DigitalAtlas said:
I found HL2 fairly interesting myself, however, speaking from anecdotes, I had to force my friend to play till he Barney threw him the crowbar. After that, he fell in love with the game. And thank you for not defending WoW.
I do agree though. Captivating the player needs to become a necessity, pending on your audience of course. Some day, I pray that games where it takes the time to build up the characters and atmosphere can be appreciated in the same library as those that start off with explosions. Or if audiences expanded enough, devs wouldn't be afraid to start their story slow. I remember playing Tales of Symphonia and how slow that started after I read how great it was. After I committed? Twas an epic game I still own today.
I get what you're saying, but here's the issue. There are LOTS and LOTS of games of BOTH types (explosions and epic story-driven games) What if every reviewer for Tales of Symphonia couldn't stand the first two hours, and stopped playing after that? How can I, personally, tell that a game is GOING to be good? Moviemakers really value those first 15 minutes of a movie because that's what they hope to really get someone interested and wondering "What happens next??" It's in that span of time that someone determines if the piece of media is worth spending time on.
Let me give you an example. I absolutely adore the game Aquaria. It's a little obscure, and very indie. Let's assume that if you were to get about 2 or 3 hours into it, you would really, really enjoy it and want to finish it. Assuming I gave you little other recommendation other than just to try it, you might not make it that far because it was just one of many, many random games you heard about in passing on an internet forum. (I can assume every reader of this thread is not trying out every game people mention)
There are a lot of games now, and critics are corrupt. That 10 minutes or so is right ahead of the box art in motivating you to finish the game.