...but what makes a game great?
I'm curious as to what you guys find to be the best qualities in a game.

For me, it would have to be replay value and lots of "secret" things to optionally uncover.

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Genesis 22:2-5 - And God said unto Abraham "You must kill your son, Isaac." And Abraham said "What? I can't hear you! You'll have to speak into the microphone." And God said "Check, check, check, check. Jerry, can you pull the high end out. I'm getting some hiss up here."
Valuable Life Lesson: Frog + Potato Gun = Blindness
Catalog of Electronic Components - Complete IC data sheets
National Electrical Code® (NEC®) Online - Legal requirements for wiring projects.

Replay and a good story

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I'm not an actor. I just play one on TV.

a great story, great replayability (this especially means good multiplayer modes), good audio, good graphics

good audio is more important than most game developers realize... it's not as bad now as it was but it's still not good enough...

good examples of bad voice acting
Chaser
Chaser
Chaser
Chaser
oh and did i mention Chaser?

i'm serious... go download the single player demo and play it until you reach the cutscene (this means playing the entire demo) the voice acting is so horrible it's funny... so at least it's bad in an entertaining way

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LONG LIVE DREAMCAST!!!

I don't know, Soldier of Fortune 2 has pretty bad voice acting too.

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[="Mothers stop cooking take off your aprons; Fathers stop looking at every sports station; Take a second, and think of every poor nation." - Nas=]

Massassian since: March 12, 2001

I don't know. MegaMan 64's voice acting was pretty embarassing... as were the graphics. And the SFX. And replayability. And game controls. I can't remember the storyline too well, but it probably wasn't too great.
In fact, I was fairly disappointed with it.
Still, it's fun to run around and shoot things.

[This message has been edited by DogSRoOL (edited June 19, 2004).]

Guybrush Threepwood.

Alternately: Alchemy.

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[Blue Mink Bifocals !] [fsck -Rf /world/usr/] [<!-- kalimonster -->] [Capite Terram]
"If all those usefull inventions that are lyable to abuse, should therefore be concealed, there is not any Art or Science, which might be lawfully profest."
-John Wilkins, Mercury, or the Secret and Swift messenger, shewing how a man may with privacy and speed Communicate his thoughts to a Friend at any distance (London, 1641)
NPC.Interact::PressButton($'Submit');

Great story (a la Max Payne and Fallout), good replayability (a la Fallout 2) and customisability (UT2004).

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[ Massassiism ] [ Cynicism ] [ Fanaticism ]
Sell your soul for a cookie?

Please tell me what these games have in common apart from replay value:

JK
UT
HalfLife
Baldurs Gate Series
SHOGO
Monkey Island Series
Final Fantasy Series
the games that this site buzzes off... with sabers and editing
other cool games i like


replay value doesn't count, since i love these games but rarely complete them, i also love other similar games (such as MK island games also including many other lucasarts puzzlers in its category)... games are fun, but only once in a while does a game not seem like a shallow lump of turd.

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Drugs & Stupidity, Tons of it.

Good story with interesting characters that grab at you emotionally. Characters that you actually create a bond with game. Games like that are always the ones that I treasure the most. Zelda: OoT is a good example of this, as well as some other RPGs with good characters. Another element would have to be replay value, game play that doesn't become tedious and redundant (something you can just keep playing and never get bored of), and the feeling of "being there". The more it pulls you out of the real world, the better. There are many other elements as well but I can't really think of them right now.

-- SavageX

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"...and if you don't like that, then you need to be slugged in the face repeatedly, until my hands are soaked in blood. Have a nice day!"
http://geocities.com/savagex378

MML was the best mega man series ever. usux.


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"My god, it's full of stars!"

"True as toasted toads!"

Unpredictability, and realism. A game is supposed to suck you in. As soon as you think something like 'oh I saw that bridge collapse cominga mile off' or 'what the heck is with this AI? They keep running into each other', bam, the spell is broken.

Environment interactivity is becoming bigger and bigger these days, too. I guess this falls under the banner of 'multiple ways to progress through the game', but being able to use real-world objects that are usually inanimate in games is very cool.

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The Massassi-Map
There is no spoon.

For a more interesting question, what would be a game(s) that did virtually everything right?

For me, the first one would have to be Deus Ex I think. I love that game. The story is awesome. The gameplay could be a tad better in terms of the AI, but it's still good. The ability to choose your own way of completing objectives was awesome. I LOVE that game.

I'll always remember the first time I played through the first plot twist in the game. Lebadev(sp?) and Paul on the side of the NSF. I think I played that part at least 3 or 4 times over before I continued. The first time I killed Lebadev, then felt guilty over it. Seriously. I went to bed and kept thinking about it. I've never felt like that over a game before. That feeling prompted me to play it again the next day. This time I let him live, then Anna killed him. I still felt bad. So I played it one last time... This time I let him live, and killed Anna. I felt bad for killing her, but knew I'd done a damned good thing. I hadn't killed a man in cold blood. That changed the way I played the rest of the game.

Have I said I loved that game?

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Frogblast the Vent Core!

--End of Line--

[This message has been edited by phoenix_9286 (edited June 19, 2004).]

A lot of Raven games have bad voice acting but the game design etc. makes up for it.

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Ya know ive noticed that turning into a grown up just means you have more power to change your body into crap.
Light And Darkness|Remnant Temple Part A|A work in progress

NO it ruined the good name of megaman by making it cute and too colorful...

it's called Mega MAN not Mega Animeboy


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LONG LIVE DREAMCAST!!!

story
atmosphere
gameplay/replay value
cool-looking-ness

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Do you have stairs in your house?

