Renaud Charpentier, of Total War devs Creative Assembly, may have a point. So many "bad" games, which to be fair most people would call simply "average", aren't offensively terrible. They're just boring. Bland. "Competent".
The ones that stick with us, even if they don't play so well, stick with us for a reason. Like, say, Mirror's Edge. They're bold, confident, either trying something new or doing something old with panache. They're what happens when a developer tackles the creative aspects of a game, not just the technological.
Creative Assembly: "70 per cent of games aren't good enough" [Edge]