Well I know a lot of you have probably seen me around in the video game thread arguing very passionately against Final Fantasy 12, and there's a reason for my madness (I just passionately passionately loath all Final Fantasy fanboys now that the series has ben shot to hell but anyway). So instead of adding more negativity to a people who blindly won't open their eyes to see, I think it's time I actually tried to talk on what makes a good game. I was hoping to share some insight onto what makes a game so enjoyable and I was also hoping to get some feedback in order to get something out of this, so let us begin. It would be highly unfair to just argue a ground set of rules because oh I think it's not hard for all of us to agree that what makes a good sport or racing game might not exactly make a good RTS or FPS. Let me try and break each genre I can think of down.

Sports: What makes a good sports game first is the controls. Clunky controls and controllers (*ahem* PS2/3 *ahem*) normally can help spoil a sports game. The PS 2/3 controllers are very good examples of this with the analog sticks being in a somewhat awkward position compared to the nice layout of the 360 controllers. The game cube controller but a game like NCAA Football 2003 was not bad since the c-stick was mostly a before the snap button, but the very horrible Z positioning made stripping the ball very hard. To all its insubstantiality though, I cannot obviously blame game developers for a control design they did not make, but applying controls to each individual controller is key. Second comes the gameplay, which must flow smoothly. In most cases this isn't a problem but a good example of this was MLB 2k6. The game felt really frame oriented and the animations and controls were not fluid at all. The game felt just too un-natural, particularly the problem lying in the contact of the ball to the bat to the fielding interface. This was a problem that was brilliantly fixed in MLB 2k7 though and it was nice to see a more fluid gameplay change. Third is the animations because seeing the same tackle over and over again makes me wish I had just cracked out my SNES and played Konami's NFL Football. Fourth is probably the commentary. I'm sick of repetitive commentary, and this is a huge problem with the EA series, where Madden and NCAA Football easily use lines from 3-4 years past. The overall look of the game seems to change little either as the first NCAA Football game I played that looked and felt different from when I owned 2003 was in 2007, which is not a good thing. Then again this is the infamous EA strategy of releasing the same game every year.

RTS: One of the first problems in RTSes to my experience tends to be balance. Nations and the powers they come with, whether it be buildings they construct realtime like Red Alert 2's soviet Nuclear Missile, or to country specialties like to Rise of Nations' Bantu's +50 population, need to be balanced. For the most part RTS makers have gotten this concept down and some good examples of balance is Red Alert 2 (before Yuri's Revenge), where each nation and each main alliance had special powers that could equally hurt. The other is Rise of Nations, where a lot of the nations powers are very well balanced. One example of probably less-than-good balance is the wonderful Age of Empires 2, in which every player chooses the Byzantines for the defense boots and then builds rows of walls like there's no tomorrow. Second is obviously the combat and gameplay which must be smooth and fair. Probably one of the most unforgiving combat systems is of course Risk, with a honorable mention going to Civilization. The virtual dice rolling system doesn't work anymore and is very unfair to see a half injured tank lose to a French knight.

FPS: The days of the beloved Unreal are done, and now there must be a good balance of Single-Player storyline and Multiplayer battle. Call of Duty 4 is a brilliant modern example of this, scratch the single player's ending. Multiplayer must be incredibly well balanced, and for the most part Infinity ward goes a good job with it, but the games they make seem to always have one unbalancing issue. In CoD 2 it was the shotgun (aka M1 Trench Gun) and in CoD 4 it's a mix of the P90 and the noob tube (aka grenade launcher). A bad example of these things is probably Clive Barker's Jericho or Army of Two in where the combat is overly repetitive and dull. Army of Two's aggro system is new and innovative, but gets awfully dull awfully quick and undermines the game in the end. Clive Barker's Jericho just has you fight the same monster up to 5 times consecutively in the same gun battle which horribly makes the game annoying. Another problem with the game is it's "weak spot shooting" boss fights. Gears of War might have done this decently with you fighting the boss and after every 5 minutes it gives you a visual hint as to where to shoot, if you could survive that long. However, Gears of War's online multiplayer was a problem. The host was the only person who really never lagged and it was promised more than the warrenty on this computer that anyone who wasn't the host would lag. Also, a lot of the weapons like the Torque Bow or the Hammer of Dawn were horribly overpowered. This coupled with a terrible Boomshot made the only decent weapons the Hammerburst, Magnum, Pistol, Shotgun, Longshot, and Frag/Smoke Grenades.

