Every week, sort of, features editor Anthony Burch discusses games and gamer culture in his “Rev Rant” video series. You can watch the previous rants here.
This week’s rant is a sort-of answer to my previous video about harmonizing difficulty with accessibility. Last time around, I said I couldn’t think of any games that combined the sense of desperation one experiences in The Void or Demon’s Souls with the accessibility of any other mainstream game (player-instigated metagames like permadeath runs not withstanding). This week, I realize that Derek Yu’s Spelunky fits the bill almost perfectly.
On a barely related note, I just finished Pathologic over the weekend. Ultimately, The Void does pretty much the same stuff as Pathologic, only much better and in a slightly more accessible way. If you can only try one game this year that you’ll probably never finish due to ambiguous mechanics and crushing difficulty, make sure that game is The Void.
Additionally, my new goal is to reduce the length of all future rants to three minutes or less.