Some games from a gameplay standpoint just don’t end up being that great. The controls are bad, the core gameplay loop isn’t interesting. The game’s unbalanced or maybe it’s just not fun. That happens sometimes. But what’s even more rare is when those games actually end up having good stories. So today we’re talking about 10 games that were rough, maybe even just weren’t very good, but they had great stories or concepts.
10. We Happy Few
Look, this was highly anticipated. It was like a Kickstarter game. It had this really cool unique look, some very interesting visual flare, but the game that actually launched in 2016 wasn’t really what anyone expected or really wanted. You see this game, you think it’s gonna be kind of like an English “BioShock,” but what we got in the early access release was very disappointing. It was kind of like a janky clone of “Don’t Starve.” It was all over the place. The studio to its credit eventually completely overhauled the game to make something closer to players’ expectations, but the small studio was only able to like do so much with the game they had. So the final result that came out in 2018 was still underwhelming. The gameplay just wasn’t really where it needed to be. The survival stuff was both overbearing and undercooked. The combat was stiff, and the whole joy mechanic where you had to pop pills to avoid the citizens of the town turning on you was kind of inconsistent and more frustrating than a good idea. “We Happy Few” just unfortunately wasn’t a lot of fun to play, which is unfortunate, because the actual story and presentation is surprisingly good with excellent production values and some really unique and interesting themes.
The first character story is the most standard, while the two other playable characters take things in a much more surprising and unexpected direction, especially for a game like this. When the DLC for a game is significantly better to actually play than the base game, then you know it had a bad time. “We Happy Few” has three DLC chapters that actually lean into the game’s strengths and completely eliminate the survival and the joy detection aspects of the game and are all the better for it. It’s unfortunate that the defining features of the game are all mostly not very good, but in a lot of ways I think the strength of the storytelling here redeems the game, at least a little bit. At the very least, Compulsion, the people behind this went on to make some more games.
9. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Look, none of the “Silent Hill” games have what I would call like great gameplay. You know, we’re at least talking like clunky combat and stuff like that, but they’re rarely full-on bad. But in the case of “Shattered Memories,” the story is really what carried this game. This re-imagining of “Silent Hill 1” by game designer Sam Barlow, the guy who would go on to do “Her Story” and other FMV games, is admittedly a pretty controversial game among “Silent Hill” fans. Some people like what they did here, some people absolutely despise it. I can recognize the problems. The psychologist character is very much like kind of a Hollywood therapist, but I think the reimagining of the “Silent Hill 1” story is interesting, and there are some really striking images and solid bits of character writing here. The gameplay is another story though, that’s the point of this list, right? There are some creative puzzles, but the core problem with the game is that it just isn’t scary to play. The only time you’re ever really threatened by monsters are during designated chase segments. That’s the only time you’re really ever in any real danger, which takes all the tension out of the rest of exploration. The strength of the interactive motion controls keeps things interesting, but the experience playing is just too thin. The story is really the one true memorable thing about “Shattered Memories.”
8. Drakengard 3
Look, it took until “Nier: Automata” for Yoko Taro to finally have it all, a game with a really batshit crazy awesome story that’s also actually fun to play. The first “Nier” is pretty rough in a lot of ways, but it’s a hell of a lot better gameplay wise than the “Drakengard” games, which are uniformly pretty rough and not always that much fun to play. Out of all the games in this weird series, “Drakengard 3” is the most extreme. It’s got like the wildest most out there cool story and somehow the most hot and cold gameplay that kind of vacillates between being pretty okay to being almost unplayable bad with really, really bad frame rates on PS3. This story though is like just as dark and twisted as Yoko Taro’s other games, but where his “Nier” games have a little bit of heart buried in the darkness. This game is nothing but just naked contempt for everyone and everything, and it’s kind of incredible. It’s cool, it’s a game that’s not for everyone. It manages to be both extremely goofy and bleak at the same time. But like Yoko Taro’s skills are on full display here. It’s one of those games that’s worth playing on the merits of its story alone because the gameplay is rough as hell.
7. Pathologic
Games rarely get as bleak as this one. It’s an interesting case here because the developers intentionally made this game as frustrating and obtuse as possible. “Pathologic” is a game set in a mysterious Steppes town on the Russian frontier beset by a mysterious plague, and then you play as one of three characters attempting to find a cure or in some way just resolve the problem before everyone is dead at the end of day 12. Now while the second game managed to make the experience a little more streamlined and less confusing, the original game is brutal in every way. Your character either starts out with nothing or just mostly nothing. Simply dying of starvation is a constant concern when you’re not completely lost about what you should even be doing or where you should be going. Nothing in this game is made clear to you. It’s intentional, like even with the dialogue. While it is very interesting sometimes, it’s often very, you know, vague about what people actually expect you to do, and the game progresses no matter what you do. So it’s easy to find yourself locked in to an unwinnable state. It’s really not a fun game to play when you want to unwind, but it’s undeniably an interesting and creative one, and there’s a reason why it found a fan base. The story is interesting, the presentation, the mood, the atmosphere is unlike anything you’ve really seen in a game. The dialogue is aggressively strange, but again, that atmosphere is impeccable. The sequel is a much easier game to recommend as it’s just a lot more normal and easy to play and engage with. But the first game’s so impenetrable and player unfriendly that it’s kind of a more interesting thing.
