It doesn't matter if it's not gameplay

I'm not trying to be the blind man telling the others what an elephant looks like, but I think it's pretty clear so far that the aspect of video games I am most interested in is the game aspect.  By this I mean almost entirely the rules of the game.

The rules of a game are as central to the game (any game, not just a video game) as a plot to a novel and a melody to a song.  A game cannot be separated from its rules.  Anything that can be termed a game has rules.  The only question is, how good are they?

Versus Series 2: Games vs. Film

Since we've already established what a game is in the first installment of the Versus Series, we'll begin this one by looking at films first and then comparing the two.

The gated game

As mentioned briefly in Versus Series 1, there are four components to every game: 1) a goal; 2) a way to achieve the goal; 3) obstacles to the goal; and, 4) a way to bypass the obstacles.  Readers of that post may have wondered which video games I felt were lacking in one or more of these areas.  At this juncture, I won't fall into the trap of calling out specific titles--instead, I'm going to go after an entire genre: "action games."