Blogs What will you put up with for a good storyline?

I think the problem here is not about 'putting up with things'. It's about what you like and don't like.

I personally had no problem with VATS or the Mass Effect combat. Everyone operates under the logical fallacy that all things have an absolute quality, that if something is 'good', then everyone must like it.

Ask people about marmite, doctor who, or opera. If you like marmite, then you'll think marmite is awesome, if you don't like doctor who, you'll think doctor who is rubbish, and if you like opera, well, you're weird aren't you?

My point is: These things are a matter of personal preference. If you find yourself 'putting up' with something, what is actually happening is you forcing you to play a game you do not like, because you have the faulty logical belief that just because other people say something is good, that you should like it.

Don't feel bad if you don't like the gameplay features that other people do. I personally hate mmorpgs, but a hell of a lot of people like them. If I played an mmo, I would be 'putting up' with a lot of the aspects of the game, that wouldn't be a reflection of it's absolutely quality, a) because there is no such thing, and b) because it is my personal opinion.

 

Perfectly said. Rep.

 

I play JRPGs, that answers the question mostly by itself

Personally, Story > gameplay by a huge margin.

crappy gameplay but great story? - I will play it to the end even if i have to resort to easy mode and/or cheats to do so

Crappy story but good gameplay. - I might not bother finishing it, unless the gameplay is exceptional.

Results in me giving RPGs a huge leeway on gameplay, but games such as doom3 meaning i can't bring myself to finish them...

 

Are you honestly saying you would put yourself through all kinds of **** for a good story? And you play JRPGs?! That's a lot of **** to put up with for what usually amounts to a mediocre at best story.

 

What? People think Fallout 3 had a good story? Ugh.
Each to their own I guess.
As far as I'm concerned it was a paper-thin bland questline characteristic of Bethesda.
Like most elements of Fallout 3, it just felt like Oblivion with different art assets.

Mass Effect had a good story, good roleplaying elements and good presentation of the above and I played it to the end.
The combat was crappy, though, and puts me off actually revisiting the game.
So you could say I put up with it once, but the horrible gameplay was enough to kill the longevity or replayability of the game for me.

As said elsewhere on the forums, just go and play Planescape Torment or Deus Ex.
Then weep over the sorry state of modern gaming.

 

For the record, Fallout 3's in-game v-sync option doesn't work. You have to disable it by changing the Fallout3.ini file, specifically the line iPresentInterval=1 to 0. However, this causes the game to move too fast once it goes past 60 fps (yeah Bethesda sure are competent that way) and as such it's recommended to use one of a few programs available to cap the framerate at 60 fps.

Oh, and Fallout 3 has a dogshit storyline. It's better than the average shooter's, sure, but the game is overall much too schizophrenic and the main story is far too short and repetitive, with far more emphasis on linear action than on proper freeform role-playing that made the first two Fallouts so excellent. Fallout 3 has its strengths, but they're in atmosphere, exploration, and the whole sandbox nature of the game; there's very little in the way of deep game systems or memorable characters, events, story twists, etc.

Mass Effect on the other hand has pretty poor combat, but it's offset by the excellent universe the game features, along with its characters and storyline. Probably the first BioWare game where character interactions don't feel forced and stilted, and in some ways it does a better job than Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age. Some moments in the game are just phenomenal too, including the entire endgame sequence, and make up a lot for some of the occasional slowness.

 

I have Mass Effect still on my shelf waiting to be played ..
There will probably be Mass Effect 4 out by the time I get round to it
Fallout I do enjoy though each to their own though I guess.

 

I don't think that's the case, they probably thought a lot about the gameplay.
...THEN they decided the gameplay had to be optimised for consoles.
You need VATS or autoaim when running about with no mouse.

I've found both games mediocre at best, and both very repetitive.
If you stick to the main storyline* ME is very, very short.

Fallout3 and Stalker both make you collect loot, return to a selling point, collect again, return, collect, return...

Xir

*and ME urges you to continue the main storyline (Hurry, he's getting away!) instead of wandering the universe.

 

Story is important, make no mistake. My favourite ones are usually the ones which have a great story or some really compelling characters and there are things I'm willing to forgive if they are really strong - but not the majority of the gameplay, certainly.

Take Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, for example. Wonderful story, beautiful characters. I love it. The combat is incredibly shoddy though, to be honest, and the final fights are...ugh. Just, ugh. That's OK though because the fighting is concentrated into short bits and the bulk of the action is the platforming, which is excellent. If the platforming had been bad and the combat good though, well the story would be much less of a concern.

I love story. I love good characters. My favourite games are the ones which have interesting plots, like Deus Ex and Thief. At the end of the day though a game has to have more than just story - because if ALL I cared about was the story then I'd just read a book instead. I don't because I want to interact with the story in a meaningful, intelligent and fun manner - which is something you can't do in a book.

 

I sort of felt a little, 'Godalmighty, *another* bloody gunfight' when playing through Uncharted 2, but then with the amount of really quite good setpieces and the story behind the whole thing just made it absolutely brilliant.

Fallout 3 was a non-starter for me at first, I just couldn't handle myself once out of the vault. Aiming's fine for me though, sometimes use VATS to get a couple or so shots in while I think how best to dispatch the baddies.

Mass Effect just got very annyoing very quickly. I was enjoying it up to the point where you first land on a planet in the transport vehicle you control. I think it's a bug wherein you can't tell if you've fallen off the sometimes fairly narrow path you have to follow, the textures aren't 'complete' and then you start back at the beginning. I like to be given at least a fair chance. Because of that, I gave up on it after the umpteenth go.

