It depends more on the experience: what a game makes me feel as I play it. I can analyze all day, but in the end, how I feel playing a game is often more important than a technical appraisal of the game.
Time-losing addiction - My first real experience with this was the original Warlords. I played 8 hours straight. I am extremely vulnerable to Just One More Turn syndrome when playing turn-based strategies: the Civilization games, Alpha Centauri, the Heroes of Might and Magic Series... The king of this for me has to be Civilization IV (I haven't played V yet). I once played that game for a full day without eating or sleeping. Honorable mention: Almost any Bioware RPG. (Back in September, I spent about a week staying up till five in the morning playing Dragon Age: Origins.)
Tightly-focused viscerality (I don't think that's a word, tho') - Crusader: No Remorse and No Regret. God, I hate that EA killed the sequel to those games, and it happened like ten years ago. I've rarely played a game so uncompromising in portraying what it wanted to portray--that being, a bloody revolution.
Fanboy thrill - Transformers: War For Cybertron. I have never seen a game that made me feel as appreciated as a fan as that game's single-player experience. And that was with the PC version!
Full-world immersion - This one is a toss-up. On the one hand, while I still love it, Deus Ex doesn't do this to me anymore, even though it did until about 2005. On the other, GTA IV has numerous flaws, but what can you say about a game where a viable play style is to ignore the story and just live in New York City, driving around, going to stores and restaurants, taking friends out to bars and having conversations with them, and listening the radio?
Satisfying accidents - After I beat Morrowind, I went back to the initial town, and found myself standing on the docks where I entered the game world as the sun set. Beautiful.
Text adventure game - Planescape: Torment. (I keed! But that game was a unique experience; I can't classify it as anything else.)
The Game - The one that makes me think, this is what video games are meant to be. This is why video games were invented. This is the pure, platonic ideal of Game...
TIE Fighter. Back when Lucasarts hadn't gone off their fucking nut. Back when you could say "I'm a Star Wars fan" without having to qualify the statement. Back before the Internet allowed all the closet fascists to come out and say, "Yeah, I think the Imperials were the real good guys in Star Wars"...you had this masterpiece. Take everything good about X-Wing, take out all the bad, and then have you fly as the "bad guys"...but do things you never considered the bad guys doing but which make perfect sense. Fighting pirates, raiders, traitors, political dissidents who think the Rebels need to commit more atrocities, flying as Darth Vader's wing, saving the fucking Emperor...I personally think this game gave rise to have the Imperial sympathizers on the interwebs.
Time-losing addiction - My first real experience with this was the original Warlords. I played 8 hours straight. I am extremely vulnerable to Just One More Turn syndrome when playing turn-based strategies: the Civilization games, Alpha Centauri, the Heroes of Might and Magic Series... The king of this for me has to be Civilization IV (I haven't played V yet). I once played that game for a full day without eating or sleeping. Honorable mention: Almost any Bioware RPG. (Back in September, I spent about a week staying up till five in the morning playing Dragon Age: Origins.)
Tightly-focused viscerality (I don't think that's a word, tho') - Crusader: No Remorse and No Regret. God, I hate that EA killed the sequel to those games, and it happened like ten years ago. I've rarely played a game so uncompromising in portraying what it wanted to portray--that being, a bloody revolution.
Fanboy thrill - Transformers: War For Cybertron. I have never seen a game that made me feel as appreciated as a fan as that game's single-player experience. And that was with the PC version!
Full-world immersion - This one is a toss-up. On the one hand, while I still love it, Deus Ex doesn't do this to me anymore, even though it did until about 2005. On the other, GTA IV has numerous flaws, but what can you say about a game where a viable play style is to ignore the story and just live in New York City, driving around, going to stores and restaurants, taking friends out to bars and having conversations with them, and listening the radio?
Satisfying accidents - After I beat Morrowind, I went back to the initial town, and found myself standing on the docks where I entered the game world as the sun set. Beautiful.
Text adventure game - Planescape: Torment. (I keed! But that game was a unique experience; I can't classify it as anything else.)
The Game - The one that makes me think, this is what video games are meant to be. This is why video games were invented. This is the pure, platonic ideal of Game...
TIE Fighter. Back when Lucasarts hadn't gone off their fucking nut. Back when you could say "I'm a Star Wars fan" without having to qualify the statement. Back before the Internet allowed all the closet fascists to come out and say, "Yeah, I think the Imperials were the real good guys in Star Wars"...you had this masterpiece. Take everything good about X-Wing, take out all the bad, and then have you fly as the "bad guys"...but do things you never considered the bad guys doing but which make perfect sense. Fighting pirates, raiders, traitors, political dissidents who think the Rebels need to commit more atrocities, flying as Darth Vader's wing, saving the fucking Emperor...I personally think this game gave rise to have the Imperial sympathizers on the interwebs.
