I think story and art are very important, it's just some games don't need it. GOW3 pretty much just said screw it and tried to let you kill as many gods as possible, and that was fun. On the other hand a doubt KoTOR would be anywhere near as good if it had a bad storyline or plot twist, same goes for Bioshock.
My issue is when you completly sacrafice gameplay for story, graphics, and art. For example FF12 and 13. I thought they had great stories, mostly enjoyable characters (Vaan...well yeah), and all that worked well. But it was very light in the gameplay aspect. In FF12 all you had to do was initate combat, and the gambit system did the rest. In FF13 you only controlled 1 character and all you had to do was auto-attack. Later on you had to stay on your toes with the paradigm system, but still, there was hardly any character control.
It's fun everyonce in a while to play a game that is more like a book then a game. But at the same time games can't exactly cop out on gameplay. COD dosen't have to do a good storyline because most people just want it for the MP, on the other hand a game play FF or an RPG is all about the story. You sort of need that balance. It's why I love MGS4. Even though the cutscenes are sometimes insanly long, the story is fantastic, and the gameplay is great as well.
