What makes a truly brilliant game, brilliant?

[Vindekarr]

We all have favorites, but even then I can name a few games Ive played that simply blew me away. For while "best games ever" has existed, but this is more a discussion than a top ten. what makes a true video gaming masterpiece so good?

 

Well from my experience it can come in all sorts of ways. When I was 11, I played an australian made atari/melbourne house made game of Transformers on the then relatively new PS2, I was just a kid, but I remember this game absolutely blew me away with its depth and quality, and replay value. Despite having been given a terrible premise, melbourne house had done everything in their power to make it the best game possible and I still remember it fondly as a truly great shooter. the gunplay was a bit off, and the timing based melee was even worse, but the graphics were, even back then, on par with an early xbox 360 title, especialy for shaders and particle, the levels were huge and mostly nonlinear, and spread throughout them were all sorts of equipment items. but best of all the equipment was WORTH wandering off to collect, jetpacks, invisibility, humungous plasma cannons, and a novelty tractor beam for playing sick "living pinjata" games, all of these could only be won by exploring, normal gameplay armed you well enough to win, but this was the first game I'd played that actualy rewarded either a fast playthrough or exploration equally and fairly. To cap it off it had a brilliant music track, great replay value with the two dificulties having diferent kit drops and placement. And some memorable levels, setpiece cutscenes, great voice acting and cgi, and in depth gear selection.

 

Another that blew me away somewhat more recently was Dawn Of War II's expansion, Chaos Rising. You play as a Space Marine, a superhuman soldier sworn to defend the Empire against all possible threats through obliterating all alien life in the galaxy. But in chaos rising you get put against renegade Space Marines, and actualy get the choice of going evil. Ive not finished this as a chaos. But you get real moral choice like few other games. The choices have meaning, all squads in the RPG like campaign have a "corruption" stat that increases as they perform selfish, base, violent acts. Mid game, your most corrupt squad goes rogue and you are forced to kill one of your own best soldier, usualy who fought with you all the way through the last game. If you want to be a good-doer, then you have to consistantly do good, and at times perform mad "juggling act" objectives or race against a very short timer in order to protect allies, or civilians. Evil is gratifyingly, well, EVIL, in the form of selfish choices, bloodlust, random violence, psychoses and ruthlessness, rewarding you with some ghastly-yet-adictive kit like "extruciatus claws" that leave the target writhing in agony, or a staff that makes the enemy explode in a shower of blood in tribute to Khorne the blood god. the rest of the game is just as good, a superb RTS multiplayer, a fun and addictive co-op campaign and a very good instant action mode fill out the list. Its also extremely true to 40K lore, has excellent voice acting, superb graphics and some great music.

[Demetori]

I remember seeing my brothers friend play a Transformers game that looked really, really good and I wanted to play it so bad. I wonder if it's the same game you were talking about.

 

 

I'm having trouble remembering the games, but I do know that I've played some truly amazing games.

Even though Zelda isn't a favourite series, and I've never really became a fan, I honestly love those games, OOT and MM are brilliant, but I think since those games scared me and such when I was little (even though I was awed by it, and at one point the music and a part of MM made me cry my eyes out) I haven't gotten into them. I'd really love to play them again, and try to get into them, since I love it.

[Surenas]

If ye love to play a certain game at the age 15 and still with 23, and perhaps even beyond thy prime of life, well, that's probably because of the brilliance behind the brilliant Morrowind boxing...

 

http://www.abload.de/img/anne9hol.gif

[ub3rman123]

Just managed to get a copy of Spyro: Ripto's Rage after it became a collectible. What blew me away was the sheer creativity you don't see in games anymore. It was just packed with hilarity at every turn, and it was easy enough for me to play since I'm terrible at video games.

 

Really, rescue a frozen caveman and little hearts come out of his head, then he gets turned back into an iceblock by a wizard.

 

Also, the level design is a major part of the brilliance factor. Spyro's levels seem to reward you for exploring every nook and cranny for secrets. I like that.

[XanAlderon]

Morrowind was the first game I ever played where you could just walk off and do whatever. It really set of my addiction to the sandbox RPG genre.

[Sinophile]

As a long-time consumer of video games, I would speculate that one or both things make a game "brilliant". The first is challenging the player in a way that they like to be challenged, or haven't been challenged before. Sometimes this can be as simple as trying to stay awake through a two hour cutscene. I believe the earliest example is Tetris. Tetris has no storyline,and in most of it's carnations, has only the simplest of graphics. The object of the game is simple, try to stack things and make straight lines. Tetris itself is the best-selling video game in existence, and even has a whole company just based on this one game.

