Counter counterpoint, the fun of Mario Party is mostly determined by the people you’re playing with, not the game itself.

True, but at least Mario Party has the [i]potential[/i] to be fun. The only platformer I've ever enjoyed in any capacity was Hollow Knight.

While I don’t know every game you’ve ever played of course, it is worth noting there are two very different types of platformers. There are platforming oriented platformers, like most Mario games, Celeste, Grapple Dog, etc. And combat oriented platformers, which include the likes of Kirby, Sakuna: Of Rice And Ruin, and most Metroidvanias like Hollow Knight & Ender Lilies. I would recommend giving more combat oriented platformers a try. Especially Ender Lilies. If you liked Hollow Knight, I bet you’d like more platformers than you think—there are a lot of good ones out there! But also, out of all the 3D Mario games, the Galaxy games by far feel the worst to control. In 64, Sunshine, and especially Odyssey, a lot of the fun just comes from how fun it is to move Mario around. If you haven’t already, I’d highly recommend giving Odyssey a shot.

I've always considered combat-oriented platformers like Hollow Knight to be a separate genre from "pure" platformers like Mario. Hollow knight is a "platformer" in that you are able to jump on platforms, but overall, the meat of the gameplay is more akin to an RPG or a 2D fighting game with character progression and well-defined combat mechanics. I enjoy games like this! I never beat Hollow Knight in its entirety (I don't own it, I just played through several bosses at a friend's house), but what I saw of the game was quite enjoyable. Mario is a platformer in that the gameplay consists almost entirely of jumping on platforms and enemies. I don't tend to enjoy games where the primary mode of gameplay is just traversal. Cool traversal mechanics are an excellent complement to more fleshed-out games, but don't make for entertaining gameplay in a vacuum (in my opinion). For example, I love the jumping "puzzles" in [i]the forbidden game[/i], but I wouldn't play Density if that was all the game had. Platforming is at its best when it's just an enjoyable accoutrement to go alongside the combat and character sandbox elements that make games "good" (to me). That said, I am a man of very specific tastes; not just for games, but for life in general. As far as food, music, and hobbies go, my scope is very limited in that only a few select things make the dopamine go "brrrr." Curse my useless hypothalamus... "Master" gland my -blam!-!

[quote]I've always considered combat-oriented platformers like Hollow Knight to be a separate genre from "pure" platformers like Mario. Hollow knight is a "platformer" in that you are able to jump on platforms, but overall, the meat of the gameplay is more akin to an RPG or a 2D fighting game with character progression and well-defined combat mechanics. I enjoy games like this! I never beat Hollow Knight in its entirety (I don't own it, I just played through several bosses at a friend's house), but what I saw of the game was quite enjoyable. Mario is a platformer in that the gameplay consists almost entirely of jumping on platforms and enemies.[/quote] Yep. That's more or less what I was trying to say. There's a lot you can do with combat in 2D that doesn't work as well in 3D, and so I'd really recommend diving into some more combat platformers. In Sakuna, for example, there's this really awesome projectile attack that quickly became one of my favorite moves in most any game ever, but I cannot think of any conceivable way to transfer it over to 3D. Combat oriented platformers are some of my favorite games ever, so if you're ever in the mood to try a few, I can talk your ear off about some good ones! [quote]I don't tend to enjoy games where the primary mode of gameplay is just traversal. Cool traversal mechanics are an excellent complement to more fleshed-out games, but don't make for entertaining gameplay in a vacuum (in my opinion). For example, I love the jumping "puzzles" in [i]the forbidden game[/i], but I wouldn't play Density if that was all the game had. Platforming is at its best when it's just an enjoyable accoutrement to go alongside the combat and character sandbox elements that make games "good" (to me).[/quote] This is a tricky one, though. See, if your movement capabilities aren't properly fleshed out enough, this is definitely true. There was a really fun game called The Pathless, and it had amazing movement. However, the game was also pretty much *just* movement, and as fun as it was, the movement system wasn't deep enough to really flesh out a whole game. However, the problem with The Pathless wasn't that the game was a movement oriented game, but that the movement in the game simply wasn't deep enough to be the core focus. When a game does pull this off, however, it feels amazing. The trick is usually that the game starts off with relatively simple movement--sometimes this is a hard cap by actually locking what movement abilities you have, sometimes its just a knowledge barrier where you don't quite know how to move around super great yet--but that movement winds up being a lot deeper as you progress through the game. In Mario Odyssey, for example, the game is easy enough to pick up that most anyone could do so rather easily. However, the movement system is much, much deeper than it seems on the surface, and once you realize what you're doing, it is so satisfying to pull off a bunch of really tough tricks. Then you have games like Ori and the Blind Forest, where your movement *does* actually start off really simple, but you start to unlock more abilities as you progress through the game. There's also games like Celeste, where your core movement abilities are always relatively simple, but each level is designed with new mechanics in mind, creating a really deep experience. Now I don't play Destiny anymore, but from what I remember years ago, its movement system is relatively simple. Of course you couldn't play a game where that was the focus. But, if you look in the right places, movement-oriented games can be really fun. The problem is, they're just a lot harder to pull off. You can have a combat-oriented game and a movement-oriented game that are both relatively shallow, and the combat game will be much more enjoyable. However, find and stick with a movement-oriented game with enough depth, and it may surprise you just how fun they can be. Overall, though, I do definitely enjoy combat platformers more than pure platformers. Like, I can recognize Frogun and Grapple Dog as genuinely good games, but I just have a really hard time playing them. I didn't get very far in either. :p

