Even “Metroidvania,” a portmanteau created specifically to denote a certain set of design tenets, often comes with a cascade of asterisks, caveats, and parentheticals.īut of course, video games’ stubborn refusal to be pinned down is part of what makes them so damn fun. “Turn-based strategy” isn’t doing all that much work anymore. Simple terms like “open world” and “first-person shooter” have lost much of their original meaning. It’s becoming increasingly difficult, as the years go by, to describe my favorite video games.
