作者：Neil Long

我不打算购买PS4或Xbox One，因为我现在已有最活跃的游戏平台了。iOS游戏越来越便宜了，能很快满足我的游戏需求。事实上，手机游戏也反映了我们现在的游戏方式。老一辈游戏玩家再也无法坐在电视前玩上连续玩上数小时的游戏。

App Store里有无数怪异的、有趣的、抽象的游戏，可惜大部分都被埋没了。有些游戏的销量只够支撑它的制作者再维持几个月，只有极少数游戏能获得真正的成功；iOS游戏界的成功传奇很少，当一旦成功，总是成功得惊天动地。

ipad_3(from edge-online)

然而，不成功的游戏太多了，组成了一出永远不会终结的悲剧。像Simogo工作室（游戏邦注：代表作包括《Device 6》、《Year Walk》和《Beat Sneak Bandit》）这样的工作室极少获得关注，让我感到非常沮丧。有些游戏有幸得到一点儿关注，帮开发者挣了一些钱——如《Super Hexagon, 》、《Super Crate Box》、《Joe Danger Touch》、《Triple Town》、《Drop7》，但这样的游戏并没有你想象得那样多。

那么，为什么游戏得不少关注？在某些人看来，但凡是手机游戏，就算不得“正统的”游戏。更明显的一点是，关于手机游戏的报道通常不会有太多的浏览量。根据Comscore网站的流量统计，我可以告诉你，关于手机游戏的报道的浏览量远少于主机或PC的。但我们会坚持报道的，因为我们信任游戏行业中被奇怪地忽略掉的部分。特别是，Xbox One和PS4现在已经不太能让我兴奋了。

App Store每周都会推出大量新游戏，再加PC领域的独立游戏开发的兴起，这些已经足够让我欢呼雀跃的了，我实在找不到什么理由花350美元入手PS4，更别说430美元的Xbox One。

主机游戏已经变得太大了，太占用时间了。在追求越大越好的过程中，游戏工作室意外地制造了这个奇怪的现象：越来越多游戏被它的所有者弃置一边，失宠的游戏让玩家产生深深的罪恶感。因为玩家都有这样一种观点：如果你不能玩遍所有重要的新游戏，那么你就配说自己对游戏有热情——你就不是“真正的玩家”。多么荒唐啊。

这种观点根植于狂热的玩家对收集所有自己喜欢的游戏的渴望之中。我猜，这是为了让自己觉得对游戏有深厚的知识积累，因此可以高明地讨论游戏。你可以在社交网站和论坛上发现这种现象，甚至游戏网站还提供奇怪的入门书帮助你积累那些知识。但为什么要像做无趣的苦功那样玩游戏呢？你难道就不能出于单纯的乐趣而玩游戏，而非要搞得像尽义务吗？

然而，罪恶感还是存在。考虑到我的职业，我从来没有玩过《生化奇兵》、《质量效应》和《刺客信条》，那么我就应该感到羞耻吗？我甚至没玩过《天际》。《侠盗猎车手5》很可能是我玩的最后一款主机大作，甚至玩了它之后还让我很奇怪地产生不舒服的感觉。它是卓越的，一直是，是2013年游戏机大作的标杆——技术上的奇迹、沙盒游戏的典范，允许你在虚拟的城市中随心所欲。但非常可惜时，它似乎是我的游戏机生涯的末日余辉—-面对这么大的游戏，我实现很难保持兴趣，所以玩到一半我就放弃了。在我玩的游戏中，Michael、Franklin和Trevor永远也走不到旅程的尽头。

GTAV-selfies(from edge-online)

然而，我很欣慰地发现在这个异常的后主机时代，我不是一个人。Tom Bissell曾写了一篇文章，详细地解释《侠盗猎车手5》是关于变老的游戏，改变了你和电子游戏的关系。专栏作家Leigh Alexander最近表达了同样的幻灭感——她在文章中表示，她惊恐地发现也许主机游戏再也不适合她了。

