Before I put on my toga and begin pontificating about the ruination of cinematic gaming, let me give you a quick “oh-shit-my-boss-is-coming” summary of Uncharted 2:
Uncharted 2 is a great game that takes a bit of time to get its legs but delivers strong after the first couple of hours. It has the best writing and acting I’ve seen in a video game thus far and is the first time I remember enjoying cut scenes. In Uncharted 2, they learned how to keep such cut-scenes thankfully brief. The controls are a bit loose and sometimes frustrating but the puzzles aren’t bad and the combat is great fun up until the last boss who is an annoying controller-throwing pain in the ass. Uncharted 2 is likely to drop to $30 or $40 in the next couple of months at which point it will be a great bargain. At $30 or $40, I highly recommend it.
Now on to the deep pontifications.
There’s a very disturbing trend with games these days to make them more like movies. Many game publishers, marketeers, and advertisers have begun referring to them as “interactive experiences” or “interactive cinema” and often claim that their game “is the closest thing to being in a movie.” Never do they realize that this is not at all what we want. We want good games! We want gameplay and challenges and good fun. The LAST thing we want are painfully long cinemas with terrible writing, spaghetti-bowl plots, and jarring breaks in our gameplay.
The Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid franchises are some of the worst examples at this, seeming to have build up an industry of 3d modelers who think they’re Martin Scorsese. It puts a huge added cost into the budget of the game and passes that expense on to us in both dollars, and worse, time.
The recent success of Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Store show us that we really don’t want big cinematics in our games, we’re happy just to jump around and land on top of things. We don’t need a plot any more thick than a large orange thing that vomits up rainbows.
Because of my clear bias against cinematic games, I was clearly going into Uncharted 2 with narrowed eyes and a wrinkled nose. Lucky for the game, they did a few things right and did them right up front.
First, rather than start with a 20 minute long introduction, They throw you right into the game. You begin your adventure hanging for your life and must learn your controls from the most dangerous of possible positions. Only after you get through it does the cinematic style start kicking in. The second big thing they got right was to keep these cinema cut-scenes short. They know they need to get you in the game doing stuff as fast as possible and they don’t waste their time. Third, they keep the plot simple all throughout the game. I knew who the bad guys were, I knew what the general story was. I never got lost at all. There’s no Halo 3 style “hey look, now you’re on the side of the Flood!” twists that have us scratching our heads.
This all came down to good writing. There’s a distinct lack of good writing in video games. Video game writers just can’t seem to help themselves. It’s like they waited their whole life to tell an epic 17 book story and this is finally their chance to share it with the world. Instead we sit staring at our screens with an unused controller hanging limply in our hands while we watch a 3D rendered version of Plan 9 from Outer Space.
Good writing comes from knowing what to say and eliminating everything else. They accomplished this in Uncharted 2. It has the best writing I’ve seen in a video game.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the control. I had just finished Assassin’s Creed 2 on the Playstation 3 when I picked up Uncharted 2 and found a lot of similarities in the games. Both games have a focus on running around, climbing up walls, and hanging off of things. Both of them have a combat system – swordplay in Assassin’s Creed 2 and gunplay in Uncharted 2.
While the gunplay system in Uncharted 2 runs well enough to not be frustrating, character movement felt loose and jerky. More than once my character would go leaping off of some rung and into space simply because the camera wasn’t in the right spot for me to see what I needed to do. Death has very little penalty in Uncharted 2 and it’s a good thing since you’re likely to die a lot.
The gunplay is a lot of fun in Uncharted but I really wish they had put in some sort of Max Payne / Stranglehold bullet-time system. Being able to slow down a fight and do some amazing gun feats would have been a nice.
While the beginning starts strong, it still requires a bit of patience for the game to get going after the first cut scene. There is one particular scene early on where stealth kills are required that apparently had many people setting the controller aside for good. Luckily it gets a lot better after that, but I can see a lot of folks never managing to get beyond that point.
The final boss is an exercise in patience. Only my commitment of 10 hours of my life so far kept me from tossing the controller aside and shelving the game. It couldn’t have been any more tedious and annoying, especially with the crappy character control, loose targeting system, and need for precise timed shots.
Graphically, Uncharted 2 is the most beautiful console game I have ever played. I picked up a Playstation 3 to have something to drive my new 1080p TV and this is the best game to show it off. Environments are lush and full of detail. The colors are vibrant and the frame rate never seems to stutter. If graphics are your thing, this game has them in spades.
