I am guestimating I am somewhere around the midlle of Act2. Last save was right around the place where I was supposed to escape Laughing Octopus after talking to Naomi. 

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/35051.html

and yes, they complain on the cutscenes, the levels are linear, but you can choose tactics (its not just stealth ) and details are great


what I wanted to point is that many super-detailed current-gen blockbuster games use very limited color palete. I guess you simply have to do it in the age of visual overload to have some style and to hilight the important events and information.



btw Im so tired of hyped-up fanbois. stop doing the job for the PR jerks. go play your 9.9 out of 10 best-fps-ever Halo 

i actually sat through (what felt like) the first 2h of cutscenes with 10minutes of gameplay in mgs3. 

The feedback I'm getting from actual people (not the stupid media) is that in general, the MGS fanboys are wanking over this (and they had already declared it the best game ever 2 years before it was released anyway).

Meanwhile people without any attachment to the series (or just simply new to it) are sort of giving it a "meh". 

As I mentioned, I haven't played any of the previous MGS games before (ironically, apparently my girlfriend has played MGS2 to death), yet I had very little trouble "getting it". 

One such review from someone who was not impressed. The screen captions are great.

http://www.crispygamer.com/_GeneratedPages/GameReviews/Review170.aspx 

Some people seem to have a lot of gripe with the amount and lenght of the cutscenes in MGS4, so let's talk about that a bit.

Yes, there are SOME cutscenes that are a bit too long and perhaps a bit boring, but I just got to Act 3 and so far I've only seen such cutscenes occur perhaps twice. My guess is that most of the people who have this huge problem with MGS4 cutscenes are those who don't care about the backstory, plot and the universe the game resides in and just want nonstop buttonmashing action, because that's about the only explanation I can come up with.

I found the game universe revealed via the cutscenes to be very involving and rather emotional. Yes, there are lots of cutscenes, they some of them are pretty long, but why does it make the game bad? A few of my friends have been watching me playing and have been commenting that the production and graphics quality of the game combined with the game plot revealed in the cutscenes easily rival a lot of actual Hollywood movies. And this is precisely my definition of next-gen gaming: seamlessly blending the line between movie (storytelling) and game (interactive action) entertainment. 

And this is precisely my definition of next-gen gaming: seamlessly blending the line between movie (storytelling) and game (interactive action) entertainment.

no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

no.

(sorry I couldn't come up with anything cleverer than that.) 

Why? I am assuming you are trying to say it's a bad thing? 

he really didn't enjoy it. I keep wanting to try it, but as I didn't like Twin Snakes because of a. crap camera, b. shit controls and c. way too many cutscenes with a greater length than the gameplay sequences I think it's probably best I avoid it.

At least he is giving his honest subjective opinion though. Perhaps he is revelling a bit in the controversy, but I'm not sure crispy gamer is a particularly well known site so I doubt people are going to get too fired up about it.

It's crazy how stupid people can be when a game they like gets a bad or even just non-perfect score on a big review site. Anyone remember the fuss that got kicked up about Zelda Twightlight Princess getting an 8.9 or something on Gamespot. 8.9 is a good score and the reviewer had some fair criticisms and who the hell is anyone to tell him what he should and shouldn't like. It's kind of sad how childish a lot of people are online and also a shame that nobody cares about what is written in reviews when there is a score attached.

p.s. I recommend listening to the Games For Windows podcast each week as it's very entertaining, mostly PC related and they often talk about problems reviewing games, the relevance of scores and pressure from publishers to score a game highly even if it's a pile of shit.
http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3148397
Sean Elliot is a clown (in a good way) but well spoken and smart, and I respect his opinion more than most journos. A couple of the other regulars are very likeable too (Jeff Green and the Silent Bob of the podcast, Ryan Scot). Despite being sponsored by Microsoft, they often criticise the Games for Windows platform, windows itself and make jokes about the security of their jobs. Definitely worth a listen. 

he really didn't enjoy it. I keep wanting to try it, but as I didn't like Twin Snakes because of a. crap camera, b. shit controls and c. way too many cutscenes with a greater length than the gameplay sequences I think it's probably best I avoid it.

