Counterpoint: Avatar. I have never heard someone say they loved that movie because of the amazing story. They like it because it's very, very, very pretty to look at.
I've been debating watching the movies now that there a few of them out, thinking there must be something there. However, I've never heard anyone actually talk about these movies in real life, which is still a concern.
I don't really enjoy the stories all that much, but the experience is fun.
Although, I usually turn off the water while I'm eating my popcorn.
And even with great graphics why are they always so sterile. Where are my dynamic damage models, deformable terrain, procedural content. One tiny thing that bothered me more than it should have was Doom(2016). Great gameplay but the way the monster corpses disappear just upsets me "How can I be knee deep in the dead if there are no dead?" I mean the original doom and quake kept the corpses around. But now 20 years later they can't?.
The new Donkey Kong game has this. You can smash pretty much everything. However, just like with leaning too much on graphics, it felt like they leaned too much on this. The game was very boring and repetitive. I kept waiting for it get better and eventually gave up on it. Being able to smash everything got old by the time I made it out of the tutorial area.
Contrast this to the newer Zelda games. You can climb pretty much anywhere and go pretty much anywhere. It’s the first game I ever played with that much freedom to explore. But instead of subtracting from the gameplay it added to it, as it opened up new (and seemingly infinite) ways to approach and solve a problem. There were also enough varied game loops that felt distinctly different to not feel repetitive.
I'd also argue that it's much like movie editing: you tend to only notice it when it's crappy.