As I grow older I’m coming to the realization that paying $60 for a brand new game is a sucker’s gambit. A game that comes out for $60 today will be no worse when I pay $30 for it in six months. It’s still just as good a game. Sure, I won’t be able to get on the inside of all the best Penny Arcade jokes but as I grow into a venerable old fart, I expect that gap to continue to grow. I’m coming to a even more interesting revelation. The amount of money I pay for a game directly corresponds to how much I enjoy that game. An OK game like Too Human becomes a great game when I only pay $15 for it.
For this reason, I was very happy to get Uncharted 2 on a Black Friday deal for $30 and at $30, it’s a great game. Unfortunately, the cost has gone back up to about $55 but I would expect it to go back down again.
I really enjoyed my time in Uncharted 2. With some excellent visuals, entertaining gun battles, and the best writing and acting I’ve seen in a game, it manages to get past the loose jittery controls and show off a really excellent game. Wait until the price drops to $30 and then grab it right up.
Do you actually believe there should only be one trend in games?
I am one of those many who like game with excellent stories (cinematics included), but also enjoy the smaller games that can be found on PSN (and Steam, for that mater).
It is intriguing how you cite two of the best-selling franchises as example of games “players do not want”.
I get that you don’t like the style (MGS4 was pretty cut-scene intense, even for those of us who like that sort of thing)… I just don’t understand how you generalize your tastes to what “all gamers want”.
You might be surprised how much sales they are getting, “sucking in” new clientele by doing just both what you suggest they should stop and what you suggest they should do 🙂
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..Good bye ChattyDM.net – hello Critical-Hits.com =-.
So a couple of points. I wasn’t saying that Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 4 wasn’t successful, just that the constant video clips aren’t really what we want (well, ok, what I want and what all of my gamer friends want).
I think its a terrible trend that extremely popular game developers think its ok to constantly interrupt our games with long boring poorly acted cut-scenes. Much better are the games that integrate such things into the game like Bioshock and Halo ODST have done.
.-= Mike Shea´s last blog ..Three D&D Tips I Learned From Dragon Age =-.
Hi Mike,
My point was that if they were successful, they obviously have the things that their (large group of) customers really wanted.
Doesn’t mean you and your friends have to like it, though 🙂
Just a pet peeve when people take their personal likes and dislikes and push them on a global scale.
I do agree with you that, when done right, integrated cut scenes work wonderfully – loved the ones in BioShock and currently loving the ones in Dragon Age.
But there’s something to be said for the old ways… for a lot of fans, Command & Conquer wouldn’t be the same without the horrible live acting.
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..Good bye ChattyDM.net – hello Critical-Hits.com =-.
Eric,
At first, I was about to say exactly what you said. However, I then went back and re-read it and kind of came to a different conclusion.
I think some games set out to be some epic story-telling (MGS and FF for example). They try to do this with tons of boring (imo) movie-like cinematics. I think the point being made about Uncharted 2 is that you can be an epic story-telling game without having to resort to movie-like mechanics. In that regard, I think Uncharted 2 is pretty ground-breaking. I mean, other companies have tried (including the first Uncharted, Gears of War 2, Call of Duty 4, etc) and they did a pretty good job but I think Uncharted 2 has really perfected the art of seamlessly integrating story into a game without compromising either.
Well, it’s actually a bit more subtle and possibly more dangerous than that. There isn’t anything inherently different about how Uncharted 2 treats in-game movies. They still jar you away from the action like normal movies and there’s still a lot of them. There’s two things that are different, however:
1. The writing and acting is really good so they’re enjoyable.
2. They’re short. This comes from good writing as well. Good writers know when to shut up. Every word you speak makes every other word less powerful.
Unfortunately, these two subtle points will be lost on most games. They’ll have bad writing that’s severely overwritten and we’ll sit there hitting the start button hoping to bypass it.
.-= Mike Shea´s last blog ..Three D&D Tips I Learned From Dragon Age =-.
Yea – that is what I meant.
MGS had too long of cut-scenes.
FF tends to have really poor/cheezy dialog.
GoW2 had a terrible script – albeit on purpose 🙂
COD4 was pretty good.
