Trailer praising/stomping thread

[KingAl]

I think it's better to view media as a multi-dimensional spectrum - interactivity, story, audio etc. can all make their own valid contributions to the quality of the end product, and there can be variable emphasis on each - that is, our definition of 'game' is too narrow, and only really focuses on one of many factors which contribute to the end product. For example I've already raised Dreamfall, which has a brilliant storyline, and where it was praised by some critics, others panned it for the minimal level of actual gameplay involved - at parts, it was more an interactive movie than anything else.
That is, you can have a bloody good game which relies primarily on one aspect of the medium other than interactivity (though in the process you may be blurring the definition of 'game') , and equally (and in my opinion, ideally) you can have games in which there is interplay between these aspects - i.e. they rely on eachother: for example, in the case of Phoenix Wright (and most adventure games), the gameplay is the storyline (in that your actions directly contribute to its progression, and the 'aim' is essentially to progress the storyline), whereas in Mario the storyline is simply a premise for why everything is going on.

EDIT: This is where I hope that makes sense to anyone other than me.
EDIT 2: Xocrates - that's essentially what I was trying to say in my OP in this thread re the example of Ocarina.

[alphasmart]

Indeed.  I think that the term "gameplay" has been slightly misinterpreted.  A game basically constitutes three things: graphics (i.e. how pretty the pictures are), story/premise (i.e. what determines which pretty pictures to choose from) and interactivity (i.e. how to control the pretty pictures).  These all make up the "gameplay" or perhaps more precisely the gaming experience.  Tetris was a good game.  Why was it so popular?  The graphics worked, the premise was simple, the interactivity was again simple.  Some new games seem to be more cut-scene than game, but there are some of those that work too.  You don't play the game very much as such, but you are captivated and entertained by the pictures and the words.  And that last bit is the clincher: is it entertaining?  If you don't enjoy playing it, by definition it's not a good game.  Of course it is very difficult to have a game that you'd never get bored of - excellent games like Death Worm and Tetris for example have potentially unlimited gameplay, but there's only so much you can take.  However, I thoroughly enjoyed both games, particularly due to their pick-up-and-play qualities.

I kinda digress, but to summarise: of course games are about gameplay.  That's what games are.  The only other measures you could rate a game on is the quality of the box they come in or the CD/DVD/cartridge/whatever, which is rediculous.  The best measure of overall quality of a game is this:

From starting the game up until all replay value has gone, how much did you enjoy what you experienced?

[Alec]

Enjoyment can come from more than just game play. That's why I feel its more valuable to think about games in their entirety.

Certainly some people value certain aspects above others. But pretending that all games are about are game rules is silly. They're multimedia, there's no getting around that.

I frankly don't agree with those articles that are like "LOOK, YOU CAN TAKE THE GAME PLAY FROM THIS SHINY GAME AND DO IT WITH CUBES". Its like... "Duh". But its not the same game. A game is at very least the sum of its parts, and I believe they're more than the sum of their parts.

With that said, I think game play is important. A lot of mainstream games have pretty graphics and pathetic game play, and that's why they're no fun to play. As a developer, I'm very concerned with the game play being central to the game and having it be a lot of fun.

But I don't support a view of games that forces them to be defined in such limited terms. I think there's lots of room for great experiences of all sorts, they don't have to stem from pure game play.

The way that most game reviews break games down into their components annoys me. Just because some games don't have the most replay value, or they have "tricky" controls, or whatever the minor complaint is, it doesn't mean that as a whole they're worse than a more generic game that doesn't have those minor "issues".

I prefer to read scoreless reviews that deal with how the game works as whole, how the game feels to the user. Once you start pulling out components of the game and examining them individually without concern to how it fits into the larger picture, I think you're missing the point.

[KingAl]

Exactly. The problem with rating games based on gameplay - or any particular feature - is that it assumes said feature is equally important to all games. It also assumes that all games are essentially equatable - that there's a "Plato's cave" format that all games aspire to fill, and this is clearly not the case.

A game is an experience, like any other form of media. That it chooses to use interactivity does not necessarily make interactivity central.

EDIT: Incidentally (to return to the topic of the thread...) the trailer looks awesome. The art and music (and voice work) go without saying, but I haven't played a game with good  2D boss battles in years

[Cobar]

Destructoid seems to have some interest for Aquaria