Critique of Games: A System

This is my idea on a way to criticize video games. It's easy to think of games in terms of “gameplay and graphics”, but that trivializes a lot of the concepts that occur in a video games and for some people even sets up the idea that they're mutually opposed. So what I've done is broken it up into four categories, and despite the names they might include more than you would think at first glance. Also realize that these categories work independently of each other in many ways... But also rely on each other as well. If you have new mechanics that are fun to play with, but the level design is boring and doesn't give you a chance to play with them, that's just as bad for the game's health as if both mechanics and level design were boring.

Mechanics

This is the core of the game. This is all the rules. Is it a platformer, a fighter, a SHMUP, a puzzler? If it's a platformer, do I shoot, stomp, slash? What's gravity like? How high do I jump? How fast do I run? What do my enemies do? Are there enemies?

Level Design

This doesn't mean solely the creation of the maps, this is almost everything about the game. Possibly the most important category. Many games have identical mechanics, and differ only in level design. This is the levels, the enemies, how the enemies are placed, obstacles, power-ups, what order the levels occur in, whether they're discrete or seamless. This is how the mechanics are organized into a game, and how they are introduced to the player. It could be all at once, before you start playing (board games usually fall into this category), gradually as you play the game (Portal or Braid), or somewhere in between (Street Fighter II is easy to pick up the basics of, but things like links, or even combos, are not immediately obvious). This doesn't just apply to single player games. The method by which Street Fighter II allows people to compete would technically be part of the level design, or the deathmatch concept of Quake 3. It's the framework of the levels as much as the levels themselves.

Controls

This is how the player interacts with the game. Is everything intuitive, responsive, logical? Satisfying? Note I don't say “easy”. Guitar Hero has simple, responsive, logical controls, but completing a song on expert will be difficult. An RTS has simple controls, but managing an army takes a lot of practice.

Presentation

You may be tempted to assume I mean “graphics” and skip this section, but don't. This isn't just graphics, this is setting, art direction, characters, graphic design, texture work, sound effects, music. This is things such as loading times, menus, and how the save system works. This is choosing to make the controller shaped like a guitar instead of a box with five buttons. This is everything the game does to present information; how the game interacts with the player.