[quote]You can have a combat-oriented game and a movement-oriented game that are both relatively shallow, and the combat game will be much more enjoyable. However, find and stick with a movement-oriented game with enough depth, and it may surprise you just how fun they can be.[/quote] I agree with the first part 100%. At lower levels of complexity, combat systems tend to be fun more often than movement systems. It takes a lot more complexity to make traversal mechanics fun. That said, I don't think there's a point where movement can [i]become[/i] entertaining enough to be the sole focus of a video game. Even if you were to add as much depth as humanly possible, I'd still say that complex movement systems are significantly less fun than even [i]middling[/i] combat systems. If you combine a half-decent combat system with some passable character progression, the game will almost always be more enjoyable than a game that builds itself solely on traversal mechanics, no matter how revolutionary and genre-defining they may be. I've watched a fair amount of gameplay from Mario Odyssey, but I don't get the appeal. Watching Alpharad spend several hours learning how to do one of the big skips with a frame-perfect jumping trick was entertaining because I was invested in Alpharad's success, but it didn't look like something fun to actually [i]do[/i]. I don't get the same "I did it!!!" dopamine hit that other people seem to get after accomplishing something difficult. I expect myself to succeed, and I know that I'm patient enough to accomplish (insert goal here) [i]eventually[/i] if I decide to do it, so actually succeeding does nothing for me. It's just... "Box checked, time to do the next thing." Even when the goal is nearly unreachable, my patience becomes obstinacy and I refuse to quit, often to my detriment. In those cases, I just end up hating the experience even though I succeeded in the end. For me, the most appealing thing in Mario Odyssey seems to be the balloon minigame, but that would mostly be because of the people I'd play it with, much like Mario Party. Dunkey had some pretty funny videos about that mode, though, so I'm wondering how much of that appeal is just because of the way he framed it with his sense of humor.

I disagree. If you have a sufficiently good movement system, it can easily be the sole focus of the game. It's kind of hard to explain, really, but a good movement system provides a totally different kind of fun when compared to a combat system. Movement systems are harder to make, but neither kind of fun is inherently better than the other, and to say that the best movement systems can't even stand up to middling combat systems isn't really fair, I don't think. It makes me think of Sonic Frontiers. For a while, Sonic games have been very movement focused, with Sonic blazing down levels at high speed, dodging obstacles and taking out baddies with relative ease (note that if you're familiar with Sonic I'm specifically referring to the Boost era of games). However, the most recent entry, Frontiers, took a totally different approach. Sonic is now in an open world, and while there are platforming challenges, they're relatively shallow and the real fun of the game comes from the bosses you can find scattered around. Sonic's combat system is so much more in depth in this game than in previous ones, and these bosses are genuinely amazing--some of the best in the series. Despite this, though, the game is one of the worst Sonic games imo, because it just doesn't capture that same feeling. Sonic still moves fast, but it doesn't feel like it matters. Sonic's overworld speed basically just amounts to the same purpose a horse would serve in most open worlds. It feels so bland, and the game loses so much because of it. The game is still, like, okay. The bosses are great. But, it's not the same, y'know? It's a different kind of fun. I'm not totally sure how to explain it, though. I wouldn't say either type of game is inherently better than the other, but I think it's something you kind of just have to experience yourself to understand. Though, let me just be clear about a few things, because there are some things to note about games with good movement systems (note that I actually typed this part up before the above part, so I do kinda tread on the same ground a little bit again with Sonic Frontiers) 1. Your good movement system needs to be supported by good level design. Sonic Frontiers is a good example of this. The movement feels, like, fine, I guess, but it's set in a big open world, and as a result the movement system never really gets to shine, because you're usually just running across big open fields. Meanwhile, Unleashed & Generations are fantastic, still letting you go fast, but putting your skills to the test by seeing if you can go fast while also actually controlling where you're going. 2. Depth =/= complexity. Celeste's movement system is relatively simple (at least, it is until you get into the crazy speedrunner tricks), but it's very deep. It's all about controlling your momentum, and performing actions with really tight timing. But, like, you don't actually have a ton of moves at your disposal. I've seen games with more complex movement systems than Celeste that were much more shallow. 3. Hybrids are usually the best. Like, I enjoy a good movement system, but usually a game that has both good movement and good combat surpasses a game that just has one or the other. Both systems are at their best when they work together, such as in Splatoon.

