Which games live and die by their gameplay?

[aofelix]

During my pretty short gaming career, something has become obvious.

Titles which I have enjoyed the most or at least I can appreciate the huge amount of quality have lived and died by their gameplay. They don't shove story down your throat or huge amazing CGI cinematic. They might look good, but their draw is the gameplay and at the attention to detail on the mechanics and challenge.

I was looking through my top 10 titles and I found Dark Souls, Wind Waker HD, Fire Emblem Awakening and Mario Galaxy were the games where I found the gameplay was extremely tight and phenomenal.

Then I look at titles in my top 10 like TLOU, Kingdom Hearts and Trails in the Sky and see they take me on a journey and story more than absorb me into their worlds through gameplay alone.




Which titles would you suggest flourish by depending on gameplay rather than CGI/Story?
And vice versa?

 

[MaskedRed]

Doom/Blood/Wolfenstein, Castlevania , any Megaman game, any rhythm game(that you really enjoy)old Metroid games, Fallout all manage to survive trough Gameplay alone(for me that
is)
Souls series,Tales Games, Kingdom Hearts,Catherine,Halo, Zelda Skyward Sword(some will disagree) and these flourish trough both

 

[RevPokemon]

All pre ps2/DC/gcn/Xbox games that have good ratings

 

[Taleweaver]

All pre ps2/DC/gcn/Xbox games that have good ratings

This...pretty much sums things up.


Honestly: I'm the kind of gamer who couldn't give a damn about the story in most games (it sort of depends). Still...some notable mentions:

-tetris. Okay: all puzzle games, but I think this is so obvious no further explanation is needed
-pacman. Okay: most if not all arcade games have a basic tot non-existent story. It's simply not why they feed coins in the machine.
-smash bros. Or rather: all fighting games suffer from it: their "story" is just a bunch of characters duking it out. The very fact that MK is mentioned to have "a good story for a fighting game" pretty much says it all: they all have terrible excuses for a story.
-Mario games. Yes...platformers in general. There are exceptions, but the fact that the most famous one has an uninteresting, boring and especially ENDLESSLY RECYCLED plot says enough. (I'm currently playing an indy game called Rochard. It's rather fun, but the story is tacked on in pretty much all aspects).
-UT3. FPS'es in general do better without a plot, but UT3 has an especially cringeworthy story that somehow misses all attempts at being campy.
-diablo 3. Honest trailers is only too right when they say "Prepare yourself to skip your way through the all the dialogues explaining the diablo lore". It's not that it's bad in any way...it's just that it distracts from what you're busy doing in a dungeon crawler.


I could go on, but I think this isn't what you intended, aofelix. You may want to limit the scope from "games" to "story-driven games" or RPG's and adventure games. It'll save people like me from just stating obvious examples.


As for where the story is relevant...final fantasy-style RPG's come to mind. Fallout as well. Still, it's worth mentioning that "story" is more than just the cutscènes or text to progress the plot. The atmosphere and characters are important as well (though it all has to come together, which is the part where fighters fail).

And some special mentions in previous categories:
-anno 2070. I don't play enough simulation games to make a general statement, but the overall world actually matters to me. The way you build your landscape within the environment really speaks to me. The factions just round out the whole.
-Braid. Most story progression is just books and those stupid puzzles. Nonetheless, the sum is certainly greater than the individual parts.