What makes a great video game?

[Ferbian]

This thread applies to any video game, be it sport's game, strategy, First-person shooter or a RPG etc.

There's always been some kind of game that had you saying "man that game was absolutely awesome" or "that game absolutely sucked", but what is it that really makes the game so incredibly bad, what is it that makes it so incredibly awesome?

Is it the graphical design of it compared to it's time? is it the accuracy of the game based on a movie / a book etc. or what is it really?

RPG: To me, I think it has to have that storyline that keeps you coming back, the graphical aspect of a RPG is always a very important thing I believe, to properly enjoy the environment that the game has you play through, the thing's your allowed to do in the game, so that it's not just a hack and slash game where you talk to people for a quest, it has to have some depth, some side quests that allows you to do more than just the main storyline.

Sport: Hard one really, I've never really played many sports based games, but I've always enjoyed the Fifa football games, so I guess that's the description of a good sports game to me.

First-person shooter (action games) Yet again graphic comes into play, that and I think the wider the available weapons in the game is, the greater the game is in itself, which is why I have an insane love for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, and Call of Duty (Modern Warfare 1 & 2)

Strategy: I've always been a huge fan of Age of Empire, I think a strategy game, it needs a good storyline behind it, but it's not necessarily the thing that should keep you from playing it if it doesn't, I mainly think that the available size of an army is something that keeps me more and more interested the larger the army in it self is, which is a reason to why I love the Total War series, Age of Empire while it doesn't offer a large army, offers that great storyline series of historical events and the large range of buildings.

What do you think makes a great video game?

 

[Lee]

Above all it's emotion. If a game can't grab one good emotion, what's the point? Nintendo and SquareEnix are really good at doing the emotion thing, whether it's through Visuals or music of simply the plot.

However to make a game great it has to have little side things, whether it's the basic things like collecting 100 coins to get a star in the 3D super Mario universe, or collecting Poes in Zelda, these things add to the experience if you want a fresh change.

Add to that various powerups, Mario has his different suits, Zelda has Link's array of weaponry, all FPS' have guns (with Goldeneye having the likes of Golden gun etc), it gives you that advantage in a game.

Level wise it needs to be a mix of hard and easy, some levels you want to blitz through, some will take a few goes but when you do it it's a huge sigh of relief! A mix of the two works well.

That being said there's no FIXED method, engage the player and you have a good game, engage them on a personal level for the entire length of it and you have a great game.

 

[ABMorales787]

Fighting:For me here, it has to be the controls. Nothing fancy like punching six buttons to pull off one special move, but also not so simple that a chimp could beat you if he finds the right button. A balance in controls. Graphically, I'm easy to satisfy. A fighting game isn't exactly built for realism.

Strategy: This is all about what the game offers. Something that looks simplistic on the outside, but takes heavy practice to master. Like Tetris. No way in hell you'll get 100 lines on your first try. Or your tenth. Same with Pokemon Puzzle League and Bust A Move. Extremely simple look, amazing gameplay.

 

[Davi323]

I can think of one word that encompasses everything I think about what makes a great video game...replayability. A great video game is one that makes you want to play it over and over and over again. This is true of every genre, whether its sports, RPG, 1st person shooter, whatever. If I want to keep playing it long after I have beaten it, it was a great video game to me.

Some examples. Techmo Super Bowl. Most of probably know of this game, whether by ownership or youtube videos, or other. This game still gets a lot of love, but why? The graphics are horrendous. If you compare it to Madden, its no contest. The game is incredibly simple. It wasn't realistic under any stretch of the imagination. Yet...it was fun as hell. When you got done kicking the computer's ass and won the Super Bowl with your favorite team, you did it with other teams. (I beat it with every team in the game at least once). Then, you played hours and hours against your friends, marveling at the ridiculousness of how good Bo Jackson and Barry Sanders were. You fought to be either the Lions or Raiders, because you knew your running backs were untouchable, and you wanted to humiliate your buddy with a 99 yard TD run. The game simply had a huge replay value, and that makes it great.

Street Fighter II. Button masher fighting game. Nothing special about the graphics, nothing special about the simple controls. Limited characters to choose from. But, it was damn fun. You could beat the entire game in about an hour, but that wasn't the point. You just wanted to kick your friend's ass as many times as you could before they got frustrated and threw their controller at you or the TV. Great video game.

