Have you ever come across a game that has a grounded or promising story, yet it manages to lose all that and more due to its overly complicated gameplay? Or maybe it’s not complicated, but just plain dumb or stupid in how it feels to actually play?
It’s a feeling that you get suckerpunched with, because the gameplay element is just serviceable at best. Or at worst, it’s just baffling to play. Honestly, at this point, I’d rather just turn my brain off and hope for the best, praying that a game sticks the landing with the engagement value at least.
For today’s list, I’ve selected a group of games that had every bit of a serious and gripping narrative but were hindered by their overly complex or, occasionally brainless gameplay mechanics. Some of these games might have plenty of notable qualities, but their actual gameplay was the one area that left the most to be desired.
8 Fort Solis
Disappointment On Touchdown
When I first heard about Fort Solis, a sci-fi cinematic thriller starring Troy Baker and RDR2’s renowned Roger Clark, my hype was set in motion. Little did I know that’d be flushed down the drain, since besides the narrative itself, the gameplay was a massive letdown.
Look, I understand that a ‘cinematic’ narrative game shouldn’t have gameplay as its main focus in the first place, but even Telltale wouldn’t be this careless in adding zero engagement value as the catalyst to their narrative adventures.
What Fort Folis ultimately ended up being is a monotonous walking sim with barely any player agency as you move everything along with a painfully slow movement speed. It’s all held together by duct tape, with high-quality visuals from UE5, since the story itself suffers from a lackluster pacing.
7 Twelve Minutes
Psychologically Repetitive
An indie game concept that seemed mildly innovative and intriguing was Twelve Minutes, with its thrilling storytelling and a big-name voice cast, including Willem Dafoe and James McAvoy.
While it was marketed as a time-loop-based game with thrilling and psychological storytelling, it ultimately became a chore to play, as the gameplay is mainly boiled down to a trial-and-error progression, where you attempt to achieve a new instance by taking a different action.
It also doesn’t help that the puzzles give you no clear indications, and rather make you feel unmotivated to reach the end of this couple’s horrifying tale. It tries to be an insistent point-and-click adventure where you slowly put together the bits and pieces like Christopher Nolan’s Memento, but instead, you’re left mildly frustrated about how to get to the end and the payoff that it gives you for reaching it.
6 Spec Ops: The Line
Do You Feel Like a Hero Yet?
Before you point your pitchforks at me, I love Spec Ops: The Line. I honestly think it’s one of the best cases of a political psychological game that makes you question your moral compass, especially with that second half. It’s also one of the first games I played once I truly built a gaming PC, but there’s a reason why I’ll mainly praise the writing.
While the game is at its peak in the narrative, it loses points in the gameplay department, since it is sandbagged by one of the most generic third-person gunplay systems out there. Almost every single encounter feels obtuse to progress with the bullet-sponge enemies, and the strategy of switching between cover-to-cover gets repetitive right from the first half.
5 The Medium
An On-Rails Nosedive
By all means, The Medium has a promising story, and one of my personal favorite main settings. Taking the time and attention to explore every inch of Niwa Resort is always a delight, thanks to the fixed camera angles that make every shot feel like a surreal horror game from the mid-2000s.
That horror DNA is psychological and atmospheric, just like the Silent Hill series. Oh, and if you’ve obviously got Akira Yamaoka at the stern as the main OST composer.
But I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a huge fan of the gameplay side of things here. Where it shines in the aforementioned areas, The Medium gets bogged down by being a low-key walking sim with extra steps, since most of the puzzles are relatively simple enough, and even those stealth sections with The Maw aren’t anything home to write about.
To some whom I know personally that have tried The Medium, it even felt like a tech demo to them, simply because of the simplicity in the design philosophy of this title. And you know what? I don’t blame them for thinking that way about this game. It’s more on-rails than you’d expect and makes you wish you were more involved with the gameplay.
4 The Callisto Protocol
A Cheap Imitation
For what it’s worth, I tried giving The Callisto Protocol a shot, but just couldn’t get behind that atrocious gameplay, even though it came down to just getting a feel for it. Don’t get me wrong, the story was decent, even great at some points, but by the time I was done, I found myself wanting to replay Dead Space instead to clear my palette.
A game that nails a bleak and daunting sci-fi horror atmosphere is dragged down by watered-down action combat, where half the gameplay involves rhythmically timing your dodges with clumsy movement.
And don’t even get me started on the barebones weapon and enemy variety. The former I can look past, but these guys could’ve cooked up way more enemy types than what I experienced throughout the game.
For what it’s worth, I even enjoyed some of the game’s atrocious parts, especially the cheap insta-kills and cramped encounter spaces, which added a bit of anxiety. But I cannot defend the overall gameplay here or some of the finer details; it is absolutely stupid and drags down the game’s otherwise salvageable quality.
3 Quantum Break
Remedy’s Weakest Concoction
As someone who adores almost every single game set in the Remedy Connected Universe, imagine my curiosity when I dived into Quantum Break, waiting to see how its controversial time-travel narrative and unique gameplay formula could fascinate me.
And hey, putting that absurdity of the finale aside for a minute, the game does have a promising narrative; you’ve got a full-blown TV show streamed in-game, with A-list actors such as Lance Reddick and our lead, Jack, played by the talented Shawn Ashmore.
And that’s exactly where I once again draw the line. Quantum Break has one of the most subpar gameplay experiences, all wrapped up in a fancy paint job that makes it feel somewhat appealing.
Using Jack’s time powers is cool and all, but for a game that relied on time so much, it could’ve had more unique traits rather than a bland third-person gunplay, something that Remedy would soon come to realize with Control. But hey, for what it’s worth, it’s still a decent title from Remedy with a strong story that got lost in time, just like the IP itself.
2 Detroit: Become Human
Deviant Uprising
Look, I’m a sucker for narrative adventure titles like any other guy, but while Detroit: Become Human succeeded in capturing me with its overarching storytelling on the three characters, specifically Kara and Connor, the gameplay just wasn’t all that engaging as it seemed.
I know that Quantic Dream and David Cage love to add interactivity as much as humanly possible, but with a game like this that features a well-dated QTE design and binary or otherwise surface-level gameplay details, it becomes a rather annoying experience to complete than anything else.
The game operates on movie logic rather than actual narrative-focused games with meaningful choices, as there are only a handful of major outcomes available for each character that truly pivot the latter sections in different outcomes.
1 Heavy Rain
An Interactive Nightmare
You just know I saved the best for last with Heavy Rain. It’s a game that I honestly enjoyed back when it went up as a freebie on PS+ in 2018, but I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t mention how it was also the most hilarious game that I played thus far back then.
While on the surface, it’s an intensely bleak and noir narrative, almost making it seem like a crime thriller show on HBO, it’s also an interactive nightmare; every mundane action requires a dramatic QTE of some kind, while having a weak choice-based system that does little to nothing with the outcomes.
And most importantly, it has such a high emphasis on interactivity and QTEs to the point where the game has an unintentional comedic layer. Missing one minor button prompt can make Ethan stupidly fail in a goofy manner as well as make him look like a stand-up comedian in an otherwise serious narrative game.
And honestly, with how much it does this with the player agency it provides to you, it ends up making even the most emotion-driven scenes in this game feel like a blooper reel if you manage to miss those button prompts.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
