What makes a good game?

I recently got back in to playing Unreal Tournament. For me, this game
is the gold standard of First Person Shooters. I enjoy the slightly
unrealistic physics and surreal weapons. They create an environment
that is infinitely more entertaining to me than the more
hyper-realistic FPS's. Playing UT again made me start thinking about
what it was that I really liked about the game. What pushed it past
being just a cathartic shoot-em up and into the realm of strategy and
thought (at super high speeds).

I remember when I started hanging out on line with Andy and his
regular gaming group. I played the best guy in the group, Rhythm, 1on1
and he beat me with a score of 1 vs. alot. I spent a couple hours
talking to him and later Andy about different aspects of the game that
I never gave much thought to. I always thought of FPS as being "point
and click" kind of games. If you have the best aim you can win almost
every time. After talking with people for awhile I realized there's so
much more. Weapon Selection, Movement, Board Management (hoarding the
power ups and good weapons for yourself), Anticipation, Pattern
Recognition. All of these things are critical to becoming good at UT.

I was amazed watching Rhythm play. He knew all the different little
jumps you could make so that he could move around the board much
better than I even thought possible. I found myself running into
explosions everytime I rounded a corner because he knew that I would
be coming around the corner about that time. I never found myself with
a decent weapon and don't think I even saw one of the crucial
powerups. And so I learned that there were nuances far beyond "point
and click".

I think this analysis extends well towards other games. The games that
you can play once and enjoy the story are fun but if they don't have
some additional depth you'll probably never play them again. I've
played the original Final Fantasy through about 7 or 8 times just
because I enjoyed having different party combination to see how
challenging the game could be. I continue to play Championship Manager
because there's always difficulty in building and maintaining a sports
team. Master of Orion 1-3 are all good games that I still play.

What games are you guys playing now? What keeps you playing them?