Can anything redeem bad gameplay in your eyes?

[Smeggs]

Sure.

Metro 2033 has pretty mediocre gameplay for a shooter, but it wasn't meant to simply be a shooter. The atmosphere and story, and the voice-acting really made me feel like I was in post-apocalypstic Moscow, fighting for my life.

So basically, only the writing is extremely good and gripping/extremely funny. Like piss myself laughing level of funny.

 

[teknoarcanist]

I find there's this spectrum from bad, to mediocre, to great. If gameplay is outright bad, nothing can possibly redeem it. If the gameplay is generally mediocre, some really good "everything else" will make the game palatable. If the gameplay is fantastic, I can deal with having little or no art direction, story, etc.

 

[DesertMummy]

Yes, Case in point, Heavy rain. The gameplay was close to nonexistent, yet it somehow managed to keep you on the edge of your seat through to the end.

 

[Rule Britannia]

Glitches that nag throughout the game. Saints Row 3 is a prime example, it's a spectacular game but the numerous glitches slowly start to hinder me more and more. I was able to save an reload to fix the glitches but doing that always broke the emmersion.

Boring characters aswell. Though it's not a video game the TV series The Walking dead has brilliant characters, they grow as people and you as a viewer get yo experience that, the grumpy, sinical red neck is actually a nice guy the cool friend of the main character isn't who he seems to be. Characters that don't grow or change are boring to make this point worse is when the voice acting for the characters are poor too.

So yeah my biggest problems with games a up above, glitches and boring characters. Are these redeemable? Depending on gameplay definitely, Saints Row 3 kept me playing, vehicles won't deliver screens occasionally don't load the list is long.

Bad character is a general thing, some characters in games are good and build and grow, others do not to redeem bad characters a game needs to have distinctive, fun gameplay.

Yeah, good gameplay redeems those issues.

 

[MoNKeyYy]

It would have to be a really good story. I mean, if I really really reeeaaalllly want to know what happens next in the story I'll forgive the crappy gameplay. Or rather, I'll tolerate the gameplay becasue the story is just that good.

 

[ecoho]

So for Christmas my sister gave me 2 games, Brutal Legend, a game which I have played before and enjoyed, and Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard, a game which I had only heard of and had not much interest in.

Now I gave Eat Lead a try, and right from the tutorial stage I noticed two things, one, this game is hilarious, and two, this game feels like a crappy version of Gears of War.
I told myself, "Well the games incredibly funny at times, so maybe I can endure the gameplay"
I couldn't, at least not at the moment, the gameplay is boring, the levels are boring, and the only thing that I really enjoyed were the dialogues and Matts one liners.
Now Brutal Legend for me is a game that serves as a really good comparison because Brutal Legend also has some pretty bad gameplay, its serviceable and it gets the job in but theres nothing wow about it, and the core gameplay mechanic (The RTS type battles) is also pretty terrible, however unlike Eat Lead, I enjoy Brutal Legend because its world is amazing and oozing with detail and creativity, its characters are hilarious and it has a huge soundtrack filled with amazing metal songs, thats the main reason it got me hooked, because, aside from rather dull gameplay, its an amazing experience and you can see the developers went the extra mile and crafted something with incredible care and love for the source material, as apposed to Eat Lead which, while being incredibly funny, has nothing else going for it. It fells somewhat like someone came up with the idea to parody shooters in general but forgot that they were making a game until the last minute.

/vent
Anyway now thats over, the question is, Can anything in a game redeem bad gameplay for you? Or does bad gameplay ruin the experience regardless?

if you can enjoy playing it while drunk then yeah gameplay not an issue this is why i love too human

 

[triggrhappy94]

Get some friends together and just play the co-op (Probably won't work for Brutal Legands, though), and enjoy the good parts while making fun of the bad.

It's why the Kane and Lynch games are some of my favorite.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Dragon Nest, big time. It's got fun dialogue, characters have personality, the cut-scenes are quite cool, gameplay is enjoyable, but omfg, it looks like CRAP! It's either as good, or worse, than a ps2 game, which is quite amazing for something made in 2011. But honestly, it's charming because of its anime-like art style, even if it doesn't look that great(except the skills, those look awesome!). Oh, and gender-locked classes. But that's ok, you get used to it

But, the enemies, especially the bosses, are quite creative, and I love it to bits ^.^ Go ahead and try it, it's free, and pretty fun~ (Though I must note, it's VERY Asian (Korean to be exact) towards female characters outfits, so if you're easily offended by that... Maybe go through the levels alone, and choose a male class XD)

 

[remnant_phoenix]

If it's bad as in uninteresting, like early Final Fantasies, it can still be good - if the gameplay is just meh rather than bad. If it actually becomes a chore to play through, stupidly difficult or buggy - then no. Make a movie.

On the flipside, great gameplay can't redeem bad story either, in the same way - if it's ignorable/laughable, like in the first Deus Ex, then fine, but if it's really bad, like in Metroid: Other M - which had good gameplay - it's still terrible.

I'm gonna agree with this.

There's definite distinction between mediocre* gameplay and BAD gameplay. Likewise there's a definite distinction between mediocre* story/setting/context and BAD story/setting/context.

(*see also: bland, unoriginal, generally unappealing, outside one's preferences, unexceptional, etc.)

If gameplay is definitively BAD, I can't stick with it. Too Human was like this for me. I couldn't play it for more than 20 minutes because the gameplay was just that bad: unresponsive camera, imprecise controls, guess-and-check gameplay, ridiculous death punishments, etc...

Likewise, if the story/setting/context is definitively BAD, the game is painful to go through no matter how enjoyable the gameplay might be. See the example of Metroid: Other M above. I never even played the game, but watched some videos of the opening cutscenes, just to see what people were going on about. It was god-awful... The voice acting, the overwrought melodrama...and everything I've heard tells me that that stuff gets worse and worse as one progresses through the story. *shudders* I will not play that game, no matter how fun the gameplay is.

The OP's question hinges on how one defines "bad." According to my standards of "bad," my answer is "no." If a game has truly bad gameplay or story/context, I won't put up with it. However, if one of those aspects is mediocre but at least serviceable, and I'm really enjoying the other aspects of the game, I'll keep playing.