What's the blandest video game you ever played?

[FalenDemo5]

Since there's a lot of "what's the worst game ever" threads on this site, here's something different:

What's the game that isn't the worst one you ever played, but it's so unremarkable and bland that you end up forgetting almost immediately. Like the ones from Zero Punctation/Fully Ramblomatic's "Top 5 Blandest Video Games of 20XX" lists?

[Deity-Donkus]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Now the first Xenoblade is kinda bland too but I was killing robots and stuff and that was badass. I feel like when I found out half of the Xenoblade series wasn't about killing robots and piloting mechs it stopped being something I was interested in.

[Drazah]

Pokemon X and Y, the characters are just so damn lame, the starters are imo the weakest in any game aside from Greninja, has next to no new Pokemon, and the game's OST is... eh, far better than Sw/Sh and SV, but with how milk toast it is, it might as well not even exist for all I care.

I will admit, I only played it half way through, but I still remember more from Pokemon games I haven't played like Sw/Sh or BW2.

Sun and Moon on the other hand, probably has the most personality in any Pokemon game, such a shame all of it's ideas even ones unique to the main line games, went down the drain from it's shitty rail roading and hand holdy nature.

[orangebomb]

Not a single video game, but a company that develops bland games, WayForward. None of their games are memorable in any way and it almost feels like they like being a low end developer. Shantae is the only thing their widely known for, and it's less about those games and more about their main character, and the identity crisis of said character.

(About the only silver lining is that no big publisher bothers to buy them for better or worse)

[Chdonga]

Darksector. It felt like I was playing the example game for some drag & drop "cinematic action game creator" for the PS3/360.

Bulletstorm is a close second. So much chaos & carnage and yet I felt nothing while playing it.

[Mitchelf]

Anything made by Ubisoft in the past decade.

[OnixDark]

At 3/20/25 09:53 PM, Chdonga wrote:Darksector. It felt like I was playing the example game for some drag & drop "cinematic action game creator" for the PS3/360.
Bulletstorm is a close second. So much chaos & carnage and yet I felt nothing while playing it.

good thing i bought the 1st one when it was 100% off then?

now answering the thread:

i probably forget about most of the bland games i play, but there was this visual novel i played on itch io a few days ago (forgot the name, sorry) about 2 anthropomorphic cat siblings who decided to try hunting monsters for food. it was a short story with an interesting premise, but as far as i could tell, it only had 1 possible ending (despite the player being able to make seemingly meaningful decisions, correct me if i'm wrong though) was badly bugged (specially if you chose to catch and eat a fish instead of a sea monster) and it left me tempted to try and replicate the game using a different engine than whatever the dev made that game with. considering it was a VN, the items could probably be booleans instead of actual items. the art could also use some work (layers, a lighter image format, etc.).

i'd love to see that one reworked.

[Peepers]

Skylar & Plux: Adventure on Clover Island

The most paint-by-numbers platformer I've ever experienced.

I will say they succeeded at one thing: having the most annoying voiced sidekick I've ever heard.

I've never actually wanted to murder a video game character before this.

[DeaghlanNG]

At 3/20/25 09:53 PM, Chdonga wrote:Bulletstorm is a close second. So much chaos & carnage and yet I felt nothing while playing it.

Now what if they were to add Duke Nukem to the mix, hmm?

[dondonboat]

Timespinner, I remember seeing it from a Kickstarter and thought why not.

And I could not remember a damn thing about it worth mentioning.

Looks, sounds, and feels aggresively like Castlevania without the charm of the dialogue.

Game too easy you forgot you can time stop anyways.

[Bundeluxe]

Sonic Forces probably. Aside from getting to make your own character (which really isn't that great either, mind you) I struggle to think of one other standout thing from that game. I consider it to be worse than 06 for that reason, it's just so "nothing" from start to finish (read: 2, maybe 3 hours)

[The-Great-One]

Gears of War

I don't know if I just couldn't get into it or if it was just a boring game. I know a lot of people who love this series. My best friend introduced me to this game and we played it together. It was fun at first, I won't deny. Then I realized... that's it? That's all this game is? That's the mark of a bland game to me. I mean this is just PC DOOM 1 on steroids, sometimes literally. Where DOOM 1 was great for its time and is still a niche game to pick up due to the carnage and arcade appeal. Gears of War came out in 2006, we should have had better. Replace demons with bugs and make it 3D with some more bloodshed and boom you have Gears of War. The story isn't too impressive either.

