Sorry for the late post- I just spent about an hour and a half waiting for my roommate to get out of the bathroom, not wanting to start anything so I could jump up at a moment's notice. Today I'm gonna be talking about some qualities of games, and what I think separates the games I like from the ones I don't.
There are 2 gameplay elements I'll be talking about, and 3 graphical elements.
This is, perhaps, the biggest category for a game. Essentially, what can you do in it? A game like Skyrim has a lot of content- there's a big story line, with lots of choices that allow for replayability. On the other hand, a game like Battlefield has relatively little content (well, the multiplayer anyways- I've never played singleplayer). All you really do is shoot enemies, drive vehicles and shoot more enemies.
Strangely, I seem to actually dislike content... Some of my favourite games are really basic, when you boil it down- Powder Toy, for instance, is just "put element pixels in a screen", TF2 is just "shoot enemies and wear hats", and Kerbal Space Program is relatively complex with "fly rockets, get science, spend science, fly bigger rockets". Of course, this isn't a perfect inverse relationship- Warband has a fair amount of content and I quite like it, and there are games with little content that I don't like. But it is an interesting trend, and I have a theory about what causes it.
Freedom is the ability to do what you want, as opposed to what the game wants. In TF2, you're free to go anywhere, as any class, with any loadout, and fight in any style you like. In Powder Toy, you're able to build literal computers out of those little pixels of various elements. On the other hand, in Skyrim, as much as it's an open world game, there is still a plot handed to you that you have to follow to some extent. Simulator games, which give the player lots of room to do what they want, have a lot of replayability, and can be played for some time without getting dull (I've been playing Minecraft for over 7 years- it's only in the last few months that I've started to get bored of it (and even then, if I could find some people to play with and the right mods, it wouldn't take much convincing to get me back into it)).
No, not as in people from Poland. Polish can make the difference between a playable game and an unplayable one, in extreme cases. Look at Dwarf Fortress- it's got all the content in the world, and probably more freedom than is healthy. On the other hand... Don't look at Dwarf Fortress, because it's very graphically unappealing. I can respect the developer's choices, of course, but the complexity of the user interface mixed with the sheer lack of polish makes it unplayable for a lot of people (me included). Then, look at a game like, say, Plague Inc. There isn't all that much content, and there's less freedom than you would think by looking at it, but it's very well polished, with intuitive UI, so anyone can get into it in a matter of minutes.
I mean this in the graphical sense- games that go for realism use realistic shaders, textures and models. This is especially noticeable in high-end FPS games, but it can also leak in to other genres. Realism can make for some really good looking games (see GTA V, Crysis, or various Fallout games)- but it can also make games look busy and overwhelming. Sometimes, a lack of realism can actually make for a really good look, but only if the game has the right style.
This is, of course, a very subjective thing, so I'll just say my thoughts. A good graphical style, for me, is critical for making a game look good. Cuphead, for instance, has a very clearly defined style, and even though it's not graphically intensive, it looks great. Stardew Valley, despite being very pixelated, has a certain style, and it looks good. The thing is, realism technically qualifies as a style- it's hard to make realistic things stylised, because then they're not realistic any more. It's just a style that I personally do not care for.
To illustrate my point about realism and styles, I'll name some well-known games to compare.
Team Fortress 2 is very unrealistic and stylised- but the style works well with the game's humour. There generally isn't much going on on the screen, so it's easy to recognise enemies, allies and things like health packs.
Overwatch is more realistic, but still pretty stylised. It's got more textures, more complex models, and from what I've seen, there's more going on with the lighting too. Personally though, I find this makes it a bit busier, and it can be harder to follow what's going on (though it's worth pointing out, I've never played this game, just watched it).
Battlefield 3 is very realistic, and not at all stylised. The models are very complicated, the textures very high-resolution, and there's an abundance of other visual effects adding to it. Again though, I find this to be too much. There's just so much on the screen that it's hard (for me) to focus on, say, an enemy.Now, I understand that that's part of the experience, but it just isn't for me. (I'm using Battlefield 3 specifically because it's the one Battlefield game I've actually played).
Of course, getting the ratio of these elements I've talked about right doesn't necessarily make for a good game. A game generally needs a good concept to be fun, and if it's good enough, some of these factors can be overlooked. This is more just a ramble about how I differentiate games, and some trends I've seen that separate the ones I like from the ones I don't.
