“It’s like I’m PLAYING a movie!” Cinematic gaming and you

From the title, I know that YOU know which game I’ll be talking about in this article, but I assure you that this won’t be a one game entry. There are a lot of other games out there that aim for a cinematic experience other than Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, though most are nowhere near as effective as what Naughty Dog has pulled off with their PlayStation 3 exclusive.

As the technology used for video games advances, developers gain the abilities to add cinematic elements to their games. There is no single method for this and each game, depending on the developers chosen style, go about this concept in many different ways.

And now onto the first and very obvious game on the list…

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

Firstly, before I say anything about this game… Chloe = Australian Lara Croft in red? I know that you were all thinking it when you saw her.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune is a game that successfully spread its storytelling through cutscenes as well as in-game dialogue and masterful character interactions by some extremely talented actors. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has all that, but oh man is it so much bigger, better, cooler and more thrilling than what the first game ever came close to. There are still moments when you’re put into a cutscene, but there are also a lot more moments where the story and character dialogue take place during playable events in the game. To add to that, 99.9% of all of the action, including huge explosions and thrilling fight scenes occur while the player is in control. All of this is bound together in what can be described as a perfect cinematic experience… so much so that Sony brags about it in their commercials for the game.

With the level of quality put into Uncharted 2, it makes me wonder how Naughty Dog will top themselves with the third game which we all know will come sooner or later. How can they improve on what already seems to be the best that anyone could possibly do for a series that has taken cinematic gaming to its peak? I look forward to seeing it with my own eyes years from now…

Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots

What the Uncharted series does during the game, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, as well as previous games in the MGS series, does during some pretty intense (and long) cutscenes. Even the die hard Metal Gear fans stopped for a moment to wonder “how long is this going to go on for?”… Of course, with MGS4 there really wasn’t any other way the story could be told… as convoluted as that story may have ended up being on some levels.

Some may criticise MGS4 for this, though when you think about it, at least they used the in-game engine to present those cinematic moments rather than the usual Full Motion Videos that were quite popular back in the day.

Back in previous generations when several consoles were starting to use CDs, there was a huge rise of FMVs showing up on practically every game that had the development budget to afford them. I remember a moment when my friend wanted to show off his new PlayStation to me back in the day. He booted up a game and showed me how awesome the FMV looked. He seemed to be really proud of how his system could do such a thing, but even back then when I was still a kid, I still knew that this was just a video playing. The funny thing is that once the game actually started it revealed less than thrilling visuals. Are FMV cutscenes a bad thing? If used well it can be a great cinematic story telling element and also show some great action that, in the past at least, couldn’t be achieved with the game engine itself. Final Fantasy VII comes to mind, though Final Fantasy VIII was the game that really pimped this feature out.

…and these other ones over here!

While some games let you watch a cutscenes in peace, others decide to throw button cues at you out of nowhere. The first time I encountered the infamous “quick time event” was in Resident Evil 4. All of a sudden an icon telling me to press the A button flashed on screen while I had my controller resting and then suddenly I was dead. It may have fooled me the first time but never again. Later on in the game I was pleased to experience the greatest interactive cutscene I had ever experienced with the knife fight between Leon and Krauser. What started out as an annoyance suddenly became awesome, and while some people will always hate QTE’s, when done right, they can make you feel like you’re a part of that cinematic moment…

Previous Resident Evil games should also be mentioned, though not for the cutscenes themselves, but rather for the in-game camera angles. Of course many gamers who used to play Alone in the Dark back in the day will recognise these forced perspective camera angles from the original Alone in the Dark on PC. These camera angles, which are used in quite a lot of different games nowadays to guide the player but also manages to add a cinematic flare to the games as well.

There’s also been a recent trend with some light gun shooter games for Wii that have their own cinematic elements. The entire game that is House of the Dead: Overkill is practically homage to every b-grade/low budget horror movie ever made. On the other hand, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles and Dead Space Extraction, both of which are heavily stylised first person rail shooters that seem to be heavily inspired by the camera shaking style of The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield.

One of the common threads that bind many cinematic games together is that they tend to be associated with more linear based games that have a single story path you must follow from start to finish. Anything that has particularly heavy story elements suffers from this effect, though in this current generation things have been changing. There is a PS3 exclusive called “Heavy Rain” that, if it can deliver on all of its promises, will lead players through a cinematic non-linear experience that have never been experience before.

I enjoy seeing these kinds of evolutions occur in video games. I’m also glad that developers are seeking out new styles of explore and not sticking with the overly used cutscenes that we’ve been used to for all these years. I’m also glad that we’ve moved on (mostly) from using FMVs and are starting to use the in-game engine for cutscenes more and more. I look forward to see what else developers come up with in the future.