Stretch Panic

Edge: It's when I have two men and a dog happily balanced on the undulating form of my giant quadrupedal anthropomorphic caterpillar and then eat a house that I realise this is either one of the most important videogames of recent years, or somehow not a videogame at all. What is this crazy thing called Noby Noby Boy?

The core pleasure of Boy's stretchiness is the kind of thing that is, in videogames, sometimes loosely called a 'mechanic', but that word implies a sense of linear rigidity belied by Boy's twangy and twirly acrobatics. It's more about the simulation of a recognisable material quality, like my preference for blue denim when I am Sackboy (a texture I in some way stroke with my eyes), or the peculiarly satisfying way in which Metal Gear Solid's iconic cardboard box flops down around Snake. Some kind of stylised 'physics' had been around in videogames for a long time, of course (think of the crucial role played by versions of 'inertia' in Asteroids or the 2D Mario games), but gradually more interest was directed not just at how objects move but what they are like in themselves.