Games with everything is perfect except the playing part. (gameplay, design etc)

Hello friends,

I dont think its discussed here before but what games do you think where developers did everything perfect. except the playing part. means story, characters, setting, world design. except gameplay and level design or game design in general.

here's 2 I think of

Bioshock

Bioshock did setting incredible. who does not like underwater city? the story is great, the atmosphere is great, it also have arguably best villain ever ie Andrew Ryan but playing part. its bad. its dumbed down system shock 2. its very disappointing compare to system shock 2 as it was deemed as System shock 2 spiritual successor. the gunplay is also not very good. its level design is walking in straight line like most of 7th gen games were. but apart from playing part. it done everything nicely.

other is

Red Dead Redemption 2

Im sucker for anything old west. I always want Old west game that is done nicely. sadly RDR2 is not one of them. but yes It has everything amazing. the Story is fantastic, the characterization, the setting, the graphics as its current graphic king. everything else in this game is 10/10 except the FREAKING PLAYING PART!!!. the mission design is too linear and avoid of any freedom, too much of horse riding following automatically, extremely linear when you are in mission etc. not to mention useless side missions like epilogue one.

if I have to rate this game. based on story, characters, setting etc. I have to rate this 10/10 but when it comes to playing part. its 1/10. making game as whole is 6/10.

so my friends, what games you think done everything right except playing part?

lets discuss

Yeah, Bioshock is a pretty good example of the thing you are describing and might have been the first one I would have suggested had you not used it as your initial example.

The Shenmue series is probably another. Amazing world building in the first one (especially for the time) but the game itself wasn't necessarily that great.

I'd throw Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines in there as well. Great ideas, writing, world building, etc but the game itself was broken garbage. In spite of that, the rest of it was so memorable that it's still looked back on fondly decades later.

You'd make the worst reviewer on Earth.

/thread

No better examples than Far Cry 2. Bought the game, loved the setting and mechanics, but it was simply unplayble with its bullshit jeep respawns every couple of minutes, especially when playing on the highest difficulty. Nobody tested their game, and infinite enemies spawn is so 2001.

IMO Witcher 3 and many eurostyle platformers

Far cry 2 was masterpiece. underrated game.

A heavily flawed game with good mechanics and setting. That is what FC2 was. But at least it was released back when Ubisoft wasn't a meme "yet".

Its also far better than 3 which was overrated and praise by gamers and critics alike.

The third game had nothing else but Vaas.

vaas is overrated villain.

he have very less screentime. compare him to andrew ryan who had plenty of screentime and very charismatic.

^ Def this

Remember when the trailer launched. The hype was through the roof.

And then you play it.

Yes, he didn't have enough screentime, but this doesn't make him any worse. The actor doing the character is pretty great in movies as well.

That's something don't see people bring up much about Far Cry 2, the audio was terrible. Everyone sounds like they are mumbling on a mic three feet away with the emotions of Stephen Hawking voice box.

They add this buddy system in, with all these backstories written down, including your own, but they have less character, and emote worse than something like Dog in Halflife 2.

Agree with this so much FC2 had so much potential the respawning enemies really ruined the game and running around to get the Malaria pills was a chore.

While it's rare that a game nails everything EXCEPT gameplay, it has definitely taken a backseat to production value in recent years.

RDR2 - I completely agree with this. Jam-packed with story, details, and art...too bad it's not fun. It felt like they didn't know whether to be sim or silly

Destiny - We all know the tumultuous history, and the game probably had some brighter days after the fact, but that game was just bleh.

Anthem - Never played, but I assumed

Its better than Crysis.

this is my most controversial opinion. please forgive me cup for this.

Far Cry 2 is definitely a perfect example.

The Witcher and Nier come to mind. The Witcher gameplay is like that by design but OMG the suffering that is all that easy to do combat just to advance the really well made story. The same with Nier, one of the best stories in video game history and really good music but the suffering of actually playing the game to experience it all, ugh.

All the Cyrsis games.

Original Mafia.

Ff7remake. It's a good game, good art style, characters are good, story line is ok. Sadly the gameplay is just trash hack and slash.

