Yeah, the last of us is an example of a game with a moderately compelling story.

But it's also a game that does a really good job of offering brutal difficulty in a way that's fair, engaging, and makes success all (OK, mostly) about you. There aren't really cheap fails. If you approach encounters intelligently and execute your actions, you will succeed. If you don't, you get punished. The mostly is because resources are scarce and there's some RNG to drops, so if you're too low, some harder encounters can vary in difficulty based on the ammo that you get.

If that's not what you want, that's fine. But I read books and watch TV for stories. I play games for mechanics. Is it nice when a game like Horizon makes a character like Aloy really compelling by having her have to present advanced tech to primitive tribalist cultures? Sure. But if the mechanics weren't good, writing couldn't even sort of mitigate that for me.