What games have you played that legitimately felt "cinematic"?

[Turbo Kid]

It's a word that has been so overused in gaming, the "cinematic" experience. How many games actually delivered on that for you? I will say that the first time I played Resident Evil 2 on the PS1 (DualShock edition), I truly did feel like I had just stepped through a screen into a movie. You're surrounded by zombies, fire, and you're immediately drawn in by those amazing pre-rendered graphics and it's like, "Holy shit, this is what 32- bit gaming is all about right here". You also immediately feel the thrill of being in immediate danger and having to take action. This wasn't a game that started with a boring, "tutorial" section. You're immediately thrust into "survival horror".

Peter Jackson's King Kong was so immersive without any HUD elements on the screen. It felt very cinematic at the time. I think Peter Jackson is underappreciated for the efforts he put into making sure that some of his licensed games were really good and that they captured the feeling of his movies so well, including the two Lord of the Rings games that he was involved in. Also, credit to Michel Ancel. He usually gets remembered for Beyond Good and Evil and Rayman, but he made that King Kong game so great. King Kong has some of the best T-Rex encounters in any video game (well, they are called V-Rex but whatever). They look like something right out of a movie and the tension is so strong as you're actually playing through them. Also, the moment when you enter into the valley with the brontosaurus stampede while being attacked by velociraptors is memorable.

Until Dawn. The use of well known actors for this game certainly helped and they looked pretty damned close to the real thing. It really did draw you in and make you feel like you were in a teen horror movie. There was real tension too in this game as literally anyone could actually die like a good, proper horror movie.

Hong Kong Massacre. The game that inspired a scene in John Wick 4. It's Hotline Miami run through a John Woo filter and it's pretty great

The Ninja Gaiden series. All anyone talks about is the legendary difficulty, but people forget how they pioneered video game cutscenes and story telling

Max Mad when you ride into a storm while combating enemy vehicles

Literally everything in Shadow of the Colossus

Mass Effect 2. I mean, what really needs to be said that hasn't been said already?

Several moments and levels in the Pixar movies we call Ratchet and Clank games

 

[RETRO-VETRO RETRO-VETRO]

Absolutely, Resident Evil 2 nailed that feeling. That opening scene, zombies everywhere, the city in flames, and no hand-holding was pure adrenaline. It didn’t just look cinematic, it felt cinematic. The pacing, the tension, the framing of those pre-rendered backgrounds, it was like stepping into a horror film where you were the lead and the director forgot to yell “cut.”

And you're right, the term “cinematic” gets thrown around a lot now, often just meaning “has cutscenes” or “looks pretty.” But back then, it meant something more visceral. It was about atmosphere, immersion, and storytelling through design, not just through dialogue dumps or scripted sequences.

For me, other games that truly delivered that cinematic punch were Metal Gear Solid, with its tight direction and voice acting, and ICO, which felt like a quiet art film you could play. But RE2? That was the blockbuster. It didn’t ask you to learn, it asked you to survive. And that’s a hell of a way to start a game.

 

[Segadude113]

Ninja Gaiden 1-3 (NES)
Flashback: The Quest For Identity
Full Throttle
The Dig
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Sonic Adventure
Sonic Adventure 2
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy IX
Final Fantasy X...

 

[Bandini]

Rockman 8(ps1) the japanese ver with the Electrical Comunication song. It was like a playable anime. I was a kid back then and the last game of the saga I played was Rockman 3. So it blew my little mind.
One(ps1) closest thing to a 3d Contra game. It has its flaws but it felt like a non-stop action movie.
Fragile Dreams(Wii) don´t miss this one. Es una obra de arte.
To the moon(PC)
Detroit Become Human(ps4). Obviously...
Wherewolf(Famicom)
Vice Project Doom(Famicom)
Ico(ps2)
MGS (ps1). I played it back in `99. I was almost 13 years old. I´m from Argentina so I had to use a pocket English/Spanish dictionary to understand the plot and dialogues. It wasn´t easy.
Silent Hill(ps1).
Zero Tolerance(Genesis)
Battletech(Genesis)
And a lot more..

 

[Segadude113]

Rockman 8(ps1) the japanese ver with the Electrical Comunication song. It was like a playable anime. I was a kid back then and the last game of the saga I played was Rockman 3. So it blew my little mind.
One(ps1) closest thing to a 3d Contra game. It has its flaws but it felt like a non-stop action movie.
Fragile Dreams(Wii) don´t miss this one. Es una obra de arte.
To the moon(PC)
Detroit Become Human(ps4). Obviously...
Wherewolf(Famicom)
Vice Project Doom(Famicom)
Ico(ps2)
MGS (ps1). I played it back in `99. I was almost 13 years old. I had to use a pocket English/Spanish dictionary to understand the plot and dialogues. It wasn´t easy.
Silent Hill(ps1).
Zero Tolerance(Genesis)
Battletech(Genesis)
And a lot more..

We need a Mega Man anime series with Electrical Communication as the opening and Roll's theme from Marvel VS. Capcom as the end credits.

 

[petran79]

When I played Jurassic Park : Lost World in the arcades in late 90s and saw the T-Rex boss and chasing scene with the audio fx and surround. It felt as if you were in the movie inside that booth

 

[Cu1tur3D_Gam3R]

I gotta go with Ace Combat Zero. To me, in terms of the "cinematic" feel, is a goddamn masterpiece, to this day. It legit got everything you can ask for when you want to capture the fantasy of aerial combat.

