What makes a great video game?

The video game, the great creation. Regardless of your gaming preference most people could highlight a couple of titles they have fallen in love with over the years. But what is the main component within a video that creates a special bond between player and game? 

One of thing that never fails to get me absorbed in a game is a great story. Being able to follow a character from the opening scene to the end credits, there's nothing better. Feeling their fear, their pain, their sadness, their triumph. A couple of personal favourites would be the Gears of War and Mass Effect franchises. Both these stories pulled me in from the word go, whether I was Commander Shepherd flying round the galaxy in the Normandy or Marcus Fenix stamping on a grubs head, I always felt like a standing along side these characters ever step of the way.

But it isn't just a games storyline that can win over a gamer. Oh no, a character can make all the difference with a gamers experience. Furthermore additional characters can make a gamer fall in love with a game all over again. I recently experienced this with Gears of War 3 and its Raams Shadow add on campaign. Within this add on you get to play along as General Raam himself. You experience this foes formidable wrath in the first gears of war game however you have no true idea of his true power until you said into his shoes. With your shield of cryl around you you can't even be hit by bullets, lets repeat that you CAN'T BE HIT BY BULLETS!!, you might aswell be a tank. A true envisionment of a killing machine, a god amongst grubs.

However an obvious part of a video game that can have it's fan playing it for days and days on end is its overall gameplay. My personal example that I'm going to use here is "Supreme Commander", for those of you that aren't familiar with this game, to put it in simple terms the Command and Conquer franchise on steriods. The steer size of some of maps is mind blowing. But back to why the gameplay is so good, its so addictive, I could spend hours just on one match. These huge levels contained multiple enemy obsticles to overcome, multiple upgrades that were needed to make your army progress. Every second of gameplay was important to the overall matches outcome.

Every gamer is different, please leave your thoughts below, did you agree with me? Are there some video game areas that I've missed?