Can a good story make up for weak gameplay?

[wgreer25]

Will try to keep everything spoiler free since I will be talking about my recent experience with a game...

So I recently finished Enslaved: and I have to say that it had a wonderful story, excelent voice acting, great character development and development of character relationships without getting sappy, and some of the best facial animations I have seen in any game... but the gameplay is a resounding meh (not bad by any means, just meh)... but I found myself wanting to keep playing to see how the story and how the characters develope. Not GOTY material, but considering that most games now-a-days don't even know what a story is or how to develope a charater, I was pleasantly surprised by Enslaved.

So, to discuss, have you had this experience? Where a great story/character has made you want to finish a game dispite it's gameplay flaws. What was the game, and what about it made you forget it's shortcomings.

 

[zehydra]

Usually I get frustrated enough that the game's story becomes meaningless to me if

-I can't figure out how to play the game
-The game doesn't work (buggy)
-It's boring as hell.

 

[LogicNProportion]

Gentlemen, I direct you to:

http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html

Sure, it's not a story, but the atmosphere of the whole thing makes the experience so much more enjoyable. You wish (see what I did there?) to know why this Unicorn is roaming the lands!

Okay, weaksauce example, but I meant it to a degree. A good story might help balance out below average gameplay. Just as good gameplay may make you forget about a bad story and environment. If this balancing makes something bad into something that's not good...but doesn't have anything WRONG WITH it...then it did it's job. It's delightfully average!

If I can describe that game in one way, without referencing any bits in it would be so: "There's nothing exceptionally great about it...it's just...I can't think of anything bad about it."

 

[oplinger]

The gameplay has to work with the story if it's poor imo. I like things to make sense.

 

[sms_117b]

Heavy Rain is pretty much the epitome of this for me. While some of the more hectic moments were fun, the gameplay was still fairly mediocre, but the story and characters were so great I played through it three times.

I'm pretty much in 100% agreement with this, there were moments when the controls felt very natural but others that just sucked and broke the game, but a game that almost moves me to tears, as I do CPR on a characters child has an epic story and immersive experiance

 

[Matt_LRR]

Heavy Rain is pretty much the epitome of this for me. While some of the more hectic moments were fun, the gameplay was still fairly mediocre, but the story and characters were so great I played through it three times.

I had the opposite reaction - I liked what they were doing with the story, but that gameplay was so poor I had to push myself through it, then put it away, and wouldn't play through it again to save my life.

That game was seriously hampered by it's gameplay, and failed to be really excellent in large part because of it.

-m

 

[SomeBritishDude]

Apsolutely. Otherwise I wouldn't play old school adventure games.

 

[Johnnyallstar]

It works both ways. There are games where the gameplay is so good that people feel let down by the story, and then there are games where the story is so good, people feel let down by the poor gameplay.

 

[Serenegoose]

It depends, really. I can take a game being mediocre in the gameplay department as long as it's not a chore to push through it, or if it's not always a chore. I was compelled to finish Dragon Age because I was engaged with the story and the world, but the actual act of finishing the game was an utter bore.

So yeah, a good story clearly to me balances out weak gameplay to some degree.

 

[wgreer25]

Heavy Rain is pretty much the epitome of this for me. While some of the more hectic moments were fun, the gameplay was still fairly mediocre, but the story and characters were so great I played through it three times.

I had the opposite reaction - I liked what they were doing with the story, but that gameplay was so poor I had to push myself through it, then put it away, and wouldn't play through it again to save my life.

That game was seriously hampered by it's gameplay, and failed to be really excellent in large part because of it.

-m

I love this example. I actually didn't finish Heavy Rain, it obvously didn't pull me in that well. And yes, I didnt' enjoy the gameplay at all. And the story just wasn't good enought to make me want to play more. Enslaved made me want to keep playing to see what would happen. I don't want it to sound like Enslaved has horrible gameplay, because it doesn't, it is just not on par with some other big 3rd person action/platformers.

 

[Lolth17]

OT: Yep, sure can. I can't tell you how many games I have played where I didn't really enjoy the gameplay but I played long into the night to see the story. Heavy Rain and Alan Wake are two prime examples off the top of my head. Oh, and Dragon Age Origins. I hated the gameplay but the story/characters kept me hooked the whole way through.

 

[Heart of Darkness]

It can, but developers should never count on that. Games are, first and foremost, games, not novels.

 

[EightGaugeHippo]

Morrowind...

 

[metal eslaved]

Legacy of kain soul reaver series,this game gameplay was so boring , but the story hooked me from the beginning i couldn`t stay away for one day without thinking what was gonna happen next.

 

[archvile93]

A little, but not nearly enough to make the game more than bad rather than an abomination.

 

[zhemis]

I played through Outpost 2 just for the story. Gameplay wasn't terrible the levels just weren't any fun.

So, yeah, sometimes.

 

[voetballeeuw]

Isn't gameplay what makes a game? If the game play is horrible but the story is great, shouldn't it be a book or movie then? At least that's how I feel about it.