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[antymattar]

I like big amounts of compressed actions, because I don't like long games and I like fast-paced games.

I bet you hate cavestory then?

True that

But when I didn't have internet I was playing only RPGs, strategy games, etc.

Have you played spore? I personally like ONLY the space exploration part. AOE3 is epic too.
Timesplitters...

[ANtY]

I like big amounts of compressed actions, because I don't like long games and I like fast-paced games.

I bet you hate cavestory then?

True that

But when I didn't have internet I was playing only RPGs, strategy games, etc.

Have you played spore? I personally like ONLY the space exploration part. AOE3 is epic too.
Timesplitters...

I did, but I only enjoyed parts before city phase.

[thatshelby]

Timesplitters...

I... love... Timesplitters... !

[XRA]

i was ranting about my hates but overall it just made me feel like i hate games

i would LOVE to see a return to what i think of as classic game design but mixed with the immersion and capabilities of modern graphics techniques, along with more modern design ideas.

[Squiggly_P]

LOVE:
- Games that let me make stuff. Doesn't matter if it's stuff I just glue together and see if it works, like Garry's Mod, or if it's the sort of game where you have to work your ass off to find that last ingredient that lets you make a really bad-ass weapon or something. It's best when you can experiment and figure out combinations and stuff. Minecraft, SimCity, Rollercoaster Tycoon, etc. I like Diablo 2 for this reason as well (and Diablo 3 looks like it has expanded the crafting a lot, which makes me excited).
- RPG's that let you do your own thing with the characters instead of being locked into a rigid skill tree. The original Diablo was good at this, and Elder Scrolls 4 was pretty flexible if you understood how the system worked and could game it.
- 3D games with 3/4 overhead views. I dunno why, but the sort of perspective used in just about every RPG, Zelda clone and tons of Ikari Warriors style run & guns just vanished overnight after the PSX was released. The ones that made use of it were usually RPG's that used traditional 2D spritework for their graphics and sometimes used 3D for the fights. I'm attracted to the freedom of movement coupled with the fact that platforming is still usually pretty fun and doable. Most games now use over-the-shoulder perspectives if they aren't full on FPS games. Hurray for Alien Swarm!

HATE:
- A lot of modern games. I dunno if I can pinpoint the exact thing I hate about most of the new games, since there are so many different things that bother me. FPS games played with a controller. The incredibly shallow, profanity-laden stories populated by a parade of stereotypes and cliched characters - which now have to feature some kind of sex scene in every game, cause that's what "mature" means. Games that have devolved the mechanics down to "push a button in time to advance the game". Every game world is a dystopia or post-apocalypse or back-alley hell hole. Games that are really just long cut-scenes - and I don't mean Heavy Rain, I mean COD:BO where a lot of the game is apparently a cut-scene that you can speed up by killing the enemies before your squad does. I'm sure we've all seen this video. There are tons of examples of stuff like this happening in shorter segments in lots of games. When the game stops being participatory and you can sit there and watch it play itself, at what point does it stop actually being a "game"? It's just interactive movies at that point.

So yeah, I just lumped all my hate into one big fuming rant...

[Ququman]

Love :
   - Secrets. Secrets, secrets and secrets everywhere ! No wonder I liked Doom 1&2 and Duke Nukem 3D this much. I love it when you're like "let's see if I can find something in this innocent room" because you know you COULD find a rocket launcher or whatever :3 And side quest and secret - insanely hard - bosses.

   - Replay value. In rpg this would be thanks to an original class system with radically different gameplays for example. Or replayability by difficulty settings. For example : MOAR MONSTERS  An other example I love is Time Splitters 2 : when you go from easy to medium everything changes, it's like a different games ! More objectives, more ennemies, additional areas to explore (kind of)...

   - Choice. I want to choose the way I do things. Deus Ex did it right for obvious reasons (you probably heard them so many times I won't explain in detail, but GOD killing ******* was so good. (don't wanna spoil :3)

   - Atmosphere. I love it when you feel the atmosphere of the game, when the music fits perfectly... I don't know how to explain this. I'll use Deus Ex again : the levels in France or Hong Kong had an incredible feeling to them, partly thanks to the music, for example.

   - Baddies with charisma.  nuffsed. I have no example right now but...
   -... i'll link it with EPIC BOSSFIGHTS. You know, the one involving skill, plot, charisma and badass ? Like Iji's last boss (non-secret), Painkiller's bosses (minus the plot), the Cyberdemon, SF2's Sagat (true final boss for me, it's just so rewarding to beat him :D)...  I could list them but it'd be long x)

   - Pointless stuff. Yeah. just for the heck of it. But not too much otherwise it looks like it's just filling empty spots x(

   - Things you can destroy. It's always cool to see the your impact on the outside world right ? An explosion-shaped impact, for example. 

HAAAATE :

   - Second World War / World War setting. TOO... MUCH ! I CANT... ANYMORE... 
   - Commercial games too short. CoD story mode anyone ?
   - QTE
   - TIGER KNEE
   - TIGER UPPERCUT
   - TIGER SHOT
   - Already said it but definitely corridor level-design.
   - probably more stuff but nothing pops into my mind right now.

