How Rankings Work
Each game has a rank for each area. If you select to rank by graphics, the games are listed in graphics ranking from best at the top to worst at the bottom.
If you select multiple areas to rank the games, the areas are averaged to provide a ranking for the game. The average ranking for multiple areas may rank an unexpected game to be higher than others even though the other games have individual areas higher than it. As an example, at the time of writing this, Heroes of Might and Magic V was ranked highest for variety, Empire at War was ranked highest for atmosphere, but when you rank by both atmosphere and variety, the winner goes to Anno 1404.
When you select a base game to get recommendations, only games that have selected areas ranked higher than the base game are listed. Cotinuing with the above example. If I wanted to get a recommendation based on Dawn of War, the only games listed are Anno 1404 and The Moon Project. These two games are the only games in the database that have both atmosphere and variety ranked higher than Dawn of War.
About the Areas
Graphics
How good a game looks. How good the animations are. How detailed the items are in the game. Graphics is heavily dependent on the video card, so I judge this area based on how good the look is while still getting an acceptable frame rate. This means that a game may look better with full details turned on, but look worse at the settings that make it playable. Eg. Bioshock may look better than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl at maximum settings, but with my Radeon X1600, after decreasing the settings of both games, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl ends up looking better.
Sounds
Sound effects, ambient sounds, speech. How clear and authentic the sound is. For first-person games, how good surround sound is, if any. As I only recently acquired surround sound equipment, most games have not been judged with the surround impact in mind.
Music
How good the music is and how well the music suites the game. Whether the music is annoying or pleasant. I only consider music that comes with the game. If a game allows the player to add their own music, it is not considered for this area.
Story
How interesting and mind-blowing the story for the game is. How well the story fits in with the game and drives the game.
Variety
How many different things can you do in the game. How many different kinds of things can you use/collect/build. How many different scenarios or maps are there or can be obtained.
Atmosphere
How well a game makes me feel like I am in another world, namely the game world. It is usually how good a game uses the combination of sound, music, story and graphics to immerse the player in to the game world. I deem graphics to play only a minor part in atmosphere though, as games like Alone in the Dark(1992) was and still is tremendously atmospheric, even though it had simple polygon graphics with fixed backgrounds. Techincal explanations aside, I basically judge atmosphere, by how I feel when I play the game.
Easy to Play
How complex the game is, how difficult the game is and what is the learning curve like. In general, difficulty can be changed in a game, but some games, even on the easiest difficulty is very difficult to play. I usually judge on normal difficulty of a game but in combination with the complexity and how easy it is to learn to play.
Cleverness
This area covers how good the artificial intelligence(AI) is as well as what kind of innovations the game has. Realistic AI, clever AI that know how to do basic things automatically, innovative ways of controlling the game, how a game changes playing modes and even clever user interfaces all contribute to cleverness.
Action Quality
How good is the action in the game. Some games do not have much action, but what little action there is might be very good.
Action Quantity
The amount of action the game has. The action may not be very good, but there may be lots of it.
About the Filter Tags
Games are tagged usually based on their genres. There is the special tag 'free' for free games though.
The games list can be filtered by an individual tag or multiple tags. To filter only simulation games, add the simulation tag, but if you are after only flight simulators, then add the flight tag as well as the simulation tag.
