> dynamic damage models, deformable terrain

The new Donkey Kong game has this. You can smash pretty much everything. However, just like with leaning too much on graphics, it felt like they leaned too much on this. The game was very boring and repetitive. I kept waiting for it get better and eventually gave up on it. Being able to smash everything got old by the time I made it out of the tutorial area.

Contrast this to the newer Zelda games. You can climb pretty much anywhere and go pretty much anywhere. It’s the first game I ever played with that much freedom to explore. But instead of subtracting from the gameplay it added to it, as it opened up new (and seemingly infinite) ways to approach and solve a problem. There were also enough varied game loops that felt distinctly different to not feel repetitive.