Weekend Confirmed 84 - Battlefield 3, Uncharted 3, GTA V announced

I'm glad you guys brought up EuroGamer's Uncharted 3 review, but I think you missed the heart of Simon Parkin's complaint, which wasn't so much about the game not doing anything new (I don't think anyone is too upset about that) but that the game is so tightly scripted from start to finish that at any point that you, the player, doesn't play along with the script, things get screwy.

My favourite quote is this:
"It's entirely understandable given what the developer is attempting to achieve - an unbroken flow of action that leads to climax - but, at the same time, beneath the spectacle there's a nagging feeling that your presence in the scene is an irritation rather than a preference."

This complaint speaks to me as a gamer 100%. It's something that has bothered me about so-called "cinematic games" for years. Going all the way back to when I first played Metal Gear Solid, I couldn't help but feel like I wasn't really an active participant in the game, that I was just being shown the game, and I had to do what I was told or else I'd ruin it.

Granted, games are all about doing what you're told to a certain extent, but it's different when a game banks so heavily on it's cinematic presentation. The scene plays out exactly the same each time, characters repeat the same lines of dialogue, the sequence of events never changes, and this happens over and over again until you, the player, get it fucking right already.

Much was made of how there weren't any QTE's during the big moments, but frankly, if the whole scene is going to fall apart and start over every time I deviate from the script, then the difference between that and Dragon's Lair starts to feel a little thin.

I suppose the payoff for me to put up with this is that the scene itself is an exhilarating white knuckle ride, but in the end, I just don't feel as though I've actually participated in making that scene awesome. My contribution was more of an impediment than anything else, I ruined the scene several times, lessening the impact, and the game would have been better off on autoplay.

I'm not going to play Uncharted 3, I'm going to watch a video of someone else's playthrough, because for what I'd get out of the experience, the game really might as well just be a movie.