It's likely Ridge Racer and Taiko no Tatsujin talking, but I can't help but kind of like Xevious. I've been brainwashed by Namco so thoroughly that I've been convinced there's some value in this screensaver of a game.

Hideo Kojima has said that Xevious was one of his favourite games growing up, and admired its sense of a tangible world. I think that's what I appreciate about it. The landscapes. Xevious's backgrounds aren't built out of repeated patterns and tilesets, but unspectacular dirt roads, forests and coastlines. The hypnotically repetitive gameplay casts your attention to them. It's easy to start thinking about the lives of the people below, and the day-to-day operations of each base you fly over. It feels convincingly mundane, and builds the illusion quite invitingly. It's quite unique for a shoot 'em up of its vintage, and it's easy to see how this sense of purposeful adventure inspired Kojima's work.

Then you snap out of it and realise how fucking boring the game is.