You know what I love? Moving. Sure, shooting and punching and problem-solving and galaxy saving and twisting time and space are all great, but none of them quite compare with that fundamental pleasure of just moving through a virtual environment. It is, I think, one of the most enjoyable things to do in any videogame. Be it an open-world sandbox or a linear, narrative-driven map, I love moving my virtual body through and as part of that world.

‘As part of’ is the crucial part of that sentence. There’s a subtle but vital difference between just moving a camera around an environment, and moving a body through it. There needs to be some kind of density, some kind of thickness that threatens to restrict your movement while, counter-intuitively, allowing you to feel like you can move freely. Ultimately, movement in a game needs to feel like it required effort in order to be rewarding.

It’s for this reason that Just Cause 2 continues to be one of my all time favourite videogames while the grappling hook remains one of my all time favourite utilities to appear in any videogame ever. There are few games out there that are enjoyable to just move a character through like Scorpio’s body across and over the islands of Panau.

On top of the typical basic movements of running, aiming, jumping, and driving vehicles that are expected of any post-GTAIII sandbox game, Just Cause 2 adds a whole heap of context-sensitive actions as well as two very important items: the grappling hook and the parachute. While the game only really teaches the player the basics of these gadgets (use parachute to not hit ground; use grappling hook to go over there), it is up to the player to figure out the myriad ways they can be combined to propel Scorpio through the world like some gravity-defying acrobat.

For starters, the grappling hook can be used while the parachute is open to pull Scorpio along and pick up speed. After a while, you figure out it is vastly quicker to get around like this than stealing vehicles, kind of like rowing a giant boat through the sky. Then there’s the way the parachute can be opened from inside or atop a vehicle, or while reeling in the grappling hook, to launch the player at high velocity, like a giant slingshot.

After a few hours, Just Cause 2 becomes less like a typical sandbox game and more like an exquisite kind of ballet. Like one of those anime movies, where two fighters will leap into the air and have an epic sword fight for minutes before either touches the ground. You might launch yourself at one helicopter with a grappling hook, throw out the pilot, grapple to another one and ride it for a while before leaping towards the ground, landing on a jeep, stealing it, and then surfing on its roof as you blast the chasing motorbikes.

By giving my a few easy-to-use gadgets and a whole heap of buttons mapped to specific, constant acts of movement, Just Cause 2 gives me this unadulterated pleasure of movement no other game has matched. I no longer feel anchored to the ground like I might in, say, Saints Row 3. With a little bit of practice, I’m free to move in any direction I want, as long as there is a solid surface to grapple to.

Similarly, the simple pleasure of movement is why I have poured more time into Jetpack Joyride than all my other iOS games combined. Jetpack Joyride is far more straightforward and simple than Just Cause 2, requiring only a single finger to play. If you tap the screen, Barry throttles the jetpack to go up, and if you do nothing he goes down. Simple. Still, it taps into that fundamental pleasure of mastering movement through a world just like Just Cause 2. You need to learn the nuances of the jetpack before you can master moving with it.

But moving doesn’t always have to be so eccentric to be pleasurable. Just strolling through a field in Skyrim or across a level of Rayman Origins can be just as enjoyable, be my character a flexible trapeze artist or not.

It’s why I’m terribly interested in giving Dear Esther a go when it comes out later this month. I never played the original Half-Life 2 mod when it came out, but everything I’ve heard about it has got me impatient for the updated release. Apparently, you do nothing in the game save move across an environment, looking at things. It’s a minimalistic design that I’ve seen several articles call ‘daring’ or ‘experimental’, but to me it just sounds obvious, amazing, and pure. Because, really, when it comes down to it, that’s what videogames are: the ability to visit a new world as a newcomer, as a metaphorical infant, and to learn to walk in them.

In this sense, games like Just Cause 2, Jetpack Joyride, and Dear Esther (from what I hear, at least) are, dare I say it, some of the purest videogames out there. They put moving through the virtual world before all else. And, really, if moving through a virtual world isn’t fun, what’s the point of being there in the first place?