Platformers

[Rosalinas Spare Wand]

Holy shit, how does somebody make a fuck up that bad? Really IGN? You can't tell the difference between a 2.5D sidescrolling platformer and a 2D co-op game?

[Rosalinas Spare Wand]

As an aside, I got LittleBigPlanet after Sony's recent fuck up, and I've been trying to beat it ever since. It's not hard or anything, just extremely boring as a platformer. The creativity aspect is nice, but the actual gameplay is floaty, slow, and sometimes its uncooperative with what you want to do.

Even the community levels seem rather safe. Especially doesn't help that the most popular ones are survival modes where you don't actually do any platforming at all.

[Foggle]

Alien Hominid did have a few platforming-heavy segments, but yeah, that article is complete and utter trash.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, but Alien Hominid isn't a platformer, the jumping is mostly for a combat mechanic, not traversing the environment. It's an action game through and through.

I got LBP with my PS3. I don't really like it. The actual platforming (the gameplay) is just completely unfun. Like they sold you the game so you could make it for yourself because they didn't feel like it. If someone tried to tell me LBP is an example of a good platformer when it fails in the area that matters the most in the genre, then I'd have to laugh them off.

It has HD graphics and all the "next gen" features everyone wants, but it's a C-grade game at best.

[Rosalinas Spare Wand]

Thank you. I'm so tired of people pushing it as what a modern platformer should be, because the grand majority of people buying games can't actually make games. The community levels are a fine example of why Media Molecule should've spent more time actually making a decent game and not a level editor.

I'll continue paying full price for my 2.5D platformers that haven't evolved since the SNES, thank you very much.

[Kiddington]

Same here. I've only played LBP once (I don't own a PS3, so... yeah), and that was at one of the kiosks in Best Buy long ago... and I hated it. I couldn't believe people were heaping so much praise on it; five minutes, and I was bored out of my skin.

I haven't played it since, but really, do I even want to?

(screw that article, by the way; IGN is a fucking joke)

[Spark Of Spirit]

On the plus side, I'm hoping Sly 4 is up to par (but hopefully improved from) the originals, Kirby Wii looks awesome, and Super Mario 3D Land for the 3DS and Sonic Generations for the HD systems are looking awesome, too. But I wouldn't call any of those "rehashes" or stuck in the 16 bit days rehashing nostalgic wax. The all utilize new mechanics and apply them all in different ways in the gameplay.

Platformers are the best they've been since the SNES/Genesis era, but it's not because they're aping the old games, it's because they're continuing on from where they left off. Everyone forgets that the genre has been on the backburner as a whole since then, it's not like we've been flooded with the games at all. The genre is just back to getting the respect it deserves.

LBP in contrast to the above games feels like someone saw a video of Mario 1 and made a game around how they thought it would play.

[Rynnec]

While I enjoy LBP, I definately wouldn't hold it in the same caliber as something like NSMBW.

[Foggle]

LBP is horrendously boring. I got it for free and I still can't bring myself to reinstall it. Sure, it has extensive level editing tools, but so does Super Meat Boy, which is a lot cheaper and about 100 times more fun.

[gunswordfist]

Don't get me wrong, I love Mario, Donkey Kong and Kirby as much as the next guy, but it can't be denied that these games are selling gameplay that hasn't necessarily evolved since the NES and SNES eras, at five times the price of new and original games being released on PSN, Steam and XBLA. These titles don't have the added bonuses of HD graphics, online play, leaderboards, true 5.1 sound and the potential for DLC expansions.

None of those features (aside from DLC) would really add anything to those franchise's.

I've never given IGN shit...until now. Those features definitely don't improve the genre.

[Eddy]

I like LittleBigPlanet (and LBP2) but I won't deny that as a standalone platformer it's not the best. But the community has done some amazing things with the games tools.

[gunswordfist]

I like LittleBigPlanet (and LBP2) but I won't deny that as a standalone platformer it's not the best. But the community has done some amazing things with the games tools.

Same here.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Sly 4 info

Sly 4 keeps the fundamental Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic of the series intact and uses the power of the PS3 to add more in the way of detail. Sly the character has evolved a little -- he's aged, got tougher and fitter and also appears to have grown a small pointy beard. Meanwhile the game world still looks characteristically Sly-ish, with distorted, wacky shapes and good use of color, light and dark -- there's just more of it to see at once thanks to enhanced draw distances and textures.

Because Sly 4 has been designed specifically for the PS3 rather than being an upgraded port, Sanzaru has been able to add a lot more to the game. Levels are bigger and there's a lot more verticality to the environments -- past Sly games tended to take place on two distinct "tiers" but Thieves in Time has a number of strata to explore, each offering a different perspective on the sprawling locales.

Structure-wise, Sly 4 keeps the approach of the second and third games, which is to have a quasi-open world "hub" level with occasional more focused missions as appropriate to the narrative. Completing missions will also frequently require the assistance of Bentley and Murray, both of whom are playable.

The biggest twist on the gameplay is the addition of costumes which provide Sly with special abilities. A Japanese samurai costume, for example, allows him to absorb fire damage (quite why is anyone's guess) while an Ali Baba-style costume gives him the ability to slow down time. The costumes are there to allow a greater variety of environmental puzzles, but also to encourage replayability -- in order to uncover the game's many secrets, players will have to return to past levels with additional costumes available to them.

Boss fights are back, and they're old-school platformer "pattern recognition" affairs. Because of the added power of the PS3, though, Sanzaru have gone to town on the environmental destruction during these confrontations. By the end of a boss battle, the environment will generally be a smoldering pile of ruins, providing a greater sense of satisfaction when the villain finally yields to Sly's skills.

Not liking that they're keeping the style closer to 3 than 1, but I just hope they make the missions more platforming oriented gauntlets and less switching between 4000 characters like 3.

[Foggle]

They should just take the platforming/stealth levels from Sly 1 and 2 and ditch everything else. If they'd cut the fucking hub worlds, character-switching, gun turret levels, and vehicle missions, we'd have the greatest 3D platformer of all time on our hands and Sly would finally be able to surpass Ratchet and Jak. Stupid design decisions have always held this series back from its true greatness.

[Kiddington]

Not a huge fan of 3. Really, I'd prefer they distance themselves from that as much as possible with the new title.

It wasn't a terrible game by any means, but a definite step down from 1 and 2.