As for storyline, I would like to cite Donkey Kong. The gameplay was hardly innovative, even for it's time. I mean come on, jumping over a barrel? The story was somewhat complex for the time(I think the closest was space invaders). You had a love triangle between a gorilla, a carpenter, and a princess.

 

If ye love to play a certain game at the age 15 and still with 23, and perhaps even beyond thy prime of life, well, that's probably because of the brilliance behind the brilliant Morrowind boxing...

from most gamers I've met, whatever games they've played between the ages of 13 and 19, will be the games they will be most nostalgic about. In my case, Xenosaga, Metal Gear, and Neverwinter Nights. I've played games well before I was a teen, and long after, but it seems all my favorite games were released 2001-2007.

[brokenergy]

Well, I have been playing video games since I was five years old and to me what makes games brilliant is that they either have a great story, great characters, easy to understand system and most of all they should be fun. Lets face it people don't want to spend three hours getting through the prologue only to find out that you need 200 hours more to finish the game, it will end up being tedious and unimaginative. Bethesda, BioWare, Valve, these are the drivers of innovation in the modern gaming industry as all their games improve from past gaming protocols. Bethesda brings on the adventures that we all want and the power to make our own (examples? TES series), BioWare's stories and unforgettable characters engages the audience and is the leader in RPG (examples? Look at ME, DA and BG series and as well as JE) and Valve's games are known for their dabble in science and their quirkiness (examples? All of them).

 

These developer are popular is because they bring fun to gaming and is hard for new and upcoming developers to recreate that without learning a thing or two from the leaders in this industry. Look at The Witcher and how well it's doing, for their first game from the developers it is good and I'm sure that they have learned a couple of lesson from their mistakes and are going to give users a better experience in The Witcher 2. To round this little talk off so I could go to bed, games mostly have to be innovative and different to stand out and with those four points above from the beginning of this little wall of text I can say that it is these things that makes a brilliant game.

[Vindekarr]

I know what you are saying.

 

Ive always been into cars and motorpsort, virtual and otherwise. And Ive played a lot of racing games and sims over the years, but of all of those, Project Gotham, 4X4 evo 2, Need For Speed hot pursuit 2, and Burnout are among my all time favorites.

 

These were some of the first games I ever played, and some of them would bore the brains out of most poeople today. But I'd happily replay any of them now, with the exception of Evo, only because it took a few months to finish. Simple fact was they were FUN. Evo had enormous customisation and a heavy emphasis on the technology of the vehicles. Tuning wasnt new, but in 2002, essentialy building your own car, was. You would often spend an hour buying parts, fitting, tweaking and then 5 minutes racing, it was boring if you didnt like racing much. But if you wanted a good sim, this REALLY delivered, 10 out of 10 for being so outstandingly hardcore.

 

Project Gotham and Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 were another two I adore, they did absolutely nothing new, with only a few cars. a few tracks, and no customisation or tuning. But hot damn were they ever fun. A huge part of Project Gotham was Kudos challenge, in this mode you simply had a regular race track around a city, and had to earn as many style points as you could. Sounds simple, but it was absolutly addictive fun, with all sorts of possible stratergies and plans, but at heart it was just having fun. Likewise for HP2. It only had 3 locations and a handfull of cars, but they were all awesome cars and the tracks were all brilliant, and fun, and I had many a fun day playing this, either fleeing the ever present lamborghini driving cops, or playing as them.

 

One unsung hero nobody ever remember however, who's flag Im going to wave here is a little THQ game that I played as a kid.

 

Hot Wheels: velocity X, was crass, violent, and barbaric, but actualy really well made.

 

I may have been a young kid at the time, but this little ps2 oddity I vividly remember for its beautiful graphics(now and back then), imaginative and stylised worlds, great soundscape(for then) and huge funfactor and depth. I can only guess, now aged 19, and an indi dev in my own right, that the devs for this project must have groaned alloud when they were told to make a hotwheels game for kids. But that didnt stop them pulling out all the stops. The graphics, for their age, were mind blowing. The world itself was spectacular, with tracks being 3-D with verticle and wall mounted alternate routes, and a full open world version to explore freely across a large variety of maps.

 

 

This game isnt an icon or a legend, its just a kids game I played a decade ago. But the fact that the devs didnt just assume kids couldnt tell trash from quality and turen out rubbish. The fact that they really tried to equal adult games for atleast gameplay and world really puts it up here with the others for me.

[Sinophile]

Lets face it people don't want to spend three hours getting through the prologue only to find out that you need 200 hours more to finish the game, it will end up being tedious and unimaginative

Oh really, what do you think half of all MMORPGs are about? There are plenty of games I've spent well over a hundred hours doing tedious tasks.

[brokenergy]

That's why I don't play MMORPGs, 200 hrs completing tedious tasks. :tongue: