What makes a great game great?

Slayer5227

This is a very opinionated question with many different possible answers. My thoughts on the matter? I think to be a truly great game it has to make you connect to the game on some level. I have never played a bad game and felt an emotional connection to the characters. I'm gonna give a cliche answer as Half-Life 2 *spoiler alert* when Alyx's dad dies (don't hate me for not remembering his name :P) I choked up and was truly torn as to where the series would go after that. I think great games must incorporate many things, a few being: a deep thought provoking plot, great voice acting (or none in the case of Half-life), an emotional connection to the characters, and finally an ending that will have you pleased with how the game was closed out. Now I'm sure there are plenty of games that incorporate a few of these things, but I'm talking about GREAT games and not good games. These are the games you'll tell everyone about and probably always remember as one of the games in your top 10 list forever. Some of my personal favorite games being: Half-Life series, Portal 1 and 2, Legend of Zelda OOT, Dead Space series (highly under-rated series, it is brilliant). So what makes these games great? Well I will use the most under rated game series in a while as my example. Dead Space is a game that takes the resident evil survival horror genre and put's it on steroids. You play as Issac Clark an Engineer commissioned to work on a ship that lost power. You find out that an infection has broken out and you are trapped with very scarce ammo and health (if you don't play on easy). I may have shortened that a lot but my point is that no matter how simple something can be it can be great. Dead Space may have a very rich and deep plot with incredible plot twist, but at heart it is a simple game, kill or be killed that's the choice. Okay enough fanboying over dead space (buy it if you don't have it, it's incredible). What do you think makes great games great?

Thrax

As with all media, resonating with some aspect of the human condition is the key.

Slayer5227

I couldn't agree with you more

Cliff_Forster

I've said this for years. At it's core, playing a game is about fun. If it's not fun, I don't care what else it does well, it's not a great game. In fact, if I owned a gaming company, I'd call it "Fun First" games. Every developer in the company would know that before anything else, you have to stop and ask yourself... How is this going to be fun for the player? So, you can have digital art, but if its not fun to play, it is not a great game.

Good game = fun

Great game = fun mixed with innovation

Art = fun mixed with innovation while creating an experience where players can feel emotionaly connected to the title.

Slayer5227

Very well said I still haven't made a case for video gaming being an art on these forums.

pigflipper

Humor, whether it be light and innocent or gallows or anything in between, is what typically draws me to a game and is a major determining factor when I consider whether a game is "great" or not. BF: Bad Company 2 is a game I am still playing, in part, because of the gallows humor that your character and squad mates shout out, in single player and multiplayer. Or the twisted and offbeat humor of Lucas Arts adventure games (Guybrush Threepwood is one of my favorite video game characters of all time). To the twisted humor of Portal.

The other thing I look for in a game is character development. It is enjoyable to watch a character progress and change as you play, even more so now as more and more games incorporate the decisions you makes as a player into how the character develops. For me, a prime example of this (and of humor as a center piece, thank you for Krogans) would be the Mass Effect series. I want to finish this series more to see how all the relationships fully develop with the NPCs you have met through the series than whether or not the Reapers can be defeated. This development of your character and his/her/its relationships to people in the game world are vitally important, to me at least.

Slayer5227

Let's keep this going I'd love to get more thoughts on this.

CB

Most of the fun of a game comes from learning. It seems strange, since people don't usually think of 'learning' as fun, but in the video games which receive the most positive reactions, you are being taught how to play the game for the entire game. As soon as you master one element or tool in the mechanics, the game offers you a new one to play with.

This, for example, is what makes the Legend of Zelda games so much fun. If you started out in the begining of the game with all the tools, learned them all first, then spent 50 hours grinding through temples and stuff with them, it wouldn't be nearly as much fun. The fun comes from the need to constantly learn how to use the next tool.

Sonorous

U GUYS R ALL WRONG. THE BEST GAMES R DA 1s WIT DA BEST GRAFICKS. DATS Y MW3 WIL B DA BEST GAME EVR.


