CoCage said:
sageoftruth said:
Vanquish, Devil May Cry 3, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, and every other action game made by Platinum and Team Ninja. They make great games that I love to play over and over, but the cutscenes and voice acting are always laughable.
A possible exception is Transformers Devastation, where the silly cutscenes actually help make it feel like a genuine Saturday morning cartoon.
I think I'll also add every good 90s game that had voice acting. The 90s was a bad time for voice acting.
Devil May Cry 3 wasn't done by Platinum/Clover Studios. That was one of Capcom's other in-house studios. The lead director of 2, 3, & 4 was Hideaki Itsuno. Platinum did work on the orginal DMC pre-Clover (called Team Little Devils). Besides, DMC 3 is not cringe worthy. That game had the best story and voice acting. The story knew when it was time to have fun and when to get serious without ruining the balance of either one. DMC1 had some cringe moments with the voice acting (DARK SOUL WITH LIIIIGHHHHT!), 2 was so fucking boring that it really wasn't worth cringing, 4 had a corny love story, and the DmC Reboot had so many embarrassing moments. DmC Reboot failed at being "witty", "edgey", and just plain not good. If you wan actual humiliating cringe in the story, check that game.
Also I found nothing to cringe at in Vanquish either. It's your stereotypical late 90s/early 2000s action film in video game form...and I loved every moment of it! Too bad there will never be a sequel.
Oh yeah. I forgot about Capcom. Anyway, I'm surprised you found absolutely nothing in Vanquish to cringe about. In-game it was pure fun, but I kept finding all these moments in cutscenes where it looked like the game was shooting for drama and fell completely flat, usually because the characters weren't that developed beyond the snarky hotshot, the grizzled veteran and a bunch of nameless troops who weren't even introduced until the moment we're expected to care about them. Near the end, when (spoiler) Burns rejoins your side and guns down his own men, all I was thinking was "why?". I did not see any plot points leading up to that moment. When I saw it, I couldn't help but picture a bunch of writers going, "Oh and then we should totally have them team up again, because that would be so awesome!"
Those kinds of games work best when they bank completely on eye candy and awesomeness. When any sort of drama is attempted, especially when it's been nothing but fun and awesomeness up to that point, it usually feels forced and kind of embarrassing, just like the Devil May Cry cutscene you mentioned. It doesn't mean it can't be done, but it usually requires more preparation and effort than I'd expect from people who already know where their game's true appeal lies.
As for DMC3, you may be right or it may be a matter of preference. The game and the cutscenes knew how to have fun, but for me and my friend, it came across as trying too hard to impress me. My memory of the scenes with him and Vergil are kind of fuzzy, so I'll have to look back into those.