MMORPG: They suck, see Webster's "Grind".

RPG: The RPG, though somewhat bogged down by a level-up system, needs to first and foremost have a compelling story to tell. I'm sick of people trying to argue against that, because the reason we play RPGs is to be drawn into this out-of-this-world fantasy story. I didn't play Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven stars because I wanted to be like Mario and save the princess, Peach was always my most hated character of the series (that is until I got to the end and admitted that she's the most valuable person in the party thanks to the healing). I played instead because I wanted to see what environments they could create and how the story of the chase for the seven stars concluded. I was always wishy washy about if I should finish the game or not, then I went cart riding and pimped some goombas with Bowser and wondered why I even thought about quitting the game. I later remembered that it was because of some Kerby reject marshmellow who cried everytime he wasn't killing something in battle for me, whuch was most of the time cause Geno was so much better than the puffball. Anyway, point is story keeps most RPG players playing, unlike the MMOs which keep most people playing a non-storyline based redundant grind. Also, developers need to leave the level up system alone. Leveling up should just be to boost stats, no more sphere rids, licensing tests, nothing. A simple points allocation like in Jade Empire is fair enough, but other than that leveling up should stay what it is. The other two key parts are, likeable characters. Wussy characters need to stop appearing in my RPGs (I'm looking at you Cloud, Ashe, Tidus, Sora, Square Enix in general). The main RPG character should be more knowledgeable than the normal ones of today and that's a point that developers should at least take notice of. Finally, there's the combat system. Combat needs to be decided amongst one of two systems: First, turn-based. The old turn-based systems of Final Fantasies 1,4,6,7 need to be used, or at least some kind of system like the Temple of Elemental Evil. The turn based system can even use partial turn taking, like the brilliant AP system of Final Fantasy Tactics. Second, a full real-time combat system like Tales of Symphonia or Jade Empire. A half turn-based half real-time system like Final Fantasy 12 doesn't work real great, and in the end it's not really all too real-time, which only helps to weaken the game in general.

Racing: Racing games are all about physics. Once they get the racing physics down then it's all about physics. After they get that down the third thing they should work on is physics. Get what I'm trying to say? The racing physics need to be first, in general real, second they need to be individual to each car. Having a Honda S2000 handle like a Lamborghini Diablo isn't gonna work. The cars need to feel real and an outstanding example of this is Forza Motorsports 2. The only thing that keeps Forza 2 from perfect is the physics of the car after you soup up the crap out of it, which is fine. Third is the sound. Make each car sound like it actually does. Turn 10 took the painstaking approach of going to a racetrack and recording the sound of every car's idle engine, and racing engine. A 1979 Charger sounds like a the muscle car that it is, and that's what needs to happen. Fourth, car selection. You need to have at least 200 cars in your game, as the less-than-average option of Cars in Gran Turismo 4 was disappointing. The 150 odd some cars they had was a good amount, but it was quickly thrown out the window when a good percentage of them turned out to be Fords (nothing against Ford but your racing game can't be 20% one car brand). Fifth is customization. The options available for customizing in Forza 2 is superb. Absolutely everything you can think of is customizable: Reap Spoiler, Caliburs, Front/Back Bumpers' Height, Dampers, Springs, Tire Pressure, Weight Shift, Gear Ratio, the list goes on. Sixth, the tracks. Having Daytona in the new GT 5 is nice, but for the most part you need some really infamous tracks. Nurgburgring, Mazaga Raceway Laguna Seca, Suzuka, Tsukuba, Daytona, Sebring, and Le Mans are the best tracks I can think of to include. Forza 2 had all but Dayton and Le Mans in the game. Finally is custom painting and online play which need no introduction.

Other: Probably the best games besides the action-adventure genre which I'll probably edit in because I'm tired of typing right now, are some innovate and unique games. A great example of an "other" game was Chromehounds. This game was a mech game where you pick one of three nations to fight for and basically wage war in squads of up to six online for dominance of the entire region. The game was brilliant with fully customizable mechs and squads of up to 20 people (though combat was limited to 6 v 6) fighting online. The 6 different classes were all great as well. The game contained over 300 parts with around 50-70 downloadable ones on top of that and a great experience overall. The only place the game suffered was the absolutely horribly single player campaign.

Discuss:

What makes a good video game?

Interactivity thats got to be the biggest one. No one likes watching someone play a game. That just leaves someone out

Very true, but then again no one wants to interact with others if the experience is going to be choppy and laggy, unless you count single screen co-op, which is always great in a game.

