What makes a good/compelling story that would want you to actually play through the single player portion of a game? The trend recently seems to be games being about 5-8 hrs long for the SP portion of the game. Couple of games played recently had me thinking about this.
Most recent would of course be Battlefield 3; whereas the previous versions had a relatively interesting SP portion, the SP campaign for BF3 seemed to be tagged on to the Multiplayer portion of the game. Every other clichè used in other games also are present here, flashforwards, jumping in different characters shoes, plot twists etc.... PLUS making a game more difficult does NOT mean making the AI snipers! Shame on you lazy programmers. Not to mention infinite spawning enemies, and portions of the game where you can't advance unless your squad mates go ahead first. (how nice of them to remind you about this during the loading screen).
On the other hand, you have a game like Gears of War 3 (should have been called 'Emo steroid warriors with big guns 3'), granted this universe has very rich/deep storyline, there must be a line drawn before everything gets too convoluted; seriously i'm playing it now just to get it over with.
It's not that the graphics are not good, although the gameplay mechanics are a bit tiresome already. It's just that the gameplay is too linear, and adding in the dearth of fetch this and fetch that missions, plus a dragggggyyy story, the whole game seems so much longer than it should be.
So what makes a good game? I believe one that gives you a sense of deep satisfaction when you complete it, and which you'd care to go back to replay it all over again.
Too true man.. They make games these days catering to the masses.. Instant satisfaction n gratification.. That's why good story telling isn't a hall mark of good game design these days... I think Amazon Bikini Warriors has a more compelling storyline than BF3 :)
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