Bad Games With Great Stories -

[Dave.]

So I decided to make a contrary to the thread "Great Games With Bad Stories" with "Bad Games With Great Stories".

I don't know if you could unironically call Deadly Premonition a 'Good Game' because with the gameplay... it's kind of uncomfortable. Poor controls, wonky camera system, and hilariously bad Ai. However, the story and characters are what really wrapped the game around for me and made me forgive the awfulness of the game. Francis York Morgan is by far one of my favorite video game protagonists who talks to the player in his head through an imaginary entity called 'Zach'.

 

[Guts Gets Some]

Kane & Lynch Dead Men is as close as this gets for me.

I generally don't play games if I can't have fun with them, but I legit tried (until I did inevitably give up) with this one simply because the characters and story seemed interesting. I'd heard the horror stories of its gameplay and thought I could power through, but I was too naive.

 

[TFT-A9]

Depending on what you think makes a game "bad", you could place some surprising entries in here. Like, say, Planescape: Torment and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Note: I don't actually think either of those games are bad, UNLESS your first instinct with every fucking game you play is to be the video game equivalent of a combat-maniac murderhobo. You try and play PS:T as a murderhobo simulator, you're really REALLY not going to enjoy it. Combat in PS:T is easily the worst, most boring part of it.

 

[Tim Buckley]

"What Remains of Edith Finch" is probably the most extreme example of this.

It's a walking simulator completely carried by superb presentation and thought provoking story.

 

[Titos]

Pretty much most Swery games. Deadly Premonition is carried almost entirely by it's story and characters. D4 is barely a game but the entire cast is so charming it makes it worth playing. The Missing, despite starring a troon is very charming. Swery is the king of making charming characters negate awful gameplay. I would say Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice also fits into this. The gameplay isn't absolutely awful but it's incredibly shallow. The writing and story are so good though that it makes it worth playing, which is hilarious since it's written by the same person who wrote DmC.

 

[Dave.]

Depending on what you think makes a game "bad", you could place some surprising entries in here. Like, say, Planescape: Torment and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

Note: I don't actually think either of those games are bad, UNLESS your first instinct with every fucking game you play is to be the video game equivalent of a combat-maniac murderhobo. You try and play PS:T as a murderhobo simulator, you're really REALLY not going to enjoy it. Combat in PS:T is easily the worst, most boring part of it.

I suppose it's up to your interpretation. I can look at a game and say, mechanically, that game would've bombed, but I still had fun with it given its story and characters. It can also have boring and mundane gameplay with inoffensive mechanics, but still have a great story behind it, but have no replay value and no reason to continue playing even after the game's over. (MW2 campaign, Mafia 3, Spec Ops: The Line (If you're feeling REALLY pretentious))

 

[I Love Beef]

Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII. More of a case of a game with bad gameplay and an average story, but with cool concepts.

The game is an action third person shooter that tries to be both Gungrave OD and Resident Evil 4 but with little to any grasp of what makes them so fun. Everything in this game feels floaty and despite being "dark", it rarely displays hard hitting violence, ordinance and obstacle destruction, and even stuff like gore and blood. Gun customization is completely fucking broken where it's insane and the bullet physics are shallow as shit. The story is also set after Final Fantasy VII and Advent Children. Yeah. I'll let you soak that in.

But, I do like the concepts and the story elements. This game explores not only Vincent's past, but also goes into what is essentially the Planet's Hell of its lifestream to its Armageddon failsafe. The only things that would make it better would be to explaining the other transformations of his Limits and making Deepground even more of a menace, as well as not making this a part of the Compilation of FFVII, but I digress.

 

[The Last Stand]

Mafia III.

It's a GTA clone but without the side activities. It's very repetitive; you have to do damage to a location which includes a stronghold of enemies to progress. For the entire duration of the main game. Imagine doing that 30+ times with little deviation.

The bosses and subject matter are some of the best in gaming. It's in 1960s Louisiana which touches on racism, revenge and loyalty. Its characters are well rounded with their own strengths and weaknesses coupled with superb voice acting and facial expressions.

Shame the gameplay is average at best.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Alpha Protocol. An espionage game with pretty neat, larger than life characters where most of your decisions actually matter.

Sadly the gameplay and especially the gun play is... well, it's not AWFUL, but it's not nearly as good as the other parts.

 

[Guts Gets Some]

Mafia III.

It's a GTA clone but without the side activities. It's very repetitive; you have to do damage to a location which includes a stronghold of enemies to progress. For the entire duration of the main game. Imagine doing that 30+ times with little deviation.

