5 Games that are essentially interactive movies

Adam Smith from Coregamer: Have you ever sat down to excited to play a game and when it's all unwrapped and spinning in your disc tray for the first time, you find yourself watching more often than actually playing? In the movie industry, features increasingly seem to shy on story telling and rely more on attracting viewers by throwing hours of special effects in the mix. In the gaming world cut-scenes are slowly taking over in the same way. There was once a time when games were 100% gameplay, but nowadays actual playing time seems to be limited more and more as cut-scenes and button-prompting-interactive-s egments take hold of a lot of current generation titles. Variety is great, sure. But sometimes us gamers just want to play!

Here's five of the top offenders, when it comes to parting you with your the console controller for long periods at a time:

[Aleusia]

Flamebait garbage

[acky1]

How did this even get approved?

[Bandit03]

It's N4G. Does anything NOT get approved?

[darthv72]

the ultimate "interactive movie" would be either dragon's lair or space ace. Actually, pretty much any of those generation laserdisc arcade games. You pressed a button or moved the stick and then watched the animation play out.

[Weefz]

What, no Dreamfall? There's loads of action in the games the lists.

[Kingdom Come]

Is there no action in Lord of the Rings?

[wollie]

funny... these are my some of my favorite games this generation.

I remember when I was younger I would play games just to get to the cut scenes. I think of them almost a reward. Play through really difficult gameplay to watch some awesome cut scenes.

[nikkisixx2]

Yeah I guess when people see that a game has an amazing story line it automatically is labeled a "movie" game.

[itani]

Broken Sword anyone?

[Brewski007]

Haha yeah definately.

[yog-sothot]

Uncharted ? Mass effect ?

come on

I stopped there, it was pointless...

[Kingdom Come]

It's like a Movie, just because Uncharted 2 and Mass Effects have loads of action, doesn't make them antlers movie like. Watch an Indiana Jones Film, then go and play Uncharted 2, both action packed whilst mainting some quieter scenes. The games are interactive due to them being playable...

[djfullshred]

WTF? A lot of game play going on in most of those titles.

Even Heavy Rain was the first game I played that made quick time events feel instense and engaging.

[zireno]

yeah, I never got why the hate on heavy rain, it's a game that offers something different, but this is the generation of FPS so that's that.

[Darkfiber]

I actually agree with everything on this list to an extent. People seem to be taking this article the wrong way though. They are taking it rather negatively.

Yes, your beloved Uncharted 2 is an interactive movie, which is EXACTLY WHAT NAUGHTY DOG INTENDED IT TO BE. They said it countless times in interviews, "it's just like playing a movie!" and prided themselves on it. How are you disagreeing with what the actual developers said? Idiots.

[Montoya]

This. Saying your game is a movie can be a compliment or an insult. This sounds more like an insult.

"In the gaming world cut-scenes are slowly taking over in the same way. There was once a time when games were 100% gameplay, but nowadays actual playing time seems to be limited more and more as cut-scenes and button-prompting-interactive-s egments take hold of a lot of current generation titles. Variety is great, sure. But sometimes us gamers just want to play!"

BTW

MGS4 is one of the best games and movies of this generation.

[thief]

Fun facts
3 out of the 5 games are PS3 exclusives, the 4th a part exclusive.
These four have sold 4 million on average - compared to just 2 million sales for the sole XBOX entry, Mass Effect - even though the 360 has a higher install base.
All combined, story-driven or family games (such as LBP) have sold maybe 5-10 times as many copies on the PS3 as on the XBOX.

Anyone doubt that the 360 is just a "dumb shooter" console? No plot, no character or innovation or change in gameplay, just plain old run and jump and pray-and-spray while grenade spamming kind of game and you have a winner as far as XBOX is concerned. If you want to develop a story-driven game, you have to be on the PS3. If you waste time on the Halo console, you will probably end up with half or a quarter of the sales - as Remedy and Mistwalker are finding out, Alan Wake or Lost Odyssey would have hit 2-3 million on the PS3.

[antz1104]

Holy sh%t dude, really?

