It can be difficult for video games to find ways to entertain players without falling into the trap of solely using combat as a method for any difficulty or gameplay. While there are many genres of video games, and some don’t focus at all on combat systems, many of the most popular games find themselves immersed mostly in combat.
Major recent releases like Hogwarts Legacy and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have a heavy emphasis on exploration and puzzle-solving in addition to combat. But players frequently find themselves complaining about the total reliance of video games on combat in other cases.
7 Tomb Raider (2013)
Tomb Raider was built on the idea of taking a female character like Lara Croft and introducing her into adventures similar to the style of Indiana Jones. The thing about Indiana Jones, though, is that his best skill was never his fighting ability. The adventure was the heart of the story, as opposed to the action.
Unfortunately, the 2013 Tomb Raider game, while still having a lot to explore and puzzles to work through, focused too heavily on the action side of things. There was too much combat for a game that was supposed to focus on adventure and puzzle-solving. In previous games, Lara had primarily fought animals, but more enemies left some fans feeling like the game was more of a third-person shooter than an adventure game.
6 Horizon: Forbidden West
Horizon: Zero Dawn brought players into a world filled with machines that had taken over. Nevertheless, the game managed to be an open-world RPG with plenty of elements that players could focus on. Horizon Forbidden West, the sequel to Zero Dawn, moved the focus a bit, and players have been upset.
There is not only more combat in the sequel, but it feels a bit more forced upon players. The excess of combat can become irritating if it does not click with someone, taking away from the game's other strengths. While this hasn’t been a deal-breaker for many fans of the franchise, it is something that Guerrilla Games needs to address for any future games.
5 The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Skyrim is one of the most successful video games of all time, and it would be going too far to say that there are any major problems with it that the huge fan base can't deal with. But the focus, particularly in dungeons, on near-constant combat is something that gamers have struggled with over the decade-plus since the game was first released.
Making the game much more action-based than an RPG at times, Skyrim does have too much combat. Players struggle with the volume of it in the early game, and later, the constant enemies are more of an irritation as, the challenge becomes fairly low at that point. Nevertheless, Skyrim is a phenomenal game that will be remembered for many great aspects.
4 Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
The Assassin’s Creed games have always kept a lot of focus on combat elements, from the very beginning. However, there is something that changed more recently in the games as they moved away from stealth and began to focus on being active, open-world RPGs instead.
This significant shift in style has angered some fans of the franchise. While many enjoy the style of games like Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, others think the volume of combat and lack of focus on stealth has changed the franchise too significantly and made the games feel much blander in nature.
3 Cuphead
Cuphead is a run-and-gun game that players struggle through in the same way that they struggle with the Dark Souls games. While all of these games are about punishing combat, Cuphead contains too many bosses in short order, and it takes far too long to get through them.
Cuphead is generally a fun boss rush game that offers a great challenge worth trying to complete. However, it is sad that a game that includes so much fun animation based on 1920s and '30s newspaper strips couldn’t include other aspects besides the combat. Still, this is ultimately what the project decided to be, and that is perfectly understandable; perhaps one day, another game with a similar aesthetic comes around that is more of an adventure game.
2 Rambo: The Video Game
Rambo: The Video Game was released in 2014. It baffled and angered many gamers, who believed that the franchise deserved more in a game adaption. A rail-shooter game that had nothing but combat, many thought the franchise was ripe for a survival game set in an open-world jungle.
Instead of creating something that would make fans of the franchise feel like they were in the world of Rambo, the game seemingly just added as much combat as possible. The game was reviled upon release, and another attempt at entering the Rambo world through gaming has not been made since.
1 Alone In The Dark: Illumination
Alone in the Dark was the survival horror series which fans credit with creating the genre. The first game was released in 1992, years before Resident Evil was released. However, Alone in the Dark: Illumination made a common mistake in the survival horror genre: taking the series and adding far too much combat.
Illumination was the first game in the franchise designed to be played online. Players were meant to work together to solve a mystery, but between the magical elements some players had, the over-reliance on combat, and the seeming attempt to copy Left 4 Dead 2, the game was a complete failure and helped kill off the franchise until the recent reboot looked to bring it back.