Ever seen game cinematics that didn't suck?

I've been playing Injustice: Gods Among Us and have actually been pretty impressed with the quality of the story mode cutscenes. And while this is probably not what you were asking about, I love watching the plot-important conversations in Deus Ex: Human Revolution. As compared to any other conversation in the game, they take place entirely from Adam's point of view, and they clearly put a lot of love into animating the character on screen.

A good example is this scene with David Sarif (potential spoilers):

Surprised none mentioned Armed and Dangerous.

SuperflyJohnson said:

The Ratchet and Clank series has some entertaining, clever cutscenes. Ratchet is a dick in the first game but I think that got retconned for the HD collection.

Considering its just the first three games converted to the PS3, the story is exactly the same. Pretty funny how he grows into a tired sarcastic veteran over the series, considering his antics in the first one.

Every cutscene in Metroid Prime 2. Seriously. The first game was a bit weak in this department; Samus's animations weren't very fluid or realistic and projected no real attitude. Some of the cutscenes weren't even finished due to the end game rush - grapple in particular, which reuses the Chozo Artifact cutscene, which is itself just a really poorly done camera rotation and zoom-in - note in later regional releases, some of these cutscenes were actually finished and were much better.

Holy shit did they get this together for the sequel though. Samus throws herself around like a tank. You feel her weight, and it is somewhere around 2 tons. She moves with purpose and determination; the opacity of her visor changes just enough for you to see her scowl in disgust or anger, or feel her empathy with the victims of the Ing. She does even the simplest things, like refilling her ammo, with an amount of swagger which is off the charts. She just blows through everything like a badass. Other M apologists, play this game first.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma series have good cutscenes that i kinda like, also there is God of War, Ratchet and Clank, Heavenly Sword, Jak and Daxter, Sly and Super Street Fighter 4:AE.
These games have good cutscenes that i like a lot, especially Heavenly Sword, those cutscenes are excellent for me, considering how short that game is.

For the most part, Wolfenstein: The New Order had some pretty sweet cinematics IMO.

[EDIT]: I am partially surprised nobody mentioned The Neverhood:

Descent: Freespace has an awesome intro that got me pumped for the whole game. The Ancients narrative cutscenes that played throughout the campaign were mostly good too.

Descent 3 also deserves to be mentioned:

Dune2 and UFO: Enemy Unknown intros were pretty cool and memorable.

Both of these games (and Another World featured above) are CARTRIDGES.

Also, anything made by Rockstar, including GTAV (sorry, GoatLord).

Oh, and ModNation Racers on the PS3. The cutscenes in that game are hilarious - just a shame the game is so infuriating it makes IWBTG seem fair by comparison.

Another World was interesting because of its design approach. Part (all?) of the backgrounds were bitmaps, but for objects and characters, he developed a vector animation thing that used polygons. So that data was thankfully very small. It also helped when he re-released it since the polygon data didn't need to be adjusted for higher resolutions, only the bitmap data.

First time I played it wasn't on a cartridge, though. It was on DOS. The original platforms were the Amiga and Atari ST, iirc.

EDIT: Since we're on the topic of Another World... related

There's a possibility to use bitmaps for backgrounds that was hacked in for testing, IIRC, but the backgrounds in the finished game are vector. Redrawn backgrounds are optional; you can use the old backgrounds, and they'll scale the same way as characters (at least in the 15th Anniversary Edition).

yukib1t said:

First time I played it wasn't on a cartridge, though. It was on DOS. The original platforms were the Amiga and Atari ST, iirc.

True, although my parents didn't have a spare £600 to spend on hardware back then :P

Worth noting that the recent HD reissue still looks fantastic, almost like one of those indie animations Channel 4 used to air at around midnight back in the day. Testament to the notion that art style really does count for a lot when it comes to how well graphics hold up over time.

I know this is a Doom forum so most of you are PC gamers, but shame on everyone of you for not posting the Onimusha 3 intro. Greatest cutscene ever made. Too bad PC gamers got a garbage port