I don't play sports game, my computer sucks --which keeps me from playing most good RTS (my computer can't take Command & Conquer Generals, but I had my time with Red Alert 2 and it was awesome) and FPS games, and Racing I've played NFS (2, 3, 4 and the first Underground were alright, the rest are the same as underground with better graphics and flashing things) and GT4 (which I like but sometimes it's too hard). And RPGs:

Spudsy

RPG: The RPG, though somewhat bogged down by a level-up system, needs to first and foremost have a compelling story to tell. I'm sick of people trying to argue against that, because the reason we play RPGs is to be drawn into this out-of-this-world fantasy story. I didn't play Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven stars because I wanted to be like Mario and save the princess, Peach was always my most hated character of the series (that is until I got to the end and admitted that she's the most valuable person in the party thanks to the healing). I played instead because I wanted to see what environments they could create and how the story of the chase for the seven stars concluded. I was always wishy washy about if I should finish the game or not, then I went cart riding and pimped some goombas with Bowser and wondered why I even thought about quitting the game. I later remembered that it was because of some Kerby reject marshmellow who cried everytime he wasn't killing something in battle for me, whuch was most of the time cause Geno was so much better than the puffball.

Training your character at maximum level and getting every single skill, getting items that are very hard to get and trying to get all the items available from a huge list, completing every side quest there is, exploring the map till there's nothing more to explore, defeating every type of creature out there and extremely hard bosses that makes you need a strategy no matter if you're in max level, the randomness of opening a chest and getting a rare item, customize your characters, customize your weapons... <-----------all that along with a good story are what makes me play a RPG

spudsy

Anyway, point is story keeps most RPG players playing, unlike the MMOs which keep most people playing a non-storyline based redundant grind.

Most RPG players? Speak for yourself please, 'cause you can't deny that MMORPGs like WOW are extremely popular.

spudsy

Leveling up should just be to boost stats, no more sphere rids, licensing tests, nothing. A simple points allocation like in Jade Empire is fair enough, but other than that leveling up should stay what it is.

So, game mechanics must not evolve. I've played Dragon Quest VII and the Mechanics are extremely boring (in the innovative aspect, while playing i have no problem spending over a minute to defeat some monster and gain 3 exp points) there's nothing new in that kind of system, and you're basically saying originality is bad.

spudsy

The other two key parts are, likeable characters. Wussy characters need to stop appearing in my RPGs (I'm looking at you Cloud, Ashe, Tidus, Sora, Square Enix in general). The main RPG character should be more knowledgeable than the normal ones of today and that's a point that developers should at least take notice of.

Ahh Wussy characters right, that makes a bad game. I hate Tidus, I hate Vaan, I hate Squall; but that doesn't mean the game sucks 'cause I realize that's my point of view and I have my reasons for hating them, but they are subjective and personal reasons which if I used to criticize a game it wouldn't be wise. The main characters (in a lot of stories, not only in RPGs or in games) need to learn through the events that are going on in the story so you can identify yourself, and usually the most wise characters are secondary characters, and in the end of his/her journey the lead character becomes more wise.

Conclusion: I think you're the ff "fanboy", a ff i-vi fanboy that refuses to evolve along with the RPG industry.

And finally, let me quote from this article:

"Narrativists focus on the storytelling and roleplaying aspect of the game more so than others. They are the type who is least concerned with the mechanics. Ironically, they also tend to be the pickiest about their systems."


PS. Will post about Action and Adventure games when Spudsy does.

irov

Training your character at maximum level and getting every single skill, getting items that are very hard to get and trying to get all the items available from a huge list, completing every side quest there is, exploring the map till there's nothing more to explore, defeating every type of creature out there and extremely hard bosses that makes you need a strategy no matter if you're in max level, the randomness of opening a chest and getting a rare item, customize your characters, customize your weapons... <-----------all that along with a good story are what makes me play a RPG

I will agree for the most part here. Aside from the story there does need to be a lot more side-tracking capabilities and extras that allow the game to have more playback abilitiy.

irov

Speak for yourself please, 'cause you can't deny that MMORPGs like WOW are extremely popular.

Cause the general game is very unintelligent. Let's be honest, who'd pay for the ability to kill local wild-life X, Y, and Z just to level up in front of others? Those who don't have their heads screwed on straight that's who.

irov

So, game mechanics must not evolve. I've played Dragon Quest VII and the Mechanics are extremely boring (in the innovative aspect, while playing i have no problem spending over a minute to defeat some monster and gain 3 exp points) there's nothing new in that kind of system, and you're basically saying originality is bad.