From the story being played out like a war documentary, complete with various interviews of pilots accounting their encounters with the "demon lord of the round table". To the shots of the enemy squadron units you & your wingman are going toe to toe against. To flying escort for a allied transport unit, then suddenly a fricking laser beam out of no where wiped them out, forcing you & your team to get out of there quick! To sit in your aircraft, ready to sortie while the airbase is under attack, but then you look up, in shock & awe when you see a massive, and I mean MASSIVE, air fortress doing the slowest flyby you'll ever see. To then have a final showdown with your former wingman, with everything on the line; and then to the final iconic shot of the two planes narrowly miss each other as the pilots cross paths one last from their fierce battle, one unscathed & the other smoking before exploding & the demon lord flies home as a hero. That's without even mentioning the god tier music along the journey.

And of course, you can't forget the iconic line: "Yo Buddy! Still alive?".

 

[jon2]

Ace Combat Zero for me as well

"Cinematic" doesn't just mean awesome graphics.

The presentation also counts

 

[.arkasth]

RE1, GOW, MGS1 and 3, ICO, GTASA

 

[bjork]

Probably the first time I saw Star Wars Trilogy in the arcade? Other than that not much, and I like it better that way.

 

[Neb Lleb]

F.E.A.R. 1, Extraction Point, Perseus Mandate and 2, The better entries in the Resident Evil universe, Metal Gear Solid 1 & 2 (2 even giving us one of the best opening cinematics of all time in the form of a glorious title sequence), the Wing Commander saga, and one that I don't think gets much credit... is Enter the Matrix. That game suffers from jank, but it succeeds at making you feel like the star of a deleted sub-plot from The Matrix Reloaded. A true testament to the creativity of both The Wachowskis and Shiny Entertainment.

 

[Sheepy765]

Final Fantasy XIII, absolutely. It’s a pretty cool game with interesting characters and a lot of dialogue between them.

 

[Cu-Neo]

For me it's between Max Payne 3 and Metal Gear Solid 4, and speaking of MGS, I still remember this moment in TPP

Easily one of favourites.

 

[Matricks]

Uncharted 3 in 3DTV PS3 is Top.

 

[Jimbo_McDumbo]

Uncharted 2 has hands down one of the best openings in any game. I also love the melodramatic cheese-fest that is the opening of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows. And every single Kojima game has a real cinematic flair, even the two MSX Metal Gear titles have a lot of cinematic flourishes

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

Don't even get me started on the word "cinema". That word has crept so far into the public consciousness lately that it's practically a meme

Yakuza/Like a Dragon cutscenes have always felt like well directed movies. Makes sense considering some of their inspirations were popular crime/action movies.

I never quite understood the fixed camera angles in survival horror games until I played games with them for myself. The Xbox 360 version of Deadly Premonition has a fixed camera in select spots throughout the game, and it has such a different feel compared to all the other versions that got rid of those fixed camera angles.

 

[qw90700]

- First time I saw a game that is like "a movie" is Battletoads on NES because it was the first time I saw a cutscene logic during gameplay itself and unique boss battle in a game:

- And then on Sega Genesis Another World and Flashback is prime example of fully cinematic video games that is platformer-action games yet they nail this feeling despite they are not a visual novel or adventure game per se.

And then we were introduced to point and click games that has fixed camera angles but more like overall look on the scene and the games being adventure games they focused on stories. In that regard King's Quest, Space Quest, Monkey Island, lots of LucasArts point and click games, The Longest Journey, Sanitarium et cetera played decent roles in this cinematic sense.

Afterwards Alone in the Dark series got popular for its cinematic fixed camera angles but instead of a point and click game it is a survivor horror game like you play the game via watching it by security cameras and lack of decent visibility adds to the sense of horror which later on what Resident Evil series took this idea. However clear difference is Along in the Dark focused more on story telling and cinematic feeling in the format of a survivor horror especially because monsters wasn't directly always able to be killed and gameplay focused on adventure game logic of puzzles but Resident Evil was more about having no decent story to begin with and the whole goal is shooting despite it's not that a "pew pew action game" and some puzzles here and there so it was less of a survivor horror game than we got to know before.

At this point games could be good and still feel cinematic without reducing or butchering gameplay, but afterwards shit got BS.

- On PS1 Hideo Kojima made Metal Gear Solid 1 a "watching simulator game" that was bad aspect of later MGS games for me. I didn't welcome it.

Japanese RPGs having boring long cutscenes is my prime part of an example of why I stopped playing new games for good.

And then they released a BS game like Fahrenheit that you watch, when you don't watch you either deal with BS quick time events or for a little while you can actually play a game.

It was around that time that we started to see walking simulator interactive visual novel games like Flower, Sun and Rain that this type of games became another adventure/cinematic sense but then walking simulator games became more and more that focuses more on their walking aspects.

Afterwards games started being less of a game but more of interactive Netflix shit that ruined gaming for me. Especially new Sony "games" are repulsive AF for me.

 

[stormesp]

Asura's Wrath recently, absolutely crazy game. Was like watching a good action anime movie.