I'm not saying story is a bad thing. It's not, but it seems like a lot of devs focus so heavily on coming up with an engaging story and good visuals that they forget to actually make the game fun to play.
I think about some of the games I've played over the years, and a lot of my favorites either had fairly limited or even downright absurd plots that basically boil down to an excuse to make the gameplay loop happen.
Just a random musing.
In the AAA realm, yes to both. Exclusions to the story part for the GTAs and CoD of the world that exist to separate idiots from every dollar they have. Everything else in AAA, they demand some intense story that makes them cry with writing that combines a B movie with a little kids TV show and graphics that give them "immersion" (a stupid term).
Sub-AAA gets a bit of a pass on both, depending on what the game is targeting. There are way too many that are put together by artists that go all in on a shit story and have shit graphics and gameplay.
I'd argue immersion includes the gameplay loop/controls, but I see your point.
very true. i'll give graphics a pass as long as the game is fun to play, though. Look at katamary damacy. sub-par graphics (limitation imposed by the game mechanics), absolutely retarded story, but I can play that game for hours, rolling up nonsense into a bigger and bigger ball.
Yeah, I could agree with that, I could get immersed (still hate using that term) in a game with totally zero story, like Tetris. Meaning that I'm losing track of time.
I just always saw the normies use that term, "oh I feel so immersed play <generic Sony 3rd party game> because I just felt so lesbian while I was playing it and it made me cry"
I really couldn't care less about graphical fidelity myself. It can be part of what I like about the game that adds to the fun, but so many games focus on photorealism and forget everything else.
omg, thank you, i didn't even think of tetris, but that's a fantastic example...
...to this day, whenever I'm packing something and I'm having trouble getting everything to fit, I just hum tetris music, and before I know it, I'm done, lmao.
Yeah I often forget Tetris when someone asks me something like "what's your all time favorite game." It's Tetris, and very little is even close. There's no other game I've played since my age was in the single digits and can pick up today and be interested. Doom is about the only other thing like that although I was a bit older when it came out. It doesn't have much story either.