Is NSMB Wii worthy of the title Game Of The Year?

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Final-Fan said:

GIANT WALL OF TEXT BY ME

 

I think that your point about musicals versus games with cutscenes is way off base.  Some games, like Mario, do just fine with hardly any cutscenes at all.  But others use them heavily to enhance the game experience.  And that's what it's about in my opinion:  enhancing the game experience.  It's okay for Mario to be given a simple goal like "princess kidnapped, go save her (by running a giant gauntlet of nearly nonsensical obstacles)."  But Nathan Drake's goals need a little bit more structure and narrative.  

That's what cutscenes are supposed to do, I think -- deliver that narrative and structure when it can't be delivered during pure gameplay.  Lots of cutscenes have things going on that would be hard to show the gamer in gameplay, or have an action sequence that would be too hard or boring to fit into the game and make people play through, etc.  It enhances the game experience by bridging the gap between playable areas and giving the player a sensible narrative connecting them and keeping him interested in the character's exploits.  

If you want to come back with, "Well, they shouldn't try to tell a story that they can't deliver in pure gameplay", you have a right to that opinion.  But I think that that's unfairly restrictive.  

And this also, I think, accounts for a lot of the 'lower standards' you see in game storytelling -- it's not the focus in many cases, just a support.  

 

I definitely see what you mean, but do you think there are better or different ways to give those goals structure and narrative? (I haven't played UC2 yet, but the first one damn near made me buy a PS3 after I played a little of it).

I wouldn't want to see stories only told in pure gameplay as some kind of rule handed down to all game makers, but I would like to see that challenge presented to game makers (How much can you tell without going to a cutscene?) Lower standards and it not being the focus is exactly why things like cutscenes detract from a game. 

Again think back to something like BioShock or System Shock 2 or Half-Life.  Those games had nothing or next to nothing in terms of cutscenes, but you knew what was going on, and your imagination filled in a lot of details that weren't there. What made the gman in Half-Life 1 so memorable was his mystery.  What makes the "golf club" scene in BioShock so great is how every point prior to that you had full control of your character so losing that control as a "cut scene" had a huge impact on (at least my) perception of the game.  What made System Shock 2 so scary and threatening was that the ship was all the story you needed. Same with the PC version of Aliens vs Predator 1 (Marine missions). No cutscene necessary. Actually the 2nd one was ruined by cutscenes and too much story.

Or, if you are old enough ...how much more awesome was Hyrule in your mind as a kid before Nintendo detroyed it with piles of (bad) dialogue and story? The thing I loved about the opening to Windwaker was how awesome it is if you just remove the words. Let the tapestries tell the story.

I've been playing games a loooooooong time and very, very few have a story I remember, but the ones that I do remember were stories created with the full knowledge that they were games, and their strengths were not in what was told as a cutscene, but what was shown to the player in atmosphere, suggestion, passing or direct dialogue. 

Why play to the weakest element of a game instead of using the medium's natural strengths?