What are your favorite video game features ?
Hey all. Long time lurker, fairly new poster.
I was recently having a discussion with one of my coworkers about our favorite video game qualities. Some were little details, while others had massive impact. Regardless we broke it down into Characters, Environments, and Game play. It would be great to hear some of your opinions !
Characters
I tend to prefer dynamic characters that are constantly changing their looks or outfits. I guess the biggest draw for me is progression or customization. The feeling of getting "better" or dramatically changing the way I look keeps things interesting.
Environments
As a fellow artist I tend to fall in love with immersive environments. When the world moves with your actions such as grass, snow, dirt, and mud (Like Uncharted for example). It always helps the level feel more "alive" and really draws me into the game.
Gameplay
I love the "epic" feeling of massive boss fights. Games like Shadow of the Colossus, God of War, and Everquest where you fight creatures larger than the screen. Its always a very rewarding feeling when you take down a demigod or monster that is 100 times your size.
How about you ?
I was recently having a discussion with one of my coworkers about our favorite video game qualities. Some were little details, while others had massive impact. Regardless we broke it down into Characters, Environments, and Game play. It would be great to hear some of your opinions !
Characters
I tend to prefer dynamic characters that are constantly changing their looks or outfits. I guess the biggest draw for me is progression or customization. The feeling of getting "better" or dramatically changing the way I look keeps things interesting.
Environments
As a fellow artist I tend to fall in love with immersive environments. When the world moves with your actions such as grass, snow, dirt, and mud (Like Uncharted for example). It always helps the level feel more "alive" and really draws me into the game.
Gameplay
I love the "epic" feeling of massive boss fights. Games like Shadow of the Colossus, God of War, and Everquest where you fight creatures larger than the screen. Its always a very rewarding feeling when you take down a demigod or monster that is 100 times your size.
How about you ?
Replies
Non-linearity. We've all seen the Doom E1M4 vs. Modern Warfare 2 picture.
Arsenal of Tools. Rarely seen nowadays, but was commonplace among the '90s. Basically, 1/3 of the weapons are your average guns, the rest are special functions and traps. Linear inventory system counts, too.
Humor. Games are unrealistic already, so why are there too many that takes themselves too seriously?
Community Tools. Publishers favor a locked down experience for more sale incentives on continued play through sequelitis or DLC (especially Microsoft), and many pros got their start from hacking teh QuakeC. Many new games don't even allow/provide any access to game logic source code and just have level editors and vaguely provided exporters at best.
@JamesWild. Definitely! I would love to see more emergence in games.Building calculators in Minecraft or making music machines in Little Big Planet was probably not on the developers to-do list. Its neat to see what people do when you give them something interesting to play with.
@LeiLei. Humor for sure!, I miss games like Space Quest and would love to see more Rathcet and Clank (Cpt. Quark is hilarious). I think people are still very nervous about letting go of their tools and code. But its always amazing to see what the community can do by decrypting (and modding) games that were never meant to be "tampered" with.
What I don't like on the other hand are clich
But seriously. Those small things that give games depth.
And games that I can alt-tab without crashing the game or my pc
Characters: Interesting back story and personalities that don't get in the way of gameplay. Valve's been doing a great job of this in their recent games: Left 4 Dead, Dota 2 and portal. No dialogs to cancel through, no drawn out cut scenes, no mandatory bios to look at, you get a deep sense of the game world and the people within it from off remarks as you play through the game. I also respect that these games don't pander to the audience by telling them how "amazing" they're doing at every turn. I usually find flattery in games to be so overboard it's offensive.
Environments:
A good game is one that doesn't have to rely on its environments to be fun. Mario 64 is a great example of a game that has such insanely polished 3d movement mechanics that a well made level is just the icing on the cake. Too often games rely on clever new content, big cut scenes, etc, to make progressing in them interesting when the game at its core is lacking. How much fun can you have in the game just learning the core movement and action mechanics? Do they feel organic and polished? Do they build on each other and open many options for play? Games with randomized landscapes fall into this catagory too, as it's what you can do with the randomized world that's exciting: Terraria, Minecraft, SPAZ are examples of such games.
Gameplay:
Inventive gameplay mechanics that throw progression curve balls and open up entirely new powerful builds. Need mana? You could go for a mana tap weapon, or maybe get that spell that converts life to mana, but you'd have to supliment that with a lifetap spell. Maybe the lifetap spell's Power is based on how fast you're currently moving so you get a charge ability that causes you to run very fast...
Really enjoy games that have crazy off the wall mechanics like this that cause you to think up cooky new builds. It's even better if obtaining many of these mechanics are randomized, so you can't fully plan it out, you gotta just find random items and theory craft the best possible setup for the tasks at hand!
I mainly go with the storyline, gameplay, items and scenes, so for:
Character:
Storyline, wardrobe, gear, weapons and some what animation cycles.
Environment:
Background, Main storyline, buildings and settlements according to the main storyline but this thing depends on what game it is. If its something like Dota or LOL, I wouldnt really care about the graphics or story or anything since there is mainly one map for dota and its the same game every time between Dire vs Radiant and vice versa. Same goes for league of legends.
Gameplay:
lol I dont get this question, are you talking about just ingame specification rotation builds or animation effects.