Characters: Nero and Dante
In-game failing: Everything bar the bare minimum
No-one - and we mean no-one - in gaming has a bigger disparity between what they can do in cutscenes and what they can be bothered pulling out of the bag in-game.
The beginning of the game sums it up beautifully. Wall-running, bullet-dodging, disarming enemies and stealing their weapons, jumping off monsters' heads, brutal hand-to-hand and foot-to-face combat, hurling scenery around as makeshift weaponry, ludicrously balletic mid-air grappling... And how many of these can you actually use once you get in control? Precisely none.
What's the problem guys? Does the presence of the player cramp your style? Can you only do it when no-one's watching? It takes a great deal of effort to make DMC4's in-game action look clunky and limited, but its cutscenes pull it off every single time.
Game: Timesplitters 2
Character: Ghost:
In-game failing: Loss of flashy, bullet-time kung fu skills
Ghost impressed us quite a lot when we first watched the opening cutscene to TS2's Neo Tokyo level. He ran, jumped, dodged and he kicked all kinds of arse with enviable ease. Okay, so Sadako eventually put him down, but years of boss fights have taught us that the gang leader is always trouble.
However, that bang on the head appeared to shake a few things loose in old Ghost's noggin, because as soon as he got in-game he degenerated to the state of a cack-handed buffoon with the dexterity of a toasted teacake at the bottom of the sea. Watch and despair...
