Personal Enquiry Final

For my personal enquiry I want to tackle the Story vs. Gameplay debate. I’m going to try to keep this as diverse as I can with the limited word count, I’ll be discussing my opinion on which is more important in a game by giving examples of games I’ve played and how enjoyable I found them with regards to the story they tell or the gameplay they provide the player. I’ll also look at others’ opinion on the matter by looking at what games sell better and what games are appreciated more and have higher review scores.

Some gameplay focused games I’ve enjoyed include: the Guitar Hero series (2005-2010), Tetris (1989) and the Payday games (2011 and 2013). These games have entertained me with their gameplay and although Payday and Guitar hero both have a narrative in the games, these are by far not the focus of the games and are merely there to justify the levels of the game. Despite Activision running the Guitar hero series into the ground by saturating the market with its games I found the series a lot of fun, it often gets criticised for mocking real instruments, but the game isn’t trying to replicate a real instruments. In a way it’s similar to a combat system such as the one used in the Batman Arkham games (2009-2013), you’re reacting to something that happens on the screen with a button press and it’s all about timing. The Payday Games provide problem solving scenarios that can be solved cooperatively which results in edge of the seat moments and enjoyment with friends. Although I wouldn’t consider these games and games like them to be the best games I’ve played, but they’ve defiantly provided me with a lot of enjoyment while playing them.
 

Here are some examples of heavily story based games: Mass Effect 2 (2010), The Witcher 2 (2011) and Beyond: Two Souls (2010). I generally really enjoy story driven games, at the moment I'm making my way through the Witcher 2, the mix of interesting characters in a well fleshed out world makes it a pleasure to play through. It's a really mature take on the fantasy genre, often in fantasy game such as The Elder Scrolls series (1994-2014) and the Fable series (2004-2014) are fun to play, but they feel as if they're catering to a young audience and don't really differentiate their worlds from other fantasy settings that much, the Witcher seems to really make the fantasy setting it's own by taking elements such as species and magic and really makes it it's own.

 Mass Effect 2 is a pleasure to play through as it creates this large universe with history and advanced technology, in a way it's similar to the Witcher in that it has taken an already existing genre, in this case a futuristic space setting, and gets creative and builds a really interesting universe and an enjoyable narrative to follow. These two games unfortunately share a similar downfall, they're lacking in the gameplay department, Mass Effect is a fairly basic 3rd person cover based shooter with some magic abilities and the Witcher has a solid sword and magic combat system, but becomes repetitive and dry.




 
And Beyond: Two Souls is a film with a small amount of interaction, I appreciate that David Cage (Head Developer of Quantic Dream) wants to create a film like experience "The game industry is ready to create something much more meaningful, something that like films can change the world" (He mentioned this in this video). But I think that games have already taken enough from films, games posses interactivity and this interactivity needs to be used in it's own unique way, role play games such as Mass Effect and The Witcher are on it's way there with being able to alter the story based on your actions.

I want to make a third category here to mark the gray area between story based games and gameplay based games, here are me three examples of these sort of games: Portal 2 (2011), the Metal Gear series (1987-2014) and the Batman Arkham series (2009-2013). Firstly lets look at the Metal Gear Solid Series, the games posses a well built stealth  system that left me on the edge of my seat in countless occasions, innovative boss fights (Especially Metal Gear Solid 1, 1998) and generally good action gun play when it doesn't quite go to plan. The gameplay these games have are good enough to hold it's own in it's own game, but then these games have fairly long stories. The story of the series is very over the top, the majority of the characters are satires of currently existing characters in films and the plot is hilariously stupid, which has become it's charm, but it's full of memorable characters with big twists and turns that keep me interested in the series. Like it's gameplay, I would happily watch all of the cutscenes of the games in a series of films and would thoroughly enjoy them. But the Metal Gear games create a massive divide between story and gameplay when you play them, you'll play lengthy amounts of gameplay, and then be interrupted by long cutscenes, I'll never forget finishing Metal Gear Solid 4 (2008) and wanting to get on with something else but the game throws a 45 minute cutscene at you, it was really great and all, but I wish that it could have somehow been split up a bit, or at least give me another chunk of gameplay afterwards.
 
