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What’s better: rocket jumping, or fiddling with environmental objects?Subverting rules, or being pandered to?
Subverting rules, or being pandered to?
Rocket jumping
I still marvel at this crude physics interaction. Pushing rules to see if you can break them in interesting ways is one of the best parts of video games, and none is more video game-y than detonating explosives beneath your own feet to whoosh into the sky. It’s the combination of a risk/reward calculation and an act of violence that that would vaporise you in the real world. Classic video games. And it’s so fun! A great trick to master, which you can combine with other tricks (from bunnyhopping to grenade jumping) for a murderous advantages or even eschew violence and turn a shooter into parkour. That’s the sort of magic which makes video games so interesting to me.
Event Horizon 4 - Quake 3 Team Trick JumpingWatch on YouTube
Event Horizon 4 - Quake 3 Team Trick Jumping
Fiddling with objects
I refuse to believe that you do not gasp a little and say “Ooh!” when you hit ‘use’ over a video game toilet and discover it flushes. They made the toilet flush! Nor do I believe that you don’t spend the rest of the game trying to interact with light switches, taps, lamps, drawers, bins, microwaves,bottles, books, radios, televisions,drinks machines, gadgets, gizmos, devices, machinery, and every other object that would likely offer no material advantage but could conceivably do something. Each is delightful.
A culinary disasterWatch on YouTube
A culinary disaster
You might counter that fiddlebits amplify the artificiality of everything non-interactive, drawing attention to the fact that the world is made of plywood and egg cartons. Fair. But I find a lot of magic in the awareness that video games are tricks and lies held together with sticky tape and numbers. As you watch water swirl down a toilet, you can almost hear a developer over your shoulder whisper “I made this for you; isn’t it cool?”
But which is better?
I’m staying out of this one. The choice is so difficult and so important that I wouldn’t want to influence the results. You tell me, and make your case.