[concertsrule]

blandest? probably Palia. i just found it very boring and, of course, bland.

[Dreamcastian-Turnip]

Sonic Forces

It may geniunely be the only game where i do not think i felt a single emotion while playing it

[BoiledMilkz]

Pong. It's a table tennis ripoff.

[Quinnfinity3]

Fortnite and league of Legends. Booooooarrrinnggggggg!

[Galneda]

I was reminded of Commander Keen from Doom Eternal. It was actually one of the first PC games I ever played on my own computer as a kid. I had to look up game footage to remember how it actually played, and it's such a distant memory, I just kinda stared in disbelief. I remember being all about Commander Keen, but I think what I liked the most about it was he was just a colorful sprite version of Spaceman Spiff from Calvin & Hobbes, which I also loved at the time.

[Galneda]

So, around middle-school / high-school, I was walking around Sears, and they had a demo PS2 set up in the electronics department.

This was around the time that I realized I was all about giant robots and mechs, so when I saw this, I had to check it out.

And lemme tell you, even though I was only playing about 5 to 10 minutes at a time, it seemed extremely mid back then. I couldn't get into it, but I would keep on coming back to it.

It became a highlight of my mall excursions around that time. "Hang on, I gotta duck into Sears real quick" and my friends would laugh like, "What, you need a lawnmower or something, wtf"

I had to get a second opinion. Third opinion. I kept trying to give it another chance, and yet, I was never hooked enough to rent it (either because I couldn't find it, or I'd rather rent something else) or just straight up buy it, with the no money I had as a kid.

I'd probably fuck with it on an emulator if I was bored, but even now I can think of 20 or 30 games I'd rather play if I had a PS2 emulator. And half of those involve mechs as well.

[Galneda]

At 3/20/25 05:05 PM, Drazah wrote:Pokemon X and Y, the characters are just so damn lame, the starters are imo the weakest in any game aside from Greninja, has next to no new Pokemon, and the game's OST is... eh, far better than Sw/Sh and SV, but with how milk toast it is, it might as well not even exist for all I care.

I will admit, I only played it half way through, but I still remember more from Pokemon games I haven't played like Sw/Sh or BW2.

Sun and Moon on the other hand, probably has the most personality in any Pokemon game, such a shame all of it's ideas even ones unique to the main line games, went down the drain from it's shitty rail roading and hand holdy nature.

That hub-world city that's shaped like a Poke-Ball pissed me off.

And I'd go around and talk to strangers just to learn more about the world, and damn near EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM gives you free shit. It took me out of it, bad.

Like, in Red/Blue, if a stranger gave you something, it was because you did something or it was a rare case of generosity. It was kind of a big deal, a "Wow, thanks for this, I really appreciate it!" moment. But when X did it, it felt like pandering.

"OHHHH HERE YOU GO, LITTLE BABYCHILD, YOU'RE THE CHOSEN ONE. PLEASE, TAKE THIS TOO! Y'know what, fuckit, HAVE MY CARR, YOU NEED IT MORE THAN MEEE"

"It's ME, Professor Oak! Fancy seeing you here! WHY DON'T YOU HAVE ANOTHER STARTER. OG KANTO PICKS, GO FOR IT. FREE OF CHARGE."

[Chdonga]

At 3/23/25 06:33 AM, Galneda wrote:

At 3/20/25 05:05 PM, Drazah wrote:Pokemon X and Y, the characters are just so damn lame, the starters are imo the weakest in any game aside from Greninja, has next to no new Pokemon, and the game's OST is... eh, far better than Sw/Sh and SV, but with how milk toast it is, it might as well not even exist for all I care.

I will admit, I only played it half way through, but I still remember more from Pokemon games I haven't played like Sw/Sh or BW2.

Sun and Moon on the other hand, probably has the most personality in any Pokemon game, such a shame all of it's ideas even ones unique to the main line games, went down the drain from it's shitty rail roading and hand holdy nature.

That hub-world city that's shaped like a Poke-Ball pissed me off.

And I'd go around and talk to strangers just to learn more about the world, and damn near EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM gives you free shit. It took me out of it, bad.