6. Koudelka
This is a 2000 PlayStation 1 RPG that’s mostly known these days as being a prequel to the cult classic awesome “Shadow Hearts” series, but it’s got its own unique charms that deserve recognition. This game is sort of a weird hybrid between, you know, being an RPG and a survival horror game, and it’s set in one location where you’re exploring this pre-rendered 3D environment, à la “Resident Evil,” only instead of shooting zombies, you occasionally get caught in random battles. Slow and unfun and sometimes inconsistently hard random battles. Honestly, the RPG elements of this game are its worst parts, and if they remove them entirely, honestly, it would probably be a better game. Sure, the monster designs are at least gnarly and interesting, but the breakable weapons combined with this like impenetrable confusing weakness system just really doesn’t lend itself to a fun RPG. The story, on the other hand, is comparatively strong, especially for a game from this era. The voice acting is especially impressive with each character giving a much better performance than you’d probably expect given the era this game was made. Sure, there’s the rare “Metal Gear Solid” from this time period where the voice acting is stellar, but most voice acting at the time was pretty rough. The actual plot of “Koudelka” is unique for an RPG. It’s got pretty low stakes, you know, there’s no world ending scenario here, but it’s just three characters trying to survive a haunted mansion. The actual plot isn’t much to write home about, but the character dialogue and the conversations they have, all that is so well done and comparatively mature compared to what you normally get in this genre that it was definitely something that was worth checking out at the time still.
5. Yakuza: Dead Souls
Now this is one of those games where I’m always kind of shocked that it actually exists, like I forget about it for a few years and then get reminded like, oh, yeah, this is a real game. So for some reason they made a “Yakuza” spinoff game in 2011 where Kiryu is blowing away zombies with heavy firepower. And while that might sound like an amazing premise, I love “Yakuza” games, and I love when they go crazy and they do spinoffs. Just know that this isn’t like “Pirate Yakuza of Hawaii.” Unfortunately this game is not good. The shooting is so stiff and awkward. It’s basically like they took the guns from a regular “Yakuza” game, you know the ones that really basically only function like beat ’em up pickups, and designed an entire game around where you have to use them exclusively, which if you’ve played enough of these games, which we have, you know this is probably a bad idea. RGG knows how to make some fun old-school fighting and now some good turn-based battles, but third-person shooters aren’t really their thing, and it really shows in “Dead Souls.”
Now what makes this game worth playing is the side stories and main campaign, which they put the same amount of effort into as if this was just a straight up mainline “Yakuza” game. You’d think with the zombie premise that they’d, you know, half-ass it or something with shovelware quality cut scenes, but they didn’t. They put all their effort into this thing. The writing, the storytelling, the balance between seriousness and absurdity. Look, if you don’t know these games, you can chalk it off as like incredibly goofy, but like if you love these games, and like what else are you doing other than playing these games to see something crazy happen? The side stories are some of the best in the entire series too. “Dead Souls” is a miserable game to like physically play, but if you’re a huge “Like a Dragon” fan, then it is a must play just for the story alone.
4. Futurama: The Game
This now rare tie-in game to the popular Fox, I mean Comedy Central, Hulu, whatever series isn’t doing anything that special. It’s a pretty middling to bad third-person platformer, but what it does have is story and writing that feels like it came right out of Golden Age “Futurama” simply because they actually got the show’s lead writer David X. Cohen on board to do the script for the game. That makes us feel like one long lost episode of the TV show and makes it one of the rare actually funny video game tie-ins. Look, it’s no “The Simpsons: Hit & Run.” You’re not playing this thing for like the uninspired jumping and shooting that’s bland, but the story is actually a pretty fun classic “Futurama” science fiction scenario. All the characters actually sound and speak like their characters. So for a “Futurama” fan, like this is actually pretty great.
“Futurama: The Game” is one of the most faithful video game adaptations of all time, believe it or not, which doesn’t make it a great game to play or anything, but the quality of the humor and the quality of the writing just really elevated it.
