Actually, for me the intro movie could be binned for all games. I watch it once and probably savour it, as I'm about to play a new game and am looking forward to the experience. The video is good/bad/impressive/irritating/whatever. (In fact, I thought the V video was laboured and not particularly gripping. Also, frankly, I'm not your patriarchal tribal warrior-in-a-tent type, being female, but I appreciate I'm outnumbered there.)
Then I play the game next time and ... oh blimey. I'm supposed to watch the intro video again. Nope, not going there. All I want to find out is what key to press to stop the video and go straight to the main menu where, in an ideal world, there would be a tick box labelled "Never watch the intro video again".
Intro videos are meaningless. I haven't done anything to watch them except boot up the game. My cat could probably get that far, with encouragement.
Now, the Civ victory videos were, without a doubt, corny. But guess what? I used to watch them, at least partially, quite frequently because, quite frequently, they marked the end of many hours of game-play where I had managed to achieve a victory that had cost me time, thought and effort. So they marked something and, as a consequence, they were meaningful. And then I'd watch the replay (ok, yeah, speeded up a bit) and smile as I watched my colour gradually take over continents. Or watched my borders expand and various runaway civs, in the case of an OCC game.
All jolly good fun and part of the Civ experience.
When I won my first space race in V and saw how the game rewarded me, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry frankly. The sense of anti-climax was memorable, and continues to be so. Having worked in the software industry, there are so many things about V that scream "premature release we need the money" that it really isn't funny and brings back very bad memories
I am now up to 200 hours of playing time and I would
really like it if the game improved, as I really, really, want to like this game and in fact there are aspects of it that I really
do like already. I just wish they had got it more right before handing it to me to beta-test ...
