Games with good gameplay but terrible story that made you stop playing

[In Search of Username]

Just Cause 2.

Although it wasn't really the story that stopped me playing, it was more the fact that you could access all the fun features of that game from the very beginning (all the crazy grappling-hook-parachute-etc. shenanigans), hell, even just from the demo so there wasn't much point buying the game in the first place. So really the only reason to play the missions would be if they had a really good story to keep me interested. Sadly, that was VERY MUCH not the case. So I just fuck around after the first couple of missions permanently now.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

The original Borderlands made me quit a few times to be honest. I'd get into it, enjoy my time until level 20 or so, then get really bored because I hadn't paid attention to the story and stop playing.

I was so out of touch with the story in borderlands when the main bad guy of the game dies at the end (i refuse to spoilertag that) I literally asked "who the fuck was that." The friend I was cooping with didn't know either.

I did it recently with Vanquish. That game has so much dialog (for a linear action game at least) and I just can't bring myself to care about anything anyone says.

 

[Ticklefist]

I'm struggling to find the Yin to Counter-Strike's Yang.

Thought of one. Homefront. My god that was terrible. How does one manage to screw up so badly that people don't even want to finish the 6 hour campaign they've just paid 50 bucks for?

 

[Scarim Coral]

Advance Wars: Days or ruin.

It's mainly because I cannot relate to their situation since so far I haven't been in a apolcaypse environment.
Yeah it's really hard to be engage in a story where the nation you're on deliberately (by a nutjob) reignite their war with the other nation and putting the rookie protaganist as the leader of the new rebel group because he still full of hoped. I find it hard to sympathiesthose desperate ill people to attacked the group under a false quise of a cure/ mircale thing.

Also I couldn't get over the whole dark and edgy tone compared to the fun and colourful of the previous game despite I find those game to be unreal (war as hell didn't much apply to them) but I still enjoyed the hell of it.

 

[Strategia]

Earth 2160 hands down. I like the gameplay, it takes the best of what made the Earth 2150 series so fun to play, but the story - and the voice acting even more so - was so incredibly bad that I just couldn't stomach playing the campaign to its end.

 

[blackdwarf]

Persona 3. I'm planning to start playing it again, but after the amazing Persona 4 I just could't stand the the way the story was told. Nobody of the cast seems really interested in the mystery and that makes it hard for me to care.

 

[Trippy Turtle]

None really. The only time it would happen is if it was a sequel to a game I loved, that had an awesome story. So if Jak 2 had a bad story and mediocre gameplay I would stop because I like my memories of The Precursor Legacy intact. I'd still play it if it had awesome gameplay, but would pretend it was a completely different game or something.

 

[Mordekaien]

Borderlands 1 and Kingdoms of Amalur had fun gameplay, but the story was so generic I suffered it only through the half of the game. After that I was unable to finish both titles.

 

[Sansha]

Personally if I want a story, I'll read a book or watch a movie. If I want to play a game, I'll go for gameplay.

Just Cause 2, for example, has a fucking ridiculous story that exists solely as a restraint so the player doesn't literally destroy everything on the game map too quickly.

I couldn't care less about story in games. My favorites are JC2, L4D2, Worms World Party and The Sims. Even in single player games that are well-written like Half-Life, Fallout, Elder Scrolls, Hitman, Ass Creed and Portal, I couldn't give less of a shit about the stories. Very few stories can get me sucked in to their environments and role-play because I'm not here to be told a story - I'm here to play a game.

WoW, Fallout 3, Blood and Skyrim succeeded. Everything else is just so much white noise.

 

[Deshin]

Mass Effect 3 for me. Woah woah put those pitchforks down.

After getting the game on release and playing about halfway into it I just got so bored I put it down and haven't gone back yet to finish it. The first game set the tone and the plot (first act) and the second game pulled off the team building and the hunt brilliantly (second act), but when the third came around it just seemed bland and boring. Just a contrived series of fetch quests going round and doing X because of Y reason that you could tell were just honestly shoe-horned in to pad out the game's length. The whole bit with the Turians is a perfect example of this. But I suppose the gameplay was rather lackluster too... all the scenes felt very shooting gallery and forced. More often than not I'd walk into a corridor, then a large room and see all the convieniently placed chest high walls and think "oh christ not this again".

The first game gripped me, the second game gripped me, the third just kind of left me gawking thinking "seriously?"

 

[Ix Rebound]

HAWX and Army of Two come to mind. The former because of the ready willingness of mercenaries to die in mass numbers and the questionable resources of a PMC come to mind. In the span of a handful of missions, I destroyed an air power greater than all the nations in Africa and South America combined and, somehow, the US was still doing badly in the war. Army of Two lost all credibility with the hijacked aircraft carrier. Destroyed I can see. But hijacked?!. That's a vessel in a fleet with more than 15,000 personnel plenty of whom are armed. One does not seize a ship that is home to 5,000 sailors and marines by force of arms. At best, assuming the enemy somehow managed to get the tens of thousands of troops on the vessel without taking absurd casualties on the approach, an approach it should be mentioned against a force that wields more firepower than most nations, then the ship would simply be scuttled. Seizing full control of the ship assumes control of both engine room and bridge and in between those two points would be thousands of armed defenders in incredibly complex terrain.

