Kasz216 said:
The fact that you like MGS is why I brought it up. I'll put it simply. Take Citizen Kane. Often considered the best movie of all time.
It's not pure gameplay expierence that defines the artistic value, but instead what that gameplay conveys...
I'll use another HD example, one I have played. L4D. You know pretty much nothing about the characters but what visual cues say, and what they say during gameplay. You don't even really know why everyone else is a zombie. The story though is told purely through gameplay. The horror of giant swams of zombies, the unease of hearing a witch cry... the pure helplessness one feels when captured by a smoker or a jumper, knowing that they need an ally to save them, and that ally is already quite busy with a swarm of zombies. The anger for your own survival when an ally stupidly ventures too far on his own and you have the dilema of trying to save his stupid ass or risk being a man down against the horde.
It conveys everything through gameplay and gives you all the story it needs. It doesn't TELL you about a zombie apocolypse. It puts you IN a zombie apocolypse and replicates that feeling great.
Getting most stuff across while controlling the player, and making stories and expierences more and more mallable to player interaction is the art of videogames. It is the uniqueness of it's medium that sets it apart from things like movie and TV. The interactivity. |
I understand that cutscenes turn people off, and Metal Gear is the king of cutscenes. And thats cool that you don't appreciate that, a lot of people don't like that and thats their opinion and they're welcome to it. However cutscenes don't made a game less of a game. They've been around since the nes days and ninja gaiden, but not many people would say ninja gaiden is less of a game because of that.
Very few games go anywhere near the amount of cutscenes that metal gear has, even "cinematic" games like Uncharted and mass effect have few cutscenes. And then you have a game like Demons souls that has a short opening and ending and no cinemas in between. Does that make it more of a game then Metal Gear? Maybe, but it mostl comes down to opinion.
As for games like wii sports, sure it has no story or anything like that, but the gameplay is simple and gets old very fast. Wii sports is pure gameplay, nothing else, but does its gameplay stand up against Metal Gear's sneaking, Uncharted's climbing and shooting, Demons soul's slaying, or mass effect's battle system? Again a matter of opinion, I would say no, there just isn't any depth to it. And for those that would say that because wii sports is more "fun" focused then those games, its not up to them what fun is for someone else. My fun is questing against huge landscapes, killing demons that can one hit kill you with a look, and sneaking up on guards while they're pissing and putting them in choke holds. Hell, I would but metal gear even if it had all the story removed and consisted of sneaking around and messing with guards. It might be famous for its story, but Metal Gear would never have become so popular if it hadn't been for its gameplay. And one final note, with some spoilers, the final scene of MGS4 where you crawl with snake through the microwave tunnel as he slowly dies is probably the single most griping gameplay moment of this gen, with a lot more emotional impact then any of the cutscenes.
Time for hype