The accusation “the game plays itself” is one of the oldest and most convenient in game criticism. It is enough to cut out twenty seconds with a spectacular finishing move, where the camera beautifully flies around the hero, and the player at this moment does not press on the sticks, and the verdict is ready. The problem is that half the industry falls under this criterion, including those games that the accusers themselves call standard.
But some games actually do this. And this time it went to the freshly released Marvel’s Wolverine.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 relied on a combination of dodges, parries, and gadgets for its combat, with flashy finishing moves serving as a visual exclamation point rather than a replacement for gameplay. With Logan, the task becomes more complicated: claws, dismemberment and bestial rage require brutal staging, but such videos can be found in any Sony game. Press the right button at the right time and the scene will move on.
Classic gameplay, but:
In the video above, you don’t have to press anything during the QTE scene, and it continues on its own.
Why play then, if you can watch a movie?
I have a question for the developers – how did they manage to miss this after all the playtests, reviews and internal procedures?
The real question isn’t whether the game has cinematic cutscenes, but rather how long the player actually holds the controller in decision-making mode. Uncharted 2 in 2009 built an entire genre on staged scenes, God of War 2018 learned to hide editing cuts inside a continuous frame, and both games are still used as an example.
Judge Marvel’s Wolverine one clip is wrong, but this complaint about Sony studio games is heard too often. It seems that it was high time to fix it.
