Varying Game Types by Name

Games have many different styles and genres today, each to present a unique gameplay experience that caters to the creators' design. Different graphics, different perspectives, and different stories all come together to make new video game adventures. A game that features realistic graphics, would be a game like Assassin's Creed, displaying entire cities and people from centuries ago, from the Arabian lands during the Crusades, to the Renaissance of Italy, to modern day America and beyond. Detailed character models, textures, and lighting come together the represent finely tuned virtual city-sized playgrounds for your assassin to complete his quest in.

Assassin's Creed 2 makes 15th century Italy a work of art.

But some games lose realism in favor of abstract creativity. Some games like deBlob, take familiar, basic concepts like cities and colors, but abstract them into a wildly imaginative game about re- colorizing an entire civilization, using abstract blob characters and exaggerated cartoon-like buildings; all with bright and vibrant colors.

deBlob 2 players slowly transform the abstract skyline from a gray wasteland,
to a expanse palate of color and vivacity.

2D games, are most often thought to be left in the 80's and 90's, but they are actually still going strong today. An example of a successful modern day 2D game would be LIMBO, a game that features 2D graphics and a strikingly unique visual style.

LIMBO's air of emptiness and dark visuals make it
a creepily engaging modern 2D side-scroller.

A 3D game is something else entirely, creating three dimensional worlds and levels for the players to roam in. They are the most common game today, with almost every modern console game featuring 3D character models and landscapes. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, the latest entry in the Zelda franchise features a fully three dimensional world to explore, as they have been since 1998 when they first departed from the series two dimensional standard.

Nintendo has been keeping Link in 3D since 1998's Ocarina of Time.
Skyward Sword is another great example of a series' 3D transition.

A game can be in first person, third person, or both views. A game like the recently released Elder Scrolls IV: Skyrim, features both first person and third person gameplay.

Skyrim has players battling and exploring in both 1st and 3rd person.

A game can be based on an idea or game from the real world, and then applied to home consoles. A video game like Mario Super Sluggers, takes the classic rules of baseball, but puts a Nintendo twist on it by adding Mario characters and power-ups.

Super Sluggers makes baseball even more fun with Mario and Co.

And finally, games can present the player with a captivating and expansive storyline, to bring skilled and well crafted stories to video gaming. A modern game franchise that has been doing this in what will be three games, is the Mass Effect series. A lot of games have good stories, but this series is an epic being told by you the player in your actions. The character you make, the people you talk to, become involved with, befriend or destroy, or any choice you make carries with you to the next game, to custom build your own Mass Effect experience as you watch the story unfold.

Mass Effect 3 brings the galaxy-sized story home with an epic
player choice based conclusion.

So these are the examples I've chosen to display how the game industry features many different types of gameplay variants to give the enormous amount of players out there, their choice in what they want to play. But this is only the tip of the iceberg in video game experiences available to gamers today.