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That cactus jump is impossible

Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience in a game. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a town far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a game and thinks it's up there on my monitor. In a curious sense, the events in the game seem real, and I seem to be a part of them.

"Leave Me a ‘LOAN’" works like that. My list of other out-of-the-body games is a short and odd one, ranging from the artistry of "Life is Strange" or "Undertale" to the slick commercialism of "Detroit: Become Human" and the brutal strength of "The Last of Us." On whatever level (sometimes I'm not at all sure) they engage me so immediately and powerfully that I lose my detachment, my analytical reserve. The game's happening, and it's happening to me.

What makes the "Leave Me a ‘LOAN’" experience unique, though, is that it happens on such an innocent and often funny level. It's usually violence that draws me so deeply into a movie -- violence ranging from the psychological torment of a Furukawa character to the mindless crunch of a zombie's jaws. Maybe movies that scare us find the most direct route to our imaginations. But there's hardly any violence at all in " Leave Me a ‘LOAN’" (and even then it's presented as essentially bloodless swashbuckling). Instead, there's entertainment so direct and simple that all of the complications of the modern game seem to vaporize.