ok been playing some new console games for a while now upgraded to a xbox 360 and a wii fun games. but what is with all the crazy long story lines? call me old fasiond but you know when you went into an arcade droped a quarter into a machine and walk away feeling like a hero. no waiting for cinamatics or what ther hero is supposed to do you just played the game till it beat you no rests. due to where i work i have alot of game conversations and todays player is more worried about the story than getting to the end. I am glad there is guys like us who are saving what I believe to still be a challenge to play in this day and age. now if we could get some members interested in breaking some high scores and get us on the map that would be cool but i always have high hopes. I know we have some great players amongst us they just need a push "Hey guys you have full support go and kick a**". well just thought i would mention that happy gaming guys.

I personally never caught on the whole "story ends, game over" principle, or even when the story starts over, like Super Mario Bros (sports games excluded of course...). Maybe it is the gaming demographic that I fall into, which played all the classics. But then again, why is it that even 26 years later, Galaga and Ms.Pacman are still raking in the quarters, while newer games end up forgotten? For example, a buddy at work got an XBox 360 and a few games. Which one gets the most play by his 9 and 7 year-olds? Championship PacMan... go figure...

Games with a story generally have a path to follow and it is your task to figure out the path. Many games claim to have non-linear gameplay but in the end I find that you still have the same tasks to complete but you can choose which order you complete them. So it becomes a challenge of how quickly you can figure out how to move down that path either through better character development or solving some sort of problem. If the game designer makes the story of interest and the mechanics of doing this enjoyable, you have a decent game. You inevitably are following the path laid out by the designer which tends to make it more like an interactive movie. Games where it's obvious you are being led down a path I find uninteresting. You might as well hit the play button on the DVD player and watch a movie. To me it's like, "We have a story to tell but we are going to make you push a few buttons to see it." Why bother? I can use my hands to fish through the popcorn bowl instead.

The old games have.... a score. So you are driven to compete for a higher score. As simplistic as this sounds, it is at the root of competition.

I think on the competitive side though there is much to be said about online play where you can challenge other people in real time.

I'm a big fan of RPG games and really with RPG story is everything.  

By far my favorite ghame it play is the Final Fantasy series.  I buy consoles just specifically so I can play them, I bought my PS2 to play FFX and FF12 which I'm playing through right now.  Personally I love playing through the story line and a in depth story line that really gets you into the charcters just makes the game that much more fun to play.  

FF12 right now I think is allot of fun to play, FF7 is still one of my favorites with FFX comming a close second.  

I like RPG or story game but after 40 hrs you normally finish them and the only option his to start again and build a new character again and again... yeah a new combo, I can make 3000000 hit point damaged now...

Now, I play hockey (sport game) or puzzle game (tetris, bust-a-move...) and some old arcade classic.

Fitghting games are the worst for me, 36 combos moves.. wow

Funny thing is on most FF games I've played they have a game timer so you can tell just how big a loser you are for how long you've been playing the game.

I think I'm a little over half way through FFXII and I've logged 66 hours thus far.

For FF7, I did everything possible that the game had to offer and it was 81 hours of logged game time at that point.

I also used to play MMORPG's (Still waiting on the next good one, everything else has sucked since UO and Shadowbane just gets boring after a while)

I don't even want to know how many hours I've logged on MMORPG's.  I played UO for 5 years.

I have to agree with Vengeance.  I Love RGP's and quite frankly they are nothing without the story.  So for me story plays an important role as well.  I remember playing Phantasy Star (my fav RGP) as a kid I would save just before the cut-scene so I could watch them again and again.  At the time the graphics were some of the best out there, so I really got a kick out of it.  Considering my only other alternative at the time were those dos games that describe where you were; and you typed in a arbitrary command in hopes it would do something.  Needles to say my sega stood out as the clear winner.

For pure competition games ... I would say I loved playing Starcraft online.  It was fun game but when you went online or played on a LAN it was tough feeling to top when you pwn the guy on the other end.

Yea Starcraft was allways allot of fun, any body else play starcraft?

I used to have some online buddies and we would hook up once a week just to plya a few games, wouldn't mind starting something like that again.  

Starcraft III is comming out soon that should be good.