I like games with good gameplay + good stories. Seeing as those are pretty rare, or mabye extreemly rare, I stick with okay stories and good gameplay. If I want stories I'll go read a book.

A lot of game stories are great as games, but would be awful in a book.

It depends what sort of mood I'm in, I don't really mind cut-scenes as long as they are entertaining and kept quite short.  (I wasn't a big fan of MGS4 though)

Why not like both?

I agree with you. I love games and everything on his list can be called "game".

Uncontrollable cinematic parts are not automatically a story.

Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Tetris, SimCity, and Wii Sports have no story.  There is no narrative because there is no beginning, middle, and end.  Some times they throw in a little bonus video for no reason other than to celebrate your high score, but are you seriously going to argue that the goal of Tetris is to launch a rocketship?  Does your space pilot character have a name, or motivation, or a backstory?  A bonus video is no narrative.

The animations in Pac-Man tell you nothing about the next level, or about anything.  They are completely random movies of the characters partying or chasing each other back and forth.  And Pac-Man has no ending.  You play for hundreds of screens until the game crashes.  It was intended to be played forever.  It wasn't until stuff like Donkey Kong where there was an actual intro cinematic and ending cinematic, and a story with a beginning, middle, and end.

And Wii Sports... I have no idea what you're talking about.  There's no intro videos or bonus videos for high scores or anything.  You just play and compete for high scores forever.  No ending, no story.

Heavy Rain is the only interactive movie in the list.

Could have just titled the thread 'I hate Heavy Rain.' It's pretty obvious the big-ticket game coming out that's like that, that's talked about so much.

*cracks knuckles* This is going to be fun.

Heavy Rain - Congratulations for starting this list off with a game you haven't played nor even seen in real life. On the other hand, it does resemble an interactive movie on some levels. Despite that, most of us prefer to actually, you know, SEE a game before judging it.

Mass Effect 2 - You follow up a list that started with a game you've never played and continued it with another game you've obviously never played because no one I've met would put Mass Effect 2 on the same list as these other games. It radically changed how a player can interact in an environment and drastically change a game's outcome without relying on some cheap gameplay trick that only alters the last five minutes of the game.

MGS4 - I can see your point here. The MGS series has some of the greatest boss battles in gaming history and Kojima just bogs it all down with twenty minute (!) cutscenes that made me want to kill myself.j

Most Modern Console JRPGs - I don't even really know what you're talking about here but I guess you hate the entire genre. Okay, personal preference. Good for you. I prefer to judge individual titles on their own merit.

- The Ace Attorney Series - It's a quirky DS title that has a niche audience. Lots of people don't like this series because they don't buy it. Or maybe it has more to do with most people not knowing it exists.

- Alan Wake - YES! That's three games you've never played on this list! Considering how little is actually known about this title, I think you deserve two points for this choice.

- No More Heroes 2 - I don't mean to bust out my Jump To Conclusions Mat but I'm going to take a flyer on this one and say you've never played it.

FF VII - You already mentioned how modern console JRPGs aren't really games anyway. I find this choice redundant.

Resident Evil 2 - I don't understand this choice because it's followed by Bayonetta shortly after it. Do these games really have stories? I've never really noticed a strong coherent story arc in any of the DMC/RE/Bayonetta style games that you apparently dislike. Unless you consider a boss introduction to be something bad that plagues videogames, in which case I could add about 500,000 titles to your list of hated "games" (term used loosely within the context of this thread).

I can understand why you would hate several games you listed but almost every game has a story to it that is told "through progression".

Really, you just created this list and added random titles to each section to get people fired up (more commonly referred to as trolling).

Although I do find it somewhat amusing that it only took a 15 second scan of your profile to see that you gave a Pokemon game a really good rating (8.9).

DAMN THAT PROGRESSION! It's easily a 10.5 on a scale of 10 without it.

Three things:

1. A game is a game is a game. In truth, as demonstrated by Wittgenstein, there is no one definition to the term "game". Rules, player(s) and goals (which, notably, are present in all of your examples) are some of the most well-established characteristics of what a game, but the term is still open to interpretation. However, a story, or cinematic focus, is something even most Ludologists agree have little if any effect on a work's status as a game.

2. The world of game narratives is not a simple black-and-white dichotomy. What of the games with great gameplay and great storytelling? Or, put another way, what game has ever been made to have poor gameplay? It is not a case of one or the other - only avant-garde anti-games aim to treat their audience with poor gameplay experiences.

3. I spoke about cinematic gaming before. Yes, it is an unfortunate trend, if only because it is being overexploited. Some say cinematic games are not true to the essence of the medium - I partially agree with that, as I feel games should be based on their own principles, not those of motion pictures - but they can still be excellent game experiences, and it is evident there is an audience for them at this point in time. Who knows, maybe these games are the progenitors of true 'interactive narratives' or some other kind of game-related interactive entertainment?