3. Deadly Premonition
This game really was lightning in a bottle. What started off as like a blatant “Twin Peaks” ripoff that they had to make major changes to the game’s presentation ended up being the ultimate cult classic of the 2010s on almost every level. I mean, “Deadly Premonition” is not good. The story is insane. The characters are all basket cases. The graphics sometimes barely look above a like a PS2 game and the controls are pretty atrocious across the board. But instead of hurting the experience, the jankiness in “Deadly Premonition” works. Combined with the bonkers story, it actually all meshes together into a so-bad-it’s-good-type masterpiece.
At first, everyone was laughing at the game, but slowly but surely, an ironic fan base started to build up around the game. People who were laughing at the inexplicable dialogue and baffling story twists were for sure, but they were also genuinely enjoying their time. Look, call it irony poisoning or just a deep dedication to being contrarian. But there is something legit compelling about the story of “Deadly Premonition.” I’m not sure if I’d go so far as to say it’s actually really good, but it is fascinating in a way that few games are.
This is what makes it unique and why we’re still talking about it. The writing and dialogue are so idiosyncratic, the whole thing is aggressively quirky in a way that just can’t be faked. This is a game that’s the work of a singular visionary, Swery65. The game success has yet to be truly replicated no matter how many times Swery has tried. “Deadly Premonition 2” was just a flop. There is just something so magical about this first game, about “Deadly Premonition,” it just works. It’s a real beautiful mess of a game that manages to be somehow so much greater than the sum of its parts.
2. Crash: Mind Over Mutant
Look, the “Crash Bandicoot” series went in some pretty weird directions at Activision after Naughty Dog, before eventually finally returning to that classic formula with “Crash 4.” Some of those experiments were weird, but most of the other experiments were pretty bad, “Mind Over Mutant” included here. This was the second and last game of the attempted visual reboot of the series that kind of turned Crash from a charmingly manic freak to like a guy who wears tribal tattoos and just kind of didn’t feel like the original character. The original character felt like a cartoon, and this kind of just felt like a cynically made cash grab mascot.
Generally, that time period was not good for Crash Bandicoot, especially for people like me who grew up playing the very original games on PS1. Instead of like the well-made platforming of the Naughty Dog games, “Mind Over Mutant” here is a really basic, very lame beat ’em up game where you wander around these overly large levels and just mindlessly mash buttons while fighting brain dead enemies. It’s more of a sleep aid than a proper game. It is not fun. This game is pretty lame, but it’s got one thing going for it, the cut scenes. The cut scenes are unhinged. For some reason, each one is done in a like a different art style. The first is shadow puppets. The next one comes right out of a Saturday morning cartoon. There’s one that’s based on grimdark comic book art. It’s a whole lot of unnecessary effort, but it adds a lot to the game’s presentation. Whoever greenlit this thing, whoever decided, hey, this is what they’re gonna do, whoever was given that task and really ran with it, they deserve an award. It’s really the one truly memorable thing about “Mind Over Mutant.” Well, that. And that these cut scenes are actually kind of funny.
Like there’s some clever writing here that’s a lot better than what you’d expect from a game like this. They actually manage to get some solid laughs out of us, and that’s an impressive achievement considering while actually playing “Mind Over Mutant,” like you’re gonna wanna fall asleep.
1. Rule of Rose
This cult classic PS2 survival horror game is known for two things, the moral panic it generated in parts of Europe and its story. These days, the game is highly sought after and rare. It’s currently one of the more expensive PS2 games to buy, which only adds to the game’s notoriety. The story deals with some extremely dark subject matter and involves children, which makes it even more unpleasant. But the actual events of the game are mostly abstract, and all that really bad stuff is only alluded to and rarely shown. So the game isn’t actually all that disgusting or explicit. The horror is all implied rather than, you know, completely straight up stated or shown.
It’s got one of the strangest and most interesting unique stories in any survival horror game, and the fact that it’s like willing to tackle subject matter you don’t see in a video game, like it’s just worth mentioning. And the story itself, it’s mostly what everyone talks about with this game because the actual gameplay is pretty miserable. It’s mostly just a whole lot of fetch quests where you have to run back and forth through this gigantic confusing orphanage, spending most of the game lost and confused. The combat is extremely limited, even as far as survival horror games go, and the pacing is just bad. This is not a fun survival horror game to play. If you’re playing this for anything, it’s the cut scenes. This is the ultimate walkthrough game, or more likely long play game, because, man, those prices, like yikes!
For survival horror fans, this is definitely a game worth checking out in some capacity because the atmosphere and the story it tells feels legitimately, like I said, fresh and unique, but that gameplay is pretty bad, even by survival horror standards of the time. Look during the PS2 era, games were still figuring things out.
But, hey, those are 10 games where the gameplay isn’t very fun, maybe it’s bad, and the story is awesome. There are plenty of other examples out there, like tons. I’m sure you guys could probably think of your own. So let us know in the comments anything you think. But either way, thank you very much for reading, and we’ll see you guys next time.