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

Connor Lonske

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Sep 30, 2008
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Sansha said:
Connor Lonske said:
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?
ok. well ignoring that it butchers the continuity of the older games (that i don't really care about), the fact that the real ending of the game isn't definitive at all, even if you put heavily poisonous chemicals into the water suply of pretty much all of the wasteland killing anyone that isn't enclave (eg a normal human genetically). dispite of this the wasteland however still seems to be doing pretty ok anyways.

this annoys me heavily because in my asshole run through the game this basically made his big evil deed (other than blowing up megaton) void entirely. because of this i didn't have much interest in continuing much forward with the game then i already have.

(also fuck you captcha)
 

runic knight

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Mar 26, 2011
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krazykidd said:
Radiata stories . That game bored me to tears with it's story and i didn't care .

Every sandbox game , ever . I can't stand sandbox games for this very reason .
Actually, I was going to say I couldn't think of any until you mentioned that one. Radiata stories I wanted to like but the story just sucked out what little enjoyment I got from the game and I got board and dropped it pretty fast.
 

vid87

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May 17, 2010
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I think Grandia somewhat qualifies (for the record, my disk, for the Playstation mind, keeps crashing randomly, which makes everything worse). I remember somewhat enjoying it years ago and I tried playing it recently - the combat is fine if a bit repetitive, but the story and dialogue (far as I've gotten) are painful. I might try again, but I'm not eager about it.
 

Fleetfiend

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Jun 1, 2011
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I would say Dragon's Dogma, but I played it anyway because it was more the writing sucked than the story. But the writing sucked a lot. I still like the game (guilty pleasure alert).
 

Zen Bard

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Sep 16, 2012
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I felt this way about the original "Torchlight".

Like most people, I got it as a cure for my "Diablo" fix and I found the game play in this respect okay.

But the story and voice acting were so bad, I could hardly stand it.

Finally forced myself to finish it (because that's just how I am). But I haven't touched it since.
 

-Dragmire-

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Mar 29, 2011
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Terranigma, I was really enjoying the game until I hit a couple plot points that sent out a "shit ending" signal to me. I looked up the game script and read the rest of the story, it was not something I would have liked in any way and stopped playing. Endings are important to me, while I can live with mediocre endings, really bad endings to 60+ hour games get me depressed about the wasted time and potential.
 

Sansha

There's a principle in business
Nov 16, 2008
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Malkav said:
In Search of Username said:
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?
Because blowing shit up is fun. My Rico has destroyed literally everything on Panau and only now has the game lost most of its luster to me because there are no more gas sations to send sky-high, wind turbines to break and watch unravel or military bases to strafe with a stolen superjet. I massively enjoy the hookshotting and parachute-farting. It's almost superhero and hugely cathartic, ridiculous fun.

The story might as well have not existed. The climax mission is the most aggressively retarded thing I've ever seen in video gaming and even then it didn't bother me, because stealing a military helicopter and destroying fuel towers never gets old for me.

Try letting go of any sense of realism and what makes sense and just have some fun. I paid exactly zero attention to the cause Rico is fighting for, be it the main "story" (massive airquotes) or the factions - I'm here to blow shit up and get paid for it.

Connor Lonske said:
Sansha said:
Connor Lonske said:
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?
ok. well ignoring that it butchers the continuity of the older games (that i don't really care about), the fact that the real ending of the game isn't definitive at all, even if you put heavily poisonous chemicals into the water suply of pretty much all of the wasteland killing anyone that isn't enclave (eg a normal human genetically). dispite of this the wasteland however still seems to be doing pretty ok anyways.

this annoys me heavily because in my asshole run through the game this basically made his big evil deed (other than blowing up megaton) void entirely. because of this i didn't have much interest in continuing much forward with the game then i already have.

(also fuck you captcha)
I agree that the gameplay in New Vegas is better than that of Fallout 3, and has a much better structured story and faction system. It's absorbant - working for Mr House was an absolute joy for me, as well as collecting and modifying the unique weapons. The DLC's are laughably terrible... yeah. They're putrid shit.

The problem with Fallout 3 is that being a bastard is completely without consequence. The game tries so hard to make you into the hero, so dropping the FEV and whatever else you do doesn't matter.

What I liked about Fallout 3 over NV was the environment. The titanic game world, varied characters and all sorts of spots to visit. Exploring NV, especially being forced around that fucking road for the first main quests, bored me to tears.

So yeah, I agree. Fallout 3 is still one of my favorite games ever. Probably because I never play evil.
 

Abomination

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Dec 17, 2012
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I was put off Final Fantasy XII by the character designs and the personality (or lack thereof) of certain characters. It was a real mixed bag. The combat system was great from a "thank god we don't have a constant zoom in, zoom out, strike a pose, victory dance for every fight" system, I liked how it tried to be more tactical BUT it was still a console game that naturally suck at multi-party member real time tactics.

