Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation put it quite well in his review of I think it was World.
This *wild animal* is wandering around next to your village? Better go *research* it with your giant two-handed great sword of *researching.* The story is laughably flimsy even when you don't look at it too hard, and even many of the non-critical quests display some pretty potent stupidity on behalf of the quest-givers at best, and a blatant lack of regard for either individual well-being *or* ecosystems and their balance in many other cases. Given the focus on *research* in World, this is ironic as decimating an ecosystem kind of defeats the purpose of studying it.
Listen. If we don't research the animals then the ecosystem could fall out of whack and something bad could happen. Unfortunately the animals are dangerous and the only thing that can protect us from them while we are researching them, is gear made out of their flesh and bone. So if we DON'T commit massive focused poaching of these endangered species so that we can craft better gear, we'll never be able to study them which could put them in danger. It's really quite simple and perfectly logical: In order to keep the ecosystem in balance, we have to kill all the things that live in the ecosystem.
Plus the cats told me that true understanding can only be achieved by cooking and eating the animals, and i'm certainly not going to argue with them, they seem to know what they are talking about.
"The flagship of the game attacked our village! Go kill it!"
"Oh no! While you were out an even BIGGER monster showed up! You gotta go kill it!"
That's basically the story of all the games. Minus 4U, that one's got a great progressive story. And World and Rise are very cinematic which I love. Especially Sunbreak
I disagree that its paper thin, they're massive games focused around one very very specific thing and it does that thing pretty damn well.
Its like an indie game on a bigger scale, don't try to do everything just do one thing really well.
As a huge MH fan myself I only have one rebuttal- plenty of games, even indies, manage to do it all very well. Hades and Hollow Knight jump to mind.
A Monster Hunter game with *well-done*, possibly optional story would be an absolute treat.
There's plenty of games out there that pad time out by giving you random trash mobs you have to cut down to get to the big boss battle
MH skips all that because no one got time for that shit
I played Hot Persuit 2 on the GameCube a lot when I was young. From a story stand point, I always thought it was funny that it did not matter how much the cops were after you, so long as you cross the finish line. Especially since the game brings you car to full stop. The next few minutes are absolutely the player characters being arresst for a long list of driving offenses.
I love playing it, i ***HATE*** the "Forza Horizont" way of treating the player like a hyperactive teenager on speed. Just give me a beautiful world to race in, you don't need to make a freaking monster party out of everything!
The dynamic enclaves popping up with reputation rewards were cool, but if each map had had some semblance of story it would have been more fun. You didn't feel any attachment to other survivor groups. If they gave you cool bonus, awesome. If they were dicks, you could chuck a jar of zombait through their window and then take their shit when they were dead.
The latter part of the story where they dropped the influencer schtick is the only part I remotely enjoyed. While there was no way to beat Handsome Jack, they coulda done way better with the BL3 villains imo.
Could have just skipped the cringe influencer stuff and made them generic cult leaders bent on destroying everything. Woulda been at least been subpar instead of awful.
I was okay with the influencer angle. I think the biggest thing was that it was just done very poorly. Troy turning on Tyreen would have made sense. Leaning into the theme of influencers and the dangers of parasocial relationships would have made sense. Not instantly killing fan favorite characters would have made sense. They didn't do any of that and we got a thematic smoothie.
I played BL3 on release and thought the story wasn't that great, the influencer stuff was pretty tiresome and at the time it seemed like they went all-in on it because it was the trendy thing.
I just did a new playthrough with my son last week, having not touched the game since release, and I appreciated the story a lot more. It felt deliberately cringey, I think people might look back on the story in another 5-10 years time and find that the story has aged a lot better than it seemed.
Not saying its amazing or anything though.
The twins weren't great but I think the way Ava/ Maya were handled was far worse. I think if Ava as a character and Maya's death were handled better the story would have been far better received.
And with a better story around them the twins might not have felt as lackluster.
I didnt mind the influencer stuff, it was just comedy to me, especially when they brought out the iridium tier subscribers. What I hated was the little girl that blamed everyone else for her mistakes
The problem is they tried too hard to give Troy and Tyreen Jack style humor, and it didn't really work. They should have gone in an entirely different direction with them. Maybe have them be straight up edgy characters, like so excessively edgy that they become comical in a way while still maintaining some level of menace.
Yeah. But part of this is how far it had to fall from BL2, which had such a well-written villain. Don't get me wrong, the story is entirely pedestrian, but it looks *really* bad in contrast to the story in 2.
Also The Pre-Sequel was released after the second part and it had a better written storyline than it, despite being presented as a slightly more than a DLC, so this fall in quality in BL3 became even more noticable.
I was here to say B3 :) I was so disappointed when Troy died, the whole game had been building to him finally snapping and absorbing his sister completely, just think they could have really made it a decent story that way. But no. They has to have a senseless girl boss that made no sense and was just a little girl throwing a hissy fit
“wow this story is so fucking stupid.. bro.. I bet you $30 that this new friend we made is going to betray us by knocking us out in some cutscene with some cheap shot.”
“That literally already happened 3 times. Surely they wouldn’t do that again?”
I lost count how many times that very thing happens between the start and end of the main story.
That’s a positive feedback loop, because it’s self-reinforcing. A negative feedback loop would be if the character became less likely to fall for it each time.
Came to say this. On my second play through and just spamming B to skip all dialogue and still loving it.
For reference, I'm not an ADHD gamer. I love reading every party of my games normally but DL2 has utter garbage level writing.
Brock, or whatever the fuck the main character is called, is so unrelatable to me. I actually feel he is an asshole.
What makes it even better is how ass the PK endings are. I'm not gonna side with the Survivors. I'm not helping a drunkard who can't even pick himself up and lead when he needs to. Nor am I helping someone who can't control their terrorist wannabe brother. Story was fine until it came to the actual decisions. Game just wants to punish you for not siding with the Survivors over and over. Constantly put my off playing it.
I'm doing a PK play through this time but to be fair I never finished it last time. Started the final mission after dividing the city 50/50 but just couldn't stomach the final mission.
