Developing games for PC and console markets are two different tasks but as more and more titles become parts of multi-platform franchises that need to fare as best as possible in terms of total sales, game studios have to sacrifice the ambition to develop each version to the full potential of its native platform and accept some compromises in order to make their games as accessible as possible for different audiences.
Peter Serafinowicz, a British actor and comedian, has written an incredibly honest and down to earth article for Gizmodo. Most of it consists of anecdotes about him… pirating books, TV shows, music and movies and of reasons to do so. And these are some damn good reasons.
Some of the best parts of his piece follow.
I have very little time to write this post so let’s make it into a bullet point based mini-review.
“Rainblood: Town of Death” is a simple, short, wonderful RPG that has been finally translated from Chinese. The story is set in so-called Central Land, an esoteric version of China where ordinary folks are, well, ordinary but martial artists are, conversely, super-human ass-kicking killing machines belonging to numerous groups of assassins and spies for hire.
Simplicity is a virtue but simplicity that is both fun and twisted at the same time, is good entertainment. Take the basic “Super Mario Bros” concept of jumping from platform to platform, killing enemies by dropping yourself on their heads and collecting gems that can be obtained from bricks you hit with your body, add a truly disturbing theme of a reality torn between multiple layers and what you get is “Eversion”, a short but brilliant indie platformer you are going to fall in love with.
I play quite many retro games. I do it mostly to check what I missed when they were still fresh or just to play something good. In most cases I can easily get over the antiquated gameplay design, blurry textures and blocky models of enemies and the environment. What is more, some titles, like “No One Lives Forever” or “Hostile Waters: Antaeus Rising” turn out to be real diamonds that aged gracefully.