Gronk said:
Fahrenheit/Indigo prophecy? Althought the game had some issues, storywise, one of the things i liked was how it took it's time with the story and the characters and didn't rush it like many other games.
The lame thing about Fahrenheit was that it built up to a lot of stuff that didn't pay off. Tyler's scenarios were always tangential at best(the weird library scene, the basketball game, etc.) before being unceremoniously written out of the game.
Casual Shinji said:
Resident Evil 4 has some of the best fucking pacing ever, rivaled only by Metal Gear Solid. Though with the latter the pacing kinda craps out in the second half. That first half is simply flawless though.
RE4 rocks my world, but it's all downhill for me once you escape the village.
Mikejames said:
I loved the pacing in Silent Hill 2 and Shattered Memories. They offer a good build-up to things as the setting and characters become more and more disorientating as you question what's really going on.
Yes! Both are excellent examples of pacing. I think Shattered Memories, the worse game of the two by all accounts, has probably even better pacing than SH2. The game, for all its lackluster gameplay, has a seamless way of unfolding its plot and characters. By comparison, SH2 tends to go on a limb regarding narration. The first "level" (the tenement building) always has me wondering - just what the hell is James trying to accomplish here?
My 2 cents would be Beyond Good & Evil, which is built as tightly as a spy movie. The intro attack, the journey to the garage and the city, the Big Bro screens presenting the villain, the first secret assignment, the spy HQ, the infiltration of the factory and the slaughterhouse, the plot slowly unraveling a conspiracy... I can't think of any excess fat. Even the racing sections, which most people hate, give a shade of authenticity to the whole underworld atmosphere. Love the game, very good writing.
Arkham Asylum also has very good pacing, though this can be easily destroyed by all the backtracking you'll be doing whenever you unlock a new bat-gadget.