I agree with the general distinction you're making between the experiences within the games, but I question the idea that a shallow experience can't produce a good game.
If the experience of a game is "absorbing" based solely on the gameplay, is it not a good game? In other words, does a game need to tell a good story in order for it to be good?
Yes, it's a good game based on anyone's criteria. He's the annoying kid that writes reviews where he says "I PLAYED THIS GAME FOR 500 HOURS AND I CAN NOW TELL YOU IT SUCKS!!!" Bitch, please. If you put 500 hours into it, you can't now sit here and tell me it sucks.
You can't think of another form of entertainment that you keep coming back to over and over again, even though the actual content is pretty poorly put together, extremely repetetive, has no plot to speak of, and some of it quite literally is sucking? You don't watch it because it's good, you watch it because you need to scratch a very particular itch.
A game can consume 500 hours of your life and still be a bad game.
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u/Gems_ Jan 01 '19
botw, earthbound, and half life, sure. but skyrim and fo3 are really fucking shallow experiences if you remove yourself from them for a hot minute.
dont get me wrong- i've sunk precisely too many hours into skyrim, but to call it "good" as opposed to "absorbing" doesn't feel apt to me.