For someone who hates cutscenes...

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...is it worth trying out the Metal Gear Solid or Half Life series? I've never played any of the games in these two series, but I constantly see people referencing them and talking about them, and I want to see what all the fuss is about. The thing is, MGS is notorious for being more of an interactive movie than a game, and Half Life pretty much started the whole trend of plot-heavy FPS games with lots of dialogue and scripted events.

Should I try these games out, or should I not bother with them? I don't necessarily mind games where the plot is well done and doesn't get in the way of the gameplay, but games where you constantly have to stop playing for cutscenes tend to drive me nuts (I'm looking at you, Final Fantasy X).

I have no answers to your questions. I was amused by your subject title. My oldest son, Joshua Foreman (who made Super Adventure Box inside GuildWars 2) hates cutscenes and has been working for years on a video about why he hates cutscenes. He has posted fragments of his video on Youtube.

Personally I find the cutscenes in the Metal Gear Solid series to have gotten more irritating since the third game. I thought the scripted events in Half-life were very well done, though I haven't played past the first one.

I own Half Life 2 along with its episodes, but I don't own the first game. Do I have to play the first game to understand the plot of the second game?

Not really; Earth has been taken over by aliens due to the Black Mesa incident; that's all you really need to know.

I don't really like the MGS games very much (but I did play a bit of the original MSX games), so I can't help you there...but Half-Life is nothing like a cutscene heavy game =) The train ride at the beginning of the game(s) can get a little boring if you replay it (them) often, but otherwise, most of the dialogue bits happen while you're playing, and don't pin you down and force you to watch anything. You can still move around, whack things with your crowbar, whatever you want. In the first game (and the expansions) you could even kill people before they finished talking to you.



Yes and no.

They make it very unclear as to what happened between HL and HL2, and as far as I can remember, there aren't really any spoilers...so if you ended up liking HL2 and then went back to try the first game, I don't think you'd miss out on much.

Similar to the first two Mad Max movies...which may or may not be an intentional nod.

As someone who ALSO hates cutscenes, my own personal answers would be: MGS, no, dont bother with this series. Just dont. That's not to say that the gameplay is bad or anything, but it's an EXTREMELY story-driven game, and cutscenes, well.... it's practically drowning in them, as much as or moreso than even Square's stupid RPGs.

Half-Life, ehhhhh..... some have differing views on this. I, personally, got the same effect from it as I did with MGS, though I've only played HL2, not the first game. Yeah, you can move around and such during the scenes with lots of yapping, but you're still not really DOING anything... it's more just fidgeting while waiting for it to go away. I have less than no patience though, it may be a different experience for you.


But yeah, MGS is a very definite no-go if you dont like cutscenes, no question there.

I see. So are there any games that play like MGS, but have more gameplay?

Probably, but I would rather just play Thief or Hitman or something.

Or, like I said, there are those two Metal Gear games for MSX...plus there's one for Gameboy Color that I thought was kind of nice.

....and I guess there's two for NES, but.....

Last edited by SabbraCadabra on 22 Dec 2013, 9:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

MGS is definitely worth playing if you can get hold of it. The first MGS game is what converted me to playstation.

You can zip through the codec conversations if you want by tapping X, but you might miss important info. Retaining info you get during story parts that you may later depend on is just part of the gamelay. I remember the part when Meryl tells you to contact her by codec but doesnt give you the frequency saying its on the back of case, you later have to literally look it up yourself on the back of the game box. Or the bit were Psycho mantis looks into your memory card to see how many times you've saved. I thought little bits like that were genius.

To be honest, i don't think the interactive move label is fair, the first two games are pretty action packed on an interactive level. Plus its got loads of easter eggs. MGS3 is the only really bad offender in my opinon and MGS4 was always intended to be eye candy to show off the PS3's power. MGS5 looks pretty innovative, its going to have new stealth mechanics in a sandbox environment. It definitely deserves a go.

The beauty of Half Life is that it doesn't really have cutscenes. There are first person dialogue segments, but you are never removed from your character.