Story and fun gameplay are the big two for me. If I enjoy playing the game then I'll have fun all the way through. If I start to get frustrated by the gameplay, a great story will still keep me playing.
I barely ever use photomode in games. I often admire views in games which are amazing looking but I don't like to stand around for a long time, I wanna keep going with the story
If I love a game loads then I'll play it through again and take more time to enjoy the environment though
Well for me I like taking photos in game so I can go through and try and deconstruct how it's modeled. It's the easiest way for me to figure out how detailed I can go now in my environments. It was engrained so much to go super low poly for my stuff while I was in school and now I'm trying to catch up to new games and workflows because my school fails to adapt to the industry or even try hard to. I saw a wireframe of Uncharted 4 and it's tessellation and there was likely a couple million polys on screen at any given time and mine have been usually not even 500,000. This game alone will hopefully help me push past my boundaries.