Who did it right: Call of Duty 4 puts me on an adrenaline-filled roller coaster ride and makes me feel like the hero. For story and characters, I would go with the Metal Gear Solid series--it delivers a multi-layered and intricate storyline that serves as a major motivation for me.

3. Let me do cool stuff

Why it matters: I'm guessing this is one of the biggest reasons people play games--you get to do so many super-human things. But there are some things that can break that experience: Falling to my untimely death because I pressed the wrong button is not cool; doing a jump puzzle for the 10th time because I missed the last jump by a centimeter isn’t either. I want to do cool things and avoid doing steps over and over again because they are conventions.

I applaud Assassin's Creed for making a bold design decision to make the controls easier. Climbing and free running across the rooftops does not force me to mash buttons, and if I tell Altair to jump he does so as spectacular as possible. Tomb Raider relied on me to learn prolonged jump sequences by trial and error- and don’t get me wrong, back then I loved it. I think the Chinese wall section will be imprinted into my muscle memory forever, but times have changed.

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