What Makes a Memorable Game?

Gonna go with gameplay and characters.

Personally, I think characters add a lotta personality to a game, making it more charming and relatable, stories are usually forgettable in games but characters and the interactions that you've had with them can stick with you for a long time, which the best example would be Mass Effect 2

And obviously, the gameplay, you can always recall the best in-game moments that you've experienced; the close calls, the cathartic "I DID IT" moments, the experimentations, the multiple kills, the last moment victories, the crazy stuff that you've pulled off, the jump scares, etc

Well, for me Half-life was the most memorable game because I had never played an FPS like it. It was one of the first (and revolutionized FPS) with it's scripted story-telling. A eureka moment as to gamings potential.

Nowadays it's generally associated with Call Of Duty and it's ilk of clones, but those strangle the gameplay to accommodate kewl-kewl sequences in a very trite controlled manner. Half-Life used it in moderation as a punctuate and accentuate sections, never veering into redundancy within those 9-12 hours. While, comparatively your average Call Of Duty/clone becomes tiring in 4 or less.

Personally, what makes a video game memorable is tied to how unique it is and how much of its design was focused on marketability (designed to sell). It's a bit abstract and silly to try and point down what people mean wen they say something is "soulless", but you can tell if a video game was designed to sell or designed out of pure passion by simply playing it; does it share a lot in common with other recent popular video games? Does it copy over mechanics from other popular video games? Do they (the developers) change up the formula copied over into something that differentiates said formula from other popular video games? And so on.

When I first played Half Life 2, I was blown away by its physics and the way they'd created cut-scenes in gameplay, you were there in control, there was this sequence where the walls are about to compress you and you hear them collapsing one by one and you gotta find a escape route asap or you die, experiencing that for the first time felt amazing! I mean if it was any other game, that would've been a cut-scene, but this had way more impact on me to the point that I still remember it

And goddamnit you reminded me that I gotta play the first game :D

Well-said!

And that term "soulless" is indeed kinda stupid and baffling.

Music and sound design.

Not a surprise as your avi is from Ori and the Blind Forest, THAT main theme!

Besides Ori, which games do you think nail this aspect and have become memorable for you as a result?

World building and interesting gameplay mechanics. Games like Skyrim, Halo and Deus Ex are some of my favorite games because they made me want to explore their worlds more and had interesting gameplay hooks

@mjorh: yea Ori is amazing and Coker's work is sublime.

Others off the top of my head are Super Metroid, Final Fantasy VI, some other SNES games. Panzer Dragoon Saga. TLoU was also brilliant in its execution of sound in all aspects, it really helped bring the world to life.

Atmosphere.

Fallout 3, SOTC, Mass Effect series etc do a great job at this.

Specific gameplay elements, particular music or sounds, characters, story, atmosphere.

Me. :P

It can be different things for different games. I remember most games because of their gameplay, but there are some exceptions to it. Games I love for their characters, world and/or Music or/and maybe artistic artstyle. I remember Find Mii differently from Persona 4

Depends on game to game.

Games like Mass Effect, Persona, and Final Fantasy are usually remembered through Characters rather then Story.

But Games like The Elder Scrolls, Metroid, and Silent Hill aren't really known for their Characters, but the Atmosphere the games give out.

And Sometimes the games are just really good without any atmosphere or characters, Like Tetris, Bomberman, or Pacman.

It's kind of a weird question to answer since there's no real answer to it. It's like asking someone "what makes a good movie?" or "what makes a good book?" What may sound bad to you may sound awesome to another individual.

Heh, some videogame soul searching in some of these threads, nice. One thing I noticed over the years is my taste in games changes a little, I have less patience for high-profile RPG games that can take a while to go through, I still love them though it's just the time that they take is a little bit hard to come up with these days.

What makes a game memorable for me is the whole package, the entire experience. How does the game make me feel, what state of mind it puts me in, all part of the experience. When I played a game like Dark Souls, I finished it by myself without any help and it was an immensely satisfying experience, but there were some very frustrating moments as well, and I was not having fun during those times. Still the whole challenge, the great gameplay, numerous close battles and beating a boss after 15 tries, achieving my goal and finally finishing the game, very memorable experience. I couldn't tell you anything about the story though, lol.

A game like Destiny, I was compelled to play it for over 150 hours because I was really enjoying myself during that time. There was nothing like it at the time on consoles, I loved the atmosphere and roaming the landscapes with my fire team on my futuristic bike, the game has a lot of nice little details. Gameplay is good, not exceptional, not bad either, but good enough to sink my teeth into the real draw for these types of games, finding loot, exploring, grinding with others, a big part of this genre is building your character and maximizing his abilities, using abilities that complement each other & synergize and having a specialized build that you keep refining.....it took me back to my Diablo 2 days, I played that game so much and kept restarting my character to make him better each time.