The bosses and subject matter are some of the best in gaming. It's in 1960s Louisiana which touches on racism, revenge and loyalty. Its characters are well rounded with their own strengths and weaknesses coupled with superb voice acting and facial expressions.

Shame the gameplay is average at best.

I actually tried this and gave up very early. It was on par with a Naughty Dog game, and by that I mean, they wanted to make a movie instead of a game.
I'd heard the story was good, but I didn't care either way. The game was so insanely boring, especially for a PS4 era open world game.

 

[Gramh]

American Mcgee's Alice is currently making my head hurt but I enjoy the plot and atmosphere. The combat is so stiff and there's almost no reason for half the weapons to exist, the platforming is floaty and stiff, and there's nothing significant for damage mitigation to some enemies so it's just playing a game of hoping you have enough "ammo" and "health" to survive to kill something to get a "health and ammo" drop to continue on.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Rule of Rose is the ultimate example of this.

I wouldn't call the game bad bad, but there's no denying the game is very flawed gameplay wise, that even by the standards of the genre the combat is awkward and janky.

But it has one of the best stories I've seen in any game, wholly original and fascinating, with a lush, beautiful atmosphere.

 

[HeyYou]

Persona 2. The most brain dead yet somehow time-consuming RPG combat, but it has a good story and really great characters.

 

[JuanButNotForgotten]

The writing and story are so good though that it makes it worth playing

Lol, no, not only they fucked up mythology and rites of vikings, the overall message about mental illness falls flat, because it presented through society, where people killed each other for even less offenses than "whoah, she can hear voices, she is cursed". Also, daddy issues and ending is not worth 4 hours of anyone's life.

My pick is Spec Ops: The Line. Yes, it's gameplay is incredibly shallow cover based third person shooter with bad AI companions. And no, it's not about burning civilians and the whole "no, you are the demons" twist. I liked it because it doesn't present war like some Hollywood "good us vs bad them", but as Hell on Earth, where everyone eventually goes insane and US military does more damage than good, with resulting cover up by CIA killing even more innocent people. But fuck everyone who put it higher than "Apocalypse now".

 

[NIGGER ASS PEE POOPY RAPE]

Kane & Lynch Dead Men is as close as this gets for me.

I generally don't play games if I can't have fun with them, but I legit tried (until I did inevitably give up) with this one simply because the characters and story seemed interesting. I'd heard the horror stories of its gameplay and thought I could power through, but I was too naive.

I just played this, it's not that bad. if the stuttering is why you quit, disabling all the "HID-compliant devices" in device manager fixes that.

 

[WinchesterPremium]

The Witcher III. I'm pretty sure the combat system was just to pad for time in the end.

 

[Guts Gets Some]

I just played this, it's not that bad. if the stuttering is why you quit, disabling all the "HID-compliant devices" in device manager fixes that.

It had nothing to do with performance. I actually got used to the game's style and kinda liked it at first (the bank and escape levels were actually kinda fun), even though it was clunky, until the second chapter, when everything became night. You were in a crowded Japanese nightclub and I had to replay that stage 100 times because it was so poorly designed.

The next one was stealth or something in a park, also at night. Not nearly as frustrating, but not fun either.

And the straw that broke the camel's back was having to save your daughter from a ditch and shoot a guy within 5 seconds in the head driving a construction vehicle. I tried over and over and over and couldn't do it. Worst of all, you HAD TO sit through the cut scene leading up to it each time. I was done after that.

 

[Vault Boy]

I wouldn't call Mafia III bad, but it was so tedious and repetitive outside of missions that I bailed halfway through.

A shame since the story was quite engrossing, the characters compelling, and the setting very well realized.

If the developers find a way to make the gameplay outside of missions worthwhile, I think Mafia IV could be really solid.

 

[Guts Gets Some]

I wouldn't call Mafia III bad, but it was so tedious and repetitive outside of missions that I bailed halfway through.

A shame since the story was quite engrossing, the characters compelling, and the setting very well realized.

If the developers find a way to make the gameplay outside of missions worthwhile, I think Mafia IV could be really solid.

They should just make a CG movie. That was obviously all they wanted to begin with.

 

[JuanButNotForgotten]

That Game of Thrones RPG. Gameplay and graphics were outdated for 10 years or so, but the plot and characters... They've managed to outdone Martin, considering the last books and especially seasons. Also, this game has 4 endings and even one extra if you lose the last fight.