也许我们只是怀旧了。我属于“马里奥和索尼克一代”，那时候的游戏是直接而单纯的。操作和动作都很简单，我探索新场景，那里有恐龙守卫着鸟头状的最后关卡的入口。我探索蓝色刺猬（索尼克）可以瞬间移动的世界。这是色彩和想象创造出来的令人兴奋、超凡脱俗的体验。

我对电子游戏的热情随着几年前PlayStation时代的到来而衰退。我想，让我对主机游戏彻底失去兴趣的，就是《GT赛车》——当时我疯狂地在游戏杂志中寻找关于它的一点一滴的报道。似乎是一款惊人的游戏，但太大了，太复杂了，我终于意识到：“这样的游戏再也不适合我了。”

当然，这完全不是《GT赛车》的错，但从那以后，大主机游戏时代的竞争目标一定程度上变成把一更多内容塞进更深刻、更有意义和显然更成熟的体验中。确实，越来越先进的硬件也允许玩家购买一些DLC（可下载内容）。

Ridiculous Fishing(from edge-online)

对某些人来说，这是完全合理的。但我更怀念《Granny Smith》中简单到愚蠢的、有趣到低俗的体验，《Ridiculous Fishing》的紧张搞怪，《Drop7》的巧妙创意，还有在《The Room》闲逛数小时的欢乐或者解决《Hundreds》中那些特别复杂的迷题。《Super Hexagon》和《Pivvot》是对你的反应的严酷考验。尽管《植物大战僵尸2》给我带来那么多个小时的欢乐，但我还没有为它花一分钱。还有好玩的《Triple Town》，总是帮我打发掉通勤时的无聊时光。

还有很多很多手机游戏，《Year Walk》、《Impossible Road》、《Stickets》、《Bean’s Quest》、《Infinity Field HD》、《Bad Hotel》、《Clash Of Heroes》、《Little Inferno》……那么多有趣却被遗忘的游戏，只需要花几块钱甚至免费就能玩到。对于空闲时间越来越少的老一辈玩家来说，iPad和iPhone已经成为强大的游戏平台。忘记你对主机游戏的罪恶感吧！（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Next-gen can wait: why iOS games scratch the itch that Big Console Games can’t

by Neil Long

I don’t plan to buy a PS4 or Xbox One, because I already own the most vibrant game platforms out there right now. iOS games are cheaper, more immediate and they seek to satisfy quickly; increasingly, they reflect how we play games now – there’s an older generation of players who simply cannot take their TV hostage for hours on end for what is a solitary, almost selfish pursuit.

There are countless weird, interesting, exciting, abstract games on the App Store, and most lie tragically underappreciated and undiscovered. Some have sold enough to keep their creator going for another few months, and a tiny, select few have gone through the stratosphere; iOS success stories are few and far between, sadly, but when they break through, they really break through.

There are so many that haven’t, and it’s an ongoing tragedy. It continues to frustrate me that prodigiously talented, original thinkers like Simogo (creator of the daring Device 6, wonderful Year Walk and toe-tapping Beat Sneak Bandit) get so few column inches. Some games receive a little recognition, and earn decent money for their creators – games like Super Hexagon, Super Crate Box, Joe Danger Touch, Triple Town, Drop7 – but not as much as you might think.

So why the lack of recognition in the games media? There’s still a lingering sense in some quarters that they’re not ‘proper’ games if they’re on mobile. More obviously, mobile games coverage doesn’t get much traffic. It’s a hard sell. I can look at Comscore right now and tell you, the loyal Edge reader, that our reviews of mobile games don’t get nearly as many pageviews as anything we cover on console or PC. And yet we’ll keep commissioning them; we believe in this strangely neglected slice of the game industry, especially when, for me personally, Xbox One and PS4 are doing so little to excite right now.

Device 6 is a brilliant, original iPad game.

Indeed, compare the console games scene to the surfeit of new, unusual delights that arrive every single week on the App Store, and then add in the continually delightful indie uprising on PC and, for me, there’s very little reason to drop over ￡350 on PS4, let alone ￡430 on Xbox One.

