[Hydraulix989]

I've found that a lot of more junior engineers just want to rotely pattern match on one-size-fits-all "style" rules in their code review without fully understanding why those rules exist in the first place.

Like all rules, there's always exceptions. In a hot code path like the physics engine logic, you're going for performance optimizations (which often LOOK messy) and that means making slight compromises on readability. It's quite a bit different than the code implementing the business logic in your SaaS company.