Sorry, I should have clarified that I was speaking from my perspective when I said that middling combat systems are more entertaining than great traversal systems. Fun is entirely subjective, and nobody can speak for all gamers in terms of what is and isn't enjoyable. For [i]me[/i], traversal mechanics just can't be enjoyable enough to compose an entire game. There need to be other main gameplay mechanics supporting it like combat, character progression, monster collection, or strategy elements for it to feel like a "complete" game to me. It's perfectly reasonable for you to enjoy games that are based primarily (or entirely) around movement! Everyone has their own preferences. Now, I haven't played any Sonic games, but from what you described, it sounds like your biggest problem with Sonic Frontiers is the fact that Sonic is in the title. If you're saying that it's a different kind of "fun," but just doesn't feel the same, then it's most likely because you have established expectations for what a Sonic game should and shouldn't be like. Phrases like "it isn't the same" tend to come from a place of comparison to how things [i]were[/i], which are indicative of change that one is dissatisfied with. If Frontiers was just a generic open world game with its own characters and setting, entirely independent from the Sonic franchise, do you think you would have enjoyed it more than you did? I've found that my enjoyment of games often suffers when I limit them to being the same as the games that came before it. Back when I was thinking along the lines of "this is what a Pokémon game should be," I was pretty disappointed in some of the spin-off games like [i]Pokémon Mystery Dungeon[/i] and [i]Pokémon Ranger[/i]. Mystery Dungeon didn't have the creature collecting or world exploration that I enjoyed, and Ranger didn't have the character/team building progression that I found so appealing in the core series. However, when I stopped thinking of them strictly within the context of "this is a Pokémon game" and started viewing them as their own independent titles, I found them to be a great deal of fun. [i]Pokémon Mystery Dungeon[/i] and [i]Pokémon Conquest[/i] are some of my favorite games in the franchise, despite the fact that they completely lack some of the main things that I enjoy in the main series games. While it's a lot closer to the main series in terms of gameplay, [i]Pokémon Legends Arceus[/i] was still quite a large change from the games that came before it, and I still think it's the best Pokémon game that currently exists. I hope the Sonic franchise continues making games that you enjoy, but I also hope they continue to try new things and make bold departures from the old games. Even if a title falls flat, those risks are what allow developers to make the innovations that redefine the norm for games. Many of the awesome traversal and combat mechanics that we enjoy in games today come from those risky games that "just weren't the same" as their predecessors! [b]Edit:[/b] I completely forgot to mention that I absolutely agree, games are best when they blend multiple well-designed systems together. A game with a good combat system is even better when paired with great movement mechanics. Titanfall 2 is a perfect example of this!

