How many Games now days would you say you have had the time and effort to replay the
Story more then once? Even with multiple endings and unlockables i can safely say that i
haven't gone back through any games on the 360. GTA being the exception, i only replayed
that because i saved it before i took the choice of Revenge or Money (screw spoiler tags, if
you haven't got that far yet you fucking should have).

Obviously MGS is one of the key games that resemble film the most.

MGS being such a huge game and having millions of fans, i think it deserves a epic ending
to Snakes life. Im all for that but to go as far as a 90 minute FMV, i think thats a bit long.
Yeah you can pause and skip this but what the fuck can possibly be that important to last
90 minutes? I really had hoped that Hideo Kojima would come up with a genius solution to
the FMV time span in his games. His obviously a clever guy with a real passion for gaming
and cinema and maybe he should have maybe tried pushing the envelope into new grounds
for story telling in games. Seeing as he is probably one of the most intelligent story tellers
in modern gaming. MGS has some really solid gameplay elements that would make any
game great, it practically invented the espionage genre in video gaming. Despite this the
game play is stupidly simple, stay away from guards and sentries and for bosses finding
their weak spots to your advantage. This is some addictive game play but for me it seems
that your only doing this to sit through the next marathon of a FMV. Of course the FMV's are
good and you get used to them after a while, but should that really be the case? Shouldn't a
game be placing you into the action rather then taking you out from it every now and
again? For a game that offers such a wealth of brilliant game play i think it deserves
something more.

If i was asked what were the best games for Stories in the last 2 years, i would say
Bioshock, Mass Effect, Gears of War, GTA4 and Oblivion. I only play 360 at the moment so
spare me the PS3 games that i should have played as-well. Taking the first 3 games, i
haven't touched the story modes since completing them. Gears of War i played Online for a
while but it didn't keep me interested for a replay of the story. Bioshock was a amazing
game for what it done but as with GoW i knew the ending now and lost interest. Games
based on a set path are only usually saved by excellent Online elements or downloadable
content. Call of Duty had a fairly good story to it, if not a bit cliched, it had its excellent
Online to fall back on and that has kept it on my list on games i still play.

Games that stick to there roots a little more are ones that draw you in with addiction.

Grand Theft Auto and Oblivion are the two games i have played for the longest amount of
time. GTA at around 80 hours and Oblivion at something stupid like 400 hours. I put this
down to the game slowly developing and slowly drawing you in with different characters
and scenarios. This mainly applies with Oblivion, 400 hours in and i am still bumping into
new people to help or kill. GTA had gone down the route of Story more then it had
previously had and tried to keep you playing for that reason alone. Since finishing the GTA
story i was more then happy to find the hidden characters and what else was laying around
for me. I finally got 100% just before my 360 died and i would probably still be playing it
now Online. Games with vast amounts of area to explore stay in peoples 'Currently Playing'
list a lot longer. In short they have more life. Im in no way saying that these games are
taking gaming away from its cinematic background. It just makes a nice change to be able
to tackle things at your leisure rather then a series of set pieces.

Im still hoping that the gaming industry will eventually find its own medium and take itself
to a new level of story telling. When you think back to what games used to be like Sonic,
Mario and even further back Pong. They all grabbed you in with the addictive side, bringing
you back in with the human desire to succeed and get one over our soon to be rulers
Artificial Intelligence.

Another thing is, how many games do you think stay in your collection that are based just
on its story? Compared to games that you can keep revisiting out of the lure of finding new
things to see and do.