Story: Only if it's done well. That means that, in 99% of games, the answer's a no.
Cutscenes: I HATE cutscenes - or, more specifically, the over-use of them. One would think that developers would have learned by now through games like Half-Life 2, Bioshock, and Portal that not only do you not need cutscenes to tell a story, but for the most part, stories in games are better without cutscenes. The only time when cutscenes are appropriate in a game is when they're both exceptionally awesome and use sparsely (a la No More Heroes), or when it's appropriate to take control of the game out of the player's hands (a la The Darkness). Ideally, I'd even eliminate the first category, but cutscenes like NMH's are sort of a guilty pleasure of mine.
"'Casual games' are something the 'Game Industry' invented to explain away the Wii success instead of actually listening or looking at what Nintendo did. There is no 'casual strategy' from Nintendo. 'Accessible strategy', yes, but ‘casual gamers’ is just the 'Game Industry''s polite way of saying what they feel: 'retarded gamers'."
-Sean Malstrom
