Why Keep Dragging the Game On if it's Not Fun? (Thoughts on Padding AAA Games)

     Hey friends! As you know, I always try to stay positive about things in the gaming space, but today, I'm here to discuss one of my few pet peeves. Wasting the time of the player with a bunch of random side games and modes is something that has been happening for a long time, but I'd like to talk about some of the examples that most infuriate me. I apologize in advance for anyone who loves these side activities, but to me, they really just serve to annoy, and I'm constantly wishing to get back to the part of the game that I actually purchased the game to play. 

So Many Card Games!

    If you've played any massive game in the past 10 years or so, you've definitely encountered some of this. For some reason, games that are already potentially 100 hours or so feel the need to introduce a card game that will take an obscene amount of time to understand and master. Horizon Forbidden West had one, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth so far has had at least two activities like this, and I'm only in the second major area so far, The Witcher 3 had Gwent, which was such a big deal to so many people that they actually spun it into a full free-to-play game on it's own which came out back in 2019. I heard stories of so many of my friends just running around and playing Gwent in the middle of their giant adventure, and honestly, I am glad that some people apparently like this side game, but for me, I buy the game to actually play whatever game is being advertised, and I wish I could just stick to that without worrying about achievements and sidequests entirely reliant on playing tons of these side modes. Just for the record, my whole idea of this post came from me playing a lot of the Fort Condor sidequest in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which started out being a lot of fun, but by the fourth level, just had become so tedious and tied to the time limits and mechanics that I didn't enjoy, I just found myself yelling at the TV, "Why am I wasting my time here?" The reason, of course, is because Chadley keeps saying that he needs the protorelic, which will hopefully pay off in some interesting way for the story, maybe to get a really good summon later on in the game, but it absolutely is not part of the game that I want to be playing, and will be very happy whenever it is done.

Minigames in General!

    Obviously this is not something that relates to something like Mario Party, which relies on minigames for obvious reasons, but rather in games that don't need minigames. The original Final Fantasy VII had tons of these, with them ranging in quality from something that would be fun to do every now and then, to some that were so grind-heavy and tedious that my brother decided not to bother with them, even with a full walkthrough of what to do. I honestly cannot blame him at all, that Chocobo breeding minigame to get Knights of the Round as a summon was so complicated that I had no idea what I was even reading. There are some exceptions to this rule of course. Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact are both fairly heavy games involving a lot of strategy in your team composition, which can get exhausting after a while, so the events in these games are actually refreshing. I always appreciate when I log in and there's some sort of rhythm-based minigame to be had, while I am less happy when it's something like tower defense or anything attempting PVP in almost any form. I will say that I know there's a rhythm minigame in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth because I ran into it in the demo, so I'm really excited to see that again, because I still haven't encountered it, even though I am now 18 hours into the game and they apparently moved it at some point between the demo and full release, because Tifa's theme was sadly no longer found at Tifa's piano. I have found my first instance of it now, and I hope for many more like it, but we'll have to see!

    Obviously this whole post is just about personal preferences, and of course there are many games that thrive from their usage of side activities. I've heard many people say that the best parts of the Yakuza/Like A Dragon series come from all of the wacky minigames that they've crammed in there. Kingdom Hearts 3 is a controversial game, but I think they put all of their eggs into the "variety" basket, since every world feels very different in regards to minigames and various gameplay styles. Variety is the spice of life, that's for sure, but sometimes they just serve to get in the way. Many times, I'll feel bad for not doing every activity in a game, since the developers did go to a lot of trouble to program in whatever it is that I didn't feel like doing. Also, I said this is only in AAA titles, but Shovel Knight, one of my favorite Indie games of all time, added a card game to the final free campaign that they put in. The campaign was called King of Cards, since you played as King Knight, and the card game was completely optional, there was another way to get to the end of it if you didn't feel like doing the card game, but I really wanted to support the good people at Yacht Club and try it out, even though card games have never been my thing. It certainly wasn't necessary, but I assume a large majority of people enjoyed this addition. 

Monotony!

    A bigger issue to be discussed is just the fact that many studios today, especially those working on open world projects, want to milk every bit of time out of the player, such as almost anything made by Ubisoft in the past 10 years or so. They have a million objectives spread across an almost entirely empty map, and the objectives all amount to "Go over here and get the special thing, then go over there and get that thing." Essentially this level of design doesn't really offer variety, just monotony at a certain point. Even then, though, something like Ghost of Tsushima didn't give me that feeling at all, I loved almost every moment of that game, and I can't even explain what was different about it from something like Assassin's Creed's latest offering, it just felt more competently made. Every task and objective fed into the feeling of making your character stronger and retaking the island, as opposed to just picking up a bunch of feathers because the game told you to do that.

    There is always some subjectivity to every opinion, or else it would be a fact, so many people will have the exact opposite issue with games that I do. They will inevitably feel like games are too short, and it's only whenever we stop all forward progress to play a turn based strategy game in the middle of an action-adventure game that the game will be fun to them. I just have a hard time understanding the inclusion of a potentially several 3 hourlong side mode in an already massive game when it isn't really related to the main point of the game. I'm happy for you if you like that kind of thing, but it's just never been my cup of tea. I would much rather have a 10 hour long game with solid and gameplay than one that meanders for a good 100 hours or so.

    Thanks for reading my post, friends! I know this week I mostly just shook my fist at the sky about things that kind of bother me, but it's important to get things off of my chest every now and then. As I said earlier, this post was inspired by me playing the fourth Fort Condor mission in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and just getting frustrated to the point of saying, "This isn't fun, I'm going to just continue the story." What's your opinion on these side modes in games? Do you like them? It could entirely just be me that has an issue with them, but I would love to hear from you somewhere online. Thanks again for reading this post, and I hope you have a great week! I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Critic, and I'll talk to you again soon!