Most of the cut scenes I remember are from the current or previous generation. As someone who skipped the console generation after the SNES/Mega Drive era I must have missed a tsunami of mind-blowing and category-defining cut scene goodness.
True, not every game needs them, but if a game has a plot, a good cut scene really helps me get behind the stories or characters of the games I’m playing. I always liked the story and cinematics in Prince Of Persia: Sands Of Time. There’s a moment when you’re climbing the citadel tower towards the end and you pause to take in the view that seems like such a lush spectacle I genuinely wanted to be there myself, not just watching it on a screen.
The GameCube Resident Evil remake and Resident Evil 4’s cut scenes did very good jobs of making me want to shoot the faces off Mr Wesker, Salazaar, and Lord Sadler, as well as making that hulking sub boss with the beard in Resident Evil 4 seem a lot more sinister and imposing (the bit with the exploding barrel where he gets up and reveals his true form somehow sticks in my mind).
As a primarily PlayStation 3 and 4 gamer I have to give a mention to the Uncharted series and The Last Of Us as having some truly epic and beautiful cut scene sequences, which I can honestly say I’ve never felt were intrusive into my enjoyment of the games. I know they have their detractors, and none of them are flawless, but in terms of being stylish and well-constructed bits of entertainment I think they’re pretty great and certainly the closest I’ll ever get to experiencing being in a summer blockbuster action adventure movie.
Even if when I played The Last Of Us, the epic ‘zoo escape’ near the end had a glitch where one of the creature’s ears looked like it had a big hole in it, through which you could see the sky behind its head. Slightly ruined the emotional impact of the scene by making me laugh out loud, but it was still a beautiful moment on such an emotional rollercoaster of a journey.
Probably my favourite cinematic cut sequences come from the Mass Effect series though. I loved some of the wisecracking team status update chats from storming the Collector base in Mass Effect 2 and found the ‘Leaving Earth’ sequence and the united fleet turning up for the final space battle in Mass Effect 3 were both properly stirring stuff.
However, it was the Citadel expansion that clinches it for me, especially the breaking-and-entering-with-a-toothbrush sequence and the epic everyone-and-their-guns mass shootout bit that gave me the biggest grins, thanks mostly to the great dialogue and well turned in performances from the voice cast.
I think my least enjoyable cut scene experiences were with my one and only attempt to play a Metal Gear Solid game. It was 4. While it looked incredible, I found the near constant stream of cut scene interruptions totally destroyed my ability to get into the actual gameplay. I remember one sub-30 second sequence of gameplay, crawling around a single corner under cover, was bookended by two cut scenes of at least five minutes apiece.
Sometime later, after one particularly lengthy (and to me, virtually unintelligible) encounter with what I think was a flamboyant arms dealer, I got so disillusioned I returned the game to the friend I’d borrowed it from, never to want to try another one again. I know Hideo Kojima is supposed to be a genius and I’m sure he knows what he’s doing… but I’m just not sure I’d like it, even if I could keep up.
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