Games can be a lot of things and be very different from each other, but foundational for every game is that they provide an experience. What type of experience the game provides changes, sometimes they provide several different types of experiences at once, and sometimes only a singular one. Most experiences you can have within the context of a game can be described by six overarching categories: Challenging experiences, experiences of progression and discovery, experiences and emotions driven by presentation (visuals and audio), experiences of creativity and freedom, narrative driven experiences and finally social experiences. In addition a technical category is added to adjust for how much these experiences are reduced by poor technical implementations.
An overall score is also provided most of the time to give my overall impression of how well the game works as an overall package.
A high score of 5 indicates that the game provides the potential for a good experience of that type, and a score of 1 indicates that the game does not provide an experience of that type. Neither a high or a low score is bad or good, they are neutral. All they do is describe what type of experiences you are likely to encounter in the game.
Challenges
The challenge category defines how well the game manages to provide a challenge experience. There are several ways to test and challenge the player: mechanics, game-knowledge, strategy, tactics, reflexes, focus and so forth. The challenging experience is good when the game manages to push your ability to their limits without the use of cheap tactics to force you to lose. A good challenging experience is always on the players premises, and a “hard game” or “punishing game” do not necessarily provide a challenging experience. They might be very difficult, but a lot of the difficulty comes from artificial bullshit. Overcoming artificial bullshit does not provide you with the experience you seek if you want to be challenged.
Keep in mind that this score is about the game-design elements that makes games challenging, and is not a score of difficulty. It is a score about the challenging experience that can potentially be experienced.
Creativity
The creativity category describes the experiences you feel when you create something new. For example you can experience this by building in minecraft, figuring out a new way and creative way to ambush your enemies in a shooter, building a new deck in a card game and so forth. You figure out something new, or create something that did not exist before. Your creativity is allowed to flourish.
Progression
The progression category describes the feeling you get when you progress in a game or discover something new. Examples of this is when you progress your character in an RPG, when you unlock a new weapon, when you discover a new location in an open world and so forth. You feel like you are doing something with your time, you are feeling that you are moving forward.
Narrative
The narrative category describes the potential the game has to provide a narrative based experience. This is based on qualities of the writing, the plot, the setting, the world building, characterisation and so forth. If the game struggles to remain coherent with its story and it is full of plot holes this is a problem for the narrative. If the writing is good this is good for the narrative. A lot of these things are quite objective most of the time. Bad writing is bad, bad voice acting is bad, plot holes are plot holes. You might be able to see past these or you might not, that is entirelyup to you. This category simply sums up how many good aspects the narrative has versus its reasonablyobjective flaws, and does not measure my own enjoyment of the narrative experience, but rather what the potential I think it holds.
Presentation
The presentation category measures how good I think the visual and audio experience is as a package. How beautiful is the art-style? Does the game nail the setting? Are the graphics fantastic? Is the music good? Does the game evoke feelings and emotional states? Does it make you feel apart of a world?
Social
The social category measures how social the game is; how much the game revolves around social interactions, and thereby how large of a potential the game has to provide a social based experience.
- No social features, you have to play alone.
- Limited social features such as sharing scores, but you still play alone.
- Social features are included in the game to a basic extent, such as a pvp or co-op system.
- Social features enhance the base game, and improves the experience compared to solo play significantly.
- The game requires other people to play the game.
Technical
The technical category measures the technical state of the game based on my own experience. How well does the game run? Is it a smooth experience? Is the game full of bugs or bug-free? Does the option menu do what it needs to? How frequently does the game crash or freezes?
- Borderline unplayable.
- A lot of issues, including gamebreaking.
- A fair bit of issues, but nothing gamebreaking.
- A couple of issues that are annoying, but nothing gamebreaking.
- No notable technical issues that disrupts the game.
Overall Score
In addition to the categories I also give the game an overall score. The score of the game gives an indication of the quality of the game, a high quality games receives a higher score and a bad quality game a lower score. This simply indicates the entire experience as a package put together. Synergistic experiences will make the overall experience better and anti-synergistic experience will make the experience worse. The scores 1 trash, 2 awful, 3 bad are the scores I give to bad games, and they very rarely show up on the site as I frequently quit before I can bother writing anything about them. 4 Mediocre, 5 Decent, 6 Competent are the most common scores and indicate an average game. The good games are indicated by 7 good, 8 excellent, 9 fantastic and 10 master piece. I have high standards so good scores are quite rare.
- Trash
- Awful
- Bad
- Mediocre
- Decent
- Competent
- Good
- Excellent
- Fantastic
- Masterpiece