Oh, for sure they can. As others have already remarked, if the game's performance suffers because it can't handle displaying all the in-game assets (along with post processing effects if applicable) it will impede on the gameplay and thus on the enjoyment of the player. There's also a certain subset of gamers, especially…
The graphics almost never hinder gameplay directly (although I'm sure there are some examples where they do). However, they can certainly hinder gameplay indirectly on projects where the focus and budget is mostly on the presentation side of things.