6 Of The Least Interactive Games Of All Time

Player interaction in video games tends to be a pretty important element. It can be argued that having control over proceedings is what defines the medium as a game. Most titles offer varying degrees of interactivity: from the ‘don’t stop moving’ mechanics of Super Meat Boy, to the occasional player interaction of the Telltale games.

There have, however, been some games where interactivity has not only taken a back seat, but actually makes the player question whether their involvement is actually required at all. These are the titles that make interactive novels look like competitive Starcraft matches in comparison.

From a time when thinking about the player wasn’t always the highest priority in video game creation, here are 6 of the least interactive games of all time.

6 – Star Trek: Borg

In what is a bit of an oxymoron, the cover for this 1996 release boasts Star Trek: Borg as being ‘The Ultimate Interactive Movie’; that’s a bit like using the phrase “My favourite bout of diarrhoea”. Anyway, the story itself isn’t too bad, especially if you’re a fan of The Next Generation series, and John DeLancie reprises his role as the smarmy, if slightly creepy, omnipotent Q. Plus, it’s got the Borg in it! What can go wrong?

Well, yet again we return to those two shudder-inducing words – ‘interactive movie’. Perhaps the makers thought pointing this out would let Borg off the hook for its shortcomings? Well no, it doesn’t. 99% of the time you’ll be watching a weirdly sub-par TNG episode, only without any of the series’ main cast, and with a distracting, first-person point of view. The remaining 1% of the time where you’re actually required to do something will be spent selecting objects, analyzing things, and then wondering how you made the wrong choice. This results in Q pointing out what a total clown you are, although buying the game may have been proof enough of this. Oh, and just try finding the right pixel to click on in 90’s full motion video. You’ll discover that on the rare moments where you do have to interact with the game, you’ll wish you hadn’t bothered.

5 – Road Avenger

Originally given an arcade release in 1985 under the name Road Blaster, this title was ported to various consoles from the late eighties through to the late nineties, usually under the name Road Avenger or the snappily titled Road Prosecutor, which conjures up a load of images.

The intro gives off a real Fist Of The North Star vibe, with its manga style, road gangs, gladiatorial outfits and ‘roided up bad guys.

Amazingly for a car game, you’re not really driving the car. Every so often a prompt will appear telling you to brake, turn left, right, use a turbo, whatever. Just hold down the button for a few seconds (the game had trouble recognizing quick, repetitive presses) and that’s it. You’ve got no control over what you want the car to do. What if you don’t want to turn right? Perhaps left would be the better option? Well tough. Should you disobey your omnipresent driving instructor, then you’re presented with a clip of your car exploding, but only after a short pause while it loads up.

The thing is, although Road Avenger may have been one the least interactive games of all time, it was actually quite fun – but maybe that’s because at the time it felt like being in an actual manga cartoon.

4 – Progress Quest

Most RPGs demand a massive amount of your time. The Witcher 3 may be amazing, but 200+ hours to complete it all! Jesus! That’s some investment. If you’re after an RPG that doesn’t demand too much of you, then look no further than Progress Quest.

The game starts like so many traditional RPGs. First, name your character, then select a race and a class, click on ‘sold’, sit back and watch. Absolutely nothing else is asked of the player, all you do is watch the game play itself via the text display. Literally everything is automated from this point onwards. You’ll see your character’s stats, inventory, quests and spells all altering in real time. I’m actually playing a game myself as I write this.

In fairness, Progress Quest does refer to itself as a parody of the bloated, stat-heavy, fetch-quest laden RPGs we’ve seen in the past. If you fancy a experiencing a totally non-interactive game, then check it out in its browser form.

3 – Time Traveler

When people first saw the stereographic laserdisc FMV arcade game Time Traveler in 1991, they probably thought the world of tomorrow really had arrived; so quite a disappointment was in store once they played it.

The holographic effect in the game was created using a curved mirror, CRT TV and a stereographic laserdisc. It may have looked like something out of science fiction back then, but the whole game was just a series of quick-time events. You had to pick one of the four directions or hit the action button at the right moment, but that was it. The cabinet even had game backgrounds built into it -- that’s if you consider neon colored, geometric blocks as backgrounds.

Once the novelty of seeing holographic, 5-inch characters battling away in front of you wore off, people grew tired of this type of game, and they were consigned to the arcade history books. Though cowboy Marshal Gram, Lord Vulcor and Princess Kyi-La of the Galactic Federation did make a brief return in 2001, when Time Traveler was released on the PC and DVD – one can only assume as the result of a drunken bet. 

2 – Microcosm

What do you get if you mix Fantastic Voyage, Innerspace and rail shooters? Microcosm! The 1993 game’s box proudly stated “Over 500 megabytes of brilliant SGI graphics and an original soundtrack by Rick Wakeman, formerly of YES.” So you knew you were in for a treat.

In a similar way to Star Trek: Borg’s claim of being ‘The Ultimate Interactive Move’, Microcosm was billed as ‘The ultimate CD-ROM game’; a bold and, quite frankly, totally bizarrely statement, which one can only assume came from somebody who had never played the thing.

Microcosm came with one of the most unnecessarily descriptive manuals in the history of gaming. Want to know the diameter of a certain moon within this universe, one you’ll never visit and that has absolutely no connection whatsoever to the game? Well the manual will tell you what it is, and the number of days it takes said moon to do a full rotation. Brilliant! There’s not too much in there about the actual game, and why it’s a steaming pile of ass.

Incredibly, it’s been proven that it’s possible to get halfway through Microcosm without even looking at the screen – it really is that bad. Not only does it lack player interactivity to the point of being funny (unless you bought it), it also looks horrible, is awfully designed, has no checkpoints, and each level is five minutes long. It was the worst of all the on-rails FMV games; truly a genre that won’t be missed.

1 – Dragon’s Lair

Anyone who’s played the infamous Dragon’s Lair will understand why it’s number one on the list. It says something about a game when its walkthrough can be written like so: left, left, up, down, sword, right, sword, left – and so on.

Yes, Dragon's Lair was the epitome of games with beautiful graphics and almost no player interaction. The only thing it asked you to do was pick a direction/hit a key every 20 seconds. Choose the wrong one and it’s time to try again until you get it right. Incredibly, the movement you chose rarely corresponded to what was happening on the screen, meaning you’d have a 1 in 5 random chance to guess the correct action. This removed any skill required to actually play the thing – what fun.

People may look back at Dragon’s Lair with misty-eyed nostalgia, but it really is crap. Even with a load of unlucky guesses, the entire game could be beaten in under an hour. This worked better when it was turned into a cartoon series in 1984, where it displayed only slightly less player interaction.

An anniversary edition was released on DVD back in 1999, which is possibly the best place for it, as Dragon’s Lair merely requires you to press the remote every now and again, making it similar to channel-hopping the cartoon channels. It’s now even available on Steam, so if you’ve got too much money and want to pointlessly throw some away, buy it.