I’ve done a lot of game reviews in my time here at The Nest, and in writing all these reviews, I began to look at my own reasoning for these scores. I asked myself things like, “Why do I like this? Is this too harsh? Can I really expand on this?” Needless to say, I’ve been thinking about it quite frequently. What I’ve come to is that I really need to sit down and explain what in games I think is good or bad and why.

First among the bad list is coercion and trivialization. When I’m playing a game, and it tells me to do some simple task that a chimp could do, it infuriates me. Worse yet is when I’m given a time frame to complete it in. When there’s a natural sense of urgency, that your game revolves around drama, like the Mass Effect series, then fine, timers are justified. But when it’s some arbitrary thing like, “Hey, I know you’re our leader and everything, but can you collect 300 widgets from across the street in sixty seconds? If you don’t, the universe will implode upon itself!” ..It’s just annoying.

Besides, video games are supposed to make us feel awesome and important. When you give us these trivial tasks after we’re built up to see our character’s awesomeness, it just completely ruins it. You can annihilate armies, but oh, your talents would be going to waste if you didn’t pick up some burgers.

Another thing usually done improperly is balancing enemies. In quite a few games, I’ve found myself wishing for a section where I would just get to slaughter hoards upon hoards of enemies, just to keep things challenging. That, or I’ll hate myself because of how entirely overpowered enemies are.

Games like Kingdoms of Amalur and Resident Evil 6 are strong offenders of this. RE6, for some reason or another, spreads zombies out quite a lot, defeating the entire point of them. J’avos (the other main enemy in the game) are on the other end though, as they have guns, and for some reason or another, annoyingly appear in groups, creating what amounts to firing squads. KoA, however, suffers more from the weak enemies’ perspective.  While enemies usually appear in groups, they are readily dispatched. Being out numbered seven to one isn’t a problem so much as a nuisance when you can level the area around you with lightning and meteors.

Dark Souls, though, is a perfect example of how combat should be. Enemies must be addressed one at a time, lest you risk being outflanked, and excluding bosses, you shouldn’t get hit unless you’re careless. Besides, no matter how strong you are, every time you beat the game, the enemies get stronger too. So even though you may be stronger, you might fail more often than before, but it always feels like it’s your fault, because it’s done right.

Lastly on the list of horrible things games can do is a linear design in 3D games. This is the bane of interest. For those of you who don’t know, linear game design is just going from point A to point B, wash, rinse, and repeat. RAGE in particular is guilty of this. It’s not a bad game, but it’s quite often more dull than watching paint dry. About 95% of the game is spent either getting a task, doing a task, turning in a task, or racing, and you begin to realize this about a quarter of the way in. As you can imagine, it’s quite tedious.

It’s compounded even more so when you’re doing a “Reverse Level,” where you start where you ended last time and the path is altered. If you’re going to put us in one directional rat mazes, at least make them look different. Don’t  just flip them over and call it a day. But as of now, I’ve only talked about the bad things done in games. There’s plenty of things that games can do quite well, too.

Most games have that unique dynamic that other mediums like books or movies don’t have. They don’t “unfold” the same way twice, every time is different, even if the story overall is the same. For example, Skyrim can play out in literally millions of different ways, depending on what race you choose, your character build, being “good” or “evil,” and so on.

An even better example is the current rise of multiplayer in games. You can play the same game mode, with the same people on the same map, hundreds of times, and they will all be unique. Game developers know this, which is why the rise of multiplayer even began. They know that people don’t want to play the same game more than ten times through (excluding certain games), and so focus in on this aspect well.

Another thing done well in games is atmosphere. It sets the stage for everything, emotion, mood, urgency, sympathy. If I’m walking alone in dark, abandoned ruins, I don’t want to hear some guy banging on drums. I want to hear chanting hoards, hissing violins, a sole piano in the background. Game designers know this, and it is usually done fantastically.

Mass Effect in particular has this down. All the time I’m playing, I feel the mood, the gravity of the situation, the burden of Commander Shepard. When Shepard and his crew are about to finish the fight, you know it’s coming. The music starts out slowly, but as you progress, it changes. It becomes uplifting, inspiring, and, dare I say, epic. You feel as if you can actually win the fight before you, odds be darned! This brings me to my final, and most important point in this article.

Immersion is a must in almost any game. When I boot up Skyrim, the first thing I see is a sprawling world, filled with a unique and diverse people. These people are heroes and villains, noble and evil, each in their own way. When I load up Mass Effect, I see a galaxy at siege, threatened by a force that is incomprehensibly powerful. The people are afraid and worried, not knowing if this may be their or their loved ones final hours. What they do know that they are being hunted to extinction and that their chances of survival are slim to none. When I boot up The Walking Dead (the game series), I see a people who are stressed and fearful. They’re tired and scared, their lives are busy spent living day by day, just trying to keep going on while the world around them is in ruins. They don’t know if their next day will be their rescue or their death.

In all of these games, one thing is common among them: I believe. I believe that these people could be real, that the people act and talk like actual people would in the same situation. I sympathize, despise, love, and hate, all at once. The game becomes like life, it isn’t just good or evil I’m dealing with, it’s all the shades of gray in between. Is is wrong to let someone die to ensure the survival of all, or will you risk everyone’s life to save one person? It’s decisions like these that make games great, ones where you sit there, wondering if you did the right thing or not. The perfect exemplar of this is the aforementioned Walking Dead. When you know that people will die, that you can’t save everyone, it’s emotionally brutal. As much as you want to, you’re only human, but you’re still haunted by the idea that you, not your character, you, condemned them to die. And as you watch them get killed before you, you think, “I did that, I am responsible for this.”

But at the end of the day, you have to move on, but you now walk with this guilt bearing down upon you. You can try and say that this is just a game, and that these people don’t exist…and yet you still feel this lingering remorse.

That is what makes a game truly great.