Embracing the Wii U: 5 Reasons Haters Should Reconsider Slamming the Console

[Alby_da_Wolf]

curl-6 said:

Alphachris said:
Well, but the story is there to keep you interested. There are some games that can live without a story. Puzzler like Tetris etc... Just Games that are there to challange your skill.

But there are more classes of gamer. Not everyone is playing just to test his skills or to win in a competitive situation. There are some really entertaining games that over great characters or a complex story that make you care about the world and the characters. There are games that can make me laugh, games that can almost make me cry, games that make me think about the deeper consequences of religion, war, atomic bombs or propaganda and etnic cleansing.

Games can be seen as a simple "electronic toy", that keep you busy for short periods. But games can also have the educational and entertainment value of a good theatre play. And if you played some really good games like Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XIII or Heavy Rain playing a game without such experience can feel quite empty and you miss something.

I grew up with Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World, but after Playing Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Dexter or Sly Racoon, I miss Character interaction between Mario and Luigi.

I've played Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XIII and Heavy Rain, and honestly I didn't find them much good. FFXIII and Heavy Rain in particular fell flat beause their gameplay was lacking in favour of graphics/story.

If you demand story, then yeah, Mario's not for you. But to me, the lack of story in Mario is like the lack of machine guns in Citizen Kane; kind of beside the point.

I'd have preferred other examples of games with story: while there are very few games with such a good story and so many interesting things to do that they are excellent despite being on rails, the best are those in which the players builds or contribute building the story with their actions, choices, and, in some cases, skills (this could be the case in action, when you could be able to save or not an NPC, on in peaceful interaction, when you could be able to unlock or not a conversation or direct it in different directions affecting the way the story evolves). Such games can have a strong or loose story, doing it with a strong story is much more difficult. Examples of the difficult path: Deus Ex, Planescape:Torment and a few more, where devs built a strong and complex story for each of your possible important choices. Examples of the easier path: Morrowind, where the main story, that's the main quest, is quite simple and straightforward, but it doesn't put the game on rails, as you can build your own playing experiences with tons of sidequests and activities that add complexity, but basically they don't affect the main story, making the work for devs a lot simpler. And finally there are excellent examples that stay somewhere between the two approaches, like the first two Fallout, Gothic, Mass Effect and we can say the vast majority of RPGs with a story that's not too simple.