Let's say you were playing Street Fighter.  You've mastered your special moves and combos, but before you can beat the final boss and claim your title as the world champion, you have to score 10,000 points in a game of Tetris.  Not only that, it's never even been hinted at that the game is going to depend on your puzzle gaming skills.  Yeah, you're awesome and you can knock this out of the park without even trying but does it make it better when the game throws you a curveball like this?

I was playing Dead Space last night and really getting into a rhythm.  Had my stereo turned up, the bass booming, and enjoying the atmosphere.  It was great.  I was building up my attributes, improving my weapons, and managing my inventory.  I was doing every thing I needed to do to survive the alien outbreak that I found myself in the middle of.  Little did I know that my fun was going to come to a screeching halt.  Somebody thought it was a good idea to toss in a first person game of "Asteroids".  Suddenly, my joy turned into frustration.  Even though I'm the type of gamer that plays many different types of genres, I found myself dying again and again at this scene.  Why are my survival horror skills suddenly dependent on my ability to play a twitch shooter?

And it's not just Dead Space.  Gears of War 2 did this when your gunplay skills, honed over the course of several hours of third person shooting suddenly took a back seat and your progress was dictated by how well you could drive a vehicle over a frozen lake.  Donkey Kong 64 pulled the rug out from under me when I had to stop playing my state of the art 3D platformer and suddenly play the original 80's Donkey Kong game.  This wasn't what I signed up for!

Personally, I think that if a game is suddenly going to switch things up, they need to make it a pretty easy set piece.  Add the variety but skip out on the frustration.  Every rule that has been built up thus far doesn't need to be thrown out of the window, does it?

How do you feel about this?  Way of the future or the insane ramblings of a sexy, sexy, man?  Discuss.

I hated that part in Dead space. I remember it taking me half a dozen tries to get past that part.

i never finish the first silent hill.... cause i cant play the piano like billy joel

I did not enjoy that section of Dead Space, and it did feel out of place. I don't mind minor gameplay changes, but it doesn't need to be drastic.
Sometimes it works when they put a minigame inside the game, but sometimes it doesn't, and it just makes it a hassle

For all of the hate that MGS4 gets, I think it's a game that does variety the right way. It feel like you're in direct control of everything and it impresses you but, at the same time, it never gets frustrating. Fighting Rex vs. Ray or Snake vs. Ocelot is awesome, not game breaking.

I could do without the obligatory (usually on-rails) turret section that's apparently supposed to add variety to the game but seems to be basically the same in every single shooter, but my bigger peeve is when the designers suddenly start ignoring their own established mechanics and rules. See: Shao Kahn and the way he ignores flinch damage, that fucker!

Deus Ex Human Revolution has this problem. Using stealth to get through hours and hours of the game, then 5 minutes of ammo consuming boss fights drove me insane.

Yeah... good flick, good flick.

I think Demon's Souls is a great example of variety through good design. And for such a "hard" game, it's scrupulously fair. There is no absolutely, "Haha, suddenly that doesn't work anymore!" bullshit or having the game turn into a twin stick shooter just because the devs got lazy. Once you know the rules, you know the rules, and if you're good enough you can beat the game almost without leveling up at all like that insane person who did the >1 hour speed run on YouTube.

Especially sucks the first time you run into a boss if you're playing on hard and have been going with a pure stealth build the whole time. :/

Leaving the boss fights to a completely different developer was a terrible idea.

I thought this was known as "variety", well, I mean that's what it is allegedly. We all know it's just filler to make the game longer in most games' cases anyway.