The greatest thing about game trailers when compared to the likes of, say, Hollywood film trailers is how easy it is for them to showcase enticing features without dishing out epic amounts of plot. I don’t know about you, but when I go to see a film having seen the trailer—even if I saw the trailer months before the film—I remember specific scenes and look out for them in the movie; or, worse still, I try to place them in the chronology of the story.
The result is (further) disappointment from the Matrix Reloaded when a particular trailer scene turned out to be plucked from The Matrix Revolutions and, more recently, unforgiveable annoyance when it became apparent that an ending sequence was used in a trailer. I’m looking at you, The Grey.
In the wonderful world of gaming, though, our trailers may be handled somewhat differently, but there is still division in the community as to the best way to show off a game. Dead Island’s poignant CGI-rendered trailer hit home for me and many others, but pissed off a number of viewers who didn’t care because it didn’t showcase gameplay.
Lovers of gameplay trailers can pick apart the new from the stale in any trailer brimming with or light on in-game action, but such trailers inevitably tend to show off the coolest gameplay features of a game that can have gamers, such as myself, champing at the bit in the final release of the game until we access whatever cool that was teased. Then, of course, there’s always the controversial pre-rendered trailer that’s masquerading as actual in-game graphics… isn’t that right, Killzone 2?
In more recent years, there’s been a move towards blurring the Hollywood/gaming worlds with live-action trailers. These range from F.3.A.R. ch33se to Halo’s absolute freakin’ awesomeness, and they blur the excitement of an upcoming title with the hope that a game-to-movie adaptation will be done justice… one day.
My trailer preference is actually live-action (done right), mood-setting CGI and, lastly, gameplay. Obviously, at some point gameplay has to be shown in order to see what a game has on offer in that all-important area, but it’s the live-action and CGI-rendered trailers that get me most in the mood for a game.
After you’ve had a look at the latest live-action offering below for Prototype 2, be sure to let us know which form of trailer speaks most to you: gameplay, CGI-rendered or live-action.