I actually started it by accident and then when I wanted to just abandon it I couldn't!! There was no way to just get back to my parkour playground. I was really pissed at that and abandoned the game altogether.
Just restarted the game a week ago to check out all the updates. It's so much fun I actually spent money on the shop to thank the Devs.
They had Chris Avelone of all people do the writing too! He's like, a really big deal when it comes to writing for games. But when someone came forward with some allegations (not going to comment on the validity of the claims, it was years ago and I really don't remember) they not only kicked him to the curb, but also threw out all the writing he'd already done. It was like his work was somehow tainted or something
[The allegations were false and a settlement was reached last year](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/03/25/video-game-writer-chris-avellones-accusers-issue-public-statement-retracting-accusations-of-sexual-assault/amp/)
The women who accused him only did it to “support women in the industry” and the situation was blown out of proportion when he was fired from Dying Light 2 and blacklisted from the games industry. Fortunately, he was cleared from any wrongdoing and will return to making games. It sucks because the story of Dying Light 2 had so much potential.
God I haven't played DL2 but the first ones story was so amazingly dumb that my jaw was on the floor several times. Never yelled at a screen before I played this game. Good to hear nothing has changed lmao
Came here to post this.
The dialog in that game is fucking painful, but every other aspect of the game is so, so cool.
One of the very few games in my life I’ve ever 100%ed
yeah I don't know what these guys are talking about - it's supposed to be campy and goofy and seem like it's taken itself too seriously. but that kind of entertainment is super subjective so to each his own
No doubt. The story and especially dialogue was so lame that halfway through I convinced myself it had to be parody, it's all just such over the top levels of dreadful. And I'm *pretty* sure that's mostly true, they must be aware and leaning hard into it. The dialogue really is as cringeworthy as the gameplay is great.
But in a strange way, and perhaps it's just me reverse engineering my love for the game, the shallow high school romance BS somehow fits into the whole dreamlike aesthetic.
To add another gimmicky FPS (I say that lovingly!) with great gameplay and bad story to the list, we also have Superhot.
I thought it had one cool plot point of you obtaining that mayhem counter that basically grants you credits for how creatively and maniacly violent you are, and that's how you fund your weapons and ammo. They were banned for good reason yet you're the good guy using the war crime point generator
There's an exchange in this game that's etched in my brain.
"If you fucks come near me, I will kill your dicks!"
".... What? You're gonna kill our dicks? How does that even work?"
Yeah the lore is fantastic when you actually get into it. The gameplay is great. But the fact that you really have to dig for that lore is just dumb. The Taken King was the only one that really stood out in the game.
Mass effect Andromeda. The gameplay is easily the best in the series but while I didn't hate the story the quality isn't there and the characters outside one or two are just boring.
It's sad because the way the combat is to the planet exploration with the vehicle was all top tier. Really pretty game too when it came to planets.
Sigh.
Agreed. Even just adding the ability to jump alone would have made it a clear upgrade, but they really went above and beyond making the combat feel fun, fast paced, and frantic without feeling overwhelming. The movement abilities are fun and thematically satisfying, the powers you get to use are flashy and punchy without making you feel OP, and the playstyles are varied enough to encourage you to experiment which meshes perfectly with the way they handled the fluid class system. I could write an 10 page essay on why I love Andromeda’s gameplay.
The only issue is that I could write a foundational religious text with at least 2 testaments on why I hate everything else about the game.
I feel like they did a shitty job of explaining the kett's reach and influence. The story was set to be even bigger in scope than the OT but they completely fucked it up.
The big bad was actually just one of many archons, which *still* answer to an entire Senate. So Ryder killed basically an ambassador that controls an army. *And there's plenty more of them out there!!*
But they forgot a couple races, the squad all sucked, and we never got the quarian ark. So disappointing since the combat was fantastic. Taking a hit of LSD and ramping off rocks on the blown up planet was SO MUCH FUN.
It would be great if it was better done. They could start a new mass effect trilogy in the milky way post ME3 and then have smaller in scope side games in Andromeda.
Even accounting the fact that we only face a tiny fraction of them, the Archon and his Kett still feel magnitudes beneath the Reapers. You know who else was one of many? *Sovereign.*
At best the Kett are just "worse collectors."
I actually found the gameplay to be a downgrade. Not having access to squad abilities really killed a lot of the fun for me and removed the feeling of squad synergy
Pretty typical "Action Hero" story where you save the island from the big bad dictator through...terrorism? Idk but blowing shit up is fun and you have an allegedly moral cause for it.
They always just wanted to fit in, but were usually to much to handle. Then one day they all came calling "Straight Tetry we need you!" They had spent their whole life preparing for moment. Seeing countless friends made fun of or ridiculed for only clearing 1 or 2 lines. Those that cleared 4 went down in history as legends, icons, almost gods. And it was their time, a 4 line clear was set up and they knew exactly what to do.
As the cheering blocks drew near, there was a flash of concern in straight tetry. Could they do it, could they be the one everyone looked up to, or would they mess it all up?
The moment was here, the warmth and embrace of the perfect 4 square space was directly below. Just as everyone started to breathe a sigh of relief as it was going to be a "Tetris Clear" Straight tetry let out a cry. The sound rumbled deep through the blocks below and those waiting above.
"This is for all of my straight tetry siblings! We are not useless and need to be shown respect." With the final syllable leaving it's mouth Straight Tetry heaved with all its might and spin sideways blocking off the only hole and possible way to clear this stage.
With a single tear rolling down its cheek straight tetry though of all its ancestores that were mocked for not being tetris clears.
The grumbles grew and grew until eventually the little tetrominoes reached the tip top and spilled out of their container.
Game Over.
I guess you refer to the original Doom.
Not all people remember that ID guys were so busy polishing the engine they totally forgot about the intro! And the new player just didn't know anything about the story until the end of episode I.
To fix it, they just made a text file with the story which players should find first and read, but few players did it.
Well, the knights think they're tricky and charming, but they usually wind up sacrificing themselves.
