I always wanted a sequel to Luigi's Mansion, I just can't remember why.

In December of 2001 when my father bought me a GameCube a few months before my ninth birthday, any game even close to Mario would fulfill all of my Christmas and birthday wishes. If I try to remember what I loved about Luigi's Mansion, only images of the final, ruthless boss fight and fake doors swinging open and slamming Luigi against the wall come to mind. For many new people, Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon will begin their experience with Luigi's ghost busting trips. For the veterans, Dark Moon will bring forth only facades of decade old memories.

The simple puzzles and forgiving difficulty of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon won't sustain long durations of play, but the cleverly hidden secrets and an abundance of cheerful moments makes the exploration of each mansion a worthwhile experience for all.

I continue to look for a game that doesn't quite exist yet. I want a game where I can explore and climb the buildings a cyberpunk city (a dirty and grimy version of science fiction where even the most common man owns advanced technology) and gameplay that won't burden my time spent learning about cybernetic implants or other technology.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution comes closest to that elusive cyberpunk game that I imagine, though its confined hub-worlds and stealth mechanics represent game systems that I usually find more tedious than enjoyable.  Deus Ex's stealth enabled for many great moments when successfully bypassing an entire room of guards or even wandering the lower, dirtier half of Hengsha - a city with an entirely separate and cleaner city floating directly above. I continued to play Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the appearance, fiction and societal issues a technologically distant yet similar world, not for the gameplay itself.

While searching for a game that would offer gameplay and combat not focused on stealth, I came across Syndicate - a linear first-person corridor shooter. Unfortunately, Syndicate did not provide what I specifically looked for. I ignored the narrative and spent far too much time looking at horizon of brightly lit landscapes I would rather explore instead of the white hallways I always found myself it.

Even with the relative newness of game development in the 3D era, I did not expect such small selection within the setting. Why does such a large void exist in cyberpunk themed video games developed in the last decade? I came across a few titles that closely fit the description of an open world game, but most of them (for me at least) come with a sliver of cynicism or developmental issues.

This is the first of three articles exploring the connection between gameplay and narrative.

Two problems plague the shooter genre: poorly programmed enemy artificial intelligence the failure to acknowledge your decimation of small armies. The numerous waves of scripted enemies and your easy annihilation of them produce issues with no clear solutions. So instead of solving these problems through experimentation, developers ignore the issues and hope that one day someone else will find a solution to an enemy's predictable behaviour and inability to adapt your play. It makes enemy's harmless when isolated, but a perceived challenge when grouped in dozens.

Naughty Dog - developers of the Uncharted series - create phenomenal game experiences arguably among the best of this generation. But while you play Uncharted, you murder armies the size of small towns without regard to its necessity. They shoot you so you shoot back.

From a narrative standpoint, killing these waves of faceless enemies never sees mention. The main protagonist in Uncharted - Nathan Drake - personality stays unaffected killing hundreds of people in his lifetime. Why does he not react to any of it? Why does the narrative suffer for the sake of gameplay mechanics? Shouldn't the game aim to achieve a cohesive experience of both challenging gameplay and a coherent plot?