Cinematic Games

[stolenxnametag]

I remember when I got a Sega CD for Christmas one year with a Power Rangers game and a few others like it. Those games pissed me off, because it was like watching an episode of Power Rangers and doing a few button mashes to make sure the show continued as you remembered.

Fast forward to 2013. Telltale Games had some great successes below their belt with the Walking Dead games, but I never gave them a shot. Why? Because I hate the tv show, and I didn't want to relive my Power Rangers rage from childhood.

So I started playing Beyond: Two Souls. BTS was like a mashup of gameplay and pure cinematic games for me, mostly because I used my phone and tablet as the controllers. I honestly just wanted to watch the story unfold for this poor girl and her invisible friend. After experiencing that, I'm considering the idea of scoping out other cinematic experiences. Does anyone have a suggestion? I'm open to anything, even The Walking Dead.

 

[Chandler Wood]

Metal Gear Solid? There is a lot of gameplay, sure, but it is truly an impressive and cinematic game series.

 

[stolenxnametag]

Metal Gear Solid? There is a lot of gameplay, sure, but it is truly an impressive and cinematic game series.

I've played MGS and MGSV:GZ so far. The series seems worthy of play, but the latest Video Game Collective episode may have talked me out of it. I don't want 2, 3, and 4 to make me hate The Phantom Pain when it comes out. :-D

 

[cigarley]

I absolutely despise the TWD television series and I still like Telltale's game. Unfortunately the game does suffer from being too overly "cinematic" and to be honest, it's also a bit full of itself. It's a shame, Telltale's previous adventure games were not as linear, but TWD seems to be insanely popular.

"Cinematic" is really hard to define, hell even the Oddworld series was once lauded for being more cinematic than anything else currently in existence (and if you've played Abe's Oddysee or Abe's Exoddus, you'll know that the primary appeal of these games is the balls to the wall difficulty). Naughty Dog's post-Crash games were all very cinematic, but follow the same "short cutscene-lots of gameplay-short cutscene" formula. Completely different from TWD.

I don't like labeling games as just "cinematic", if I oversimplified things then I would end up calling Mirror's Edge a first person shooter (for example). There's so many criteria that could make a game cinematic, even racers like Blur and Split/Second could be considered cinematic when you really think about it. Unless you plan on avoiding every non-8bit game, you're going to be hard pressed to find a game that isn't cinematic.

 

[Chandler Wood]

I've played MGS and MGSV:GZ so far. The series seems worthy of play, but the latest Video Game Collective episode may have talked me out of it. I don't want 2, 3, and 4 to make me hate The Phantom Pain when it comes out. :-D

I think the only way it would make you hate TPP is if you are a long time and jaded fan of MGS overall. Hopefully TPP will have more of a "MGS" feel than GZ did, but even GZ felt similar to Peace Walker, which I found to be a phenomenal game. I'd still play them all for the sake of the story, if nothing else.

 

[BigPete7978]

Metal Gear Solid 4
Heavy Rain
StarCraft 2 (I actually really like the story of the game, but yes I know it's PC only)
Walking Dead Season 2

All I can think of right now.

 

[Lifewish]

Metal Gear Solid 4
The Walking Dead

 

[Jacky]

I remember when I got a Sega CD for Christmas one year with a Power Rangers game and a few others like it. Those games pissed me off, because it was like watching an episode of Power Rangers and doing a few button mashes to make sure the show continued as you remembered.

Fast forward to 2013. Telltale Games had some great successes below their belt with the Walking Dead games, but I never gave them a shot. Why? Because I hate the tv show, and I didn't want to relive my Power Rangers rage from childhood.

So I started playing Beyond: Two Souls. BTS was like a mashup of gameplay and pure cinematic games for me, mostly because I used my phone and tablet as the controllers. I honestly just wanted to watch the story unfold for this poor girl and her invisible friend. After experiencing that, I'm considering the idea of scoping out other cinematic experiences. Does anyone have a suggestion? I'm open to anything, even The Walking Dead.

you should've used your console, then handling aiden becomes a bit more of a challenge and there's no button mashing.


Metal Gear Solid 4 nearly drove me mad, it was like I was watching a movie with barely 15 minutes of play in between cut scenes that lasted longer then the gameplay.

 

[BigPete7978]

you should've used your console, then handling aiden becomes a bit more of a challenge and there's no button mashing.


Metal Gear Solid 4 nearly drove me mad, it was like I was watching a movie with barely 15 minutes of play in between cut scenes that lasted longer then the gameplay.

It is truly the definition of a cinematic game IMO. Granted the game is bashed and praised at the same time for the game it is. Yes there are a lot of cutscenes, but they add so much to the story I think. Could there have been more gameplay? Yes. Was it it necessary for what the game seemed to be trying to accomplish? No, not IMO. I loved every minute I had playing MGS4. Any fan of the series should play it I think.

 

[Dan Oravasaari]

I think of cinematic as something that is more about the events at hand portrayed in a highly visual manner. This of course makes me have to bring up Journey, as even though it really wasn't known for cutscenes (MGS) or forced story segments (TWD), it was highly stylized and visual.

 

[darkforcegod]

Metal Gear Solid, Heavy Rain, The Last of Us and Beyond Two Souls are great examples of cinematic games. Yes they are different from each other but they are very deep in their cut scenes and story. They are not like COD or BF that you can beat the game and you don't even need to care for the story. In the game I mentioned above, you need the story because if not you will feel that you are playing a meaningless thing and will probably make you eject the game.

We have games that dont really need cinematics to work. Example is Dark Souls 1 and 2 and Demon Souls. They dont have long cut scenes or things like that but they work they way the are and are very fun.