My feeling, regarding the attempt to do storytelling by means of games, is videogame designers generally aren't that good at it. Because of this, I tend to view games as games, things to be played, which need entertaining gameplay with them. Of course, when the game designers get it right, it is awesome, and memorable. The Uncharted series, Mass Effect 1 and 2, Bioshock, and others, really do well in that area (for the most part). For me though, I want the gameplay to be fun, which the mentioned games were. But, for me, Borderlands is my top game, because the FPS action, loot run, and leveling up, were fun... lots of fun for me. Keep in mind, one game I really like also is Diablo, so you can see the appeal of Borderlands. As I said, gameplay is very important to me. In my case, as much as I wanted to like Brutal Legend, what it had me trying to do, was NOT fun. I like most of it, except having to do Guitar Hero with a 360 controller during the middle of a battle. Seriously?
Pardon me if I missed anything above. That is what came to mind for games. For me, Sandbox works, if there is some sort of key play mechanic that is fun to do over and over (like hunt agility orbs in Crackdown) or a variety of minigames which work also and are varied enough.