The Batman Arkham games are much like Metal Gear in that it bares strong gameplay, accompanied by strong story. The gameplay consists of a classic combo based combat mixed with classic (for the most part) boss battles and very fun stealth predator-pray sequences that really make you feel like the Batman. And the story presents you with already established characters from the Batman universe and puts them in scenarios which put pressure on characters and the result of the strain put on characters is portrayed really well. The problem with the game I'd say is that although the story itself is good enough to be a stand alone thing, the gameplay without Batman and the rest of the story wouldn't be nearly as entertaining.


Now let's look at Portal 2, at it's base it's a first person puzzle game, and a very good one at that so major gameplay points for that, but then as you're playing it it feeds you this really good story that's very amusing. So it takes a strong story and strong gameplay and melts it together seamlessly, instead of what they do in Metal gear where there's a huge barrier between the story parts and the gameplay parts, Portal 2 creates the two elements one experience and because of this I feel that is the most successful game I've listed here.

So looking at these games I've listed if I have to decide if I prefer gameplay or story I'd have to say story. Although I have a lot of fun playing Payday and Guitar Hero, it's story experiences that grab me, the Witcher 2 is by far the best game I've played in the past year, the Metal Gear Solid series stands as my favourite game series, and Portal 2 is one of the best examples of brilliantly merging gameplay and story.
 
So after deciding that I'd rather story over gameplay I'm going to look at what the general population prefer by looking at review scores and sales. For looking into sales figures I've looked at VGChartz, and the top 10 of this list consists of gameplay focused games, in fact the closest story focused game to the top of the list is at number 60 which is Final Fantasy VII. This undoubtedly tells us that gameplay based games sell better. Then for a look into which are generally the better games I looked at Metacritic, I saw that it was a similar story to best selling games in that the majority of the top rated games are gameplay focused games, but there was a greater presence of story based games on the highest rated list compared to the best selling list.

So to conclude, my personal choice between story and gameplay would be story as most of my favourite games are games with a strong story, but I do enjoy playing gameplay focused games. But what seems to sell is gameplay focused games, and the highest rated games are also mainly gameplay focused games. So due to the evidence of gameplay focused games selling much better and being rated very highly it looks like gameplay is what the people want and therefore more important than story.


Bibliography:

Guitar Hero series, Activision (2005-2010)
 
Tetris, Nintendo (1989)

Payday: The Heist, Sony Online Entertainment (2011)

Payday 2, 505 Games (2013)
 
Batman Arkham series, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (2009-2013)

Mass Effect 2, Electronic Arts (2010)

The Witcher 2: Assassin's of Kings, Bandai Namco Games (2011)

Beyond: Two Souls, Sony Computer Entertainment (2013)

The Elder Scrolls series, Bethesda Softworks (1994-2014)

The Fable series, Microsoft Studios (2004-2014)

David Cage Interview: http://tribecafilm.com/stories/beyond-two-souls-david-cage-interview-ellen-page-willem-dafoe-film

Portal 2, Valve Corporation (2011)

Metal Gear Solid series, Konami (1987-2014)

VGChartz: http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/

Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/browse/games/score/metascore/all/all?sort=desc

Photo Reference: 

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/12/23/tetris-review

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/get-ready-for-the-witcher-3-by-picking-up-the-witcher-2-for-4-today/1100-6418996/

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/the_witcher_2/screenshots.html

http://www.gamesradar.com/mass-effect-2/screenshots/

http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/beyond_two_souls/screenshot-59.html

http://www.videogamer.com/xbox360/mgs_hd/screenshots.html

http://www.gamesradar.com/batman-arkham-city-review/

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2011/04/19/portal-2-review

http://www.pcgamer.com/uk/review/the-witcher-2-review/