[DjangoDurango]

Love
1. Details. The extra mile. For instance, the other day, I was playing Left 4 Dead 2 with some friends and we found out that you could hit hanging signs and they would swing. And not just swing but they responded to how well your hit contacted and would even spin over the top of their hanging bar. Also, most everything that can be a physics object is one. Was playing No Mercy and noticed a roll of paper towels just sitting there by the hole in the floor in the apartment building. Friend got all smartass with me when I told him about it, told me to toss them down there 'cause he had a mess down here and he need to the quilted quicker-picker-upper. And I COULD toss them down. Also things like how if you shoot gumball machines in GTA IV, gumballs actually scatter out of them. This also extends to secret rooms, easter eggs, etc. Or even how 47's tie moved around when you walked in Hitman. Just little extra mile type things that one might not even notice unless they were really exploring.

2. Games that can be played in ways different from the exact rules. That is, you can come up with other games to play within the rule set. For instance, Spy and Seek in Team Fortress 2, where a Spy will cloak and call out voice commands and everyone else has to try and find him. Optionally, everyone else can be Snipers and try to Jarate him. Or Hot Peels in L4D in which you run around with a bottle of pills and try to pawn them off on someone else. Essentially hot potato with the pills. Or Medkit Tag, where you try to catch your teammates with the medkit (because they can't move while you are healing them) and try to kill them with friendly fire while they are trying to catch you. We play this on Survival maps because Survival as a mode is boring, but the maps are often cool and full of 1.

3. Games that allow users to create content for the game that is easily accessible to other users. Again, Source games generally permit this (Source games do a lot of things I like), but examples with less steep learning curves include Knytt Stories, Minecraft, and Love Custom. Anything where I can make something within that game for someone else to play on.

4. Games in genres that traditionally involve grinding but don't have any. I can't think of any offhand, but I am sure they exist.

5. Sandbox cities with a majority of the things interactive. GTA is and isn't this in different ways.

6. Games that don't make you load for EVERYTHING. GTA again, but two different examples. Vice City didn't make you load to go into any building except the bank, the Malibu, and the mall, but you had to load to cross to the other side of the map. San Andreas didn't make you load for maps, but you did to go inside anywhere.

7. Jokes and puns and shit. Rockstar and Valve are both good at this.

Hate

1. Gameplay which involves reflexively mashing a button as it flashes on the screen. Rockstar seems to have taken a liking to this shit in the last few games of theirs I've played. It featured in Bully's fighting whenever you got caught in a hold, in a few scenes but most notably the Turnbull AC's one in The Warriors where they run from the bus, and in Manhunt 2, whenever a Hunter suspected you were hiding.

2. Shitty controls. I know that's probably obvious, but it's the reason I could never play Resident Evil 4 even though everyone told me it was awesome.

3. Grinding. Why I couldn't play Disgaea even though it looked really fun. The fun was actually the cutscenes and you had to do unfun shit (fight the slow, turn-based battles) to see them. |: /

4. Tutorial levels. Especially unskippable ones.

5. Bad hit detection. Shit's just unfair.

[farmer]

Love:
1. Secrets/Exploration - I love secret items, secret rooms and little things to discover.
2. Crafting - Making your own powerups/weapons is really fun to me for some reason.
3. Scenes that make the gameworld feel large and alive - I love turning a corner and seeing a huge view of the gameworld that you may or may not be able to access but it has the effect of making the world feel large and alive with things you may never see.
4. Fast action - I love being able to run around and destroy everything as fast as I can. I loved DOOM. Slow me down with more enemies.
5. Autonomous AI - I like NPCs that seem to be going about their business in the little game world. Makes it feel alive and by playing the game I'm getting in on this secret world that lives inside my computer box.


Hate:
1. Long Pre-rendered Cutscenes - These can all be removed from every game. kthnx. If a game has more than one or two, or they're unskippable I just turn it off. Ruins my suspension of disbelief every time. EVERY TIME.
2. Unintentional Bad dialogue - I hate playing a game that has overly dramatic dialogue and I'm not feeling it because I can't get into the game because I've had to watch 3 unskippable cutscenes with TERRIBLE dialogue.
3. Poor controls - games that have sloppy control, or don't have smooth controls/movement drive me nuts more irritating than hate, but it's annoying.
4. Ultrarealism - Sometimes unrealistic jump physics are more fun.
5. Quick Time Events - KILL IT WITH FIRE!#$%^&

[mirosurabu]

Random hatred:

- Button mashing. Like, there is this stone and you have to push it down by... MASHING THE BUTTON! Or, you are climbing the wall, and you have to... MASH THE BUTTON! And it's not even two-button mash, it's single button mash D:

- Dumb statistics. Things like "charisma" and "attitude". Yeah, so there is this dialog, but I can't choose this option cause my guy is not charismatic enough. Now, what I have to do is look for a charisma mentor or a skill book. My god, that's so much interesting!!! And, what's this attitude statistic for?

