Well...this is of course another matter of personal taste. I tend to like fast-action first-person shooters because they give me some time off from real life. But I used to really love the old text-based adventures that would show an occasional image or two. That is actually how I learned English. This was back in the 80s and you still had to TYPE to ask your character to look at things, and after thousands of "You find nothing." replies you suddenly get a spark of imagination and try something different and hey! You move on.
I've had periods of lots of gaming and very long periods with little gaming, mostly due to having a family. But I find that for me, technological advances is fun and interesting. I like that games require heavy hardware to run. The problem is that I can't afford it...but I still like reading about those games. I actually don't mind that I don't get to play them.
But more to the point - I think storyline is very important. I also like challenges, but I tend to like them if they are easily solvable. I hate puzzles that require me to do things which do not make sense (like solving meaningless color puzzles in order to open a door).
Immersion is also important to me. If a game grabs my attention I can spend hours with it, and come back to it. This doesn't have to mean fast action and furious speeds...I had that experience with a version of Majong a while back.