Another fun fact: your troll is showing.

[thief]

More importantly, my troll is supported by numbers and facts.
xbox owners feel very proud of the fact that Halo sells 10 million on their console, and look down upon what they call "interactive movies", i.e., anything that has something like a story. Its the other way round for the PS3 - Halo would struggle to sell 3 million on the PS3.

[acky1]

Seems like you've been offended because your favourite games have been picked out. Me too. It's obviously a negative article about some very good games to cause some trouble.

Nothing to do with xbox or playstation. Why you would even start mentioning them is ridiculous. Your defending playstation when theres nothing to defend against :S

[antz1104]

Numbers and facts that were NOT NEEDED. Numbers and facts that you have yet to show. Most importantly, numbers and facts that NO ONE CARES ABOUT. Don't pigeonhole us all, most of us would really enjoy to play those interactive games you're going to war over, including myself, as I'm sure PS3 owners would like to play Halo if it was multiplatform. I cant wait to get a ps3 to play some of the exclusives. So slow your roll, trollboy.

[kaveti6616]

When the PS3 gets an interesting game, the PS3 fanboys say that people should get a PS3 to play it.

When the 360 gets an interesting game like Alan Wake, the PS3 fanboys say it will flop and refuse to buy a 360 to play it. There are plenty of interesting, unique titles on the 360, but you can't get a PS3 fanboy to buy a 360, so what's the point? Microsoft caters to shooters. You say that's a bad thing. It's just a demographic, what do you care? Also, nobody wants to play a game that's mostly cutscenes. Games with more cutscenes than gameplay show that the developer lacks the talent to tell a good story in the game, and must remove the player from the game to tell the story. I've never praised a developer for making good cutscenes.

[acky1]

You have not experienced the work of kojima san! :P

[kaveti6616]

I have. Great series. Great gameplay, too many cutscenes.

[Belasco]

If you look at my played games on the 360 I'd say most of my gamer score has come from single player games, and the same can be said for most of my friends. So what does that make your statement out to be? You figure it out.

[Kingdom Come]

If you actually did your research correctly, you would find that ACTUALLY, the Xbox 360 has more exclusives than the Playstation 3. (This isn't an attack on PS3 Gamers, it just frustrates me when Fanboy's create their own facts from fiction)

[Arkhamz]

@thief

That whole explanation was pure stupidity, another fun fact. Trolls appear in the wild comment sections of N4G

[Unicron]

MGS4 <3

[tomisnever]

I think cut scenes are great, it's make you feel more emotionally invested in the characters that you are playing. This in turn makes gameplay more exciting because you actually care about the outcome. Basically is isn't all about gameplay, cut scenes are paramount to the success of a game. Imagine MGS if they were just quick little 2 minute cut-scenes? I don't believe it would be the hit that it is today.

[Ummm Da Dum]

i can agree with heavy rain but not the others.

Uncharted is a typical good action game.
MGS4 is a game with a movie on top.
mass effect is like every other RPG

by this person logic GTA4, Killzone 2, Gears. COD are all interactive movies. they all have plenty of cutscenes which break up the gameplay.

sure this idiot has only played those 5 games.

[LeonSKennedy4Life]

Almost every video game is a playable movie.

That's why they call it "interactive entertainment".

They give us a storyline...and we play through it.

I'd say Prince of Persia is a better example of this than most of the games on the list. (The 2008 Prince of Persia) It constantly fed you story while you played. I loved that!

[SeraphimBlade]

If Heavy Rain's an interactive movie, doesn't that say the same of every single adventure title ever? What about Phoenix Wright?

In my opinion, an unskippable 2-minute cutscene is 10 times more annoying than a skippable 20-minute one. (see every God of War game)

At least these games have animation. Try Blazblue's story which just have portraits moving their mouths and occasionally changing to a different stance. (save 5 or so anime scenes) There's about 5-10 minutes of dialog for every minute-long fight. That, plus the 15-20-minute gag endings. Thankfully the characters and dialog are very entertaining

[Pa]

I don't agree with this list but in a way it's a compliment that these games are so immersive they're like movies.