That's been my biggest gripe with modern gaming. It feels like 2 of the first 3 hours of most modern games are cutscenes. I miss powering on a game, hitting start, maybe reading a paragraph, and going straight to the action.

Luckily some recent indy games have filled that itch. Yooka-Laylee, A Hat in Time, and Hollow Knight have felt like modern updates of what I grew up on.

And bad cut-scenes.

There are some notable exceptions, but storytelling and just narrative quality and variety is .... not really there.

If they're going to fill my time with cut scenes they should be good.

So bad they're good is also quite fun

I still have fond memories of Westwood's Command & Conquer cutscenes (and the CGI!) because it was so cheesy and low budget

I like a game that doesn't take itself too seriously!

Hollow knight, aside from Breath of the Wild, was my favorite game of the year.

It's such a great, great game. It offers a fantastic atmosphere supported by a fitting score, an unexpected amount of unique content, an interesting story and a fitting amount of challenge.

Fantastic experience overall!

Try Nioh or Dark Souls, you’ll have gameplay coming out of your ears. If you want cutscenes and dialogue with balance, try Persona 5, which is balanced by very tight gameplay; likewise with Yakuza 0. Avoid anything from Ubisoft like it was carrying plague.

Speaking of Ubisoft, is it just me or do they repackage the same game with different skins over and over gain? I swear Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, Ghost Recon and Watch Dogs are the same game with different skins.

It is not just you. It reminds me of Taco Bell. They’re only working with a dozen or so ingredients, sometimes fried, sometimes grilled, in various combinations. After a while though, you start to realize it’s just a “new” arrangement of the same “meat” and it gets ooooold.

Sounds like the "fast food" (in the street or market) in Mexico though.

Different configurations of the same corn, chiles, and meats. Grilled or fried. Tacos, sopes, flautas, enchiladas, gorditas, quesadillas.

Frankly sounds like all fast food except a place like Chili's, so doesn't seem like very scathing criticism.

It's a shame, they used to be good. I really like the idea behind Assassin's Creed. And Sands of Time is a god tier A++ game.

I couldn’t agree more, I think they just got lost in the easy money. If we’re lucky they might fall on some hard times that fall short of killing them, and rememember that making really great games was how they became huge the first time. Otherwise, it’s hard to see a way forward the way they are now.

Ghost Recon is IMO the best "skin" of those four. Although they look somewhat samey, they are very different games (though I would lump Watch Dogs under "Scifi AssCreed").

Far Cry is a bit of a mixed bag, 3 was fun, 4 wasn't, I'm looking at 5 because it looks fun too.

EA DICE do the same, Battlefront and Battlefield feel and play very similar, they just have different visuals and voices. There's nothing inherently wrong with reusing the same code, especially when the games work and sell very well, but it does make the games feel a bit similar.

No, it's not just you. Here's a video about that:

http://www.thejimquisition.com/ubification-the-jimquisition/

...how many versions of pokemon have Nintendo released that are the same thing? How many mario parties? (Hint, there are 16 mario party games in the main series)

No one can beat nintendo for that.

Ubisoft's Tom Clancy games are still generally Gameplay.

Rainbow Six Siege is still one of my favorites.

Ghost Recon Wildlands has been my favorite game to fire up and relax with for a long while. The Open World is massive and dense without feeling overcrowded. Esp. playing as squad with friends is fun, even if all you do is fly around in a helicopter and find bases to clear out (my personal challenge is to clear a base without raising alarm once, which I managed 6 out of 8 times). I also positively love how free the mission setup is.

I would wish that OW-games would be more like Wildlands.

Companies of this era, before ps2 hardware class you had to make something a bit fun in its more trivial and most interesting sense.

Sony is the most guilty of this imo. Even Microsoft's 1st party games are more "gamey" than Sony.

cough Uncharted, Last Of Us cough

Two games by the same studio who are praised for their ability to tell a story.

To be honest there are only a few games I played during the ps3 era (bought it for the cell chip+linux and left it unpatched when they removed it from the firmware until the system was broken wide open), but the last of us was a great story and fun game.

Good old id still makes games with 99.9999% gameplay. DOOM 2016 was all about the gameplay.

I like how the (brief) opening cut-scene ends with Doomguy losing patience with the computer trying to narrate to him after only a few seconds, and smashing it. The game's attitude to storytelling is established quickly and decisively.

My favorite part of all that is the fact the developers actually did develop lore and a back story for Doom 2016 that the player is then free to either explore or ignore. The attitude towards storytelling that they established is so much more impressive when you realize that they actually did put effort into making a story.