Oh sure, I gathered as much. I just saw the opportunity to go off on a wild tangent and jerked the wheel. I could also see myself tooling around for a bit in Everything, and really only diving in if I had the house to myself for a weekend or something. I'd feel like a bad partner if I spent hours at home goofing…

I think it also depends on what you mean by interactivity. In some senses of the word, Everything is one of the most interactive games there is, because you can take each and every game element and move it or change it into something else that you've found in the game. Sure, you can put it into autopilot mode, but…

Don't forget Tap/Click Things Until the Numbers get Bigger! (and then keep tapping/clicking)

Differing tastes aside, there's no need to make wild assumptions about what I got out of a game, or to deride those experiences as simply "masochism". You won't make too many friends around the Gameological Society by trying to dunk on people for liking what they like.

I assumed you did that on purpose, hence the upvote.

It's true, I appreciate games that make me think, or feel something other than "this is fun". If I only sought out games that were fun to play, I'd have missed out on some of my favorite games, and entire gaming genres. See also Firewatch, Gone Home, Kentucky Route Zero, Spec Ops: The Line, and so on.

I believe the phrase you're looking for is "inverse kinematics", sometimes abbreviated to IK.

Oh yeah, the DS3 was pretty much trash. Squishy triggers, huge dead spot on the thumbsticks, way too light. Mine also has some tiny plastic piece broken off inside it, so it rattles a bit when I pick it up. In hindsight, it's the ultimate long con to get folks to re-buy ported games and remasters for the PS4, just…

I won't hear it. Inside has the best integration of narrative and mechanics in a game to date. The only reason it's not a lock for my GOAT is that it's not exactly fun to play (not that it's supposed to be).

I love endlessly rehashing the merits of various controllers! The Dualshock 4 has to be my favorite, though I haven't spent a ton of time with the Xbox One controller, and haven't even touched a Switch. I prefer the DS4 over the Wii U Pro on both the curve of the handles and the shape of the thumbsticks. The…

You were hoping to see Diddy Kong Racing up there too?

Yeah, it does take some un-learning to figure out both Plague Knight's movement and the damage arcs of his different bomb casings. Mostly, I've been using the homing bombs on regular enemies, and then watching each boss to figure out where he spends most of the time on the screen. If I have a casing that arcs into…

Ok! I guess I better play this game, then. I don't have a Switch yet, as I'm waiting to see what happens with the well-documented hardware issues, so it may be a bit before I dive in. Though, seeing BotW compared to the all-time greats of gaming is certainly pushing me closer to a purchase.

In preparation for Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment, I decided to check out Plague of Shadows this week. So far it's pretty great! I like the goofy side plot they've set up to parallel the main game, and Plague Knight's arsenal really makes you rethink the boss fights. I've heard rumblings on Twitter that Specter…

My favorite emergent gameplay has to be the experience of actually getting lost in a procedurally generated world. Most games do everything they can to keep you from getting lost with waypoints, world maps, or just small environments with recognizable landmarks, so it's pretty rare to find yourself unable to remember…

Halo 3 had one of the best game capture features out there! You could save and replay entire play sessions, put the camera wherever you wanted to record a video or screenshot, even moving the camera as you were recording to do "crane shots" and such. And you could share all of it with your Xbox friends. The PS4…

I'll have to look this up. I played NMS for a couple weeks after launch, something new came out in Destiny, and never went back to it.

It feels like I've been away from the site for a while now. Between last week's vacation and a debilitating illness this week, I've barely strung two sentences together in a Disqus post!

Question, having not played the game: Are you opposed to point B because the crouch animation is gratuitous in some way, or is it that you're generally opposed to crafting systems that require gathering materials?

I always come so close on Zen's Discord trophy! I can get three pretty reliably when my team makes a coordinated push, but that fourth one is always too slow!