Current Events > What makes gameplay good?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I mean gameplay for all sorts of games, such as video games, computer games, board games, card games, sports, and so on.
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Being good usually helps
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Nude
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player agency is one thing. you need to be able to feel what you do. things need to be rewarding. charge attacks need to hit real hard.

i mean there are the obvious things like tightness of control and good hitboxes and framerate and all that. basically no part of the game should ever make the player think about the hardware it is running on.
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i was talking about this with my brother a little while ago lol.

for me it comes down to two things:

1. interactive-ness
i like being able to interact with the game world in as many ways as possible, and i hate games where you are limited to a few actions.

mgs or mario 64 are good examples of games i feel are very interactive, because you can tackle objectives multiple ways, find creative solutions, and use the in-game systems to do things in a new way.

an example of games i dont like that i find very un-interactive are the call of duty games. in the campaign you are mostly in tight corridors, you can only accomplish objectives one way, and the game never lets you deviate from what the game decides you must do.

2. feeling in control of the action
this is the feeling that whatever cool shit is happening on the screen, you are in control of it.

examples of games that do this well are Bloodborne (where you are in complete control of your character, so every cool attack and move is entirely the player) and Marvel vs Capcom (if you do insane combos it's because you timed it, set it up, pulled off the moves, etc).

examples of games that do this really poorly are the Batman Arkham games, where your character beats enemies by doing crazy flips and counter moves and shit but all you're really doing is pressing the X button at the right time and essentially watching an animation
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How good it feels ta punch a mothafucka
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One good summary I heard once is that a game is basically a series of meaningful choices.

"Meaningful" in that context means that it affects the outcome. It's why hopeless boss fights are BS. Not because they make you use all your items because you don't know it's a hopeless fight, but because your actions don't have any meaning if you're going to lose anyway. After all, if we were upset to use the item, we wouldn't have used it. We're upset that the use was meaningless.
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Mako_Sharknado posted...

How good it feels ta punch a mothafucka

ultimately this