Interestingly, I’m taking a class right now where one of the textbooks (“Creating Emotion In Games”, by David Freeman) specifically pinpoints the “cinematic game” problem. The thing is, you get writers who want to write games that are as immersive and engaging as movies, and thus try to give us movies with a game thrown in. That’s not exactly the best approach.
Mike Shea has some very good points, probably some of the best. I would also add that a detailed world, not a detailed plot, is the best way to go. They could really, really, really stand to learn from GMs of any tabletop RPG, particularly the heavy-on-worldbuilding ones like D&D.
Any time a DM tries to tell a long, epic story, it results in railroading, and the players lose interest. Any time a video game tries to tell a long, epic story, it results in a cinematic-with-game-thrown-in, and the players lose interest. Hmm, that’s interesting.
.-= Andy´s last blog ..The Journey System: The Main Idea =-.
@Mike:
I like these very much 🙂
.-= Eric Maziade´s last blog ..Good bye ChattyDM.net – hello Critical-Hits.com =-.
I do largely agree with the excessive cut-scenes. Many times, their most useful function for me is as a reminder to empty/re-fill my bladder or to light a smoke. And I definitely agree with the sentiment on alot of the writing as well as general “directing” in these games. I have no idea how many times I’ve gotten a game, popped it in and found myself bored to the point of reading a book instead of dealing with the damned thing. If these designers could work on more innovative ways of getting me the info I need instead of 3 pages of slugs pace monologue I would be quite grateful. Especially if I’m just getting some stupid gather quest from a dirty peasant or what not. No amount of bad Victorian speech is gonna cover up the fact that I have to go get 5 wolf pelts and return them, so quit trying to make it sound more important than it is. Cut scenes and overly flowery dialogue is in many ways like “strong” language: less is more. If you just kept most cut scenes to the utmost critical and kept them brief except for 2-3 20-40 second ones, and then made sure you REALLY nailed those longer ones, I wouldn’t mind. I’d sit up and notice even. But if I have to see the same stupid city fly-over one more time upon finding the big hub city, I’m gonna light my 360 on fire.
One a linked but different topic: What happened to local multi-player? Do these designers think it is simply impossible that I might actually have real people I’d like to game with in the same room with me? I’m sorry, but sometimes I take it a bit personally, especially when I look at the game design and see absolutely no compelling reason why they couldn’t at least make it split screen multiplayer. Used to be a new 2-4 player adventure rpg coming out every month, now I can’t find a single one. It’s ridiculous. Any one out there agree with me on this?
In movies I’ve heard that you don’t want to say what is happening, you want to visually show it. Maybe in games you don’t want to show what is happening, you want them to play it. Kind of a simple extension of writing to movie to video game.
I’ve heard alot of good stuff about Uncharted, I definitely want to give it a go.
I’ve noticed this tendency in other game reviews you’ve posted before. You assume that “gamers” are a monolithic group that all think just like you. Personally, I find a good story to be the most important part of a game (albeit not the only important part), and I’m willing to forgive a few gameplay problems or graphical glitches if the story draws me in. And I know I’m not alone. People like me may not be the majority of gamers, but we’re nevertheless a significant subset. The total population of gamers is pretty widely varied, often even within a single example–I can have fun with an old-school 2D platformer every now and then, or a cute but shallow game like Mini Ninjas from time to time, but the games I’ll pay full price for are the ones with rich stories, like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, Assassin’s Creed (both of them–I’m not a fan of Desmond yet either, but I recognize how important the bits of the game with him in them are), or (presumably–I don’t yet have a PS3, so I haven’t played them) the Uncharted games. Whereas a game like, say, Bayonetta, which is extremely pretty and has, from what I’ve seen, pretty great gameplay, doesn’t compel me anywhere near enough to buy it until it drops in price considerably.
I’m not making an informed guess when I say this next bit, but I suspect that some of your dissatisfaction with the stories of the games you’ve played before is you pick games for gameplay you like first, and the story is secondary for you. I suspect you’ve skipped a lot of games with compelling stories because that’s how they were marketed, and so they didn’t interest you. Most of them are pretty out-dated now, but take a look at the Legacy of Kain series (particularly those done by Crystal Dynamics, starting with Soul Reaver) for games with decent-though-not-fabulous gameplay and graphics (for the times they were made, anyway), but some really compelling storytelling.