Believe me, it would help some of us a great bit. Keep this site entertaining :)

What does a goal of a game do to its fun or value? I will repeat my example from yesterday:

A dev-team wants to make a new racing-game. In doing so they decide the most crucial part of the racing game is not steering, it's accelerating and breaking. They let everyone in the public know about it so nobody can say they didn't know what was coming. Now the devs achieve a level of graphics no one has ever seen before in a racing game, everything is jaw-dropping. They even manage to make the accelerating and breaking extremely difficult and challenging, millimeters are crucial in every corner of your trigger buttons.

But in the end it's a beautiful looking racing game where you only accelerate or break.

Now the devs achieved exactly what they wanted to but how would you rate this game, compared to other racing games? I know this is an exaggeration but how does the goal/vision add anything to what the game is in the end?

Ofcourse the goal or vision of any piece of art has to do with how you judge it.

You wouldn't review a Drama film on how many laughs it delivers, and deep fleshed out characters aren't the most important thing for a comedy.

Similarly It'd be unfair to rate a game that's meant to be a linear, story driven experience on how many sidequests it has. That's not what the developer was trying to create.

But what do you say to my exaggerated example? How would you review such a "racing game"? Or how would you review a game where you only have to use one button but the creator of the game would tell you before? Would it be a good game or valuable if these devs would achieve exactly what they wanted?

In my opinion you don't need to tell before the experience in any way and it shouldn't alter your review in any way. If I watch a movie and don't know anything before, I know while watching it what kind of movie it is and especially if I like it or not. There is no need for telling me before. And especially it doesn't change my opinion on it.

Same applies to games. When I was young we bought games because of their covers! And I didn't even know what awaited me. Of course this led to bad games in my collection...