Game mechanics are one thing. You can evolve game mechanics like the old materia system. Leveling up though shouldn't, mostly because of the fact gluing on extras onto a leveling up system will hardly make lighting to strike twice. A points allocation system isn't a bad idea, another one would be Tactics and a lot of other game's job leveling system on top of the character leveling system, which is quite favorable in my opinion.

irov

Conclusion: I think you're the ff "fanboy", a ff i-vi fanboy that refuses to evolve along with the RPG industry.

I'm sorry this isn't about me here and I'd advise you to refrain from personal attacks ok? I'm not an FF 1-6 fanboy alright, I'd prefer Super Mario RPG or Jade Empire or Chrono Cross over them anyday. I just hate to see it when new RPG/FF fans say the new games are great and talk about something so unimportant like graphics when it's a slap in the face to all of us old-time gamers. I then hate it when they argue how things like graphics and music are better than the old games in which they whole-heartedly forget that the days of the NES and SNES weren't built for high level bump-mapping. Anyway this thread is not about Final Fantasy, it's about what makes a game good.

Let's move on then to action adventure. Action/Adventure is hard for me to talk about because there's so much thrown into the genre it's hard to really talk in general about it so let me try and break it down.

Hack + Slash: This is really a genre that's interesting in the fact that you know ahead of time that you're going to have repetitive combat, but as long as the combat is decent the game suffer too much from it. So after the combat is down, you have to work on a storyline. Playing a hack and slash without a good storyline (see Nighty-Nine Nights as a great example of this) is really the defeating point of the whole game. Hack and slashes need to have good stories more so than RPGs do, and that point cannot be stressed enough. After that there's the voice acting and characters (who need to be likable unlike the wusses from N3).

Platformers: The Platforming genre kind of died off a lot in the late 90s early 00s when most of the population's intelligence decreased and Jim Carrey's popularity went up but for the most part platformers are great games. The old days of Gex are a great example of how a platformer should be and the level design in Gex 2 and 3 were fantastic. Level design for a game that is stickly platforming like Gex is crucial, and I'm proud to say Gex never disappointed. Platformers in where most of the game is story driven needs just that, a great story. Psychonauts is a great example of this, with a fabulous story, even though the platforming was a bit out of whack at times. The combat was also average, which is probably the third key in making a good platforming game. The combat in say the Devil May Cry series is great, but then those games, with the exception of maybe 1 has been suffering from the lapse of a horrible story. Then there's some you shouldn't do in a platformer like DMC 4. I quote Zero Punctuation when I say: "Jumping puzzles, fine. Time jumping puzzles, fair enough. Timed jumping puzzles with a fixed camera, now we've dropped into the ocean of crap. Timed jumping puzzles with a fixed camera where enemies spawn in every time you miss, now the ocean of crap has filled in miles over our heads with no rescue boat in sight." Timed jumping puzzles can be ok like in Gex 3 when they're bonus stages and what not, and although the platforming in Psychonauts was ok on top of average combat you got to terrorize a society of talking fish like you were Godzilla and then set squirels on fire, so it definately made up for it in other areas.

Other: The best other I can think of is a straight action adventure like Ninja Gaiden. Combat and story will probably be the two best things to focus on, and with good reason. The difficulty in NG was controller-snapping, but the gameplay was excellent and smooth all around for the most part.

Other than those examples I can't really think of other good Action/Adventures to talk about and so feel free to comment back on some great examples.

Story, Multiplayer, Gameplay are the three big ones for me Im not too picky about games .

I guess the Story and the gameplay, there are old games whit very nice gameplay(or jugability) like Duke Nukem 3D, no need of super graphics and it's a fun game, also there are the one like Zelda, Final fantasy from the old school (Nes SNEs Gb GBc) whit a very nice history,this times the people just focus on the graphics and do many poor games :(

Nice 7 paragraph essay Spudsy. I think that what separates good games from average is the sandbox idea. A game should have many differnent situations you can choose to get yourself into and many different ways to get out. Also, you have to be motivated by a good premise. The physics and gameplay should be based on skill and not chance.And characters should beautiful, numerous, and willing to die for their goal.

