The original Donkey Kong arcade cab is guilty for the phenomena of cut scenes as it's generally accepted that it had the first ones ever found in a video game. From the beginning where DK kidnaps Lady/Pauline and climbs up the ladders and trashes the place, down to his ultimate demise landing on his monkey head all delivered with a well-deserved thud. That's not to say that these short vignettes weren't awesome: they played a nice little ditty, displayed a graphic reward and gave you a chance for a breather and to step away from the machine to check if any duly impressed ladies were watching. They weren't. But the concept of cute cut scenes was now in place and the world was better for it. Wait a minute... And so after thirty years of games utilizing cut scenes to offer the player a break and also to tell a story we arrive at Max Payne 3, a trite, expensive B movie that had a tiny amount of interactivity weaved into its dull narrative. Max Payne 3 was insanely expensive to produce and yet despite all that money being thrown at it, the fact is you're watching a sequence of unchangeable preset movie clips that are sporadically interrupted by a soupçon of short, poorly designed shooting segments. That's like watching a DVD and playing a game of Candy Crush on your phone every once in a while. This is the future of gaming? Rockstar, the makers of Max Payne 3, also made LA Noire which had extremely impressive graphics thanks to ground-breaking advance motion capture of actors' faces. And it was all rendered in real time which is quite an achievement - yet it's nothing more than fancy cut scenes. The game consists of driving to a location, looking for clues then asking suspects a series of basic questions in what is patently a very simple game mechanic. There wasn't the ability to change the progression of the clip being played out; you couldn't control the action once you had selected your response to the situation. You couldn't interrupt the dialog to slap the person you were questioning, nor could you alter the delivered attitude and tone or change anything until each short clip had finished. Despite spending millions on the tech to make the most realistic 3D rendered human emotions in a video game to date, there really wasn't any interactivity beyond selecting from three or so options. The devs could have just filmed the actors for real on a period studio set or using chromakey and saved all that coding and mocap data. Had LA Noire been released twenty years ago as an FMV game it would play exactly the same on a Phillips CDi system. When you have more cut scenes than gameplay you have a problem.
A Welsh semi-retired television producer and actor known for low end work that astonishingly people actually watched and even garnered some awards. Originally residing in the electrically-challenged Amish areas of Pennsylvania he has written a few books (Hollywood Pants and Hollywood Horrible Hints and Terribly Fake Tips vols 1 & 2) which you can buy on amazon and all great book stores.
After a brief stint in Australia he now finds himself back in the Welsh valleys of his home country noting that it hasn't changed a bit!