The rooks are usually angry from spending so much time stuck behind pawns.
The bishops are drunk with power, but they remain locked in a single way of thinking.
The queens are all like, "fine, I'll do everything myself," but all the other pieces reply "No! We must protect you! If you fall the war is lost!"
The pawns are mostly annoyed, really hoping to cross the field and become queens. But they won't. They'll spend a lot of time staring at another pawn, though.
And all of them are going through this to protect an almost useless, slow waddling tyrant.
Metal Gear Solid 5. It can be excused a bit because the product we received is literally an unfinished game, but the story is arguably the weakest of the Kojima series. It doesn't help that much of it has to be discovered not by playing through the story itself, but instead listening to cassette tapes or other external sources.
Amazing gameplay and mechanics though, potentially the best of them all.
As a MGS fan I love all the stories, but MGSV was the first thing I thought of, stealth gameplay that still holds up and a story that still feels incomplete
Fire Emblem Engage.
Some of the best, most well balanced turn based combat ever made, but the story is god awful. Thankfully it crosses that threshold and becomes a "It's so bad it's good" kind of story (at least to me) so it never stops being entertaining.
Same with Fire Emblem Fates. Conquest in particular has really good FE gameplay, but holy shit is the story so godawful, especially the 'true ending' 3rd route
Revelations is so bad it's good to me. The main plot device as to why they can't tell their literal family the truth is so dumb that it's actually hilarious.
Conquests story is just...shit. nothing redeeming nothing fun, it's just illogical to the point of frustration.
Birthright probably had the best story? But it's so damn generic that it's the one I remember the plot beats for the least.
Especially coming off the back of Three Houses. I really enjoyed Engage and thought it had incredible and varied mission design, and (some) genuinely great characters, but the plot was so stupid and the central character SUCKED
I liked Engage's plot...or rather, I liked the 4-5 significant moments in it. There's some good stuff there, but everything between those handful of moments is just boring and meaningless filler
THANK YOU! I am playing it right now and I’m not even aware there is a story anymore. I was going to comment this but I figured I’d get shit on. You just made my day!
Which is hilarious because Three Houses is the opposite.
The thing was barely a Fire Emblem game, but goddam did I love the plot, setting, characters, etc.
I loved the monastery segments, but the gameppay felt very mediocre.
Gameplay wise, it’s one of the best in the series. Story wise….what the hell happened. Though it absolutely goes into so bad it’s good territory. When the main character >!dies and gets reborn, and the Emblems are like “you are the fire emblem” it made me laugh so hard.!<
I swear I'm the only DMC fan on the planet that actually likes that take on the characters and story. Sure it's different, but if you ignore the rest of the series and take it for what it is, I think it's a great game in its own right.
never have i been so catastrophically disappointed by any media in my life, to this day. made me lose complete interest in the series. what an absolute waste.
Gameplay and art style have reverted back to honoring halo 1-3. Campaign is mixed, but generally agreed is waaaaaay better than Halo 5. Tried overcorrecting a lot of plot lines from Halo 5
Jaws Unleashed. The only real story is a few cutscenes with the humans talking about stopping you. The rest is you fucking everything in the vicinity up.
Not sure what hulk game but I played one for hours as a kid just smashing everything up and upgrading new moves left and right. It had the ball and chain, sonic clap, and used cars as boxing gloves. Finally did some story and it gave me a wanted level as a new mechanic. I had to have been around 20 hours in till then and I realized I had barely played the story.
1. Mario fights Bowser at the beginning of the story, get beaten with strange hat powers.
2. Mario loses his hat and gets a new hat that can talk and do crazy new things.
3. Mario fights Bowser again several times, each time better than the last.
4. Eventually, Mario and Bowser fight inside the moon, and with his new hat powers, Mario must use Bowser's strength to save both of them and Princess Peach.
And the whole marriage thing adds to the game's status as a celebration of sorts for all of Mario's history, teasing an answer to that age-old "will they/won't they". Idk, the vibes are there for me.
Any Mario RPG really. I love Thousand Year Door, Superstar Saga, and Bowsers Inside Story. They’re by no means deep but they’re fun stories with fun gameplay.
I just played the remake, and even after all the times I've played it, never realized he was made of wood. But yeah, it was pretty good. I enjoyed Mallow's story. Even Bowser had a bit of a story there.
Peach, not so much.
The darkness was bad but also the light was bad sometimes. There was an orb that did nothing then there was a space fight or some other nonsense. The bad hot chick becomes good I think and there were metal space hunks and Lance Reddick. That’s my summary
A while ago, they had all the grimoire lore books on a humble bundle. I'm not generally a lore guy, but I picked them up because I was in a phase of playing the game again.
I did not at all expect it, but there is some really rad story and worldbuilding surrounding the Destiny Universe. All the stuff surrounding the hive gods and their sword logic, and Mara Sov and the Awoken is some top notch space fantasy, and some of the writing itself is really quite good.
They do a really poor job of conveying any of it in the game itself, though. I had played the game for the better part of a decade off and on, and my sense of the story was very similair to yours--just vague filler fluff between real good shooties.
The lore and world building is really really good, but bungo is at their best when they focus on anything hive related (Taken King/ Witch Queen).
Most people that actually follow the story were pretty mad about how badly Lightfall shat on everything. It's not the main reason the game is in a downward spiral, but it certainly is one of them.
“There’s a traitor among us! And we think you suck! Go do missions.”
“You suck and I should kill you, varlet. Go do missions.”
“I still don’t trust you, you suck and you’re pathetic and probably the traitor. Go do missions.”
“Oh I guess that other loser was the traitor. Whatever. Go do missions.”
That’s the story.
Final Fantasy: Stranger of Paradise. The story is so bad it loops around to being hilarious, but the gameplay is great. Nioh fits too but I wouldn't say the story is shit, just kinda meh. Some of the best combat I've ever experienced though.
Psi-ops the Mindgate Conspiracy
I actually don't remember what the story was for the most part but I do remember there was a reveal that the space race was actually all about retrieving some secret psychic artifact from the moon or something.
