Graphics: How should they be incorporated into a video game review?

A question that has been lingering around for quite some time is: What is the most important aspect of a video game? There has been a huge gameplay versus graphics war that has settled down in 2008 but was a huge deal in 2006 when Nintendo's Wii was scheduled for release and lingered on throughout 2006, 2007, and a little bit in 2008. I am going to offer my opinion on what the most important aspect of a video game is.

Now, gameplay and graphics are important. However, I want to introduce another aspect that can make a huge difference when purchasing a video game, and that is its value. When you bought that video game, were you ripped off? If the video game has amazing gameplay and amazing graphics, but will only be amazing for twenty minutes, did you get your money's worth? Now, this is an exaggerated scenario, but value can make a difference. If I rent a bunch of video games from the rental store, I know I am going to buy one, and I have never heard of these video games before, I ask myself these questions in this order:

1) Which video games are fun?
2) Of the fun video games: Which video games immerse the player well?
3) Of the immersive video games: Which video games give me my money's worth?

The first question is asking about the general gameplay experience. This can include how fun the video game is, flow of the video game, controls, and other things that make a video game fun. When talking about gameplay, if we score every little thing gameplay affects and average them out we should get a sensible gameplay score.

The second question is asking a yes/no question: Does the video game immerse you, make you feel like you are physically inside the video game? Things that immerse you are graphics, sounds, story, personality of the characters, and other stuff. Unlike gameplay, we can't just average the individual scores, for two reasons. First, humans are fully content with playing an 8-bit video game like Super Mario Brothers as long as its fun, so why shouldn't any video game be immersive. Second, and more importantly, if graphics are amazing and sounds are amazing, then why does the story have to be good if you are already immersed? Usually, it makes sense to use the highest or second highest score from the individual parts to give a sensible immersion score.

The third question is also a yes/no question: Did you get your money's worth? Things that contribute to value could be gameplay hours, replay value, and tilt. Although it's a yes/no question, we should average the scores of the individual parts unless one of them is extraordinarily high to come up with our value score.

So, for the gameplay versus graphics question: Gameplay is more important and that graphics are important sometimes, but can never be more important than gameplay.