I'm inclined to react favorably to the tag "adventure", especially "first-person" (with 3D-pan & pre-rendered graphic, yummy) adventure. It implies that a game will probably have exploration and an interesting background story, will look good on modest hardware and leave my left hand free. But I don't mind a bit of whacking, horror, knitting or whatever-you-like.
The only genre tag that really produces a palpable dislike in me is strategy, because I have that notion of crappy little isometric houses in oceans of tags and bubble text, and time. I'm prejudiced against RPGs/MMORPurger, as Yahtzee says it kills more people's lives than any other game addiction (except stragety, conceivably). And fights used to be lousy button-meshing contests.
I used to like a little mindless shooting (or creeping up on and whacking people from behind) once in a blue moon, but what now with all the FPS hype, gore and socially acceptable semi-fascist trash ala "Medal of Honor", I would feel like implictly endorsing torture and world domination by a certain superpower gone astray.
In this age of publisher die-off you have to seriously look for worthwhile games among the indie developers and freebies. That means lower average quality, but also more variety. And it's quite an adventure game in itself.