At least he is giving his honest subjective opinion though. Perhaps he is revelling a bit in the controversy, but I'm not sure crispy gamer is a particularly well known site so I doubt people are going to get too fired up about it.

It's crazy how stupid people can be when a game they like gets a bad or even just non-perfect score on a big review site. Anyone remember the fuss that got kicked up about Zelda Twightlight Princess getting an 8.9 or something on Gamespot. 8.9 is a good score and the reviewer had some fair criticisms and who the hell is anyone to tell him what he should and shouldn't like. It's kind of sad how childish a lot of people are online and also a shame that nobody cares about what is written in reviews when there is a score attached.

p.s. I recommend listening to the Games For Windows podcast each week as it's very entertaining, mostly PC related and they often talk about problems reviewing games, the relevance of scores and pressure from publishers to score a game highly even if it's a pile of shit.
http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3148397
Sean Elliot is a clown (in a good way) but well spoken and smart, and I respect his opinion more than most journos. A couple of the other regulars are very likeable too (Jeff Green and the Silent Bob of the podcast, Ryan Scot). Despite being sponsored by Microsoft, they often criticise the Games for Windows platform, windows itself and make jokes about the security of their jobs. Definitely worth a listen. 

triple post.

for some reason the post went through but my message box remained full so I just assumed I hadn't pressed the button.

Sorry 

Cutting from a situation where you have complete control, to one where you have none and can just sit back and watch, isn't exactly what I would call "seamlessly".
Yeah I'm a fanboy, but check Portal instead for seamlessly integrated story.

If I want to watch a movie, I'll watch a movie. Yeah that's being a bit extreme, I guess I wouldn't mind a game with a really good story and cutscenes (maybe that's the case with MGS4), but that's definitely not how I hope next-gen gaming will evolve (probably will be though -___-).
Oh and most holywood movies suck, so that's not much of a comparison. 

non-interactive cutscenes are (in my opinion) a pretty dated and lazy way of progressing a games story and (more often than not) filling in for a lack of actual playable content.

"Next-gen" games, in my opinion - and you can write this off as idealistic bollocks if you want - should be moving in the exact opposite direction - away from cutscenes and towards (the ultimate goal of) incredibly rich and immersive real-time worlds that the player can interact with in as many ways as possible. In short, let the player create the story - not some hack wannabe filmmaker. 

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/070119.jpg 

Now It's Not.



[b]DEAL WITH IT.[/b] 

hey I have a great idea how to make a movei into
a game in no time:
Just take a movie, I mean the video itself, right. Add Quick-Time-Events(*) to each scene that has any hint of action. Yes! You have to timely perform that arbiturary button sequence to watch the next chapter of the movie. And again.
Instant seamless blend of a movie(real actual movie!) and a game.
Can I patent this? I call this "Next-Gen Cinematic Gaming" �

*Quick-Time-Events: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=544#more-544 

I'm sure it's been patented already by someone. 

game in the early 90's just like that. You had to time your button control movement to the movie cut scene footage or else your character was good as dead. Forget the name of the title though. 

like all those Mega-CD games 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FMV_game 

non-interactive cutscenes are (in my opinion) a pretty dated and lazy way of progressing a games story and (more often than not) filling in for a lack of actual playable content.

Exactly, I think this is why more and more people are getting pissed off with cut-scenes in games, because we've all seen that it can be done better without cut-scenes. You can look as far back as Half-Life 1 to see that, yet some developers just don't seem to get it.

Another game I played recently that has some fairly long cut scenes is Mass Effect, except here they play part of the scene and then give the player a choice about what action to take next. I won't put any spoilers here but there are some major decisions being made in these cut scenes and the fact that you get to make them yourself adds a lot of weight to them. 

Hehe, that last paragraph sounds horridly like those old FMV games :) 

in Resident Evil 4 - a knife fight where the characters were growling plot at each other, every now and then you had to swing the wiimote or else get a cutscene of your guy getting his throat cut.

It didn't matter that it was a Res storyline (ie. crap) or that it could be repetitive retrying it since it was only a few different movements you had to do.

The good thing was it seemed like a really difficult and dangerous bit of the game because of the storyline fight going on, when really you could probably do it with not even looking at the screen, sound only. 

don't get me started on quick time events :(