The title is a question that the gaming industry keeps asking itself, time and time again, hoping to make the next blockbuster. Not only that, but it's a question even those grizzlied veterans at Bungie have admitted at asking themselves. So what is it? In my drunken stupor of finally having time to sit back and relax, I figured I'ld try tackling that question. What brought me to write this up is my recent play through of not only the entire Halo series, but also games such as Super Mario, Goldeneye, Unreal Tournament, and Spiro. Games that left me feeling nostalgic thinking about them. Luckily, I've had a rather large disconnect with gaming for a while due to work (among other things) and I feel that my recent spree into gaming and having enough time to do so finally allowed me to delve into that big question. So what does make a great game? Well, for starters, we need to ask ourselves a huge question. Why do we play video games? Better yet, how does society and mainstream media play a role in our choice of entertainment? When you look at and compare games like Battlefield 4 and Halo: Combat Evolved, society will waive in Battlefield 4's favor. This is for good reason. Not only are the graphics gorgeous, but the sound packs and ambience allows for further immersion into the gaming experience....right? That was the first thing I noticed on these playthroughs, that immersion, when applied properly, can certainly aid a game greatly, but visual affects are not needed for this at all actually. I have a rather limited further education, and I will admit that, but the apparent fact is that our dreams and perception are 2D and relative to our surroundings. An example being sitting in a bright white room, then moving to a dark room. To the person who's lived in that dark room their whole life, they can see everything in there, but for the person from the white room, they'll be blind. Our eyes are very relative, and base our perceptive reality over our surroundings. So do we play video games for total immersion? No. Just as movies, we play them for the experience. We play games for those moments where the outside world collapses away, and we're delved into the game. Not because of the graphics or sound quality, but because of that moment. Let's take for example the sniper mission in COD 4. I'm sure everyone remembers that particular mission above all. It wasn't that the graphics were spot on, or the sound, or anything else. What drove us in was the slow onset of events and their set up. The key portion to this I noticed while playing through the Halo campaigns was actually a rather stark contrast, which demonstrated our societal movements over time as well. In Halo: Combat Evolved, the story and events were spread out enough to allow them to sink in. When you first landed on Halo, you didn't exit the door to 100's of alliens trying to gun you down, there was a few moments given to you to let it all sink in. Compare this to Halo 2, where ~5 minutes into the game you're dual wielding SMG's running down covenant, or Halo 3 where within the first 2 minutes of gameplay you're in full on fire fights. Or perhaps even compare those moments to modern day shooters like Call of Duty: Ghosts, where the entire game is such a mesh of explosions and chaos you can't think straight. So what made H:CE awesome along with other games? Pacing. That is the simplest term I have thusfar been able to come up with. I've just started Halo 3 (mind you, I have no memory of playing really any of these games, so me playing through is practically a new experience) and within the first 15 minutes I'm fighting the flood and this thing is flying into a thing and covenenant are doing some crazy shit, etc. Pacing. Pacing. Pacing. Games nowadays don't appreciate that simple term. Pacing is one of the largest things, not only within movies, but within games as well. What many producers run into, I imagine, is a limited budget on allowing a game's story that should be 12 hours long, reduce to 6 hours. Not only this, but games now don't apprieciate simplicity. I'm all for having these vast weapon customizations, and huge armements, but the one thing I learned and was taught over and over regardless of what I was learning was KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. When you throw a hundred features at someone in the course of 5 minutes, we'll get overwhelmed and spend more time trying to figure shit out rather than enjoy the experience. That's also a huge issue games experience compared to movies. While games are slowly closing the gap between cinema and themselves, a huge issue lies in having a simple control scheme. A movie goer expects to sit in a seat, and be taken in by the awesome cinematography for 2 hours, while the gamer sits on his couch and bashes away at a controller expecting the same. Between pace and simplicity, Halo: CE, Goldeneye, and Unreal Tournament will always take the cake. With Halo's and Goldeneye's campaigns, everything was slow and allowed you to take things in (moreso in Halo, obviously), but regardless all of these games were simple to understand and get the hang of. These same concepts apply to GTA: San Andreas, Vice City, The Walking Dead, and many other games. Games that weren't amazing because of graphics, but because of the experience they provided the player. Above all, The Walking Dead was possibly the best example of modern games as to what makes a game great. Perhaps in a different genre, but the game still paced itself and kept to simple standards that allowed it's story and experience to shine over graphics and fancy features. This was a game that even those who had nothing to do with the game could understand and follow on, and still share (somewhat) the same amount of experience as the player. Of course, this post will be buried more than likely in a matter of seconds, but that doesn't matter. This was a post made to apply to those who matter, and those who have been making great games and will hopefully continue to do so.