Well, obviously there's a difference between "unfinished crap" and "players just don't understand the game's brilliance." If a game doesn't match it's own marketing or is demonstrably bug-riddled and non-functional... it's objectively bad. Big Rigs Over the Road Racing is objectively bad...
Alright, I can tie this in with the thread topic to brings us back on the rails. (This discussion happened on this and I don't remember who said what but the details are expunged for irrelevance.) There was a game which shall remain nameless that had one or more sequels. There was a criticism of the sequel that it "changed the story" by altering key facts from the original game.
The counter-argument was brought up with plot details in the first game that directly supported the plot that arose in the sequel. Thus, the person who panned the sequel for "changing the story" had an invalid criticism based on something they had failed to notice and mentally filled in the blanks for later. In this case, I'd think the argument that some plot details weren't as prominent as they could have been is a valid criticism. Panning it for changing a story when they didn't actually change the story... is not.
For a more concrete example directly related to plot, Bioshock and Bioshock 2. I'm assuming by now if you're gonna play them you will have done so, so unmarked spoilers ahoy!
So in the first game Jack does the whole would you kindly and Andrew Ryan's narcissistic individualism destroys the city for the most part. It's a story about people who are a part of a system breaking out of and changing that system, both potentially for the better (Jack if you aren't a dick) or much worse (Andrew "Everyone can choose their own path as long as it's the one I made for them" Ryan).
In 2, Delta vs Sophia Lamb's cuckoo collective is a mirror's image of 1. You're a part of a system who can actively work towards change by setting examples and working within that system. Sophia Lamb essentially wants to annihilate individuality and force-feed people each others' memories to engineer some human oversoul or something. The direct opposite of Ryan's rampant individualism. And yet she's just as immoral and self-righteous as Ryan was.
So taken together they bookend the same basic idea that extremism in any form should be critically examined, don't simply accept what others tell you, all that good stuff. I think that while the second one was slightly weaker, it was only because the world wasn't the brand new thing it used to be in the first game. Taken together, both games are one of the most well-done literary/philosophical allegories I've seen explored at length in a video game narrative. And yet, I saw reviews that flat-out said "I quit playing Bioshock 2 ten minutes in because it felt too much like I was playing a Bioshock game." Then my head exploded into confetti.