According to the all-knowing Oz Wikipedia, these are the major genres in video games.
Action – Quick reflexes, accuracy and timing. There’s a ton of sub-genres, which are generally the more used terminology. Fighting, platformer, shooter, etc…
Action-Adventure – Bastard child of Action, and Adventure! Their love, deemed unacceptable in the more moral times of the 1980s, they were forced to hide behind textual interfaces, and when their love brought forth the progeny of Action-Adventure Gaming, the world was united in harmony! Or something. The point is, we have this genre and its games are part adventure, solving puzzles and interacting with your environment, and part action, shooting things that aren’t puzzles to solve. Oh, and sometimes it’s better to not engage in a toe-to-toe fight, but that’s a whole other sub-genre of Action-Adventure.
Adventure – Puzzle-solving, Environment interaction and generally non-confrontational. Again, there are many sub-genres, but probably not the ones that you would have thought. Text Adventure, Graphical Adventure, Visual Novels, etc… It’s definitely redefining what I thought this genre was about…
Role-Playing – You take on the role of a character in the game and directly control their actions through the game. MMOs, Sandbox, Tactical, Action, are all sub-genres of Role-playing.
Simulation – So many things you can simulate! Construction sims like Civ City. Life sims like Spore. Vehicle sims like Gran Turismo.
Strategy – One of the other “30 day” questions deals with this genre. Asking, “Real-time or Turn based?” Since I’m going to answer that for you later, I wont go into it here, but those are two of the major Strategy sub-grenres. There’s others! Tower Defense, Multi-player online battle arena (MOBA), Artillery… lots of good stuff. You can’t just charge in strong and hope to win. If your opponent has any tactics at all, it wont work.
But which one do I personally like best? Find out after this commercial break!
Nefarious Intentions 