MSNBC Picks Its Best Video Game Eye Candy For 2011
by Perry Michael Simon on December 27, 2011
Everyone’s doing “year in review” stuff this week, because either a) they’re all copying The Nerdist: Year in Review, or b) it’s a slow news week and everyone’s on vacation. Probably the latter. So MSNBC’s In-Game did this video with its choices for Best Video Game Animations of 2011:
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The network’s list of top cinematics includes Hitman: Absolution, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, Prey 2, and Dead Island.
Now, I’ll leave it to hardcore gamers to decide whether this list is a good one — remember, it’s not about game play (they did a separate list for that, but we can turn to Kumail and Emily for their opinions) — but as someone who just doesn’t have time to do a lot of gaming, I get impatient with those cinematics, no matter how amazing and elaborate they are. I just want to, you know, get to the part where I shoot things (or pick up potatoes, or throw one up the middle to Brent Celek). How about you?
Cinematics have their place but, like you, I want to play! When they put too much into the video and not enough into the game it really kills the joy for me.
I think gameplay graphics are worth an award… not cinematic trailers. A cinematic trailer award seems irrelevant.
The Dead Island trailer is a transparently manipulative, poorly constructed, derivative piece of crap.
if you’re going to judge the cinematics, judge them on cinematic quality and cinematic criteria. if you’re giving a technical award for graphics, give it to the gameplay graphics, that’s a bigger challenge.
I remember when a video game company had to bankrupt themselves making a motion picture release to get graphics like these. (Oh ‘Spirits Within’, who thought that technology would be stable enough to not make you obsolete by the time you were finished…)
something else to post, game deaths vid http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ6APKIjFQY
I’m OK with this. Cinematics are a part of modern games weather you like it or not. It also appears as though these are the VGA’s we should be looking at. They have categories for Actor, Art, and writing. While the Art section might be overly subjective, it’s nice to see awards handed out for best performance and best writing, two categories that define immersive gaming. They also appear to have categories for game type as well, which is good.
Why are we not seeing feature films made with this style of animation? I would love to see a Star Wars movie set in the Old Republic made like those cinematics. The last animated movie I saw that tried to achieve realism was that Final Fantasy movie that came out, like, a decade ago.