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

[JellySlimerMan]

Never happened, unless unskippable counts as terrible.

The opposite happens all the time. Doesn't matter how good a story is, if the game is bad I won't play it.

But there is the prevalent idea that story is just something that shouldn't be there, that gameplay ALWAYS triumph even when you have a shitty story.

Oh, and if people skip the cutscenes because the story is terrible, then you are kinda making the point that if it wasn't skipable, then you wouldn't be able to play it at all.

Good thing that you can skip it, right?

 

[Tyelcapilu]

The closest I can come is the opposite, where the gameplay is utter shite but the story is great, so I give up.
Only two games this happened with were cave story and mass effect.
Mass Effect (the first) because it had the most unbearable inventory system I have ever seen and that fucking MAKO.
Cave Story because I fucked up on the plot and I didn't want to continue knowing what I did and (because Cave Story really just isn't my genre) I didn't want to re-do everything. I still love the game though.

Actually, I'm 90% I've played a couple of fun games that I had to quit because of how unbearably awful the voice acting and plot was. Grating on my ears whenever I play. I just can't quite remember what, probably due to purging it from my mind.

 

[JellySlimerMan]

For the record; the inverse, aka good story but fail gameplay (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, all of those "art" games, looking at you. Althougt your story was/is usually as shit as your gameplay but whatever) dosnt appeals to me at all. Why play a horrible game gameplaywise just to see the story? Go watch it in youtube or something...

Maybe the story is about "Earning your happiness" and the audience thinks that suffering thought the gameplay will make the experience more immersive, or more in tune to what the character is suffering.

 

[hazabaza1]

Heavy Rain

stories are SO amazing

haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
hahaha
ha
heh

OT: I dunno, doesn't really work that way for me but I have stopped playing a dull/average game because it had nothing going for it in terms of narrative whilst I might have continued were the story decent.

Stuff like Torchlight, Baldur's Gate, Modern Warfare 2, Hydrophobia. They're not bad (well okay Hydrophobia is. It's fucking awful) but they just get really dull really quickly and I end up sitting in my chair thinking "why am I bothering to continue this?"

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I guess the closest thing for me would be Final Fantasy X, but even then, it was only two aspects of the gameplay that were good (the battle system was great, and Blitzball was a fun minigame. The rest of the changes to the mechanics? Not so much.) The story and voice acting blew, though, the music just reminded me of Christmas carols, and with the world map gone, there just wasn't enough gameplay left to carry it, even if the few things that were well done were really, truly well done.

Before you jump on me about the music, listen to this and tell me the part after the intro doesn't sound like the second part of the verse to Silent Night played over and over again:

 

[negimafan587]

Just cause 2... I already have adhd and like my games to be a little focused. This game was just to far spread imo and suffered because of it. Also the voice acting was horrible, And I usually love open world games but this one just seemed lack anything interesting.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

For the record; the inverse, aka good story but fail gameplay (Dragon Age, Mass Effect, all of those "art" games, looking at you. Althougt your story was/is usually as shit as your gameplay but whatever) dosnt appeals to me at all. Why play a horrible game gameplaywise just to see the story? Go watch it in youtube or something...

Well, Silent Hill games have shitty gameplay but it is justified by the character and the story. And because, you know, you are not supposed to feel fun in a horror game or be empowered by the combat.

"Not fun" doesn't equal "shitty" if the game was never aiming for fun in the first place. The gameplay of Silent Hill is still very enjoyable. Though, as a horror title, it does kind of require context to work. Still, I was thoroughly unimpressed with the actual storytelling of the first game and, yet, I enjoyed it immensely. It had a mediocre story, but it was a superbly crafted game, so I enjoyed it.

Silent Hill 2 is my favourite because it merges the superb mechanics and aesthetics (audio as well as visual) of the first game with a compelling narrative. A good story can definitely enhance a game, but a game that lacks one will still be enjoyable if it's well made.

 

[Baron von Blitztank]

For me it would be Dark Souls.
The gameplay was great, the boss fights were fantastic but I just lost all motivation to proceed once I reached Anor Londo. I had no idea who the fuck I was talking to, where the fuck I was, what the fuck I'm fighting and why the fuck I should care. All I seemed to be doing was going through places and killing dudes so I can go to more places and kill different dudes with seemingly no effect on myself or the world around me.

 

[ShipofFools]

Final Fantasy 8. Everybody was talking about that game, so I got it for my little brother's playstation.
The story of that game went out of control REALLY fast, and left me confused and bored. I never finished disc 2.

 

[plugav]

I've never finished Fallout 3 or any of The Elder Scrolls games, if that counts. It's not that the stories were especially bad, but they never engaged me enough to play through them.

 

[Gecko clown]

Dishonored. I managed to complete it but never went to replay it. I kept telling myself I'd do a "no deaths" run to get the good ending, but the writing, characters, and world are just so dull, which is a shame because they clearly spent a lot of time making very interesting lore. The problem was there were no characters, the entire world seemed to be inhabited by guards/overseers/mobsters and as a result the world felt empty.

My favorite example of a good world is Arkham City because it feels alive, largely due to the incredible conversations the prisoners have. I have yet to do a run through of that game without finding something new (I'm currently on my 11th run not counting New Game +). There's a conversation about what a guys supervillain gimmick would be. There's a conversation about Crazy Quilt and there are some straight up hilarious lines in just the random conversations you hear snippets of.

The only conversation from Dishonored I can remember is:
Guard 1: How are you?
Guard 2: Blow off chauffer!

 

[Pulse]

A story can save a game, but it can never kill it.

Although, Rage probably comes closest. I might have put up with all the boring driving if it had an actual story.

 

[nettkenneth]

it's hard to answer this i will excuse quite a few gameplay issues if the story and i will excuse a bad story if the gameplay is solid...generally i will keep the games that provides the best atmosphere for fun "just cause 2" or those stories that i remember months later.

that said Max Payne 3 made me want to kill Max myself and play another more interesting protagonist but i finished it and i really don't feel like i need to play it again.

 

[ksn0va]

None, but there have been games that I stopped playing because of bad gameplay despite having a good story.

 

[ksn0va]

the thing is story vs gameplay goes both ways

Ninja Gaiden, Resident Evil, Borderlands 2, Devil May Cry, Half Life 2 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, 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

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I've rarely found a game with a story so bad that I wanted to stop playing... though games that lack a good, compelling narrative (Farcry 3 for example) just don't pull me in like games with good stories.

So yeah, games where I've found the story dull enough to not bother getting through rough gameplay patches are...

Borderlands
Farcry 3
Final Fantasy 13
Resident Evil 5
Paper Mario: Sticker Star

 

[Jared Domenico]

Every MMORPG.

Then again, those brush into 'terrible gameplay' territory like a virgin's hand into a pair of panties.

 

[Zeldias]

Blue Dragon. A friend of mine just skips the cinematics and runs through it, but I can't even do that. It's just so corny. And the music! Ugh.

 

[Siege_TF]

Chrono Cross. I just ran out of steam a bit after the body switch and a million and one miniquests for NPCs that served no appearant purpose and had no obvious direction. Great gameplay and graphics for it's time but it just lost cohesion.