like Wii Sports.

Epic-scale war and strategy games. Except the 4x ones, I love those. Micromanagement in RT Ses is something that no game I've ever seen has done well, and every game that I have ever seen that isn't a casual coffee break game requires it in one way or another. TB Ses, I'm okay with micromanagement as long as it's not on the "tweak flour prices in city X on planet Y of star system Z" level of detail, mainly because nobody blows up your stuff while you fiddle with the dials.

Also, airplane sims that require more than one keyboard's full set of buttons to function. Anywhere under than limit is okay, which is why TFX is still my favoritest of these, ever. It also had awesome musicks, which helps a lot.

Everything else I more or less enjoy. Yes, the date sims and h-games and rail shooters and fpses and rpgs of various persuasions, and even those retarded tower defense games every once in a while.

...TFX?

I have a love hate relationship for RPGS, mostly for their lack of overall involvement as far as both gameplay and immersion are concerned.

I tend to treat many FPS the same way I treat sports games: You've played one, you've played them all. Yes, this is strawmanning and it is only opinion. But the opinion is mine.

Any space marine game that isn't Doom.

1. FPSs. They're usually too short to justify me paying for them, and from what I've seen, they're a bit to similar to each other for my liking.

2. Sandbox games. For pretty much the same reasons as Ukonkivi. Animal Crossing is an exception.

3. Fighting games. Complicated combos eeeeverywhere. Not a very newbie-friendly genre, either. Super Smash Bros. being an exception.

4. Sports games. I don't even like sports in real life.

5. Racing games. Same reasons as FPSs. Mario Kart is an exception.

Nintendo in general has a way with getting me to play genres I otherwise wouldn't even touch.

^ Ah, yes. Seconding the SPESS MEHRENS.

edited 21st Feb '11 1:24:21 AM by Electivirus

Darn it, I forgot that it might be a landmark game in some respects but not get a page here because it lacks a coherent story worth mentioning and its main trope is The Dev Team Thinks of Everything - there's a lot of attention to detail as to what happens to the various gruesome deaths an ejected pilot can be faced with.

TFX was a sim game that was a sequel to Retaliator and the predecessor to EF-2000 (one of the first 3d-accelerated flight sims, not a big achievement, I know), one of a series of games by Digital Image Design, they were a bit on the arcade side of things, but ultimately were fun and pretty and awesome for their own time, while not being uber-hardcore so as to be unplayable by someone like me. This is colored by the Nostalgia Filter, of course, despite my generally hating the whole flight sim genre for being either too arcadely dumb or too insanely hardcore - this game was one of a series of those that balanced flawlessly in the middle.

edited 21st Feb '11 1:50:00 AM by Noelemahc

Sports Games, whatever genre the Sims fall into, and rhythm games.

I'm gonna come out with an unpopular opinion - I just plain don't like rape games.

Everything else, there are games in the genre I've thoroughly enjoyed.

Wait, what.

1. First-person shooters for the same reason Ukonkivi put forward; it's too constricting.

2. Sports sims. I'm under the impression that if you want to play sports, you'd actually go out and physically participate in the activity.

3. Point and click adventures. 'Kay, this has more to do with the fact that that this genre is more associated with shitty flash games instead of Lucasarts' supposed masterpieces to me.

4. Real-time strategy games. Screw strategy and micromanagement, I just wanna charge in.

5. Whatever Tetris would fall under. Maybe I'm just adverse to puzzle games in general, but I've had a long standing hatred for Tetris and its ilk.

I'm under the impression that if you want to play sports, you'd actually go out and physically participate in the activity.

Except the experience of playing a sport sims is in no way comparable to participating in it. And I doubt most sport fans will ever have the chance of becoming the manager of their favorite teams and play out through an entire season.

as for me:

• Puzzle Games (of the falling bock kind): Many of them feel like they're based entirely on split-second guesswork and blind luck. Of course I am probably being hideously ignorant and dismissive, but that's how I feel playing them.

• JRP Gs. I could probably parrot a terrible angry reviewer  ^*
  ^{so, an angry reviewer}
  on the subject, but the horse has been beaten dead, raped and mutilated so much, nothing I could say on the subject could be remotely relevant.

Of course, I've played through and enjoyed Nintendo's more offbeat productions, and at least one very traditional example of the genre, so I am probably more neutral than actively disliking it.

Note: I do play games in these genre, so it's not like I hate but I do enjoy most of the games in the genres listed much less than others...

• Micro-heavy RTS: Don't like twitching in this genre...more Warzone 2100, AI War Fleet Command please...
• JRPG: A lot of them have not different at all mechanic, plus very little freedom...

edited 21st Feb '11 4:31:52 AM by onyhow

It's hard for me to give a concrete answer, as I don't generally care what genre a game is, as long as its fun, and all genres have something that annoy me—but that's only because most samplings of such were created by people who have no idea what they're doing.

So, think of this more as a "Mortal Sins of Genre X" list.

Anyway:

Adventure Games (I don't care whether they're point-n-click or parser-based): Pixel-hunting, puzzles that make no sense and can only be solved by brute-forcing (or using the U.H.S.), and times when you have the right idea but you're just not doing the specific sequence (or using the right icon/verb) that the programmers laid out for you, and so on and so forth, are all the shortcomings of this genre. This is one of the few genres that actually improves when they try to be more like interactive movies and less like games, and that's kind of sad.

