Cinematic games like God of War and Uncharted have plenty of gameplay and challenge. You don't need to have one or the other, you can have both.

I typically only like both extremes. They need to be either basically movies or close to only gameplay. Whenever I play a game that focuses too much on both, I feel like they interrupt each other.

I would say a game that attempts to conform to the narrative structure, rules, and presentation of movies. This isn't necessarily a game with many cut-scenes. There's a chapter in Uncharted 4 with few cut-scenes, but the entire thing plays out like a scene from a movie. It is scripted in a way that tricks the player into thinking it's not.

And to be clear: this isn't about linearity. A game like Gradius is pretty darn linear but it's not cinematic in ambition. It's about we as players expected to hit our marks and trigger scripted events.

I've long thought that the beauty of video games is the conversation between the game designer and the player. The designer creates worlds and tools and environments, and gives them to the player. Then the player uses his imagination and reflexes (and those tools) to win the day. With cinematic, scripted games that conversation becomes a little one-sided.

I tend to value gameplay over story, but there are times where I'll happily ignore a game's bad gameplay to continue to experience a game's story and characters.

I love them. I also love games that aren't cinematic. I love tell tale games, why can't we have both cinematic games and not as much cinematic games? If you don't like them don't play them it's simple

Just finally got around to laying TLOU, and I think it would have been better as a tv miniseries. I've yet to see a story in a game that I didn't feel would have been better told in another medium. I feel like the fact that I'm playing a game puts an additional wall between me and the characters somehow. I've heard the opposite said, though.

And of course there's the fact that the level of interactivity oftimes has to be compromised for the sake of storytelling. The gameplay suffers for the sake of the story, and the story suffers for the game. 

I'm playing bioshock next, so maybe that'll change my mind.

@bold: that's a beautiful way to put it. I agree entirely.

@BioShock: I think you'll enjoy it. The story is told more obliquely, as in Metroid Prime, Unreal, or Half-Life 2. You explore and see more of the world and discover audio logs. In this way exploration/gameplay is linked to storytelling. I find it a much more effective way to tell a story in a video game unobtrusively.

Unless you're specifically talking about "Cinematic games",

You probably hate cutscenes nowadays because the story is usually boring and formulaeic. Another world and Flashback cutscenes were rare, short and were telling a simple and compelling story without useless talking we have nowadays.

Nothing against it. To be honest, sometimes I love to play a more cinematic game just to enjoy a good plot.

Same thing with Visual Novels. I enjoy them a lot when I'm tired of action games. However, I must like the story, or else the whole game is dead for me.