Maybe we finally have an excuse to get one of those fun looking oil cans from the cartoons and dump it in there?

Great stuff right there! Anybody else struggle with the cap on these? On mine the little cap is so hard to pull off and then if I’m not really careful I pull too hard and the whole red part pops off.

Try switching to Parry Grip, some of it is OK and the catalogue is big enough they don’t really get stuck.

And just to show solidarity the other day my kid just kept 'teenage mutant ninja turtles’ing for what felt like a half hour without a single ‘heroes in a half shell’ to round it off.

Can you imagine if you had all the time back you spent watching attack animations in RPGs over the years? There is definitely an immersion argument to be made, and this is why I just want the option to be available. I tend to be very mechanics focused and I play mostly puzzle games so I’m just here to ‘figure it out’. For visuals and storytelling I’m reaching for different media first, that’s personal preference not a knock on VG.

I just want to illustrate that I kind of still have ‘down time’ where I’m just staring at a screen that isn’t changing, but the difference is that I’m playing the game in my head and thinking through things not being trapped for 2 seconds to watch somebody swing a sword. Especially if I’ve seen it a million times already and fully finished appreciating how cool it looks.

Your argument is really strong when it comes to action games though, but I guess we could also think about how it creates a build up and release of tension if applied mindfully. But that’s usually not the case, it’s just ‘the formula says we need a cut scene here’.

Maybe the convergence of ideas here is to stand up brighter lines between playing and watching?

I think this a pretty accurate take. One place I’ll add that retro games shine is fast forward, but that’s not the games themselves as much as the platform. To me, that’s their killer feature. When it comes to animations, I’m definitely not a patient gamer. And modern design seems to get this wrong constantly.

We use silicon bags and magnets. You let the top of the bag drape over the side of the bucket(tub? basin?) and hold it in place with a few magnets. From what I can tell the results are the same for the steaks and meat we cook and none of the sketchiness from eating slow heated plastic.