Console-Style RP Gs: Can get tedious because a lot of times there's not really much strategy outside of grinding. Also, a lot of them don't have good story pacing. I admit, I got sick of Breath of Fire because after awhile I just had no idea what I was doing (as a matter of fact I consider that a mortal sin in any game—if I ever don't have a clear idea what my immediate objective is, the game has just lost me). More recent console-style RP Gs—especially those by Square—have tried to spice up the formula by adding new elements that are actually worse than the generic mechanics they replace (this is why I couldn't stand Chrono Cross).

PC-Style RP Gs: Often are too in love with their customization and like to throw in a bunch of complicated crap where a simpler system would suffice. Often try too hard to be open-ended to the point where you can make decisions that make the games unwinnable (or at least so you can't get 100% completion). Also, whereas console-RP Gs are often based on Eastern-style fantasy/science fiction, PC ones are often based on Western-style fantasy/science fiction... genres that have huge bugs up their butts and are too full of themselves and really just need to die slow deaths.

Besides, there's like 20 Ultima games, that's all the PC RPG anybody needs.

Puzzle Games: Simply that there are only two worth playing: Puyo Puyo (in all its various incarnations) and Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.

Fighting Game: Quothe Yahtzee, "I tend to think something's wrong with a genre where you can spend decades learning every little nuance of the gameplay and still get beaten by a kid whose just randomly mashing buttons." That and nobody but Capcom and SNK have ever designed worthwhile fighters.

Real-Time Strategy: Having an online fanbase that insists top-speed is the ONLY way to play. Too be honest I think the real-time nature makes them too much for my slow brain to handle (I can handle turn-based just fine but I don't like it much better).

Cooking: Eating raw cookie dough. Feeling sick an hour later when you're trying to type a post about video games.

I'm done for now.

In a twist, I can't find a single genre I don't really like. Although, I can never get into traditional fighting games (the ones that resemble Street Fighter) because of the complicated button inputs required. I just don't get it. If you have 20-odd moves on a character, why wouldn't you bind them to something like direction + button? There's like six buttons. Or does it have to do with more powerful moves being difficult to execute? Games like SSB on the other hand...

I always kind of thought that was an artistic thing. If you think about it: forward, down, down-forward kinda flows into the motion Ryu's body would go through when gearing for an uppercut (and as soon as you press "punch," he does an uppercut, so...)

It could also have been so players don't do them accidentally, when is one problem I had with Smash Bros.

Sports - just not my thing. Nothing against the genre.

Racing - once again, I have no interest in it.

RTS - I'll never, ever be good at these. I just don't like feeling rushed when I'm playing games. I like to take my time and do things little by little. But in RTS games, that's a formula for failure.

Realistic FPS - If a game becomes too realistic, it ends up making the game just plain not fun. I mean, when I play games, I want to ignore real-world laws and physics, so if the game is essentially a freakin' simulator, I don't feel like playing it. A good example is Far Cry 2. You gotta take pills every few minutes, you gotta keep your guns in good shape, and you die really easily from gunfire. I couldn't stand playing games like that.

Sports: I loathe sports in real life, and turning them into video games certainly doesn't help me. That goes for Racing games too, and no Mario Kart is not an exception.

Fantasy Western RP Gs: I want to say that I don't care for WRP Gs in general, but then I realized I liked Mass Effect and KOTOR too much for that to be completely true. Its mainly because the big western developers (Bio Ware and Bethesda mainly) really suck at making Fantasy RP Gs. They're usually just big love letters to D&D and fail to really get me interested in the setting or characters.

Multiplayer focused FPS: Stuff like Halo, Call of Duty, and whatever other shooter that fratboys won't shut up about. Partly because Hype Aversion, partly because I'm not very fond of multiplayer games in general, and partly because I don't want to deal with the types of people that haunt your average match. What's disappointing is that soem of these games actually have decent campaigns that get ignored by most people.

edited 22nd Feb '11 7:35:56 AM by Neo_Crimson

Puzzle Games: Simply that there are only two [puzzle games] worth playing: Puyo Puyo

... I had the first Genesis Puyo Puyo (aka Dr Robotnik's Dental Apointment or some shit) in mind when I said puzzle games seems to rely on blind luck.

There's probably something I don't get.

Sports games: Unless it has the name Mario somewhere in the title and some fat fuck in a pair of overalls I just can't play it. I get bored. Very fast. Unless it's a golf game. I LIKE GOLF GAMES. Or I did in the N64 era anyway.

FPS: I've found a few I like because of atmosphere and such, but the gameplay is not something I find enjoyable in any form. Unless you're Portal but that's more a puzzle game with FPS controls...

Party games: Are the words Mario Party in the title? Do they in fact make up the title? No? Then no. I don't like party games.

Racing sims: I like my mascot racers and high speed futuristic anti-grav racers.

WRPG: Yes there's variety. I haven't found one I like yet that isn't Secret Of Evermore. This saddens me but it is so. NOT EVEN SONIC CHRONICLES. Thankfully there's many older dungeon crawling ones that look fun...THERE IS HOPE.

Does this mean I cannot have fun while playing these? No not at all. It just means that I grow tired of these things very fast and see no reason to purchase them. Or even pirate them. I've managed to have fun even playing Kotor! Which I hate! :D

edited 21st Feb '11 9:18:59 AM by Aondeug

Sports, hands down.

Also, to a lesser extent, most First-Person Shooter games. I usually get bored with them unless the game in question has good single player.

Western RPGS on a lesser extent, since I just... Stop playing them for some strange reason. I want to get Planescape Torment, but other things are in the way right now.

Oh, I forgot something! Racing Games, unless they're called Mario. Even then, I might come across a good racing game that makes me think otherwise.

edited 21st Feb '11 9:31:03 AM by AttObl

Ah, WRPGs, too.