There are only two things that are critical for me in a game:

Storyline – something that drives me to play through. I’ll play through most games until the main storyline is complete and then I’m done. Fallout 3 may have a lot of side quests to play, but if I missed any after the main quest is over I’m not going to feel driven to go back and play them. I need to feel that the narrative is driving me on. Poor gameplay isn’t saved by good narrative and good gameplay is empty without good narrative. Far Cry 2 (as an example) was just too open storyline wise and too disconnected with travel and difficulty to feel coherent. I never even completed the first main area before selling my copy.

Pure Gameplay – good arcade racers, and twitch games like Mutant Storm/Geometry Wars have a simple mechanic I can pick up and play easily. These games always have a place in my collection and I can keep going back to them year after year. Roguelikes fit into this category too.

Looking at the games I play, I’d say by empirical observation that what I look for is an online multiplayer game made by Valve. Aside from that, my tastes tend to the FPS genre, but the ones with decent story (making some kind of sense, at least by in-game logic, is also a must) rather than just insipid run ‘n gun affairs. Anything Half-Life is a win (yay Valve)

I started playing Bioshock recently… the gameplay was fun, but I honestly can’t figure our what’s supposed to be motivating the character – survive a plane crash in the middle of the ocean and swim to a nearby lighthouse, fine, but then to randomly climb into a bathysphere and plunge into the depths of the oceans? The only reason I had for doing that was because there was nothing else to do apart from swim around in the ocean some more, and the character has even less reason. He then proceeds to take the whole underwater city and mutant “splicers” thing in his stride, jam every needle he finds into his arm (no indication of what that was going to do before it happened) and generally have no reaction whatsoever to the situation beyond getting on with tasks he has no reason to care about.

That being said it is fun to play… despite making no sense. Might play some more eventually, but I might just go happily back to being spoiled by Valve with their free DLC, frequent updates and awesomely done Half-Lifes (might try and do the one-bullet thing in Episode 1… the PC version doesn’t have achievements, but I could try it anyway. Already did the gnome achievement in Ep2 by the way, so yknow, bask in my awesomeness and stuff). That or continue waiting for Episode 3.

I really enjoyed the Episode 2 final battle. It took me a while to complete even on Easy mode when I kept trying to battle the hunters conventionally with ammo instead of using the car or gravgun and logs, but for me it was one of the most intense game experiences I’ve ever had. It was massively tense and blisteringly challenging at times, with the siren going off and the strides feet from destroying the rocket when I made them foom.

I don’t understand what is so innovative in the latest PoP auto-rescue. If I remember what I read about it right, if you fail you have to try again a short series of jumps or start the boss at full or half health. Seems a lot like (very numerous) checkpoints to me, except the loading screen is actually hidden by a scene in which the girl saves you. For that matter, I’d much rather my own anti-death mechanism present in most PC games : quicksaves. At least my character can die, even though I won’t let him (and not some NPC).

FarCry is insanely hard, if you try to play it like a basic FPS. Believe me, I tried : even on easy you get slaughtered. I could only survive the campaign by using stealth tactics and sniping as much as possible. It’s closer to an infiltration and stealth game as far as mechanics goes, it’s not another Doom-like where circle strafing can get you out of anything. If an enemy squad spots you, you don’t fight them off, you run in the jungle and try to lose them, then pick them off in the shadows one by one. It takes time to lose the reflexes acquired on other games, but once set on playing this way it’s much easier and quite refreshing.

Anyway, I play some games for the story (adventure games, rpgs), and some others for the gameplay (rhythm games, puzzle games). What I look for is different in either case. If the story is interesting, I usually don’t like too challenging a gameplay because it’s preventing me from advancing the plot, which is frustrating as I want to see more. If there’s nothing but the gameplay (or a minimal cliche plot), it’s better if it’s challenging to keep me interested.

I’m with IceBrain here. I don’t mind a little DIAS. Once you get over that hurdle, it’s quite a great feeling! :P I do enjoy the GTA series, despite its shortcomings. Of course, like IceBrain says, if a game makes you take 40 tries, that is a little too much and it’s going on the to-be-resold list.

My bro’s a little like yours, I would expect. He can go on and on at one game for a long time, honing his skills, while I will get bored and switch to another, and then feel a little nostalgic and then go back and have another go. Which explains my on-again-off-again relationship with WoW.

I agree with you on Far Cry. I played it before and stopped just when the aliens started showing up. Cos I keep running out of ammo and dying each time they jumped out at you. Frustrating.

How about Far Cry 2? I’ve only recently bought that game, and somehow, you couldn’t die. Or to put it in a more correct term, won’t die if your in-game buddy was still alive to “rescue” you each time you run out of health. Far Cry 2 also has that open-world concept similar to Morrowind or Oblivion, where you can go wherever you wish. The only downside I’ve been having is that the world can get pretty sparse for an FPS, and driving can be a real bitch at times. The story is like a P-type doped semiconductor though; it’s full of holes.

@Steve: I love going nuts in games too! I have a particular savegame of GTA3:SA that I love, because in that game, I have used all my money to buy a shitload of weapons, and each time I fire it up, I try to get my wanted rating to the highest and see how long I could survive. :D

I used to love games like Morrowind, but now prefer casual games I can play for a bit, then not play for days and days, then pick up where I left off. I now HATE games that require me to study all of the possibilites and combinations of gear (WoW, or any MMORPG), or that have an instruction manual that reads like a university text book (Civilization, Sins of a Solar Empire).

My favorite game last year…World of Goo. FPSs are fun too, when I can go into God Mode and unlimited ammo and all gear and just go nuts.

BTW: I HATE, HATE, HATE XBox 360. What a stupid interface to actually PLAY a game. You have to create a Profile, then load that profile, then play that profile, but if you want to start a new game with that Profile, you sorta can’t (Resident Evil 5) because you have all the weapons…gah. Stupid. Heaven help you if you want to play two players. What the hell happened to “play the game, save the game, restart the game, load save game, continue…”. My son and I were playing RE5, he started a solo game, but when we went back to our game, he had all the weapons from his solo game. Very annoying.

Oh…and achievements are fucking annoying. Talk about pandering to the moron set. OOoo…I have a shiny thing because I did this thing in this amount of time. Newsflash: doesn’t make your penis any bigger, nor does it make you more sexy to the ladies.

There…rant over…

Well, I enjoy some DIAS: Metal Slug, for example, is great, in small doses. I usually play once every two or three days and I always start from the beginning, trying to see how far I can get with only 2 coins. I’m almost at the final boss!

For me a game must provide some challenge, I hate games were you just play-through, it just feels an empty experience, even with a good story.

But frustration has to be kept to a minimum: I’m not playing 40 times the same level to get it right, but that never happened to me on games like Call of Duty or GTA, usually I get it on the third or fourth time, especially as you can adjust the difficulty.

A great game for me is Max Payne 2 – You have a good (challenging) shooter with an interesting story (with great moments like the dream levels).