What's most important to you in a game? Graphics/Sound/MP etc

Have fun playing it - 11

multiplayer is almost never important to me.

Graphics matter, but only to a point. If it doesn’t make me cry, the graphics are probably OK. I need to be able to distinguish things in the world

Sound-I notice it if it is bad. Otherwise, I don’t notice much, even though they make the experience much better I’m sure.

gameplay- I like games that reward you often, as a rule. I like a game that starts simple and adds complexity as you go along, so that you never feel overwhelmed but you do feel that you eventually have all sorts of things to do and tweak. Gameplay is the single most important feature, obviously, but it’s pretty hard to say what makes it good or bad. Coherence, consistency, new things to do all the time. It doesn’t have to be original for me, just polished.

Numerically:

Gameplay - 10
Control - 9
Replayability - 8
Story - 5
Sound/Music - 3
Multiplayer - 2
Graphics - 1

Fun.

(doh, unbongwah beat me to it.)

Numerically:

Control/Gameplay - 10
Story - 9
Replayability - 4
Sound/Music - 5
Multiplayer - 2
Graphics - 7*

I’m happy with any game that has an engaging, solid story; fun, precise gameplay; little replayability; about average music (anything below 5, I’d consider a distraction to the game, such as heavy metal tracks); and scant or no multiplayer options.

Examples: Beyond Good and Evil, Psychonauts, Zelda, Deus Ex, System Shock 2

It seems that Indigo Propechy is cut from that same mold, so I’m going to give that a shot soon.

Lastly, graphics do factor in. But they don’t have to be cutting edge for me. They just need to meet a certain bar (namely slightly better than average).

This thread is rife with grade inflation.

Since I only buy about 3-5 games a year, the only thing that really matters to me is replay value - but for me that means it must have multiplayer. Good music is a plus though.

None of those things matter in a game as much as the experience; all of those can affect the experience, but none of them individually represent it.

My importance scale is neither linear, nor sequential.

For example, it starts with graphics. Graphics must meet a minimum requirement where what’s on screen is a decent representation of what it is. Then next comes sound. Good sound is required. Excellent sound can save an otherwise crappy game (especially the music), whereas bad sound can sink an otherwise good game. So sound’s importance can be disproportionate. After that comes gameplay and story. Gameplay is by far the most important. A truly shitty game can never be saved by anything. Yet, the greatest gameplay in the world cannot make me enjoy a game that doesn’t meet minimal graphics requirements. ie: Nethack. I mix story in with gameplay because a lot of game types sort of substitute story for gameplay, and that’s cool, as long as it’s well done.

These three are then followed by difficulty. I don’t want games to be a full time job. I don’t want to have to repeat anything more than three or four times, and if I have to, I want it to be because I totally fucked up or did something stupid, rather than just “not being good enough”. I also don’t want to have to fix an overly difficult game by cheating or using a slider which then makes it unnaturally easy. I play a game at the default difficulty, and that’s what I judge the game on.

After that comes just about everything else. I don’t care about multiplayer unless it’s multiplayer only, in which case the netcode has to not suck. I don’t give a shit about replayability as I rarely finish games in any case.

So I guess what I’m saying is, depends on the game.

Ordered 1-6, in order of importance to me:

1 (tie) Gameplay
1 (tie) Story
1 (tie) Replayability

All of these are important. Which is the most important depends on what the developer does with them.

4 Graphics
5 Sound and Music (Music would be lower if it were separate)
6 Multiplayer

since we can make our ouw categories, let me add atmosphere. The best sound and graphics in the world are not guranteed to come together to make an interesting world.

Seriously, if I played a game without atmosphere…I’d probably suffocate.

ba-dum-bump.

I don’t really have a rating for games, but my enjoyment of books depends on these factors:

Cover art - 7
Forward - 4
Picture of the author - 8
Typesetting - 10
Binding - 8
Quality of paper - 2
Content - 6

-Scott-

Gameplay is the most important aspect of any game.

Everything else doesn’t work unless a game is fun.

Replayability is part of gameplay.

Dominions 2 is a good example. Great gameplay, less that stellar graphics, interface a bit clunkey, but it’s a really fun game.

Yeah, this is ultimately a pointless question for me, too. I just downloaded the new TOAW and I have completely different design expectations of it than I have for Rise of Legends or Painkiller.

“Gameplay” is just some nebulous term that I have never liked because the best games make the graphics part of the game play; visual cues here and there that serve as both interface and game mechanics. “Gameplay” is just a catch all for all the stuff that isn’t graphics or sound or interface.

I will say that sound is a low priority for me because I usually listen to other music when I play.

It’s like asking what’s most important in a song: refrain, guitar solo, rhyming or use of the C chord.

Troy

There’s a great section in the book Blink where the author discusses speed dating. Suffice it to say that what people think they want doesn’t match what they actually do. I suspect that this is true of games as well.

I never replay games. Does that mean that none of the games I play have any gameplay?

The only quality a game has to have for me is that when I am playing the rest of the world drops away into the abyss. People talk to me and I grunt and nod. The time of the day, weather outside, and state of my bowels are all things to which I become oblvious. A game has to pull a whole lotta shit off well to do that for me. It is too difficult to separate, on the rare occasion a game succeeds, the aspects that are working in conjunction with one another to make the magic formula.

Or I could just answer gameplay.

Or this post is BS and I will edit it to just say “7,000th post, bitches!”

Graphics and sound need to be up to decent standards, but gameplay mechanics (and the related issue of AI) are what really matter.

I still play MOO (and to a lesser extent MOO2) on a regular basis. The graphics are old but completely adequate, they do what they need to do clearly and nicely (other old game that had to render more than just a field of starts don’t hold up as well, like the original RRT, which I played last only a few years ago). The game mechanics are what it is all about, and even though in some ways the mechanics and AI are flawed, they are good enough so that I always know I’ll enjoy myself in a game. If the game mechanics are conducive to fun, it’s likely going to be a good game.