The Triage of Gaming

Yet another McJobless thread...he should really get a job and stop posting threads...

The "Games I Hate/Dislike with High Metacritic Score" topic brought up something I remember looking at in a survey I did with 200 responses.

In games development, there's 3(4) kind of forces that are all tugging on each other, and many times at the end of the day you need to prioritise one so you're not trying to balance too much. Now, some games can get all 3 perfect, others can't even get one. The forces are:

• Gameplay
• Story
• Art (And Graphics could play into this if you really want to analyse)

So, for you guys, what do you think is the most important/what do you enjoy most in a game?

Personally, I enjoy story, and that's mainly why I can enjoy games like point and clicks, Bioshock, Spec Ops: The Line, Dead Space, Mass Effect, Heavy Rain and onwards. A powerful story motivates and drives me. I feel as though gameplay gets stale after a while always, and that's especially why I really don't like multiplayer. I really value a good art style (unique over realistic), and yes a "game" needs some form of interactivity, but ultimately I play games to experience the atmosphere and story of the world over just trying to "play the game".

For me, I find that hard games don't have any real value to them. Yeah, you feel somewhat accomplished when you beat one challenge, but eventually it becomes masochistic (another reason I stopped playing multiplayer). I'm poor at speed-runs, and I also think it's a bad way to go into a game (yes, speed-run on your second go, but experience it the way the devs intended on your first). Also, I'm not really scared by scary games, I don't jump or scream or cry or feel anything as soon as the game plays a stinger and a monster appears, and I feel it'd be stupid to play a game with the intent of trying to scare yourself.