Every game needs (usually) visual and (usually) audio elements in order for the gameplay and narrative to work. The visual and audio elements may only exist to support other elements of the game in some games without doing anything by themselves. However, when I talk about the presentation experience I essentially mean what emotions the visual and audio elements evokes in the player.
Selling another world
The presentation can sell the experience of existing in another world or at another time. Great examples are Star Wars games that nail the visual and audio experience of Star Wars, making you feel like you exist within that universe. Any world you as a player inhabit has this aspect. If that world is based on fantasy or reality does not matter. You sell the experience of going through that world by using visual elements together with sound. Assasins Creed is typically good at selling historic settings for example. Star Wars and Harry Potter games are typical examples of fantasy or science fiction worlds that are sold well through the presentation.
Horror
The horror genre revolves around creating emotional responses in the players. The genre needs the player to feel anxious, scared, frightened and so forth. The visual aspects of a game alongside the music and sound ques are a huge part of how the horror genre manages to create these emotions.
Calm, relaxing and meditative experiences
There are some games that works like an art museum or a meditative garden. The player will first and foremost be immersed into the art and sound in an attempt to create an calm, relaxing and meditative experience. Games like Journey and Abzu are reasonable examples here where a lot of the game’s playtime is spent in beautiful environments with excellent music and sound to back it up. Alternatively this emotion can be obtained while exploration of a beautiful environment in an open world. This experience might not be the focus of the game, but it can provide a peaceful break from an otherwise hectic pacing.
Disturbed and shocked
The art can showcase some truly horrific stuff. Games like Doom can be disturbing when you look at the fate of humans stuck in background torturous settings. The sheer violence of Doom is also somewhat disturbing in how brutal glory kills can be. Games can disturb the player with visuals, but also shock the player if these visuals elements are unexpected.
Awe and wonder
If a game has an excellent presentation you might often stop and look at the visual spectacle of a scene. The feeling of awe, wonder and similar emotions that a scene and location can evoke is great. Exploration in games like open worlds like Skyrim or in games like Halo are reasonable examples of awe and wonder obtained from the visual presentation.
The overall presentation
The visuals and audio of a game are by their nature supporting tools for the gameplay and narrative. It is very important to understand that this is often the primary design criteria for the presentation. Having clean visuals that allow the gameplay components to be clearly communicated to the player is usually more important than having “better” visuals. You might also want to sacrifice some of the presentation in order to make the narrative work.
The presentation has the potential to evoke a lot of emotion by themselves, but I find that these emotions are best utilised in combination with a narrative and gameplay. I think it is very hard to create a good game with shallow gameplay and a poor narrative; it is hard to rely on a good presentation alone in order to create a good game. While the art can be beautiful and the music wonderful it is hard to keep the level of quality up for the duration of the entire game. You would need to very carefully construct how the player goes from one emotion to another in a continuous chain. Considering that every player is unique I think it is quite difficult to create an game that relies on constant emotional shifts in the player to drive the game forward. It will certainly be a unique experience if you somehow manage to obtain it, but I have yet to play a game that manages to carry itself purely by the presentation throughout the game.