Shovel Knight is a pixel side-scrolling action game — my favorite genre, pixel art excluded. The Chinese name for it is “铲子骑士” (Shovel Knight), which says it all: the hero fights with a shovel. Your attacks include the standard swing, a jump-and-down-thrust with the shovel, and a bunch of other fun moves. So why play this instead of the so-called big titles? Because they’re not fun — to me, anyway. These days, what they call AAA games keep chasing “immersion” and “cinematic experiences,” and what that actually delivers is a whole lot of boring, monotonous combat hidden behind some story. There are always people who mock me: “You keep playing those Gal games where you can’t even hit anyone, just endless yapping — how is that even a game?” But honestly, strip away the graphics, the story, and the cutscenes from most AAA titles on the market, and the combat and gameplay itself isn’t fun at all. I’d say it’s worse than games from 10 years ago — at least those didn’t have all the yapping and cutscenes, or those god-awful “tutorial guides,” or the endless grind like walking a dog. Oh, sure, some hardcore gamer will tell you that XXX big title shows you such and such a great story and scenery, with grand exploration and blah blah blah.