Oh, don't worry, I'm aware you were talking in opinions. However, I think the only reason you hold this opinion is because you just haven't found a movement system that calls to you enough. Does one exist yet? I dunno. Will you ever find it? Well, I would say probably not because you're not looking, but I do think that if you stumbled across the right game, your mind would change. Now, this isn't because movement systems are some sort of amazing totally awesome thing that everyone will love, I think this is true for most people and most genres/mechanics. I'm still not a fan of turn based games with movement involved, like XCOM, but I did really enjoy Othercide, for instance, just because it was built in a way that really resonated with me, and I found a newfound appreciation of the genre, even if I still don't like most of them. Oh, don't worry, I know about the whole judging games for what they are and what they want to be vs what you want them to be. Actually, funnily enough, I brought it up on another comment chain on this same thread. :p I wasn't trying to diss on Frontiers. I can see the fun in it, but even looking at the game for what it is and what it's trying to be, I just don't like it. I've tried to give it the best chance I could, it's not for me. My bringing it up was just because it's one of only two examples I can think of where a game mostly about movement became more about combat. The other example is Ori, but I didn't bring Ori up, because the second game--Will of the Wisps--was actually still fairly movement based. I do usually try to judge a game based on its own merits, rather than whatever preconceived conception of what I want it to be, and I'm all for franchises branching out and trying new things. However, there is an argument to be made about a franchise's identity, and how true they should stay to the preconceived notions that they have built for their playerbase. I'm all for series trying new things, but if they're going to do something radically different than what they did before, then they should either make it a spinoff or a new series. Like, looking at Breath of the Wild for example, it's fine, I guess, right? But I don't think it should have been a Zelda game. Zelda should have continued to do what it was doing, and Breath of the Wild should have just been a new IP. And sure, it was popular, but also, fans of the old Zelda formula are just kinda left in the dust. Zelda isn't Zelda anymore, and fans who want that Zelda formula have pretty much nothing now. Like, CrossCode is the only game in recent memory that's followed the old Zelda formula. And this is all touching on a different problem about every franchise and its mother going open world, like it's some kind of disease, but that's besides the point. The identity of a franchise is important, especially if it's a long running franchise. While every game should be judged on its own merits, and not be held to some standard of what it [i]should[/i] be, if you're going to set expectations for what your fans are to expect, then you shouldn't just pull the rug out from under them. I was actually really happy with what Pokemon was doing for a moment. Like, we just had Sword and Shield, and then they announce Pokemon Legends: Arceus. And Legends was a big open world Pokemon game, and I was like "Oh, cool! Pokemon is going to give the open world junkies their open world with this Legends spinoff series, and then leave the main games with the classic formula! That's awesome Pokemon! Really appealing to both sides of the-" And then they made Scarlet and Violet open world, and ruined everything, but they were almost a great example of how things should be! Keep the core games in your franchise to the formula and expectations your fans have, but still give yourself room to experiment with spinoffs, like Dungeon, Rangers, Legends, Colosseum/XD, etc.

Definitely agree with you on the Zelda thing. I thought BotW was alright, but it wasn't what I was looking for in a Zelda game. It was good enough for me to do every shrine, but not enough to get me to buy the DLC. TotK was actually really fun and I'd definitely like to see what they do with it next, but like you mentioned, I want some more traditional Zelda games as well. I want more of the puzzle-solving, dungeon-crawling, new key item-getting goodness that I loved growing up. I can find good open world games from almost any developer these days (I looove me some open world games), but I can't find a good [i]Zelda[/i] game anywhere other than, well, [i]The Legend of Zelda[/i]. Oddly enough, Tears of the Kingdom was actually the closest game to getting me to enjoy a game primarily for its traversal. The combat in the open world Zelda games is complete -blam!- - weapons break ridiculously quickly, the primary methods of attacking are clunky and dissatisfying, the "flurry rush" counter system is an atrocity to both animation and game design, and there's no real incentive to fight enemies instead of just run past them. Your good weapons are just gonna break, and all the monster will drop is a material to fuse to a worse weapon. Combat is anti-progression. While there are some mildly amusing ways to use gimmicks to fight enemies (physics kills, blowing them off a cliff with fans, building a resource-intensive killing machine, etc.), they're all inefficient and half of them waste expensive resources. Where TotK shines is in the [i]creations[/i] you can make. Hoverbikes, dune buggies, mopeds, funny self-balancing unicycles, heavily-armored land tanks with howitzer cannons, boats, planes, rockets to send unsuspecting Koroks into low earth orbit, [i]you name it![/i] I built a biplane out of glitched rails that [i]greatly[/i] exceeds the normal sustained flight speed of machines, and it handles quite smoothly. I started using the classic hoverbike before it became a well-known creation, and it was a ton of fun to just be able to go anywhere at little cost. That said, I'd argue that my enjoyment came from [i]creating[/i] the methods of traversal rather than from the movement mechanism itself. I love building things and taking them apart. It's always been a big part of who I am. That's consistent with a lot of the other traversal-focused games that I enjoy, too. I enjoy driving in GTA, but that's just as much because I like collecting and customizing cool cars as it is for the driving. (It also doesn't hurt that I can go shoot things if I get bored of driving.) The Crew 2 is entirely about racing vehicles, but it works for me because, once again, I can collect and customize a fleet of cars, jets, and boats. That game also has more RPG-esque vehicle "equipment" with gear scores and abilities, so it scratches the character progression itch for me. Compared to games like those, playing a Mario game where you've always got the same abilities and movement mechanics to get the job done doesn't seem all that interesting. Odyssey comes close with the way you can take over creatures to do things with them, but each creature is more of a temporary level design thing than a permanent upgrade to Mario's capabilities. Nothing hurts more than finding a [i]really cool[/i] ability (say, from a particular enemy you'd take over or something) and then realizing it's only available in a few parts of the game. If they gave Mario a skill tree and a gun, I'd play that game in a heartbeat! Until then, though, Mario isn't really my cup of tea.