WWF No Mercy. Not the best looking wrestling game in the world, by far. Today's Smackdown vs. Raw games are far better looking visually. But, for those of us who have owned an N64 and that game in particularly, this was truly a special game. About 6 years ago, I bought a used N64 specifically so I could play No Mercy again. If one game can force me to buy a video game console just because I wanted to keep playing it, chances are it was a great video game.

There are many more games that can be used as examples, but that would take too long. But, basically, if its still fun years after you originally got it, its good.

 

[Dagger Dias]

The entire point of a video game is entertainment. If a game cannot entertain someone, then it has failed in its primary goal. What makes a "good" video game is difficult to fully analyze down to the smallest detail. I look for a game that will give me a great time no matter how many times I've played it, or how long I plan on playing for that particular time that I sat down to play. It's easier to do it by genres and listing examples, so that is what I'll do. I'll save RPG's for last since "what makes a good RPG?" is a topic that is very important to me.


Platformer
Super Mario Bros 1 and 3 are the best examples here. So simple, yet so epic. These games never get old. I could sit down every at any given day, at any given moment, and have fun playing them. They make you want to keep going, to get to that next level, to finally save the princess.


Action/Adventure
Legend of Zelda: a Link to the Past. It is without a doubt the adventure game that I have played the most. It's so fun to explore the whole world looking for every single secret and finding all the treasures in every temple. I liked and replayed the game so much that I became able to clear it in under 4 hours (fastest is 2:45) without dying. I plan on doing a walkthrough thread for that after FF4, so be on the lookout this summer.


Shooter
Could there possibly be a more perfect shooter than Goldeneye on the 64? I love replaying every mission on it. It's so great for stress relief. Having a bad day? Easy way to temporarily fix that, fire up Goldeneye and enter any mission under the invincible and/or infinite ammo cheats. You'll feel a little better in no time. The game was such a good mix of fun and difficult. Even people like myself who normally dislike shooters could not get enough of this game, entertaining every step of the way. That's without even MENTIONING the multiplayer mode!


Racing
My pick here are the Mario Kart games, 64 and Wii in particular. They are so incredibly fun and it's awesome to sit and race through every single track one after the other. Racing games had been around for a while, but Mario Kart 64 made them more fun, and Mario Kart Wii has carried on where it's ancestor left off. They are the best racing games because they make you want to keep racing to see what silly antics will happen on the next track, and the multiplayer races are loads of fun too.


Puzzle
Tetris. No other game under the genre deserves mentioning as much as Tetris does. It's so fun and so hard to stop playing, despite being so simple in gameplay. That is what's best about it. You just keep trying to score points until it's not possible to keep up with how fast the blocks fall. Trying to defeat one's own personal high score in Tetris is always fun. Mine is 99,000+ and just a few points shy of 100,000. I keep sitting down to play it once a day or so to try to beat that record. The bottom line is this.... It keeps you coming back to play again and again!


RPG
I saved my personal favorite for last. It's no secret that I'm an RPG fan, much less a Final Fantasy fan. Believe it or not, I'm NOT going to go with a Final Fantasy game here. I'll be discussing my other favorite, Tales of Symphonia. What makes a good RPG? A lot of things.

1. The most important thing is a great story. Even the most bizarre battle system can be looked past if the story is good enough to keep you wanting more (I'm looking at YOU, Legend of Dragoon!). As a game designer myself, I made having a good story my #1 priority for my game. If there is ANYTHING that I want Division Blade to ever be remembered for in the long run, it's the story. Tales of Symphonia's story was epic in every sense of the word. The characters, the villains, the plot twists.... perfect in every way. I strive to achieve the same quality.

2. The second most important thing is a great soundtrack. Making a soundtrack for an RPG is like trying to come up with a score for a movie, the song has to fit the mood of the scene perfectly or else it just does not fit correctly. I love Tales of Symphonia's soundtrack more than any other. All 100+ of its tracks fill me with so many emotions when I hear them.

3. Then there's the characters. You have to have a great and memorable cast of characters. That's one of the areas where Tales of Symphonia is the best, its entire playable cast (and even its villains!) are so memorable and the way they did their character development was a massive inspiration for me as a game designer.

4. Finally, the fourth major point that every RPG should strive for is good gameplay. Many RPG's have struggled with trying to come up with more complicated systems to use. Tales of Symphonia struggles a bit here too, and it's the only category where it does not score a 9 or a 10 for me. Sometimes simple is better when it comes to battle systems, look at how people STILL talk about the original Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior after 20+ years.


There's more, but I could go on and on for days about what I think makes a good video game, as this is a topic that I am so passionate about because I have seen things from both points of view.... as a casual gamer AND as a designer.