So anyways, I could go on but for me different types of games are memorable in different ways, sometimes they have a great story, or it could be a gameplay-driven experience with some cool moments like I remember in RE4, so many improvised moments in that game, not scripted. Or it could be also an online experience with other people, facings monsters together, racing competitively online and beating that guy I've been tailgating all race long at the very end(so satisfying) etc. That's memorable too.

@LegatoSkyheart: Obviously, it's subjective, there's no "right" answer, as you can see so far in this thread, some ppl say atmosphere , some say music, some go with gameplay, some are geared towards exploration, etc. And it's about which aspect makes it memorable for you THE MOST

Sure :P

@mjorh: I mean, it's all of them.

I can't tell you if Persona's Story is good or not, but I can tell you I enjoyed the characters in the game.

I can't force you to like Chrono Cross, but I can tell you I loved the music.

There's no specific reason why I like one game over the other.

Story and characters

A variety of things really. I tend to find a lot of games memorable for one thing or another. I could find the story memorable (Planescape, TWD Season 1) but the gameplay to be hot trash. I could find the gameplay and its many scenarios highly memorable (Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden Black), but even after close to a dozen playthroughs I couldn't really tell you the plot, because **** that noise.

The games I happen to like all come down to make the interactions interesting to some capacity. I don't need GO levels of depth for every game, but if you're gonna tell a story or be about "the experience", then said experience should have an interesting set of interactions that compliment said experience. You can get away with shallow interactions for something really abstract (like Journey) or parody (Stanley Parable), but on balance I should be engaged by my interactions on some level.

If Metroid Prime was an action game for instance, strictly, it wouldn't be anything to write home about. Same with Zelda (which to be fair, never been the biggest fan of 3d zelda till Breath of the Wild) since Ocarina of Time. But the adventure part of the experience is what makes those games enjoyable. Tight as **** level design, meaningful exploration to the player (at least in Metroid), and low key narrative beats that actually are complimented by what you, the player, are doing.

Beyond that the stuff that always resonates with me the most has gameplay that I really fucking dig. I still think back fondly on Unreal 2k4, I still think Halo 2 is the absolute zenith of Halo's multiplayer as those maps are timeless, I yearn for another beat-em up to compete with Devil May Cry, Bayonetta n Ninja Gaiden. I really want games like SSX Tricky n Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 to make a fucking comeback.

Where as stuff that is story centric, like say Red Dead Redemption. I go yeah John Marston was great, the ending is a bit dishonest, and the gameplay is mediocre. Memorable, but for me not the right reasons.

@LegatoSkyheart: Gotcha

lmao, but I love Bayonetta's character ... I don't think it's too hard to make a likeable character in games, I mean in movies they should really be well-written and with some compelling backstory and stuff, but in games I tend to like them much easier

Btw, I've been meaning to ask you something, what do you exactly mean by "tight level design" and "tight controls" ? ? not sure I'm getting it

I'm going to argue it's the atmosphere that does it. All of my favorite games are games that have been especially strong on atmosphere- games such as The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Dark Souls, Final Fantasy, Persona, and even titles like Pokemon, are great at nailing the atmosphere, which intangibly elevates them in my eyes, and makes them stand out compared to other equivalent, or often even mechanically superior, games.

How I've used the term, or how I've always understood that term to be used is that everything feels precise, sharp, well thought out.

Trying to think of obvious examples, but the best Mario levels are tightly designed. Every single jump feels thought out from the low level stuff, to the level breaking skips n all that. Controls? Pretty simple everything feels natural n snug. You never really feel like you're battling the controls. Mario fits this, Super Meat Boy is an example, I'd argue Bayonetta certainly fits the description.

That said I've seen tight used on that wheel i linked that one time, how efficiently achieves its depth. Plus I probably could use a different set of terms these days, because I also know tight n loose as racing terms for car handling. And that type of description would work, because a character that is too stiff, is too tight in his movement. Where as something like Time Splitters is clearly too loose to work on analog sticks the way it does.

I would say that it's actually dependant on the person playing it. It could be any aspect that strikes a chord in that person. Graphics, gameplay, music, story, characters, etc.

Gameplay and music.

My all-time favorite games have both of those, so even when I'm not playing them, hearing their soundtracks will make me reminisce on the experience.

