It depends on how low the framerate is.

These are 2 of the genres frame rate is most important in. Mario would feel horribly floaty at 30fps and you would not be able to jump the platforms anywhere near as precisely. Frame drops on top of that would just be a nightmare.

Racing games you can get away with 30fps, but 60fps is just so much smoother for everything.

The difference between games and other entertainment mediums is that you interact with it. The faster/smoother that interaction is fed back to you, the greater the connection with the game.

I couldn't see it until Dreamcast with games like Metropolis Street Racer and F355 Challenge as I couldn't work out why F355 looks so much... smoother than MSR which always seemed to have a "double vision" effect in comparison when turning corners etc.

Prior to this games such as F-Zero X were also noted for how fast and fluid they ran, even before people really knew much about frame rates on home consoles because for the most part, N64 games in particular ran at sub 30fps. Many hovering around 15-20fps.

You might not see the difference, but you can probably still feel it. I don't doubt it's the reason Call of Duty became the top dog of FPS games. Gran Turismo and Forza since the early 2000s have always gunned for 60fps over visuals.

Don't get me wrong, I can make do with 30fps, but it's always a let down. 720p I can live with, it has far less impact on the way a game plays than frame rate and a 720p 60fps will always look better than a 1080p 30fps game.

For example?

Agreed. 30 FPS would be terrible in most PC games and frame rate actually matters, especially during online play. A poor framerate will also lessen the overall visual parity since it becomes more visible and disturbing the more effects and transitions you have on screen at once.

For me, a smooth framerate is more important than a really high one and also more important than really high res textures or perfect shadows and reflections. Adjusting the latter often greatly helps the former.

Framerates hasn't really been an issue in the console games I'v played in the last decade, terrible aliasing and severe pop-in issues on the other hand...

This

I care more about framerate than I do the 720p vs 1080p discussion. Especially with open world games like Infamous, GTA, and upcoming Watch Dogs, to immerse yourself in that world requires a good frame rate.

Castle of Illusion on Steam.

sigh it is clear that a lot of people here have never played online with dialup.

Frames dropping from 60 to like 45fps is NOTHING compared to dialup lag speeds which freeze the game up lol.

If you could master first person shooters on dialup then a few frame drops will not cause you go go off a cliff lol.

Every game is better with a higher framerate. Since the most important about playing games is how well you play it, framerate is very important.

We used to play CS on ISDN and even 32kbits dial-up, good times. You'd die and then after a second or so someone would appear around the corner and actually shoot you, often a Swede with a humiliating weapon (UMP was a winner back then for this purpose).

There are few things I hate more than inconsistent framerates--nothing takes me out of the experience faster. Once framerates drop below a solid 30fps, I can't stomach playing the game for long.