Games that play themselves

[Gabriel]

The First Xenosaga game comes to mind. You would play for like 10min..and then watch 20+ min of cutscenes. In fact, there were so many cutscenes, that all of them were compiled into chronological order and released on a DVD as a movie. I own it in fact...somewhere...

 

As someone who played all three Xenosaga games to completion, I want to say that this is definitely NOT my experience with the games.

I can see how someone might get that impression playing through the opening act of the first game, though. All the Xenosaga games have horrible pacing, and the first game front loads a lot of cutscenes in the opening act, including one of the longest cutscenes in the series at the end of that opening act. It kills any gameplay momentum dead. And, in truth, for years I had never progressed past the first point where the player acquires Ziggy because of the absolutely numbing stop, go, mostly stop pacing of the beginning of the first game.

Each game in the series took me about 80 hours from start to finish. Others say much shorter times, but when I play RPGs, I play to enjoy. So I explore. I do side quests. I grind a bit, because the battle system should be there to enjoy. I can safely say that none of the Xenosaga games played themselves or had anything resembling the majority of their runtime eaten by cutscenes. But yeah, getting through some of those 30 minute cutscene segments which ask you to save before another 30 minute cutscene segment is just enthusiasm killing.

[Video]

Don't get me wrong, having the option to have the game play itself can be fun. It just shouldn't be the only thing. I've set up many a sports game to play itself, it can give a good idea of what teams or players are better, but it can also just be fun to watch. I've set super smash bros to play itself. I even set up advance wars to play itself. Sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes out of boredom, sometimes (in the case of advance wars) to test a new map since my play style is so radically different than the computer, and see how balanced, or not, a map is.

[HoshiChiri]

Reminds me of when I played through Kessen 2 on my PS2. Once you set up for battle, you pretty much didn't need to participate until after it was over. I mean, you could- but it didn't really do anything. And battles were typically around an hour long, if I remember right. I'd start one up, and then grab my GBA to occupy myself until the game needed me again. I decided that wasn't really my style of game. (Or I may have just been a bit salty about learning that the disc was heat damaged so that everything played fine except the final cutscenes. I beat that game so many times, just to have it freeze 2 minutes into the ending.)

[IndogamersPro]

The only game i play without touching it is Football Manager.

Football Manager is quite boring on the first 2 years but after you learn how yhe game works, then you're having some fun with the Game.