Gameplay Vs Narrative

-What's the best focus of a video game?-

So we've had a good weekend. Fallout New Vegas and Vanquish have finally landed on shelves,
and I was lucky enough to pick them both up, and on playing Vanquish, I noticed something.

The plot, is not the main motivator in playing the game.

Now, this is an odd statement, I understand this, being that gaming is centralized around telling a story nowadays. But there's something about Vanquish that really brings a reality to light, single player campaigns are story centric these days, all sharing similar mechanics, which are used to display a story. You see, recently developers seem to be fighting to get a unique story in their game, rather than some unique mechanics. Back in the NES days your story could be shown in a single "cut-scene" of a monster taking a princess away from you. Then you'd be sent across the land fighting generic monsters like zombies and bats to get her back, but that was never a problem back then because you were playing a game.

Take Enslaved for example. It features mediocre platforming, and a set of incredibly frustrating battle mechanics. In fact, within the whole gameplay area, it contains nothing original. Your only motivation to play is to see what happens next, not because you're having fun with the new mechanic, but because you want to explore these two characters set before you. Now, call me crazy, but isn't that a bit off? Vanquish's story is simply "Russian terrorists have built a space city, and they're evil! Destroy them! Oh yeah, and you're in a robot suit!" from there on out, Vanquish includes action packed cut-scenes and some funny cliches, but never forms a plot that you'd want to follow, no, what you realize you're there for, is the gameplay. Throughout the game you're fighting the most generic of enemies these days: robots. However, this becomes a blast because of the set of mechanics you're given with which to do so. The game is astoundingly original for a game about a space marine, a concept that I think everyone believed was dead in the water. Which reminds me, Platinum games offered a similar experience in terms of originality with Bayonetta, a game that on surface looks like a re-tread of explored ground, but is in fact brimming with intelligent gameplay features, some would say the dodge mechanic is revolutionary within games right now.

There are extremes to this theory, like Heavy Rain, which is essentially a movie, and Noby Noby Boy, which is based solely around gameplay, and very unique gameplay at that. The former is bashed for not having any decent mechanics and not really being a game, whilst the latter is bashed for having no discernible objective. There are games like Fallout: New Vegas that balance game-play and narrative almost perfectly by having lots and lots of selections and mechanics for the player to take advantage of. The narrative is handled very well for a game by including many side quests and interesting locales which, to be discovered involve the gamer going off the beaten path and playing more. However, it's a very fragile balance, as previous entries from the developer have shown us. Fallout 3 had very impressive mechanics, but lacked a decent central narrative, same with Oblivion. It just poses a question. Would you rather there were games like Enslaved that focus mainly on narrative, or games like Vanqish that focus mainly on gameplay?

I know I'd rather go for gameplay, because that makes the title unique to the medium.

Image credit: www.Playstationlifestyle.net and www.gametestlab.com respectively