Gotta agree with Ghost4ever on RDR2, not to the stupidity that I would rate it a 1/10, but hey that’s ghost for you…

But yeah everything in the game is absolutely amazing, but then you start to control it and it’s just terrible… and don’t even get med started on the extremely long forced walking/riding sessions that is just beyond dull!

Perfect is too far, but The Witcher 3. I like the characters, the music, the art style, the atmosphere, all that jazz. The playing it part? means its a 6/10 game on its best day.

Were its gameplay short comings exclusively how it felt to move it be one thing, but there is a bunch of consistency issues, it has dull enemies, it has no enemy mixing, its open world creates a shit load of tedium for navigation, it is every bit a follow the trail and go to the icons game as most open world games that aren't Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring.

So yeah that one. If that game played as well as an action game and had good enemy mixing, it be the all time classic everyone else pretends it is.

Death Stranding is literally the epitome of your thread.

• 10/10 storyline
• 10/10 voice acting
• 10/10 game direction
• 10/10 graphics
• 10/10 original soundtracks
• 10/10 sound design
• 10/10 artstyle
• 10/10 cinematics
• 10/10 atmosphere
• 5/10 gameplay.

Its literally perfect in every way except for its gameplay which was just alright. Not bad, not great just average.

Overall I'd give it a 9/10 as its one of the top 10 best games last generation.

If it had MGS5 styled combat it would go toe-to-toe with the video game GOATs like The Last of Us, Elden Ring, Zelda:BOTW.

witcher 3 and far cry 2 are good shouts. witcher 3 was a lot more polished just not great to play. far cry 2 was a lot rougher round the edges and played like an absolute turd. was more just a great concept.

i'd add og assassin's creed.

again far from perfect, but an interesting new sandbox concept, everything climbable, a beautiful setting, crowd camouflage, stealthy assassinations, secret societies...

and then the best things they could come up with for you to do in that great concept was repeat the same three banal things over and over again - eavesdrop, pick pocket and interrogate a target. you'd be hard pressed to come up with anything that used the concept as poorly. and that whole walk-slowly-with-your-horse when travelling between cities because if you run you'll draw attention to yourself from people looking out for you thing, what the f*ck was that.

it was ok at the time due to sheer novelty factor, something far cry 2 can't even claim, but considering it was from the creators of a stealth classic in splinter cell, what a waste of a good idea

RDR2 is a big one.

I just think it feels bad to actually play.

Well he's definitely right about RDR2 and modern games period. But let's talk about RDR2 (this applies to GTA4/RDR1/GTA5 too). The production value/attention to detail is extremely but the actual gameplay aspect is extremely flawed.

The gunplay/animation/mission design etc. needs to be the top priority in my opinion. I personally do not care about stories in video games.

Honestly, say this about pretty much every entry i've played.

Once get past the Ubisoft production values, where the art-team generally do a spectacular job, wholly undeserving of this franchise, the gameplay is complete dog-shit.

Try to tweak the formula, pile on mechanic after mechanic, expanding the scale with more busy work. But the core of the game is shallow and redundant that it never justifies it's breadth of the wild.

Be interesting to know how many people actually finish these games.

Managed to finish 2 of them, and it wasn't a problem with time management or difficulty (it's non-existent in these games), more how quickly they become monotonous.

Breath of Fire 3. The game itself is tedious, but everything done with the storytelling, including subtle changes to character animations, is high art. The game itself has a great theme around social inequality and a lot of Capcom-style reference to the French Revolution and art around the period like Van Gogh.

Another game that is similar except for the specific themes would be Persona 2. Again, great writing, but the game itself is a little tedious.

the division 1/2.

Yep I agree, no better example than FC2. I was amazed by what the engine could do but the gameplay was really, really bad.

Kingdom Hearts. Maybe the gameplay got better in later entries, because just about everyone I know seems to love the series, but it's bad enough in the first entry to keep me from playing the others.

I just recently decided to give Far Cry 5 a try because it's on Game Pass. It's awful. Basically, you just drive to a mission location and clear out a small group of enemies and random crap pops up on the screen along the way, but it's also just a random 2-3 enemies in a truck or something. No real mission structure or level design.

Doesn't get everything perfect but every Todd Howard game fits this criteria for the most part.