Console games have become too big and too demanding of my time. In the pursuit of adding ever more content to their games, studios have unintentionally birthed the odd phenomenon of the ‘pile of shame’ – an ever growing stack of unopened, unloved console games that evokes an uneasy guilt in its owner. It revolves around the notion that you’ve somehow done your passion a disservice by failing to appreciate each and every important new offering – that you’re not a ‘true gamer’. How absurd.

Its genesis is in the hobbyist desire to build a collection of things you care about, I suppose – to feel like you have working knowledge of an artform so that you can discuss it intelligently. You’ll find plentiful references to the Pile Of Shame on social media and on forums, and even the odd guide from game sites looking to help you grit your teeth and get through them all. But why should playing games be a joyless slog? Wouldn’t you rather be doing something out of pleasure, rather than obligation?

And yet the guilt persists. Should I feel ashamed, given my profession, that i’ve never played a BioShock game, or a Mass Effect, or an Assassin’s Creed? I haven’t even played Skyrim. GTAV will likely be the last blockbuster console game I play, and even then it has inspired a strange kind of discomfort. When it is brilliant, and it often is, it is everything a Big Console Game should be in 2013 – a technical marvel, an explosive thrillride, an illicit romp around a pretend city in which you can do as you please. But when it’s disappointing, it’s really disappointing. It seems to be a fitting swansong for my days of playing console games; a game too large for me to truly retain interest in, abandoned midway through. Michael, Franklin and Trevor sit forever in limbo, never to reach the end of their journey.

GTAV: destined to be abandoned, half-finished, like so many other Big Console Games.

It is, however, heartening to see that I’m not alone in this unusual post-console funk; Tom Bissell’s magnificent ‘Dear Niko’ piece on Grantland is as much an examination of what GTAV gets right and wrong as it is a piece about getting older, and how that changes your relationship with videogames. Edge columnist Leigh Alexander recently expressed similar disillusionment – her what games are right now piece on Kotaku encapsulates that creeping feeling that, maybe, this stuff just isn’t made for me any more.

It might just be a nostalgia thing. Mine was the Mario and Sonic generation, the NES, Mega Drive and SNES era in which games felt instant and somehow purer. Controls and actions were simple, and I visited bizarre new places in which asexual, egg-spitting dinosaurs guarded end-of-stage exits the shape of giant eagle heads. I explored chequered landscapes upon which superfast blue hedgehogs could be teleported, with the right know-how, into glorious psychedelic half-pipes; these were thrilling, otherworldly experiences sculpted out of colour and imagination.

My interest in videogames waned terribly several years into the PlayStation generation; I think the breaking point was attempting to engage with Gran Turismo, having eagerly gobbled up every bit of the extraordinary hype around it within the games magazines of the day. It looked incredible, but its overwhelming scale, complexity and, well, schoolmasterish seriousness made me think: ‘this is not for me anymore.’

It’s not entirely Gran Turismo’s fault, of course, but ever since, the era of the Big Console Game has, in some cases, turned into a race to pack in ever more content, for deeper, more meaningful and apparently more mature experiences. Or, indeed, devices to simply keep that disc in your tray so that you might buy some DLC.

That’s perfectly fine for some. But I want the stupid, fun slapstick of Granny Smith; the surprising tension and brinksmanship of Ridiculous Fishing; the limitless brilliance that is Drop7. There are more involving games, of course – there are few greater delights than poking around The Room for a few hours, or working through the taxing spacial puzzles in Hundreds. Super Hexagon and its videogame cousin Pivvot are each wonderfully hypnotic tests of your reflexes, and I’ve yet to spend a single penny on Plants Vs Zombies 2, despite the many hours of entertainment it has lavished upon me. And there’s always Triple Town, a constant, compelling companion with the apparent ability to bend time on boring commutes.

There are hundreds more, if you can find them. Try Year Walk. Try Impossible Road. Try Stickets. Try Bean’s Quest. Try Infinity Field HD. Bad Hotel, Clash Of Heroes, Little Inferno – all wonderful, half-forgotten games available now for a few pounds, or for free. iPad and iPhone have each become formidable games platforms for an entire generation of time-poor players. Forget your pile of shame, and join us.(source:edge-online)