Sacrificing Gameplay for Story

[Mr. Analog]

I've noticed a trend recently; games that have AMAZING stories but crap-tastic gameplay / engines

Case in point:

Bioshock Infinite: Fun story, great setting, below average gunplay, tedious battles with bullet sponges and an annoying boss battle midway through the game.

Remember Me: Interesting story, tons of world building, repetitive combo-based mook battles and drawn out boss fights.

The Last of Us: Great story, amazing world, repetitive encounters, boring foes, poor AI...

It's kind of frustrating, and I'm not going to hold up Half-Life or Portal as shining examples of perfection however they built interesting worlds and strung together fights and puzzles that actually felt like they meant something and were FUN to PLAY

I'm just surprised I guess at how many big titles and even new IP can create such lush worlds and then scrimp on gameplay to the point where I'd rather just watch a let's play than actually frustrate myself through the game (or just turn the difficulty to "Easy" and power through it to get to the meat.

While I was lounging around yesterday I watched a few LPs of The Last of Us and I was shocked at how dumb the AI was, especially since the demo that was released earlier (April?) showed what looked like a more tactical approach to combat, that enemies really could sniff you out, but what you got was more like 3 kinds of gameplay: arena mode (large open area with cover to weave in and out of to outflank your foes), rooms chock full 'o waist high cover (Gears of Bore / corridor battles) and dumpster / ladder / pallet feng shui (i.e. most puzzles involved moving a dumpster, a ladder or finding a pallet). In all cases the enemies are dumb as bricks and as long as you stay in sneak mode you can basically just wait until you figure out their search patterns and crouch-walk your way to victory. And not only do these segments stretch on because you are basically trying to weave your way in and out of pre-defined search patterns but they get artificially lengthened as the game progresses, larger area with more chest high cover just means a larger group of guys to backstab. This is the same gameplay over and over, stretched out between some really interesting story bits.

Which is a shame, these are all amazing looking games that tell great stories but fall flat on boring, uninspired gameplay.

bleh

[Melbosa]

I'll say that I found this a bit in Assassin's Creed III. The game's AI isn't that smart, and cheats to up the difficulty if it needs to.

One game that does NOT suffer from this is the new Tomb Raider.  Fantastic Game Play and Fantastic Story!  One of the best games for sure!!!!!

[Mr. Analog]

Interesting choice!

[Tom]

Makes me think they took that gameplay slider down to make sure their team didn't get overloaded.

[Mr. Analog]

Oddly enough I think that's what happened, particularly with Remember Me, I could imagine a much bigger world that you could explore and maybe find alternate paths in (parkour!), create custom combo chains in the lab and even have more abilities that would tap the whole mind-hacking angle... there's just so much untouched potential there.

With The Last of Us you could have had a game where there were bigger consequences to making noise or using up ammunition. Scavenging basically makes it impossible to run out of ammunition / improvised weapons, some enemies can one hit kill you (which is very cool) but they're dumber than a sack of hammers and easy to avoid, conversely you can take more than a few bullets without getting winded or anything so in areas where they want to make things more challenging they just add more baddies. It completely destroys any level of tension that was suggested in the demo.

I think it's kind of cheap that some games will just jack up how much damage an enemy will take or increase the number of existing foes, I want to be in that desperate situation where I have one round left in the chamber and I have to figure my way out of a situation or even just let adrenalin take over and make a mad dash at the right time.

After seeing so many of these games in action I really have to give props to "Dishonored", it really puts you in situations where you can explore a finely created world and then choose how to engage enemies, sometimes it would lead you to interesting places and very often would put you in situations where you think to yourself "how do I get out of this one?"

Wasted potential I think :-/

[Darren Dirt]

on topic: check out this fascinating pretty short video discussing the connection between Fallout 3/NV (and I guess open-world games in general) and the 18th century Englightenment (or at least one particular author from that time )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvwlt4FqmS0
"The Shandification of Fallout" ( by MrBtongue )


found via a comment on a SuperBunnyHope video "Hundreds of Hours of Content"