- Long-distance walking.

- Character points distribution. Instead of asking me to distribute some random amount of points, why not ask me to set background for my character instead? Like, if I'm coming from a rich family with no college degree, or coming from a poor family with college degree or something like that that would distribute character points instead of me.

[Amon26]

Deceptively open worlds.  Where it looks like you have a huge lush world to adventure but turns out, there's either nothing, not even anything visually interesting out there. Or when you realize you're just being funneled by convenient valleys and bodies of water to the next destination. In the words of Tyler Durden "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken"

mid-adventure grinding.  I loved windwaker in ways a grown man probably shouldn't admit to, but once it came to the actual triforce quest I felt totally gyped. The pacing of the plot and the action dragged down to "follow the carrot" and left me feeling quite cranky.  I know it looks real great in ink to say your game boasts over 40 hours of exploration and gameplay but really if all you're doing is slowing the pacing down that's just mean.

a wide variety of weapons/armor/clothing but leaving literally ALL of the good looking gear for the highest tier.  Sure if you work your ass off you should get some really cool looking shit, but if even the mid-level gear is stuff like rabbit tunic, fawn shawl, dingo-dagger and balsa-staff then you lose the incentive to grow.  Leave some of the good stuff in-reach.  In fact bonus points if you give the player a chance to get a super-weapon in mid progress.  By the time they're top banana they might still hold onto that old war-battered tool like a trusty, rusty piece of their past.

puzzle fighters.  this is just a personal thing though.  If i'm playing tetris then goddammit I'm playing tetris, don't clutter the bottom of the screen with chibi cutsey guys with neat combat moves.  I'd rather just play a fighter with those guys.

[Cheezmeister]

I LOVE exploration (when applicable) and freedom of choice in general
I HATE controls or mechanics (e.g. menus that take >1s to animate) that get between me and the gameplay

[Krux]

thinks I like are all impressive new things. If a game offers new gameplay mechanics its cool. Copying the same into another without improving it is not cool. So be cool and steal enough ideas so that at least one of them is new to me.

-clumsy controls
-quick time events (drangons lair, God of War, Resident Evil)
-automated controls (fighting in Uncharted looks cool, but doing it sucks, because it is not me who decides how to attack)
-inflation of death (sunny boy kills thousands of Soldiers: Uncharted)
-inconsistency (Kratos in GoW can smash stone walls, but no wooden doors with a lock)
-grinding (insert any mmorpg here)
-generated gameplay (generator that creates 100 equal levels)
-invisible walls (whatever you do, dont implement invisible walls they suck)
-gamepad support limited to xbox 360 controller (there are so many cool input devices)

[Nitromatic]

Love

- I love to play game with good story, interesting places and deep characters. I want to have reason to play the game!

- Linear games are terrible, I want to explore and do things when I want.

- If game has voice acting, I hope it's not cheesy.

Hate

- If I see that fekkin' FPS one more time...

- Cliches can be cool, but if everyone's a soldier with dark past, I'll quit.

Choices that don't affect game!
-Hey, are we going to attack that over-leveled monster?
-No!
-Aha, me too! Let's get it!

[Rm88~]

Love:
- Fun, catchy music that will get stuck in my head.
- Balance in fighters. I know it's impossible to make a 100% balanced fighter, but when everyone uses the same 6-8 characters from a 30+ roster, there's something wrong.
- Fun, diverse boss battles.
- Stereotypical thematic levels. Like, ice level, fire level, water level, etc. I just love that.
- Games that are easy to learn, but hard to master.
- Customization. Looks, stats, names, whatever. It just makes everything more fun.
- Games that don't take themselves too seriously. Like the Paper Mario series or 3D Dot Game Heroes.
- Diverse character classes in RPGs.
- Joke characters. If there's a joke character in the game, I'll be using it.
- Really fun multiplayer, it makes a game playable for decades.

Hate:
- Ultra cheap bosses that don't require skill to beat, but exploitation of the AI.
- Games that want to be Hollywood films.
- Big emphasis on story or any other element that is not fun gameplay. It completely destroys the replay value.
- Sex scenes. "BUT SEX IS NATURAL AND HUMAN" - so is farting, I demand farting in my games because it's natural and human. If you need sex in your games you're probably not getting it otherwise.
- Absurdly complex war plots represented in never ending dialogues between each battle in strategic RPGs. Okay, I don't mind them, but they could be shorter. Let me play already.
- Checkpoints that are too far from the (very difficult) boss battle.
- Slow walking speed in RPGs. Ugh.

[Squiggly_P]

Love:
- Fun, diverse boss battles.

Hate:
- Ultra cheap bosses that don't require skill to beat, but exploitation of the AI.

I've been playing Diablo 2 recently (I go back to it for a month or so once or twice a year just to see if I can ever manage to solo Hell mode). This made me think of the bosses and why Diablo and Baal are awesome bosses and why Duriel from act 2 is not.