//EDIT Just in case someone doesn't get that this post is sarcasm, I am totally joking. Depth, unique game play, and a compelling story line are all part of a equation that makes a great game. That being said there is something to say about games with all of the above and a great graphics engine, art direction and sound design. The ability of a game designer to make the player feel immersed in the game world (visually, aurally, and mentally) is what I think is the over all goal for a great game.

Slayer5227

Sonorous wrote:

//EDIT Just in case someone doesn't get that this post is sarcasm, I am totally joking. Depth, unique game play, and a compelling story line are all part of a equation that makes a great game. That being said there is something to say about games with all of the above and a great graphics engine, art direction and sound design. The ability of a game designer to make the player feel immersed in the game world (visually, aurally, and mentally) is what I think is the over all goal for a great game.

Exactly, great post

Butters

The simpler the game, the better.

e.g. Tiny Wings or Dragon, Fly! and this.

Bad-Mr-Frosty

A good game for me usually has solid gameplay or characters or a story that are/is genuinely interesting and keeps me coming back to it.

A great game has both or does one excellently.

A perfect game is a great game with amazing music.


A lot of my favorite games of all time have really memorable music. That's one thing I feel like a lot of modern games kind of miss out on. I mean sure some of the big budget games have like this epic orchestrated soundtrack, but for the most part I don't remember it. Even games that I find great, in my mind, are not perfect because of an unmemorable soundtrack.

It's just so much better when you hear a song before a trailer starts for the next installment and it brings a rush of nostalgic feelings.

For reference, perfect games: majora's mask, chrono trigger, mother 2 & 3, super meatboy, tf2

great games: red dead, assassin's creed: brotherhood or 2, batman arkham asylum

SpencerForHire

Butters wrote:

The simpler the game, the better.

e.g. Tiny Wings or Dragon, Fly! and this.

And see, I think the replay-ability of a game is huge for making a game great. That being said, I associate most re-playable games as such because of how complex they are.

Koreish

Portal, Braid, Limbo are all great games because they have complex puzzles that are all done with simple controls. They all tell an incredibly interesting story but don't outright tell everything to the player. Most of the story is either created in the players head or discovered through exploration. Because they're shorter in play length but combine the previous factors they have an excellent replay value. The mega-games like FFs or The Witcher while they have awesome stories I shudder at having to grind through them again if I want to replay.

• Interesting Narrative
• High Replay Value
• Simple Controls
• Complex Puzzles/Challenges

These are what make for great games. This is probably why so many older games are fondly remembered and why newer games are just replaced by some new iteration. Older games only had those points whereas newer games just have better graphics, I'm looking at you call of duty. ಠ_ಠ

pigflipper

After my previous post, I realized that two of the games I have probably played more than any others, do not fit with what I said.

First up Total Annihilation. I LOVE THIS GAME! Released just before Starcraft, with better graphics, sound, and gameplay, I spent countless hours in massive LAN games. The game has a very weak story that just serves as an excuse to blow shit up, but man, you could blow a lot of shit up in one go, especially if using the 500 (or 2000/5000) unit hack. First game I remember playing with Full Screen AA and a true 3D graphics engine (locked to isometric view though) in a RTS.

Next, another game that many of you here have played: Sins of a Solar Empire. This game is not funny, there are no characters to get attached to, it can be tedious and boring, but goddamn I love it. I still play frequently, cause I love the absolutely huge space battles, the micro management of planetary systems, the satisfaction of defeating a pirate raid paid for by one of your enemies and, my specialty, sending it swarms of bombers covered by fighters to attack defensive positions while a planetary assault fleet hypers in from the other direction.

Both of these games have intangibles that seem to just draw me in like few games ever have done. Maybe its the attention to detail, maybe they are just superbly designed games, most likely its the challenge of building a base/empire and defending it against aggression. Or, as Spencer said, its because both of these games are almost infinitely re-playable and complex that keeps dragging me back to them.