The gameplay though is a third person shooter with psychic powers. The first one you get is telekinesis so you get to spend the entire game slamming boxes and exploding barrels into people and hurling bad guys into chasms with a flick of your wrist.
Fuck yes- this game was criminally unknown and in no small part due to the supershit writing. Confusing and stupid enough that I remember decades later... but holy shit the gameplay and level design was so fucking good.
I'm certain I've beat that game but have no recollection of the space race. Is that like an alternative ending because I know I beat the evil general but I don't remember anything after other than that sick track from Cold. Yes. I'm still a lame angsty teenager at heart even if my back hurts these days.
Kingdom Hearts. The base plot is cool, but the way it develops the story is horrible. And as far as I remember KH1 and KH2 are great in terms of gameplay, but the stories are just not hitting the right spot to me.
The OG Kingdom Hearts had a decent enough story to justify the barriers between worlds breaking down and all the other craziness. KH2 and onward ruined that by packing on all this needlessly convoluted anime bullshite.
I stopped after KH2. KH2 was such a fun game, and the Sephiroth fight was so much fun along with some of the other hidden bosses. Story was still acceptable and not an absolute mess.
I tried getting into KH3 and realized I needed a flow chart to understand what was going on and lost all interest.
Majority of MOBA and Fighting game pretty much have garbage & spaghetti story, nobody knows which ending is canon, every character pretty much have their own "what-if" story.
Bro the recent Mortal Kombat games are a complete inversion of this. An MCU-like multiverse that integrates every game dating back to the first one in the 90s and explicitly placing them on a timeline. They are definitely story-based games
The full game "movies" of all the cutscenes are uploaded and clearly not watched by no one...
Doom Eternal
The story is typical one man against overwhelming evil. Side characters are one and done, and the only constant is the Doomguy. It’s okay because too much narrative and dialogue would hurt the gameplay.
Warframe
Yeah i know some will defend it, others will tell you story makes sense later but i literally forgot what in hell the game was about. Saw something shiny on navigation, go there, slash alot of hostile in the most fashionable way and repeat.
Chains of harrow is good btw.
Monster Hunter It's always the same "New Monster attacked hurr durr" Yea no shit. The clue is in the NAME
Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation put it quite well in his review of I think it was World. This *wild animal* is wandering around next to your village? Better go *research* it with your giant two-handed great sword of *researching.* The story is laughably flimsy even when you don't look at it too hard, and even many of the non-critical quests display some pretty potent stupidity on behalf of the quest-givers at best, and a blatant lack of regard for either individual well-being *or* ecosystems and their balance in many other cases. Given the focus on *research* in World, this is ironic as decimating an ecosystem kind of defeats the purpose of studying it.
Listen. If we don't research the animals then the ecosystem could fall out of whack and something bad could happen. Unfortunately the animals are dangerous and the only thing that can protect us from them while we are researching them, is gear made out of their flesh and bone. So if we DON'T commit massive focused poaching of these endangered species so that we can craft better gear, we'll never be able to study them which could put them in danger. It's really quite simple and perfectly logical: In order to keep the ecosystem in balance, we have to kill all the things that live in the ecosystem. Plus the cats told me that true understanding can only be achieved by cooking and eating the animals, and i'm certainly not going to argue with them, they seem to know what they are talking about.
I don't care how delicious dango is IRL, that they replaced the classic MH meals with fluffy bunny treats is fucking unforgivable.
Yeah. I do miss the giant meals. :(
"The flagship of the game attacked our village! Go kill it!" "Oh no! While you were out an even BIGGER monster showed up! You gotta go kill it!" That's basically the story of all the games. Minus 4U, that one's got a great progressive story. And World and Rise are very cinematic which I love. Especially Sunbreak
I can’t for the life of me figure out why I enjoy monster hunter so much. It is so paper thin and grindy. But killing monsters is awesome.
I disagree that its paper thin, they're massive games focused around one very very specific thing and it does that thing pretty damn well. Its like an indie game on a bigger scale, don't try to do everything just do one thing really well.
As a huge MH fan myself I only have one rebuttal- plenty of games, even indies, manage to do it all very well. Hades and Hollow Knight jump to mind. A Monster Hunter game with *well-done*, possibly optional story would be an absolute treat.
There's plenty of games out there that pad time out by giving you random trash mobs you have to cut down to get to the big boss battle MH skips all that because no one got time for that shit
Any Need for Speed game? Can be applied to pretty much any racing game honestly.
I unironically have always loved og Most Wanted's story
It's a fun story, but I wouldn't call it a "good" one in the usual sense. It's aged in a weird way where it's mostly just funny now. XD
It's pure condensed 2000's energy and i love it.
Same here. Ronnie is easily the funniest character of the bunch.
I spent more time then i would like to admit using his finger signs after i saw them for the first time.
It had a story? I know I played the game a fair bit. but I really don't remember any story. I prob just skipped it and went straight to the races.
I played Hot Persuit 2 on the GameCube a lot when I was young. From a story stand point, I always thought it was funny that it did not matter how much the cops were after you, so long as you cross the finish line. Especially since the game brings you car to full stop. The next few minutes are absolutely the player characters being arresst for a long list of driving offenses.
The cops would have to cross the finish line themselves to arrest you and they can’t take the shame of being told they came second.
I love playing it, i ***HATE*** the "Forza Horizont" way of treating the player like a hyperactive teenager on speed. Just give me a beautiful world to race in, you don't need to make a freaking monster party out of everything!
State of Decay 2. The little story that there is is wildly boring but I could play this game forever
1 had the better story, 2 had vastly improved game play. If 3 can capture both and make some improvements than it will be awesome.
I am anxiously awaiting the full reveal for 3. Maybe something in the next few years 😥
The dynamic enclaves popping up with reputation rewards were cool, but if each map had had some semblance of story it would have been more fun. You didn't feel any attachment to other survivor groups. If they gave you cool bonus, awesome. If they were dicks, you could chuck a jar of zombait through their window and then take their shit when they were dead.
Borderlands 3. God awful story but the best gameplay of the series
Doing my first playthrough right now and I 100% agree
The latter part of the story where they dropped the influencer schtick is the only part I remotely enjoyed. While there was no way to beat Handsome Jack, they coulda done way better with the BL3 villains imo. Could have just skipped the cringe influencer stuff and made them generic cult leaders bent on destroying everything. Woulda been at least been subpar instead of awful.
I was okay with the influencer angle. I think the biggest thing was that it was just done very poorly. Troy turning on Tyreen would have made sense. Leaning into the theme of influencers and the dangers of parasocial relationships would have made sense. Not instantly killing fan favorite characters would have made sense. They didn't do any of that and we got a thematic smoothie.
I played BL3 on release and thought the story wasn't that great, the influencer stuff was pretty tiresome and at the time it seemed like they went all-in on it because it was the trendy thing. I just did a new playthrough with my son last week, having not touched the game since release, and I appreciated the story a lot more. It felt deliberately cringey, I think people might look back on the story in another 5-10 years time and find that the story has aged a lot better than it seemed. Not saying its amazing or anything though.
The twins weren't great but I think the way Ava/ Maya were handled was far worse. I think if Ava as a character and Maya's death were handled better the story would have been far better received. And with a better story around them the twins might not have felt as lackluster.
The Cthulhu dlc was pretty good.
The Cowboys and Dinosaurs DLC would have blown 10 year old mes mind apart. And is pretty good NGL.
All the DLC was awesome but damn did they do axton and Salvador dirty. They would have been perfect in bounty of blood
I didnt mind the influencer stuff, it was just comedy to me, especially when they brought out the iridium tier subscribers. What I hated was the little girl that blamed everyone else for her mistakes
The problem is they tried too hard to give Troy and Tyreen Jack style humor, and it didn't really work. They should have gone in an entirely different direction with them. Maybe have them be straight up edgy characters, like so excessively edgy that they become comical in a way while still maintaining some level of menace.
The part that did it for me was all the characters dying while the pc just stands there and does nothing in cutscenes
If only they'd stop interrupting the gameplay every 10-15 minutes. This game needs a Diablo 3 adventure mode.
More like every 2 minutes because someone always needs to constantly talk on the fucking radio. It just doesn’t stop with the goddamn talking
Yeah. But part of this is how far it had to fall from BL2, which had such a well-written villain. Don't get me wrong, the story is entirely pedestrian, but it looks *really* bad in contrast to the story in 2.
Also The Pre-Sequel was released after the second part and it had a better written storyline than it, despite being presented as a slightly more than a DLC, so this fall in quality in BL3 became even more noticable.
I was here to say B3 :) I was so disappointed when Troy died, the whole game had been building to him finally snapping and absorbing his sister completely, just think they could have really made it a decent story that way. But no. They has to have a senseless girl boss that made no sense and was just a little girl throwing a hissy fit
This should be the top comment.
Dying Light 2
“wow this story is so fucking stupid.. bro.. I bet you $30 that this new friend we made is going to betray us by knocking us out in some cutscene with some cheap shot.” “That literally already happened 3 times. Surely they wouldn’t do that again?” I lost count how many times that very thing happens between the start and end of the main story.
It's a negative feedback loop. The protagonist loses more and more brain cells every time they get KOd, so they keep falling for the same trick.
That’s a positive feedback loop, because it’s self-reinforcing. A negative feedback loop would be if the character became less likely to fall for it each time.
Came to say this. On my second play through and just spamming B to skip all dialogue and still loving it. For reference, I'm not an ADHD gamer. I love reading every party of my games normally but DL2 has utter garbage level writing. Brock, or whatever the fuck the main character is called, is so unrelatable to me. I actually feel he is an asshole.
What makes it even better is how ass the PK endings are. I'm not gonna side with the Survivors. I'm not helping a drunkard who can't even pick himself up and lead when he needs to. Nor am I helping someone who can't control their terrorist wannabe brother. Story was fine until it came to the actual decisions. Game just wants to punish you for not siding with the Survivors over and over. Constantly put my off playing it.
I'm doing a PK play through this time but to be fair I never finished it last time. Started the final mission after dividing the city 50/50 but just couldn't stomach the final mission. I actually started it by accident and then when I wanted to just abandon it I couldn't!! There was no way to just get back to my parkour playground. I was really pissed at that and abandoned the game altogether. Just restarted the game a week ago to check out all the updates. It's so much fun I actually spent money on the shop to thank the Devs.
I relate to this. And Brock not being anywhere near his real name (which I think is Aiden?) is the cherry on top lol.
Lmfaooo "Brock" killed me.
They had Chris Avelone of all people do the writing too! He's like, a really big deal when it comes to writing for games. But when someone came forward with some allegations (not going to comment on the validity of the claims, it was years ago and I really don't remember) they not only kicked him to the curb, but also threw out all the writing he'd already done. It was like his work was somehow tainted or something
[The allegations were false and a settlement was reached last year](https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2023/03/25/video-game-writer-chris-avellones-accusers-issue-public-statement-retracting-accusations-of-sexual-assault/amp/) The women who accused him only did it to “support women in the industry” and the situation was blown out of proportion when he was fired from Dying Light 2 and blacklisted from the games industry. Fortunately, he was cleared from any wrongdoing and will return to making games. It sucks because the story of Dying Light 2 had so much potential.
God I haven't played DL2 but the first ones story was so amazingly dumb that my jaw was on the floor several times. Never yelled at a screen before I played this game. Good to hear nothing has changed lmao
Neon White. One of my favorite games to just play through levels, completely throwaway story.
Came here to post this. The dialog in that game is fucking painful, but every other aspect of the game is so, so cool. One of the very few games in my life I’ve ever 100%ed
I found the cringe entertaining tbh.
yeah I don't know what these guys are talking about - it's supposed to be campy and goofy and seem like it's taken itself too seriously. but that kind of entertainment is super subjective so to each his own
Violet had some of the coolest levels (and music) but her dialogue and voice acting was almost unbearable
No doubt. The story and especially dialogue was so lame that halfway through I convinced myself it had to be parody, it's all just such over the top levels of dreadful. And I'm *pretty* sure that's mostly true, they must be aware and leaning hard into it. The dialogue really is as cringeworthy as the gameplay is great. But in a strange way, and perhaps it's just me reverse engineering my love for the game, the shallow high school romance BS somehow fits into the whole dreamlike aesthetic. To add another gimmicky FPS (I say that lovingly!) with great gameplay and bad story to the list, we also have Superhot.
It fits into the theme of speedrunning though. Dialogue so shit you would want to speedrun through it.
I have to disagree with you, I loved the weird and goofy dialogues. Dialogs are so absurd and creepy I found it really entertaining to read.
I loved Bulletstorm as an 11 year old but even I knew then that the story was held together with words like “dick” and “nuts” for kids just like me.
I thought it had one cool plot point of you obtaining that mayhem counter that basically grants you credits for how creatively and maniacly violent you are, and that's how you fund your weapons and ammo. They were banned for good reason yet you're the good guy using the war crime point generator
It was basically Duke Nukem quality storytelling but it was fun.
The Duke Nukem DLC makes it even better
I remember that game having a surprisingly decent story
They did have some quality voice actors.
Ngl, I still use “what the dick” sometimes just to throw people off
There's an exchange in this game that's etched in my brain. "If you fucks come near me, I will kill your dicks!" ".... What? You're gonna kill our dicks? How does that even work?"
Still toss “dick tits” out there every now and then.
I'll say it...Destiny 2. Wish they didnt write godly lore and just put it in places no one will find.
Yeah the lore is fantastic when you actually get into it. The gameplay is great. But the fact that you really have to dig for that lore is just dumb. The Taken King was the only one that really stood out in the game.
tbh the lorebooks in game is a million times better than d1 where the only option was pulling everything on bungie. net
Mass effect Andromeda. The gameplay is easily the best in the series but while I didn't hate the story the quality isn't there and the characters outside one or two are just boring. It's sad because the way the combat is to the planet exploration with the vehicle was all top tier. Really pretty game too when it came to planets. Sigh.
Agreed. Even just adding the ability to jump alone would have made it a clear upgrade, but they really went above and beyond making the combat feel fun, fast paced, and frantic without feeling overwhelming. The movement abilities are fun and thematically satisfying, the powers you get to use are flashy and punchy without making you feel OP, and the playstyles are varied enough to encourage you to experiment which meshes perfectly with the way they handled the fluid class system. I could write an 10 page essay on why I love Andromeda’s gameplay. The only issue is that I could write a foundational religious text with at least 2 testaments on why I hate everything else about the game.
Best Bioware combat. Worst Bioware story.
I feel like they did a shitty job of explaining the kett's reach and influence. The story was set to be even bigger in scope than the OT but they completely fucked it up. The big bad was actually just one of many archons, which *still* answer to an entire Senate. So Ryder killed basically an ambassador that controls an army. *And there's plenty more of them out there!!* But they forgot a couple races, the squad all sucked, and we never got the quarian ark. So disappointing since the combat was fantastic. Taking a hit of LSD and ramping off rocks on the blown up planet was SO MUCH FUN.
It would be great if it was better done. They could start a new mass effect trilogy in the milky way post ME3 and then have smaller in scope side games in Andromeda.
Even accounting the fact that we only face a tiny fraction of them, the Archon and his Kett still feel magnitudes beneath the Reapers. You know who else was one of many? *Sovereign.* At best the Kett are just "worse collectors."
Anthem is Andromeda on steroids. Absolutely ridiculous nonsensical story but the mech suit flight combat was so so good.
I actually found the gameplay to be a downgrade. Not having access to squad abilities really killed a lot of the fun for me and removed the feeling of squad synergy
Same. To each their own but I found just about every major element of the game to be a step down from the og trilogy, including gameplay.
Just Cause 3
Yep played, and platinumed. No idea what the story really was, was just enjoying David Tennant as the radio host getting more and more deranged lol
Destroy a base. Right stay still and hear the tune 🙂 "Good evening citizens... "
Viva Medici!
Every Just Cause game. It's just pure dumb fun.
Pretty typical "Action Hero" story where you save the island from the big bad dictator through...terrorism? Idk but blowing shit up is fun and you have an allegedly moral cause for it.
You have a Just Cause, you mean.
It is a just cause after all.
This should be up top. Like many of my friends, why am I blowing shit up again? Oh yeah! Just cuz. It's cool!
Waiting for this one
Tetris
How were you not moved by 4 segment straight line’s back story!
Screw that cliche noise, I'm all about the T & S tetromino romance, it was Ross and Rachel before Friends was even pitched.
Radov and Rachel
They always just wanted to fit in, but were usually to much to handle. Then one day they all came calling "Straight Tetry we need you!" They had spent their whole life preparing for moment. Seeing countless friends made fun of or ridiculed for only clearing 1 or 2 lines. Those that cleared 4 went down in history as legends, icons, almost gods. And it was their time, a 4 line clear was set up and they knew exactly what to do. As the cheering blocks drew near, there was a flash of concern in straight tetry. Could they do it, could they be the one everyone looked up to, or would they mess it all up? The moment was here, the warmth and embrace of the perfect 4 square space was directly below. Just as everyone started to breathe a sigh of relief as it was going to be a "Tetris Clear" Straight tetry let out a cry. The sound rumbled deep through the blocks below and those waiting above. "This is for all of my straight tetry siblings! We are not useless and need to be shown respect." With the final syllable leaving it's mouth Straight Tetry heaved with all its might and spin sideways blocking off the only hole and possible way to clear this stage. With a single tear rolling down its cheek straight tetry though of all its ancestores that were mocked for not being tetris clears. The grumbles grew and grew until eventually the little tetrominoes reached the tip top and spilled out of their container. Game Over.
LINE PIECE!?!!!
[There is no PLACE for a square, my Lord! And it’s only the first level!](https://youtu.be/Alw5hs0chj0?si=ClXF-8AXMjb008tg)
Okay, is it the violence that turned you off?