A good, deep, involving story. And different paths to take, very non-linear game play.

freedom. definately freedom. like thief or gta3, where you can run around in an environment and do side missions or whatever. yeah, I guess that's what non-leniar gameplay means :x

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Do you have stairs in your house?

Root-Simplicity along with optional complex gameplay.

Take Final Fantasy games. I can just play, or I can customize almost everything. There's an actual desision when I find new items, or new characters, or whatnot, if I'm going to use it. In most games, you just equip the new, stronger armor. At the same time, I could just plain play the game, and still have fun. Sometimes I like to do one, or the other. I don't ALWAYS like to have to watch my stat bars like a madman. Same goes for the Zelda sereise. I CAN be a strategist, and get deep into the game, but if I feel like cutting some *****es, I can do that, too.

JediKirby

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-Proud Leader of the Minnessassian Council
<]-[ellequin> Nothing is quite as satisfying as placing a .177 lead pellet in between the eyes of a cat.
<]-[ellequin> I think I will leave it's corpse there, to warn all the other cats to keep out of my hibiscus patch

Live on, Adam.

I think good music, enough humor to make it fun, enough emotion to make it involving, and enough action to make it interesting.

I keep meaning to reinstall JK. I really would say that JK is one of the greatest games ever. I know the first 7 levels by heart almost. I got kinda bored in the middle and never really took the time to explore all the nooks and the final boss fight was actually hard even if you did know the tricks.

I think a game has to be hard enough to make it a challenge, yet easy enough for most people to get through it without rattling off 800 obscenities.

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free mp3 ~Jump - Young America

new album Between the Dim and the Dark available now

Far Cry makes a game good.

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"Ever since I was a boy, I have always kept your laws, now I want to follow you and join you in your noble cause. Jesus turned to him and said, 'Sell all you have give to the poor.' Rich young ruler hung his head, not to follow, walked instead." - Vanishing Lesson

Good sound and a living, breathing world.

I really love it when the world seems alive with a pantheon of gods, an anthropologic history of cultures to discover, a day and night cycle that affects the people (making them go to bed at night, get up in the morning and work the fields), changing weather, that my actions directly affect the world and the NPCs etc. I want to feel as if the world doesn't circle around the protagonist (at least not initially), that I'm just another spoke in the wheel, that there are people who have never heard of me. A world that fully establishes it's credibility (even though it doesn't have to be realistic) with memorable characters and a sense of being a plausible place.

For games with a horror element then it is absolutely essential for the former to work. Undying, System Shock 2 and the Thief series are some games with an INCREDIBLE and very subtle soundscape. They wouldn't be half as shiver-inducing or playable if you played them with the sound muted.

Games which bother with the latter are usually Action-Adventures or RPGs, and end up being my favourite games ever. Beyond Good & Evil (Best game this year that YOU never played), Outcast, Gothic 2, Morrowind, Anachronox and the Little Big Adventures all succeed in this respect and have become my most cherished games..

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Worth a million in prizes, baby.

How long you can play it without getting sick of it.

I bought Medal of Honor: Allied Assault the day it came out in January 2002, and I have played it almost every day since then. That makes it a great game in my book, truly the best.

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Restless 2

Sanctum de la Mort

Silent Storm as a game did everything right...the marketing department didn't, maybe they lacked the resources.

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If you can read this, you need better glasses.

Simplicity makes a game great. Most new games are good -- older, simpler, more enjoyable games are great.

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"The trick in life is not to find a way to make it perfect, it's to enjoy the good, strengthen your ability to deal with the bad, and keep your eyes looking forward to the good."
-Chelsea Brown

Yes deux ex was really awesome. I just love how you can do everything differently every time. You can keep replaying it and you can do it differently each time.

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/fluffle

Replayability. Star Wars Rebellion; opt to play good or bad, never-ending ways to finish the game. Jedi Academy, and Outcast; editable, downloadable levels both MP and SP, opt to play good or bad, etc. You know what I mean...

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I am a nobody, and nobody is perfect; therefore, I am perfect.

Everyday I beat my own previous record for number of consecutive days I've stayed alive.

[url="mailto:Bruintone@netscape.net"]mailto:Bruintone@netscape.net[/url]Bruintone@netscape.net</A>
Yahoo! Name : jedibruintone77

Penguins.

What's very important is a good ui. It has to be playable, you should easily find everything in the menus. That's especially important in strategic games.

I liked MOO3, and I played it a lot. But the ui was ugly. I liked it much more after having installed a nicer, custom UI. Than I downloaded some better explanations for the science stuff - improved it again.
Since I didn't have any other game than I played it, got used to it. But some weeks ago I tried Rebellion, and I was lost. Stupid symbols everywhere and I don't find my way. Since I only played it at a friend I didn't have the time to read the manual.

So a good UI and a good tutorial are essential!

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My levels
And the ultimative TinyCTF

pazarol a világ, én meg segitek neki

I found Single Player to be alright. It seemed to be really good in some places, and then drag at others. The thing that really disappointed me about that game was the ending. The ending just flat out sucked.

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Frogblast the Vent Core!

--End of Line--

*shrug* Shiney crystals and explosions? Oh wait... Well, it's got some neat battles... I think.

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"My god, it's full of stars!"

"True as toasted toads!"