I remember playing the adventure/story mode of Super Smash Bros Brawl on my Wii, and looking back on it now, it follows the cutscene/gameplay/cutscene sandwich fairly accurately. While there is a story mode with a long-term goal, there are several mini cutscenes that take place as your character moves through the map. These mini cutscenes allowed me to unlock new characters to play with, and kept me engaged even though they were not entirely related to the end goal. These cutscenes did serve a purpose though, but it was somewhat different than the purpose of the story mode as a whole.
