I had a limited time/use offer and decided that you know what, I'm gonna go for broke man. Propers for everyone!

"Better pacing" just seems to mean "hurl you along" by that description though. An open world game shouldn't have Uncharted 2's pacing, and Dead Space has more in common with a methodical game like Metroid than with a thrill ride like Modern Warfare or Uncharted 2.

That one size fits all thinking is really dangerous, and it risks uniforming all games for one type of gamer who doesn't want to explore, take his time and take things in. Uncharted 2 is a great game, but it's THAT GAME. There's no mechanics to it, no thinking to it, sometimes outright no depending on the player to do much at all. It's a blockbuster ride that anyone can enjoy, and limiting games that are freeform and gamey to that type of thing is just devaluing choice, keenness to explore, and tinkering with mechanics in games.

The speed with which Uncharted 2 rolls along and never risks putting the player in a situation where he needs to do more than shoot his way out or traverse the absolutely obvious route means that its story can move along at a similar pace.

In a game where you are actually required to think about what you're doing, where systems are in place that you can explore and tinker with, the story and pacing must accomodate those things. In an open world you should be able to go off on a 3 hour tangent exploring side missions or just goofing around, and the story should convincingly accomodate that. It shouldn't be this insane authored thing that merely holds its speeding trains and nigh-disasters when you don't trigger the next story mission.

You love story, so that style of game isn't up your alley and stuff, but thing is, Dead Space is very much the style of game where the player is meant to play it and set the pace for himself. It appeals to people who may find games like Modern Warfare or Uncharted 2 downright frustratingly enclosed, stumping their imagination at every turn.

I still think you're off the mark though. Bad pacing isn't about not throwing the next thing at you before you have time to "lose interest". Dead Space 1 has great pacing, it's just a different experience from what you clearly want from your games, Korn.

Leaving the player alone to explore, to be creative or to figure things out is the sign of a game that treats a player as an actual gamer. Metroid does the same thing, and so do a lot of *games*.

"Not knowing what happens next" describes a movie, dude, not a game. Playing a game, what happens next is gameplay. "What'll happen next in Mario!?", well, there'll prolly be a goomba, or a platforming obstacle. "What happens next in Metroid?", there'll be a room. Possibly with a door.

You're trying to force this linear, authored experience on games because you seem to have absolutely zero interest in just playing a game, and it seems pivotal that they don't leave you alone for a second without throwing more sparkly objects in your path.

And that's fine, of course, to each his own. Dead Space 2 shouldn't be that game though, because it's not the legacy the first left behind *at all*.

You are pretty obviously on about a moving narrative though. You stopped caring about AC2 because the game itself didn't hold your attention - obviously. AC2 is an open world game where you're expected to get engrossed in its gameplay for 30 minutes or for 4 hours. The fact that that game doesn't hurl you along is a design decision beneficial to its structure as a game, and I'm frankly surprised that you keep hammering on about it as if pursuing some kind of grudge. There are certainly far more suitable examples out there to take, especially in relation to such a classic game design as Dead Space's. Now if you could actually point to what your beef with Dead Space is over Metroid Prime, that could actually be descriptive of something.

It just sounds to me like story, constant noise, narration, scripted events and assorted interventions from the developer equal "interest" with you. Not so much the game letting itself be a game. You're absolutely right that games are moving towards the on rails thrill ride type of experience though because fewer and fewer people want a puzzle they actually have to solve, or an action setpiece you need to explore to find your way. As you say, leave them alone with the game long enough and they "stop caring" because they aren't playing the game for the game.

But that's just it, Dead Space 1 let itself be a game in a surprising twist! It actually didn't hold your hand or point your head or IV feed you your guns/info you needed to proceed. It actually just stopped interfering a lot of the time, and you could concentrate on being in that world and tinkering with the objects in it.

That isn't bad pacing, that is the game being a game, and that's a dying breed.