heres a really broad video game ask: whats your approach to assessing the artistic merit of a game? do you have a specific set of aesthetic criteria? is "fun" an important factor for you in artistic merit? sorry if these are sort of academic question but i get the impression you think about this sort of thing
i really look foremost at the gameplay. music, graphics, story, other features can definitely influence a game, but to me a game is primarily something you play, so how you play it has to be most important.
i think some people don't understand that it's the gameplay that drives how you feel about a game. a game like doom 2016 can have all the heavy metal and glory kill animations in the world, but if it wasn't backed up by gameplay that made you powerful and skilled, it wouldn't have the impact it's trying to have.
2 examples from recent games i've played. new super mario bros wii has nothing all that special from a story, music, or visual perspective. it's "just another mario game" in that way. but the gameplay was so tight and the stage design so varied i just couldn't put it down. even when i was dying to a hard stage over and over, i knew it was just a matter of me mastering the movement to break through. meanwhile majora's mask, a game widely renowned for its story and surreal art direction, has been frustrating me with its terrible controls to the point it's absolutely detracting my opinion of the game. i can't really appreciate the boss fight with the freaky fish monster if i keep dying because the game won't let me get out of the water
obviously this is all subjective. gameplay that i love might be gameplay someone else despises, and vice versa. and if the story/music/graphics/other is good enough, i'll put up with lesser gameplay to get through it. but at the end of the day, you play a game to play a game, you know? so that's the primary vector through which i judge it. fun is absolutely an important factor, probably the most important