PoP:SoT was incredible although I agree with Joe, sometimes the combat was completely against you. I remember a part where you dropped into a room and there were several guards to defeat. That took a lot of fancy footwork and new swear words.

DragonAge Origins - I'd prefer to play the game rather than watching a fairly poor graphics engine try and provide a cinematic experience. It's just so bloody boring! Give me a dragon to stick a fork into!

 

I think the combat in Fallout 3 was designed to encourage the use of VATS rather than charging round FPS style. I find it far more fun to cripple a deathclaws legs in VATS with a railway rifle than to just frantically running backwards away from it trying to pump all your plasma ammo into it. Plus you get the slow-motion-critical-hit-exploding-head camera view which is always satisfying.

Basically, the going is tough in the early parts of the game. Remember you are just some youth who's lived in a vault all their life. Not some kind of special forces commando. It's better to avoid combat and conflict entirely against anything bigger than a wild dog until you've levelled up enough!

My first attempt at playing it was infuriating. My graphics card wasn't up to the job meaning the draw distance had to be brought right down. I'd find bullets flying past my ears out of the nothingness in the distance only to find i'd come with in range of a couple of supermutants - by that time it was too late!

 

I'm glad it's just not me. There have been several games like this, and I feel like Bioshock was the worst pc-fps, I was hoping there was a mod or tweak around the corner, and read huge forumtreads about the subject, only to find half of the post was from idiots that did not recognize the problem and believed they had superior hardware/skills. Deus-Ex II was an excellent fps/rpg, although it wasn't very sandboxy. I'm also glad STALKER was brought up, even if it was a joke or not, it's still my pick in this soup of fps games with rpg elements.

I will allways pick gameplay over story, and if the aim/engine is fundamentaly flawed to the point of no return, like Bioshock, I will pass out on it. I still played Fallout 3, allbeit did not like free-aim at all, and led me to not finish up the game even if I was at the end of the story. I passed on Mass Effect as it looked too flat and uninspired, not my kind of artstyle, and the planet-explorations looked sucky.

Hopes up for Metro 2033 to get som rpg-elements and perfect freeaim of course, Stalker: Call of Pripyat has also gotten good critics and have been said to fix up inventory and gui a lot.

 

OK, to get FO3 & ME out of the way first...

At first, FO3 did feel rather clunky and sluggish - I expected to be able to approach combat in the same manner as you do with an FPS, which is not the way the game was built. Once you get used to the combat mechanics and using VATS, I found combat really entertaining. My first strategy was to bludgeon the crap out of everything with the biggest gun going. This worked well enough until I encountered my first deathclaw (a good way into the game), whereupon I was quickly slaughtered. This forced me to rethink how I approached combat and take a more creative approach (in the case of the deathclaw, cripple or poison it's legs and you can easily run rings round the thing, without it getting close enough to attack). You can approach the game as an FPS and get incredibly frustrated with it, or you can at least try and be more creative with the combat and enjoy it a whole lot more. It doesn't help that, as others pointed out, it takes a while for your combat skills to be improve. This just adds to the immersion though; you've lived all your short life in a sterile and safe vault - now you have to face the post-apocalyptic wasteland with nothing more than a piddly pop-gun of a pistol.

I've just started playing Mass Effect, so can't really form much of an opinion, but I find the combat to be a bit of a pain in the ass to be honest; the first "real" mission I took - no spoilers here - was to find Liara, and I kept getting my ass kicked. I must have re-played that fight about 20 times. I often find myself re-loading the game, because some super attack comes out of nowhere and wipes me out. The squad control system can be a pain, too - I usually let squad members do what they want, only directing their actions with the occasional tech/biotic ability. Again though, with more experience, combat does get easier.

Mass Effect is all about the story telling & dialogue - having previously played KOTOR to death, I expected this. In contrast, Fallout 3 - at least to me - is more about combat and exploration; the story is quite good, but not a patch on the first two games.

Back to the point of the point of the post... I'm willing to put up with quite a lot for a good story line. The game has to be playable though - I wouldn't put up with dire gameplay mechanics just to finish the story. I'd put up with quite a bit, but I have my limits. The first time I ever played Final Fantasy VII, it took me some time to get into it. The gameplay felt completely alien at first - I was used to fast-paced FPS games or Resident Evil, not the relatively slow and calculated turn-based combat. It took about 5 hours of putting up with confusing combat and character development before the story got it's hooks in to me; once it did, I couldn't put it down (I damn near failed exams in school, because I'd be playing that game until 3 in the morning). It took me even longer to master the combat, which forms a major part of the gameplay - in fact, I don't think I truly nailed combat until the third time I played it. It now stands out as possibly my favourite game of all time.

Admittedly FFVII is a bad example because the game play and story are just brilliant. But if it's not a style of game you're used to, the random combat and complexity of the character progression/customisation can very quickly put you off. Gameplay and story don't necessarily go hand in hand: you can have a game that's incredibly good fun to play, but has no story whatsoever - see Audiosurf, one of the best game purchases I've ever made. On the other hand, a game with a fantastic story line is not worth playing if the game mechanics/engine doesn't work well.

 

If you're having trouble with ME combat then I'd suggest dropping the difficulty down - which you can do at any point via the menu - or replaying as a Soldier. By far the easiest class.

The game is definitely all about the story though. I'm playing through Mass Effect 2 at home right now and my girlfriend has quickly got into the habit of sitting behind me and watching me play. She says she doesn't truly know what's going on in terms of the gameplay and fighting, but she loves the story and is treating it as a TV show where she occasionally gets to jump in and yell at me to kill someone.