Dull.
Look at it this way... Let's start with a well-defined game, like Golf or Soccer and start to add features, bend the rules, be creative...
Oh yes, and as you say, at any point the consequences of your actions are reversible due to the Quicksave thingy. Essentially, sport with UNDO.
Now, you should immediately see the problem. Even if all the other participants in the game are simulated (so you are not worried about the game of nuGolf being unfair) and the spectator's aren't a concern (as, normally, the entertainment derived from a game of Soccer depends on anticipation of habituated scenarios with likely outcomes and the knowledge of irreversible consequences; remember all the fuss about the hand of God when Maradona scored a goal with his hand and the referee allowed the violation of the game rules?), then the constraints that make a sport challenging to 'work within' are incrementally unbalanced and abolished and you end up not liking the result even if you won.
Real life has far fewer well-defined constraints compared to Sport. It is also less fun because it is unbalanced, unfair, biased to those who have been playing longer than you, etc. It is like a game of Soccer where your team only gets to start playing at half-time, only worse.
Videogames that are based within a non-sport setting are better when they approach the construction of the "space of possibilities" (i.e. all possible games that can be played with that system of rules, constrained level-design, reactive AI behaviours, etc.) almost as if they were making a fun spectator sport.
Personally, I don't like games that have strong narratives and linear maps (usually because they contain a lot of scripted game events that you are impressed by the first time and then find out are exactly the same when you come to replay it - something I find is not acceptable given the cost of the game... it would have to be closer to the cost of a movie rental for me to feel I hadn't been swindled). Open worlds do not necessarily have multiple-choice next missions. Oblivion gets a lot right, but its core combat dynamic is disappointingly unskillful. It would be nice for there to be a game with a mix of RPG grind and SoulCaliber skill:
Even so, I was rather bored by Oblivion - I suppose I was spoilt by having too many
unquantifiable choices, whose effects may or may not seriously effect my character, but would generally take a while to have an impact.
Not so with Halo. Jaime Griesemer concentrated on creating short spats of dramatic gameplay interspersed by rests: "30 seconds of fun". Some people complain that the regenerating shield (which was far tougher, but slower to regenerate in Halo: Combat Evolved compared to the sequels) was just there to make the game noob-friendly; real FPS players want 'one-hit kills'... However, I think they are missing the point and that the shield made you braver (and more like the heroic character you were playing), more confident, more likely to experiment as that would involve taking chances (exploring the rich possibility space that had been built into the game's rules).
When you deconstruct Halo from the point of view of what you can do (controls, weapons, vehicles, etc.) and what you can do that to, the set of elements is quite small. However, everything is interrelated (often in subtle ways - e.g. an overcharged plasma pistol can stop a Warthog jeep from running you over...Grunts panic when their Elite commander is killed...) and the game gives you plenty of visual and aural feedback as to the current state of the system. Within that 30 seconds there is almost too much to consider (the fighter pilot problem) and threats have to be prioritized, with only the best players being able to 'see ahead' during combat. This is when the forced rests become essential to the fabric of the game. With your shield depleted by the last assault you are forced into cover whilst you wait for it to recharge, thus giving you thinking time to assimilate the current state of the battlefield and plan short-term tactics and long-term strategy.
http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/15-09/ff_halo?currentPage=all
There really is a lot more to game design than you imply.
If someone spent 30 years building a perfect VR Universe (with UNDO), the best chance of having fun in it would be finding a virtual games console and playing a well-balanced game on it.
