Tried to play the Walking Dead as well as the Wolf Among Us, but I just couldn't get into them; I found the gameplay elements too lacking.

The scoping system in Spec Ops the Line was the only thing that stood out. The level design had some good points but many just standard staged shootouts. The story was bad! If you want to talk about underhanded and manipulative story then it is a perfect story to talk about. The story is about sending a madman and his team into a over the top setting. Then they try to smear your face in something that they force you to do even when it was unreasonable to do.

That story killed that game and drop it from forgettable to being hated.

It usually depends for me. Even though Mass Effect 2 had fairly generic gameplay (ie standard TPS), the inclusion of a party and party commands made it far more interesting for me. I also just happened to enjoy the Mass Effect universe, and found exploring it to be rewarding in it of itself. Some games which rely entirely on story just don't do it for me--Spec Ops the Line for instance. It's story might be good, but god damn did it have the most generic as hell gameplay imaginable. I just couldn't get through it, even though the story was interesting.

I've never understood people that go on about how emotionally affected they were by games though. Makes no sense to me. I can't emotionally identify with 3D models, and I find all the talk about "ooh, I don't feel good killing this guy, I want to be able to let him live" utterly idiotic. I am talking specifically about Bioshock Infinite, where sites like Polygon got all pissy because the game had combat in it. I just really can't identify with people that feel bad killing a guy in a videogame. I've also never once cried from a videogame. Not trying to be a badass, but it's just never happened...ever. Movies, yes. Cried my ass off reading The Old Man and the Sea, but videogames....nope.