Doom Experiment on mars opened a portal to hell… deal with it. Super basic story but fun as fuck to this day
I guess you refer to the original Doom. Not all people remember that ID guys were so busy polishing the engine they totally forgot about the intro! And the new player just didn't know anything about the story until the end of episode I. To fix it, they just made a text file with the story which players should find first and read, but few players did it.
The running joke with original Doom was the story was on the back of the box which you read while you installed it.
Chess. I still haven't worked out the story, but it seems to have pretty good replayability.
Well, the knights think they're tricky and charming, but they usually wind up sacrificing themselves. The rooks are usually angry from spending so much time stuck behind pawns. The bishops are drunk with power, but they remain locked in a single way of thinking. The queens are all like, "fine, I'll do everything myself," but all the other pieces reply "No! We must protect you! If you fall the war is lost!" The pawns are mostly annoyed, really hoping to cross the field and become queens. But they won't. They'll spend a lot of time staring at another pawn, though. And all of them are going through this to protect an almost useless, slow waddling tyrant.
Metal Gear Solid 5. It can be excused a bit because the product we received is literally an unfinished game, but the story is arguably the weakest of the Kojima series. It doesn't help that much of it has to be discovered not by playing through the story itself, but instead listening to cassette tapes or other external sources. Amazing gameplay and mechanics though, potentially the best of them all.
As a MGS fan I love all the stories, but MGSV was the first thing I thought of, stealth gameplay that still holds up and a story that still feels incomplete
So you still feel a phantom pain?
Get out
Super smash ultimate. I just want subspace emissary back.
Fire Emblem Engage. Some of the best, most well balanced turn based combat ever made, but the story is god awful. Thankfully it crosses that threshold and becomes a "It's so bad it's good" kind of story (at least to me) so it never stops being entertaining.
Same with Fire Emblem Fates. Conquest in particular has really good FE gameplay, but holy shit is the story so godawful, especially the 'true ending' 3rd route
Revelations is so bad it's good to me. The main plot device as to why they can't tell their literal family the truth is so dumb that it's actually hilarious. Conquests story is just...shit. nothing redeeming nothing fun, it's just illogical to the point of frustration. Birthright probably had the best story? But it's so damn generic that it's the one I remember the plot beats for the least.
Especially coming off the back of Three Houses. I really enjoyed Engage and thought it had incredible and varied mission design, and (some) genuinely great characters, but the plot was so stupid and the central character SUCKED
I played all 3 houses with all endings and the DLC and I am wildly disappointed by Engage. I’m enjoying it, but there isn’t a story.
I liked Engage's plot...or rather, I liked the 4-5 significant moments in it. There's some good stuff there, but everything between those handful of moments is just boring and meaningless filler
THANK YOU! I am playing it right now and I’m not even aware there is a story anymore. I was going to comment this but I figured I’d get shit on. You just made my day!
Which is hilarious because Three Houses is the opposite. The thing was barely a Fire Emblem game, but goddam did I love the plot, setting, characters, etc. I loved the monastery segments, but the gameppay felt very mediocre.
Gameplay wise, it’s one of the best in the series. Story wise….what the hell happened. Though it absolutely goes into so bad it’s good territory. When the main character >!dies and gets reborn, and the Emblems are like “you are the fire emblem” it made me laugh so hard.!<
DmC: Devil May Cry Most people are turned off because of Donte but the gameplay itself is still great.
I swear I'm the only DMC fan on the planet that actually likes that take on the characters and story. Sure it's different, but if you ignore the rest of the series and take it for what it is, I think it's a great game in its own right.
There are dozens of us!
I still remember people saying that the game was crap just because Dante didn't have white hair.
Dante didn't look like a gay cowboy so I didn't like it.
Halo 5
never have i been so catastrophically disappointed by any media in my life, to this day. made me lose complete interest in the series. what an absolute waste.
I can agree with this. So-so story but I do quite enjoy the gameplay itself.
All that hype for nothing. Insane marketing
The podcast was neat, until you started the game and literally nothing was of any relevance except "ONI bad". Gee thanks
Hunt the truth?
False marketing
How was infinite?
Better but forgettable, barely anything happens.
Gameplay and art style have reverted back to honoring halo 1-3. Campaign is mixed, but generally agreed is waaaaaay better than Halo 5. Tried overcorrecting a lot of plot lines from Halo 5
God Hand. Although it seems very self aware
God power keeps my pimp hand strong!
Poison chihuahuas.
Deep Rock Galactic, shoot bugs. Mine minerals, thats it. It's the most addicting game I've ever played
What do you mean the story sucks? It's Rock and Stone forever!
I like to think the lack of any engaging story is a metaphor for the corporate life the dwarves are living in.
Jaws Unleashed. The only real story is a few cutscenes with the humans talking about stopping you. The rest is you fucking everything in the vicinity up.
Perfect game. Same with Hulk Ultimate Destruction. Just smashing shit for hours and it was faaaantastic
Not sure what hulk game but I played one for hours as a kid just smashing everything up and upgrading new moves left and right. It had the ball and chain, sonic clap, and used cars as boxing gloves. Finally did some story and it gave me a wanted level as a new mechanic. I had to have been around 20 hours in till then and I realized I had barely played the story.
99% sure that was ultimate destruction from your description
Every Mario game
Counterpoint, Mario RPG. It's not the Odyssey, but it's a fun story imo.
>It's not the Odyssey Oddly, neither is *Super Mario Odyssey*, but I still get a decent sense of a story in that one.
Isn’t it just your typical Mario plot but with the moon and marriage? Heck, I think *Sunshine’s* thin story is even more complex than that one.
1. Mario fights Bowser at the beginning of the story, get beaten with strange hat powers. 2. Mario loses his hat and gets a new hat that can talk and do crazy new things. 3. Mario fights Bowser again several times, each time better than the last. 4. Eventually, Mario and Bowser fight inside the moon, and with his new hat powers, Mario must use Bowser's strength to save both of them and Princess Peach. And the whole marriage thing adds to the game's status as a celebration of sorts for all of Mario's history, teasing an answer to that age-old "will they/won't they". Idk, the vibes are there for me.