Like, in Red/Blue, if a stranger gave you something, it was because you did something or it was a rare case of generosity. It was kind of a big deal, a "Wow, thanks for this, I really appreciate it!" moment. But when X did it, it felt like pandering.

"OHHHH HERE YOU GO, LITTLE BABYCHILD, YOU'RE THE CHOSEN ONE. PLEASE, TAKE THIS TOO! Y'know what, fuckit, HAVE MY CARR, YOU NEED IT MORE THAN MEEE"

"It's ME, Professor Oak! Fancy seeing you here! WHY DON'T YOU HAVE ANOTHER STARTER. OG KANTO PICKS, GO FOR IT. FREE OF CHARGE."

That fighting dojo guy in Pokemon Red & Blue: "Here, have either a Hitmonchan or a Hitmonlee. These two cannot be caught in the wild in-game!" And if you try to snag both, the player goes "Let's not be greedy."

That fighting dojo guy if he was in a modern Pokemon game: "Here, take the entire Hitmon-set!" then you run into him again a gym or two later, "I see a hidden potential in you. Here's an egg that'll hatch into a Riolu born with the ultimate moves Dragon Pulse and Aura Sphere! Want a Mega Stone, by the way?" and then they give you an unskippable unlose-able tutorial battle for Mega Evolution.

I don't mind getting a free pokemon and I'll just box it if it's game breakingly overpowered but I won't pretend it's not annoying as shit getting stopped constantly by NPCs and needing to mash through pages of ass-kissy dialogue that doesn't progress the plot or expand the world in any conceivable way.

The inventory bloat in modern pokemon games bothers me more than the free pokemon but I rant about that so much that the CDC is considering naming a mental health condition about it after me.

[ProsciuttoMan]

At 3/20/25 05:12 PM, orangebomb wrote:Not a single video game, but a company that develops bland games, WayForward. None of their games are memorable in any way and it almost feels like they like being a low end developer. Shantae is the only thing their widely known for, and it's less about those games and more about their main character, and the identity crisis of said character.

(About the only silver lining is that no big publisher bothers to buy them for better or worse)

Finally somebody has the guts to say it.

[5ERGEI]

Don't even get me started on this walking simulator:

[pinmoBOT]

Back 4 Blood... Got the game for like a dollar and still felt cheated. I never played a game that put me to sleep like this one.

[VulcanSurge]

I know there are better games in the series but Trackmania on Wii.

[KrisKagura]

Got this game from the 3ds eshop (R.I.P.) and it's probably the most dry RPG I've ever played. It's also got few search results, just to put it in perspective how much anyone cares.

[TheJayJay]

At 3/20/25 04:16 PM, FalenDemo5 wrote:Since there's a lot of "what's the worst game ever" threads on this site, here's something different:

What's the game that isn't the worst one you ever played, but it's so unremarkable and bland that you end up forgetting almost immediately. Like the ones from Zero Punctation/Fully Ramblomatic's "Top 5 Blandest Video Games of 20XX" lists?

Ironically, probably the Zero Punctuation HATFALL game.

[cece-makes-stuff]

I tried playing a game called 14 Minesweeper Variants ages ago since it looked really similar to the premise behind a similar game I knew about called Pongs, but the variations themselves to the game weren't very compelling and at times kinda frustrating. The visuals also are very minimalistic and boring too, which make sense for being just a minesweeper game but it sure didn't help either.

[Czyszy]

this piece of shovelware:

Hey, as a 2nd grader, I didn't know any better. I remember being extremely disappointed by it.

[V1ZION]

Yoshi’s Crafted World. I liked it at the beginning but now I don’t even remember that it exists. It sucks because I liked Yoshi’s New Island for the 3DS so I figured it would be worth a shot…

[GamingyoshiF]

At 3/29/25 01:01 PM, V1ZION wrote:Yoshi’s Crafted World. I liked it at the beginning but now I don’t even remember that it exists. It sucks because I liked Yoshi’s New Island for the 3DS so I figured it would be worth a shot…

Oh yeah, I kinda had the same experience with Crafted World too! The game felt ridiculously easy even on hard mode, and plus the OST is ... yeah, not exactly the best especially compared to the original Yoshi's Island or Woolly World