But it was the characters that really made me stop playing... and I LIKED the story.
 

Collegeboy21

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Jan 26, 2010
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Two games with good gameplay made me stop because of crap story: Dragon's Dogma and Borderlands. The combat in Dragon's Dogma was awesome fun and the visuals were decent. The "WTF" story couldn't keep me interested so I sold the game. I borrowed Borderlands from a friend who loves it and insisted I try it. The guns were fun and I kinda dug the art style, but there was no story to speak of and I just couldn't get myself invested in the game. He made me play it with him co-op, which was admittedly more fun, but there was still no story to invest in that I could see and I gave it back to him.
 

aguspal

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Aug 19, 2012
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What the fuck.

Does someone ACTUALLY quit games than they THEMSELVES consider are good in gameplay (You know, the whole reason of why you are playing a videoGAME in the first place?) just for having a bad story?...

I mean... I just... wow. People cant be this stupid. I think... the only reason I MIGHT say this situation is legit is if they completly, UTTERLY destroy a history in a sequel of a great series... and even then I have a hard time trying to understand how this is even possible.



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...
 

Redingold

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Mar 28, 2009
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Mass Effect 3, I guess. After playing through it once, I was so disappointed by its story that I haven't picked it up since, despite having multiple complete playthroughs for the other games. I even liked most of its gameplay, there was good enemy variety, the weapons and armour system worked, with the modding system, and the weight affecting your power cooldown, and the powers were reasonably fun to use. But its story was just so awful and nonsensical, dismissing previous choices that really should've been more important like the Rachni or the Collector Base, making Cerberus somehow more competent than every other organisation in the galaxy (seriously, they invaded the salarian homeworld, the Citadel, multiple Alliance colonies and Tuchanka. What the fuck? Even Sovereign and his geth fleet couldn't invade the Citadel without Saren and the geth attacking from the inside and disabling the station's defences), the Crucible, the terrible ending, I just couldn't stomach playing it through again.
 

Malkav

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Jan 17, 2012
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Sansha said:
Because blowing shit up is fun. My Rico has destroyed literally everything on Panau and only now has the game lost most of its luster to me because there are no more gas sations to send sky-high, wind turbines to break and watch unravel or military bases to strafe with a stolen superjet. I massively enjoy the hookshotting and parachute-farting. It's almost superhero and hugely cathartic, ridiculous fun.

The story might as well have not existed. The climax mission is the most aggressively retarded thing I've ever seen in video gaming and even then it didn't bother me, because stealing a military helicopter and destroying fuel towers never gets old for me.

Try letting go of any sense of realism and what makes sense and just have some fun. I paid exactly zero attention to the cause Rico is fighting for, be it the main "story" (massive airquotes) or the factions - I'm here to blow shit up and get paid for it.
Have you tried BOLO-patch and slowmo-patch? They let you use infinite grappling hooks that don't break, so you can tie several starting planes to trees and watch them circle around. Or tie boats or cars to these planes. Or tie every soldier in a base to a jet and then fly off with them swinging around you. As long as you can think of stuff to tie people and other stuff to, you won't get bored.
Maybe the story didn't ruin it, but it could have easily made it more awesome
 

ScrabbitRabbit

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Longstreet said:
ScrabbitRabbit said:
The Max Payne snip
Ehm, you COULD skip the MP3 cutscenes.
Not all of them. They were used to cover up loading screens. Whenever I tried to skip I was greeted with a little flashing "loading" message. It was a pretty widespread complaint. Even some SSD users suffered from it!
 

JellySlimerMan

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aguspal said:
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.
 

jdogtwodolla

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Feb 12, 2009
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I've never actually got to the point of "Stopped playing" but there have been quite a lot of games that I feel played very well but had shit story. Gears of War 3 and Bullet Storm for instance. I also can't stand the concept of BLEED but that's just me.

Different but almost related, I've chosen to never start playing most of the Pokemon games ever except for the most egregious one in the story department, Colosseum. I don't know how that decision even happened.
 

Pink Gregory

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MindFragged said:
I didn't replay farenheit/indigo prophecy once I'd gotten one of the main endings because I was that disappointed. I also went and traded it in the next day. Does that count?

Edit: It has also put me off trying more recent Quantic Dream releases, for fear of more of the same, so.... yeah. Really didn't like that story.
Well it's not like it would have had any replay value anyway...
 

CBanana

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Aug 10, 2010
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It seems that nowadays I need more context for what I'm doing in a game. I played hybrid tower defense/FPS game Sanctum and it had really good mechanics, giving a lot of strategy to its tower defense mechanics and was at the same time a fast frenetic FPS game. However, since there's barely any plot, I quickly tired of the game because it felt like what I was doing was meaningless.

I remember also playing Warcraft III which had solid gameplay but eventually the plot holes kept piling up that it eventually wore me out from playing the game.
 

LAGG

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Jun 23, 2011
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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.