And then two dudes manage to take it back in the space of an hour

 

[Andy of Comix Inc]

If a game is really fun to play, with a horrible story, I can forgive the story's shortcomings COMPLETELY. Or, if the atmosphere is good but the narrative or script are bad. You know - exceptional elements will make up for less-than-exceptional ones. This is the case with both media, I think.

But if the game is merely okay - not bad, but not great either - with a horrible story, that's usually when I stop. I tried to play Red Faction: Armageddon recently and the gameplay was... fine, yeah, it wasn't awful. But the story made me genuinely angry. I was very close to clawing my own face off it was so fucking stupid. So I didn't press through that one.

 

[Rob Robson]

Very self explanatory. There is a recent debate that, if games do the "gamey" thing right, one can overlook a story simply because stories have NO place on games. Just like how a music videos dont NEED the visuals as long the music is ok.

So, care to make a list of games that fit this criteria for you?

Half-Life 2
Red Faction 2
Red Faction: Guerilla
Far Cry 1 and 2
TimeShift (or TimeShit as it should be called)
Every Crysis game ever (the utterly most low brow thing on the planet)
Borderlands

To be honest, I don't know why I bother with these FPS games, the only good ones in like a million years were Bioshock: Infinite and Dishonoured.

 

[Longstreet]

The Max Payne snip

Ehm, you COULD skip the MP3 cutscenes.

OT; Like most people here, i can't really care bout the story if the gameplay is alright. Take for example Bulletstorm. Story was a bit screwed, but i liked playing it i didn't care at all.

Stories for me get interesting when i am reading a book or watch a movie.

However, a game can have the most interesting and well designed story, but if the gameplay is fucked it will disappear off my Harddrive real quick.

 

[Connor Lonske]

fallout 3. not even a fan of the original games, i just thought after i got to broken steal things got really really dumb.

also the gameplay was better in new vegas anyways (if only i could get the UI sounds to work again).

 

[go-10]

the thing is story vs gameplay goes both ways

Ninja Gaiden, Resident Evil, Borderlands 2, Devil May Cry have SHIT stories but yet gameplay was really good and more importantly fun, so the story as campy as it was became interesting due to good gameplay

The Walking Dead, Heavy Rain, Half Life 2, Bioshock Infinite the gameplay is so-so but the stories are SO amazing that you keep playing the game through the end, maybe even play it multiple times

so when it comes down to it really good gameplay or a really good story make a game fun and enjoyable, a combination of both makes a game awesome, so in the end both are important while all the same neither matters

 

[Sansha]

fallout 3. not even a fan of the original games, i just thought after i got to broken steal things got really really dumb.

also the gameplay was better in new vegas anyways (if only i could get the UI sounds to work again).

I'm curious; could you please explain your standpoint on this?

 

[Malkav]

Just Cause 2.

Although it wasn't really the story that stopped me playing, it was more the fact that you could access all the fun features of that game from the very beginning (all the crazy grappling-hook-parachute-etc. shenanigans), hell, even just from the demo so there wasn't much point buying the game in the first place. So really the only reason to play the missions would be if they had a really good story to keep me interested. Sadly, that was VERY MUCH not the case. So I just fuck around after the first couple of missions permanently now.

This. The story was just idiotic, lame and short. Missions reach from awesome to dull and repetitive.

The story even kind of ruins the fun once it's over. If you were nothing but a bored actionhero-terrorist on vacation who maybe even HAS to do this stuff (like the guy from Crank), that would be fine. If you were just some ass who likes working for bloody religious extremists, guerilla revolutionaries WHO ALREADY WON, and ruthless drug barons, fine. But the story makes you the "hero" with a just cause, to fight a dictatorship by creating chaos. It makes about as much sense as a Stephen Seagal movie, but who cares?
But after the damn short story, you won, and when you keep playing, you're really just playing a terrorist. Someone said Rico is like a chemo-therapy, the country is the patient and the dictator is cancer. The cancer is long gone, why is Rico still re-enacting 9/11 with kidnapped passenger planes and helping murderers?

 

[WindKnight]

Well, my good old go-to for this is Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within. No real gameplay complaints, but ye gods did the horrible mess they made of characters just kill any interest I had in the game.

in a similar vein, Comic Jumper is very much a game that lives or dies by its sense of humour, and for me it just DIED, with the humour in the demo level way too mean spirited for me (but then I spent ages trying to save the female sidekick, not realizing your supposed to leave her be blown up for a punchline)