God of War 2 was a mess. Gameplay-wise I'll admit that it was fun apart from a stupid sections but story-wise it was almost like watching a car crash in slow motion. It was awful, God of War 1's story had some simple but effective power to it but God of War 2 just pulled out the most cliched plot out of its own ass and decided it'd be good if they dressed it up pretty. Which they didn't, it turns out they dressed it up like a Bangkok whore. Don't believe me? Watch that turd of an ending and try not to laugh at a game trying to be serious and 'epic'. Suffice to say, I have little interest in God of War 3.

But going back to the word 'epic' there, that's what I think too many games suffer from now. The desire to be epic. It was fine when a few games tried doing so because some of them knew how to portay this 'epic' feeling. Underlooked games like Shadow of the Colossus for example, on paper it doesn't sound epic (9 bosses and no enemies) but once you delve into this world you are actually blown away by how epic it is. Some other games are forgiveable for trying to be epic and there are some games which just try to do so much but can only do so little. The game I mentioned above is a classic example, there was only one time I thought "Wow." and that was the Colossus fight they shoved off on you straight away. Now we're stuck in an age where we all see is nothing but epic trailers hyping up an 'epic' game and it's usually the same damned thing. Some sci-fi FPS about bloody aliens, forgive me if it gets as boring as hell shooting a different brand of alien with the same damned gun.

Oh, also another game that tries too hard to be an 'epic', Army of Two. I mean, that's not epic at all, c'mon. Two macho men sharing one parachute strapped to each other front to back? No, that's not epic, that's just plain out g-

Yeah, you get the drift.

Bringer

Nice 7 paragraph essay Spudsy.

I appreciate that a lot, thanks so much for reading.

Deer

God of War 2 was a mess. Gameplay-wise I'll admit that it was fun apart from a stupid sections but story-wise it was almost like watching a car crash in slow motion. It was awful, God of War 1's story had some simple but effective power to it but God of War 2 just pulled out the most cliched plot out of its own ass and decided it'd be good if they dressed it up pretty. Which they didn't, it turns out they dressed it up like a Bangkok whore. Don't believe me? Watch that turd of an ending and try not to laugh at a game trying to be serious and 'epic'. Suffice to say, I have little interest in God of War 3.

I wholeheartedly agree with you on God of War 2. God of War 1 was enjoyable, but compared to the first one, God of War 2 was a let down.

Deer

Underlooked games like Shadow of the Colossus for example, on paper it doesn't sound epic (9 bosses and no enemies) but once you delve into this world you are actually blown away by how epic it is

There's a game that's highly under-credited.

Deer

Oh, also another game that tries too hard to be an 'epic', Army of Two. I mean, that's not epic at all, c'mon. Two macho men sharing one parachute strapped to each other front to back? No, that's not epic, that's just plain out g-

This can not be expressed enough, as Army of Two was horrible. The characters were incredibly bland, like pulling out a sleeve of saltines and expecting to taste some kind of Chips Ahoy or something when you bite into them. The gameplay was dull as ever and the story was just plain terrible.

On conclusion Deer, I think you deserve an Oscar or something cause we see eye to eye a lot and I like that.

Moving on games like Turok (the new one not the N64 age) and Army of Two are great examples of what not to do with your video games.

I agree about Final Fantasy 12. To me what makes a good game is a strong story with great characters. Also lets not forget good gamepelay. I think alot of games have a good story but lack gameplay or vise versa. A Great example is resident evil good story bad gameplay.

For me it's the story that makes a game memorable.

Im sorry i skipped the wall of text you had up there. You have great "Opinions"

so here are my opinions on what makes a great game
-Controls
-Graphics
-Story line
-Music/sound effects
-Replay ability

Three

A Great example is resident evil good story bad gameplay.

Actually on the contrary I think that's backwards. RE 4 had great gameplay, but the story was so out of whack. When I get a "sqeeky voiced midgit Napoleon" in my video games (quoted from Zero Punctuation) then I kind of lose interest into where the storyline is going thanks mostly in part of the fact that the Napoleon makes me wonder if the script writers were all ADD sufferers, or since we're in the month of April I guess I should say Autism sufferers.

@edit and everyone trying to reply: Please try not to make this a listing thread, it's been good so far, don't just name what you think makes a good game, try to actually *GASP* argue your point as well. I know typing a few more sentences on trying to convince the audience is so troublesome.

I think it's different for every genre. RPGs requires a good and addictive story, which makes you want to come back for more. Character designs and gameplay, and sounds, it makes the game more appetizing. Shooting games should be exciting and suspenseful. RTS should have a great balance for each fraction, along with creative units.