If you think Call of Duty 4 had a great storyline, you need to play a proper game like System Shock 2.
Just Cause 2. Just kidding ;-) I think the best storylines I have seen in a while are ; Fallout 3 Assassin's Creed series Bioshock Grand Theft Auto IV Not commenting on the relative merits of the games themselves but I thought the storylines were good and kept me interested.
No one's mentioned any of the Half Life games. Yeah, I am deeply in love with the Half Life storyline and how it unfolds from a first person perspective. One of my other favourites would be Resident Evil 4, absolutely brilliant story.
Half-Life series is a good call. Here's another one - Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood - with plenty of plot and cinematic storytelling. I know I'll be in the minority here, but until we get Red Dead Redemption on the PC, this is a great Wild West title.
Nobody has mentioned Deus Ex yet? In most games it seems that the story tends to be a hook that is designed to hang the game on (although it can still be brilliant, e.g. first Halo game) but in Deus Ex it seemed to be the other way round -- the game was a way to tell the story rather than the story being a premise for the game. I'm not sure if that's always a good thing but when it does work it certainly sticks in the mind... (It's also even better second time round: when you know some of the twists and turns it really throws the earlier part of the game into a different light). JHNG
Ever heard of the genre called visual novel? lol those by far have the best story simply because they play out like a drama/anime or novel and there's virtually no gameplay, just choice making. They're more popular in Asia than western countries though. Many people find them boring because of the lack of gameplay, but that aspect forces the developers to create an amazing story for the game to sell. My favorite one is Lux Pain for the DS.
Mass Effect series, Half Life series, Red Dead Redemption, GTA IV, and Assassin's Creed 2, are some of the best gaming stories I've experienced.
I'm going to install that right now!, if only i could find my disk +1 to ME series, GTAIV, Half Life series and Deus Ex
Most of these are just basic action movie / fantasy stories. I think stories from books blow most of these away. The nearest I've seen is probably the old adventure games like Phantasmagoria, Gabriel Knight, The Longest Journey, Fate of Atlantis, etc. Most modern action games are just "man vs circumstances" which work ok for an action game, but it's not much of a well rounded story. There are exceptions though, Deus Ex was good.
