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What’s better: cool spellcasting gestures, or seizing control of a rolling boulder trap?Vote now!
Vote now!
Image credit:Square Enix
Image credit:Square Enix
Last time, you decided that unit veterancy is better than rerolling dice. I’m not surprised, given that rerolling dice is a pretty niche thing only seen in a handful of games, but oh what a glorious niche thing! Fine, fine. We continue. This week, I ask you to choose between the mechanism for controlling magic and the mechanism for controlling a big daft rock. What’s better: cool spellcasting gestures, or seizing control of a rolling boulder trap?
Cool spellcasting gestures
Hylics 2 Trailer 3Check out a few cool gestures in this Hylics 2 trailerWatch on YouTube
Hylics 2 Trailer 3
Seizing control of a rolling boulder trap
When I finally pass the trap, I pray to see a lever. And I will pull the lever. And after some grinding and cthunking, there it will be: a shiny new boulder, ready to roll. And now I’m the dickhead out to ruin everyone’s day in the most unlikely way (dearest video game, I trust you have spawned a new wave of enemies behind me). And I will watch the boulder roll over them. And then I will pull the lever again.
I am so glad that whileResident Evil 4’s recent remake did tone down some of the original’s absurdities, it does have big rolling metal balls to squish cultists. It’s also good if, like in Dark Souls, I can pull a lever to redirect the trap and cause fresh trouble. I like that redirecting the boulders in Sen’s Fortress also causes them to act less like goofy traps and start doing more of what you’d expect from a boulder rolling through a building, smashing through walls. I have caught you in the act, boulder, and I delighted that your response is to concede with a cheeky smile, “Alright, you got me. I was doing video games. I’ll try to behave better now.”
It’s difficult: seizing control of a rolling boulder is only fun if it’s cathartic. I need to suffer through this childish and impractical trap so I can revel in turning it against ‘the game’, getting revenge on ‘the game’. I don’t really enjoy control of a boulder trap I haven’t faced myself. I’m sorry, Dungeon Keeper, but it’s just not the same. There is a hypothetical risk that a trap might annoy me so much, kill me so many times, that I don’t enjoy pulling that lever myself when I finally reach it. But I’ve yet to find that, and we shouldn’t get too tangled arguing with our imaginations. Now if I could find a lever to send a little boulder rolling through the synapses responsible for this quibbling…
But which is better?
I really, really do like squishing baddies with their silly traps, but I can’t resist people doing cool twiddly finger movements and modern dance routines. If I could click my fingers into fingerguns as the gesture to conjure a flame at the tip, I would be deleriously happy as I burned to death. Which way do you fall, reader dear?
