That said, I’d rather not be funneled to a location and then forced to look in a particular location so I can be force-fed a piece of storyline, which is usually what cinematic means in a computer game. It just usually reinforces the fact you’re not the character in the game, you’re just a casual observer who occasionally gets to control what the character does, but mostly just to perform a bunch of repetitive tasks that have no real effect on the outcome. Or at the very least an illusion of an effect on the outcome.

Video games, like any art-form, borrow concepts, elements and methodologies from other existing art-forms – that’s why we identify with them, and engage with them and understand them.

Stating that a game is better/worse for using/not using ‘cinematics’ is inferring that said game is better/worse for being more like a movie.

By the way, what does ‘cinematic’ even mean? Film techniques are so complex and varied, rolling them up into a single term which you ascribe to a game, as ‘cinematic’, doesn’t really mean much.

I feel it does a disservice to games that dare to be different, and promotes the idea that games just need to be more like movies. There’s a lot more to film than camera technique, and a lot more to games than how ‘cinematic’ it looks.

Clearly those are people who have never played a Metal Gear Solid game before. Anyone who had played any of the other games in the series would know that there were going to be a lot of cinematics in MGS4.

i liked MGS4 but i hear people complain that there are to many cinematics

Taking control away from the player at the wrong point can also be pretty annoying. “This is the bit where you get knocked out and lose all your gear, and there’s nothing you can do about it because we just disabled the mouse and keyboard” style.

Cinematic linearity is a massive pitfall for some genre’s whereas it can be a massive boost to others. For instance Metro 2033 had great use of Cinematic pacing and pushing you through this linear single player story.

FFX was one of the first games I appreciated the cinematic’s to their full extent. There was a couple of dodgy ones, but mostly they were extremely well done and really immersed you in the story, both the tragedy and the optimism of it. FFXIII however gave you a massive linear and thoroughly boring start to the game. Again cinematics were top notch, but the sense of being trapped on a train that you didn’t really want to be on was really soul destroying. To have to go 5-10hrs into a game before the game starts, that’s just too much and caused any cinematic action to be lost in its significance or feeling.