Can a good story save poor or medicore gameplay for you?

[wgreer25]

I found this to be true in Enslaved. The gameplay was not the best (also not the worst). But I found the relationship between the two main characters to be riviting. It wasn't an over the top, "Hollywood" (read as crapy) love story. It felt real, and I wanted to see it through to the end dispite some gameplay faults.

 

[The Breadcrab]

Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard had borderline painful gameplay, but the premise and execution of the story was enough to see me through it. There needs to be more parody stories in games.

Also, Enslaved had loose controls and an iffy camera but a pretty good story.

 

[100tacks]

Yes. Poor or mediocre game play is only a deal-breaker if the story is also crap.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

Sometimes. It really depends though. For instance, inFamous 2 didn't have a very good story, but the gameplay was fantastic and I ended up beating it and having a ton of fun with it, while LA Noire has an excellent story with less than great gameplay and I haven't played it as much.

Certain types of games I play for story, others I play for gameplay. I'm a big fan of Gears of War and Metal Gear Solid, so I like both ends of the spectrum. But is a bad game has a decent story, I'll give it more of a chance than I would if it were a bad game with a bad story.

We all like games that mix good gameplay with a good story like Portal 2, though.

 

[Fourspaces]

I'd say that it depends on what the gameplay does. I mean, if the game mechanics get in the way of the plot...well, i'll likely not realise how good the plot is before quitting the game. But I think if the gameplay is functional and does the job, a good story and plot can go a long way to making the game a buy. I mean, its just another way of getting people interested in the game. If a dev wants to make their game stand on story, it seems fine to me.

 

[Kalabrikan]

If the game with a good setting/story overfocuses on its bad gameplay like Morrowind, I tend not to play it. However, if the focus of the game is almost exclusively the story, such as in Planescape: Torment, I tend not to care about the gameplay too much.

 

[King Toasty]

No. What separates games from movies is the gameplay. If it sucks, I'm either not going to buy it, or never gonna play it.

That said, story is hugely important in a game. I try to look for both wherever possible.

 

[Strain42]

I have played games with bad gameplay and good stories and felt disappointment and joy from title to title

I have played games with bad stories and good gameplay and felt disappointment and joy from title to title.

So yeah, I guess my answer boils down to "it depends" If the gameplay is REALLY horrendous, I may not consider it worth it. This is actually a bit of a common case when it comes to older games that imo didn't age well.

 

[StrappingYoungLad]

Bioshock
Dragon Age
Metal Gear

 

[Amondren]

If it's beatable then yes, If its troublesome and hard to master ok I will carry on but if its a glitch that won't let me continue screw that.

 

[Drexlor]

The Metal Gear Solid series has awesome storytelling. Not that the gameplay was bad, it just took me a long time to get used to the controls.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Very rarely. If I'm not having fun, I'll go do something else. If I'm playing a game I want good gameplay, story is just an excellent bonus to have. If I'm looking purely for story, I'll go read a book.

 

[chaosfalling]

Dragon Age is a good shout. Not into those class of RPGs, but the story kept me intrigued to the bitter end.

Dragonage etc (In my opinion naturally)

why do people hate on dragon age's gameplay so much? It was balanced, fun and challanging in my opinion. Maybe it's because of the vastly superior PC version that I played.

I had the PC version too. I'm not claiming its gameplay is bad by any stretch, just that its not my type of RPG.

Funny thing is, I actually knew I'd dislike the gameplay before buying the game, but I went ahead and bought it anyway because of the BioWare tag, knowing the story would be enough to keep me hooked.

 

[vazzaroth]

Assassin's Creed 1, gameplay got very repetitive and boring, but enjoyed the story tremendously

seconded.

I never would have finished the last 1/3 of the game if I wasn't desperate to devour as much of the conspiracy theory they were slowly revealing as possible.

Edit: Just to throw my 2 cent in on DA:

DA 1 was a game I originally only played for the Gameplay. IDK if the people that didn't like it haven't played played classic RPGs like Balder's Gate or have no Tabletop experience and were expecting something else or what, but the combat and character development were amazing.

At first I felt the story was generic, LOTRO-like evil army vs treacherous humans stock, but as I delved into the setting I realized it had alot more going for it, and it started to remind me of Warhammer quite a bit. However neither of these were enough to keep me playing after my only options became dumb the difficulty down to virtually auto-pilot or keep getting killed over and over again... (Specifically at the dragon fight during the ash quest...)

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Very rarely. If I'm not having fun, I'll go do something else. If I'm playing a game I want good gameplay, story is just an excellent bonus to have. If I'm looking purely for story, I'll go read a book.

Why? A game can convey a far more involved and therefore interesting story than a book.

But have any actually done that? And has the awful gameplay detracted from the experience?

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

isnt that why people like jrpgs?

edit: sorry about that. but for me gameplay is more important. And to me, its rare for a game to have a story thats more than decent. mainly because the npcs in games cant act, they cant emote like in movies (and in books you have your imagination to get them to act for you).