Black Mesa should be finished soon, it's almost a 1/1, though it lacks the charm of the original somewhat. Basically just Xen (the final level) that needs polishing, otherwise it's fully playable in it's current state.

Opposing Force is also worth seeking out, aside from Road To Hill 30 it's arguably Gearbox's best game. Compare that to dlc today and you'll see why so many pc gamers whine their faces out.

@jg4xchamp: Thanks!

I'll play the original one then, I just don't have a good feel about these fan-made projects

There are so many things that make a game memorable in a good way, but honestly, it all boils down to execution. If any facet of a game is executed in a specific way it can very easily make it memorable.

I think games inherintly lend themselves to making cool characters and are most at odds with their potential when trying to tell a story using traditional methods of audio/video/cinema approaches. I think the true memorable experiences for me is when gameplay is woven through the story telling.

Breath of the wild for example has a woven narrative that is simple, inviting and connected to each place you visit, but Nintendo makes no doubt that the world itself is the star of the show... The story is used to augment the world that we, the player are interacting with (gameplay). The most perfect design, and a testament to it's legacy... Its proof of concept.

Another game that makes me kinda shake my head at it's mastery over these concepts is portal 2. Yep. I said it. Gameplay gameplay gameplay ,wrapped in a zany, funny, dark, sometimes spooky world if characters and story... Oh and they nailed the ending.

Except for the part where the gameplay takes the biggest time out just so we can hear about cave johnson n gladdos life story. Portal 1 was so much better about it by virtue of being only 3 hours, and being tight as **** for it. All killer, no filler.

@jg4xchamp: I don't get the cave Johnson hate... Other than the fact that I definitely hear Schillinger from Oz more than anything else. :P

On point though, and correct me if I'm wrong but portal 2 teases little passing segments of environmental narrative mixed with either cave, glados or the bot offering story along the way... I didn't feel like it was weight against the gameplay. I think it gave it purpose in a few spots, namely the ending.

The character is fantastic, the part where I'm basically just roaming n doing dick before they finally give you gels and get the game going again, is my problem. It takes a good half hour to an hour out of its run time to stop being a puzzle game just to spin a yarn.

I can relate on taste changing, I used to care more about story but now I appreciate gameplay aspects much more as they're so many interesting stuff about them that make the medium unique.

Competitive games are so memorable, I can always recall some hilarious and bad-ass moments that I've experienced in online games

Mass Effect Andromeda meme's

what makes it memorable is how you react to it.

To me P4G was memorable because it touched me a lot, same thing with Heavy Rain. I remember fondly the first Gears Of War because the cinematic camera when you run.

Environments are most memorable to me.

Many things could be a gameplay system, characters and or just a good story execution. Recently dare I say that UC4 story execution with the whole avery's story trail backdrop made uncharted characters memorable and probably the whole damn series for that matter. Somebody said atmosphere man Inside, Bloodborne and Ori's enviroment comes to mind.

If I look at the list of my favourite games of all time, the traits that most of them have in common is an interesting story & characters, and/or an interesting world/environments to explore.

Memories. You're talking about memories.

The atmosphere, world and characters.

Music. Other aspects too, of course. For example, Uncharted 3 is the best in the series because of the music.

No wonder why we love Mass Effect :P

Which games are your fav in terms of soundtracks?

Yep it has the whole package. Plus, an equally awesome soundtrack.

The way everything is put together.

For me Halo CE was probably the most memorable. Loved everything about it, the gameplay, graphics, art direction, music, pacing, story, level design, vehicle sections, flood levels and the fact you could play everything with a friend in splitscreen. Brilliant.

I have to say Retro Studio's Donkey Kong games are the perfect example of what makes a game memorable for me.

• Polished gameplay mechanics
• stand-out level design
• satisfying visual design and animation

For the last point, I feel like getting satisfying visual feedback for your input is a very important part of interactive entertainment.

Donkey Kong is simply brilliant, it's a shame that the latest entry in the series hasn't gotten the exposure that it deserves.

And I agree with you on visual feedback, it's so gratifying and memorable.

Goldeneye 007 that was a very memorable game for me, the multiplayer at the time was amazing, great map design too. One of my most memorable experiences still to this day, there was something about that game the gameplay was very precise also

Everything gets old, visuals and even story. But what never gets old is a good gameplay. That's why I still visit classics from the 90s and early 2000s.

For me it is immersion. STALKER did a good job of this, as do AMRA games, Legend of Grimrock, Doom, AVP1+2+Jag, Antichamber and Everquest in 1999. The most recent game to do this for me outside of VR is BOTW.