I thought I might kick things off by going into what makes a good game for me. Obviously the things I write here will be incredibly subjective, as with any review or critique, and what makes a good game for me isn’t what makes a good game for other people (even though I’m right, mwah).
I’ve been playing games, specifically adventure games, a long time. We’re talking double digit years here. And in that time I’ve refined my tastes (or in other terms, I’ve gotten picky). I may not be an expert in game design or a well established critic, but I tend to know a good game when I see one. Like I said, I mostly play adventure games, but that doesn’t really stop me from venturing out into other genres or at least recognizing when a game does its job damn well.
So here is a list of qualifying factors I always look at in my gaming experience. Sorry, when I say look at, I don’t just mean analyze and critique. These are the factors that affect me most when playing and that can vastly influence my experience of the game. And so, without further ado:
1. Story: Story is, beyond everything else, absolutely key when it comes to whether I’ll enjoy a game or not. The games that keep me playing for hours on end are those games where I just have to know what happens next, where I get so invested in the characters that I care about what will happen to them. Games like The Longest Journey, Heavy Rain, Indigo Prophecy and Silent Hill 2 all have exceptional story lines. A lot of people today that I talk to talk about the graphics of a game. To me, you can have a game with mediocre graphics and a great storyline but it doesn’t work the other way around. No matter how great graphics are, if you don’t have a good storyline you don’t have nearly as good a game experience (this doesn’t include casual gaming). Hell, I don’t play any FPS games but I’ve often watched my friends play them just because I want to know what happens, because the story is engaging. The fact that my motor functions, trigger finger and stress levels absolutely suck is the only thing keeping me from discovering it for myself.
2. Characters: This ties into story, but it gets its own category. A game can have a good story, but a good plot is only part of the story. The other part is good characters. This cateogory could be called “Dialogue” as well. Having intriguing characters that you get emotionally invested in is a difficult feat to pull off. How do you make comic relief characters funny without being too annoying? How do you make a protagonist that doesn’t seem bland and a pawn for the plot to move forward?
3. Voice Acting: So let's say you're playing a fantasy adventure game. You're on your way to your magic school (not Hogwarts) and you walk through the gorgeous landscape, ready to solve a great mystery when you happen upon a merchant on the road. You stop to talk to him and then the bastard child of Mario and Beaker opens his mouth and you're covering your ears in agony. Again, this could tie in with characters, but even with the most complex and engaging characters, if you don’t have a good voice to back it all up then all of that goes down the drain. I cannot stress enough how a good voice actor can make or break a game. Because bad voice acting? It gets very VERY distracting. Maybe it’s because I’m an actor myself, but I just can’t stand hearing subpar voicework in a game. I tend to be a bit more forgiving to independent developers since smaller budgets often means wandering around the office getting your co-workers to perform the voicework, but the big budget games? There’s never an excuse. The above example is a character named Mustavio, and he...is...unbearable. The rest of the voices are not so great, but they mostly veer on bland. Mustavio is the extreme example of bad voice acting. Luckily, the industry is getting better and better when it comes to hiring voice actors. I'm not always a fan of getting celebrities to do voice work, because camera acting and voice acting are two different mediums, and not every celebrity (cough*Jennifer Connolly*cough) is fit to do it. The same goes with games. Some great examples of voice acting are The Longest Journey, Sam & Max, Grim Fandango and The Last Express just to name a few.
4. Music and sound: Music won't necessarily make or break a game, but it can certainly help enhance the experience. I am a movie score junkie and this has since moved into the gaming realm as well. The best types of gaming music can set the perfect mood without being too intrusive. The Myst series is a good example of this, along with The Longest Journey (guess what one of my favourite games is...go on...guess), Heavy Rain, Syberia and a crapload of others. Music plays a big part in gaming for me. All of those boss battles in console games are made that much more epic by the kick-ass music that follows you throughout the battle. Likewise with soundscapes, the right soundscape can really add to the experience. Silent Hill 2 would have been a much different game without the horrifying, claustrophobic soundscape that went along with it.
5. Puzzles: Pretty much everything in this list ties into story. The music must reflect the story and characters, the characters have to be believable and the puzzles need to make sense to the world and story. I love puzzles games, but I hate when puzzles don't make sense to the rest of the game. Timed sequences and random mazes are just a couple among the many needlessly difficult puzzles that I've encountered. Puzzles can be challenging, but making them too vague and frustrating can lead to me just leaving the game altogether. As much as I love the Sam and Max series, some of the inventory combinations were just too strange and vague, even for that game. Still, there are a lot of puzzles that worked well in their environment and while they were a challenge at times they were a pleasant one.
Those are the main things. Of course, graphics have their part to play, and the prettier, the better. And the controls should be simple or at the very least easy to adapt to. But for the most part, those are the make or breaks with me when I'm playing games. And now that I have that out of the way, it's time for some actual games.
