I do hate unskippable LONG cutscenes. I have an OCD thing where I don't want to skip and miss story though. One recent example is Dead Rising. It felt like after the installing, loading, and then the opening cutscene, that I had wasted hours just to start playing the damn game.

I don't need a game to have a story, but if you're going to have one, then make it good.

^^ DR3 is a perfect example of how NOT to do a cutscene. I'd die fighting a boss and have to replay the entire scene just to get back to the action. I must have viewed the last cutscene 9 times!

41 here. When I was single, I could kill an entire weekend wandering around an Oblivion or a Fallout, but between being engaged, raising a child, working, and indulging in create pursuits and fitness, I just don't have the time, nor patience to do that anymore.

Love playing COD MP, and I'll tackle Left 4 Dead (yeah, I know) in short bouts next, but that's about all I have time for anymore...a few moments of destroying shit without needing to be invested in game's story.

So add me to the doesn't-care-about-story column.

Most of us grew up playing games that had little to no story. They were also the best games. "Princess is Kidnapped. Go rescue her" My brother-in laws son is 8 and anytime a cut scene will pop up he skips past it right into the gameplay. So sometimes kids of this generation are the same way

Exactly! That's all the story anyone really needs to play a game.
My grandson is 10 and will watch them the first time but after that he typically skips them. He *really* gets annoyed at those "first level trainer" type tutorials that can't be skipped if you replay level 1 to get something you missed (or just for fun).

I love story if it's integrated into the game without cutscenes (Bioshock, Skyrim) and the story is told in-game. I'm okay with cutscenes for something like The Last of Us where they blend them in with in-game storytelling and dialogue. But I'm getting tired of games where the storytelling is told almost solely through cutscenes, where you know every ten minutes you'll reach a checkpoint and it'll cut away to something.

The worse offender is the Gears of War-hand on the earpiece-forced slow walk while listening to dialogue. If you are going to make me sit through it, don't cripple my movement but still make me steer my character around the base/hideout/whatever. I could take a bathroom break or something instead.

I'm totally getting this way. If the story doesn't appeal to me, I lose interest. Unless it's a game like FIFA.