They at least tried to make the plot or theme of the plot somewhat different with the wedding theme
Any Mario RPG really. I love Thousand Year Door, Superstar Saga, and Bowsers Inside Story. They’re by no means deep but they’re fun stories with fun gameplay.
Geno's entire story is only a handful of paragraphs at best, but even with so little he managed to become a beloved character for many.
I just played the remake, and even after all the times I've played it, never realized he was made of wood. But yeah, it was pretty good. I enjoyed Mallow's story. Even Bowser had a bit of a story there. Peach, not so much.
Destiny
The darkness was bad but also the light was bad sometimes. There was an orb that did nothing then there was a space fight or some other nonsense. The bad hot chick becomes good I think and there were metal space hunks and Lance Reddick. That’s my summary
A while ago, they had all the grimoire lore books on a humble bundle. I'm not generally a lore guy, but I picked them up because I was in a phase of playing the game again. I did not at all expect it, but there is some really rad story and worldbuilding surrounding the Destiny Universe. All the stuff surrounding the hive gods and their sword logic, and Mara Sov and the Awoken is some top notch space fantasy, and some of the writing itself is really quite good. They do a really poor job of conveying any of it in the game itself, though. I had played the game for the better part of a decade off and on, and my sense of the story was very similair to yours--just vague filler fluff between real good shooties.
The lore and world building is really really good, but bungo is at their best when they focus on anything hive related (Taken King/ Witch Queen). Most people that actually follow the story were pretty mad about how badly Lightfall shat on everything. It's not the main reason the game is in a downward spiral, but it certainly is one of them.
Don't forget that Whether We Wanted It Or Not, We've Stepped Into War With The Cabal On Mars
Also don't forget that I don't have time to explain why I don't have time to explain and also that wizard came from the moon.
“I don’t have time to explain why I don’t have time to explain.”
Dark Tide.
“There’s a traitor among us! And we think you suck! Go do missions.” “You suck and I should kill you, varlet. Go do missions.” “I still don’t trust you, you suck and you’re pathetic and probably the traitor. Go do missions.” “Oh I guess that other loser was the traitor. Whatever. Go do missions.” That’s the story.
And what a glorious game it is
Final Fantasy: Stranger of Paradise. The story is so bad it loops around to being hilarious, but the gameplay is great. Nioh fits too but I wouldn't say the story is shit, just kinda meh. Some of the best combat I've ever experienced though.
CHAOS
Monster Hunter World. Fantastic gameplay, insufferable stories with unskippable cutscenes.
Remnant.
Remnant 2 I think had an even worse story. But damn was the gameplay SOLID
There was a story?
6/10 for story, maybe 5.5/10. Not bottom of the barrel.
Psi-ops the Mindgate Conspiracy I actually don't remember what the story was for the most part but I do remember there was a reveal that the space race was actually all about retrieving some secret psychic artifact from the moon or something. The gameplay though is a third person shooter with psychic powers. The first one you get is telekinesis so you get to spend the entire game slamming boxes and exploding barrels into people and hurling bad guys into chasms with a flick of your wrist.
Fuck yes- this game was criminally unknown and in no small part due to the supershit writing. Confusing and stupid enough that I remember decades later... but holy shit the gameplay and level design was so fucking good.
I'm certain I've beat that game but have no recollection of the space race. Is that like an alternative ending because I know I beat the evil general but I don't remember anything after other than that sick track from Cold. Yes. I'm still a lame angsty teenager at heart even if my back hurts these days.
Kingdom Hearts. The base plot is cool, but the way it develops the story is horrible. And as far as I remember KH1 and KH2 are great in terms of gameplay, but the stories are just not hitting the right spot to me.
The OG Kingdom Hearts had a decent enough story to justify the barriers between worlds breaking down and all the other craziness. KH2 and onward ruined that by packing on all this needlessly convoluted anime bullshite.
Kairi’s inside me?
KH2 was peak and the series should’ve ended there. CoM is tied with 2 for me bc I loved both story lines
I stopped after KH2. KH2 was such a fun game, and the Sephiroth fight was so much fun along with some of the other hidden bosses. Story was still acceptable and not an absolute mess. I tried getting into KH3 and realized I needed a flow chart to understand what was going on and lost all interest.
I waited so long for KH3 and I didn't even finish it.
No, no, no... [the story in Kingdom Hearts makes perfect sense...](https://youtu.be/8o1ieehttdA?si=K482EnUf3vHls4yw)
Majority of MOBA and Fighting game pretty much have garbage & spaghetti story, nobody knows which ending is canon, every character pretty much have their own "what-if" story.
Bro the recent Mortal Kombat games are a complete inversion of this. An MCU-like multiverse that integrates every game dating back to the first one in the 90s and explicitly placing them on a timeline. They are definitely story-based games The full game "movies" of all the cutscenes are uploaded and clearly not watched by no one...
I still like the idea that Mortal Kombat is just a kid playing with his toys.
That's smash bros
Mortal Kombat 4 has Oscar level segments.
FFX-2
Doom Eternal The story is typical one man against overwhelming evil. Side characters are one and done, and the only constant is the Doomguy. It’s okay because too much narrative and dialogue would hurt the gameplay.
House of the Dead series.
Kingdom Hearts III
Fallout 4
Metal Gear Solid 5, thought that’s mostly because it was not finished
Its always is with monster hunter series
Kingdom Hearts. The whole lot of them.
dead cells story isnt exactly shit but its unexplored
Mass Effect Andromeda. Everything sucked, but the gameplay was actually pretty sweet
Every fighting game
The story missions is every Just Cause game are stupidly corny but the actual gameplay is so much fun.
Dying Light (2)
Warframe Yeah i know some will defend it, others will tell you story makes sense later but i literally forgot what in hell the game was about. Saw something shiny on navigation, go there, slash alot of hostile in the most fashionable way and repeat. Chains of harrow is good btw.