The State Of The Platform Game 89
simoniker writes "Gamasutra has a rather huge article up explaining the state of the platform gaming genre, with an interesting introduction: 'Platform games used to enjoy a 15% share of the market in 1998 - and considerably more in the 16-bit era - but [has now dropped significantly]. As a consequence, marketing circles are reportedly deliberating that platform games - as a genre - are not as attractive to consumers as they once were. We believe it's not an issue of genre, but an issue of effective design principles of past being forgotten.' There follows plenty of comparisons between Sonic, Mario, Rayman, Crash, Jak, and friends! Is it time for the platformer to make a bigger comeback?"
mmm 2d (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:mmm 2d (Score:2, Informative)
Those are all 3-D platformers that were loads of fun. The number of dimensions are irrelevant, it's how the game holds your interest. My complaint about the Xbox 360 is that there aren't enough platformers. With one or two exceptions, it's all about sports titles and first-person shooters.
Re:mmm 2d (Score:2)
I personally am not a huge platformer fan- I get frustrated by a lot of the puzzles. (Sad but true) But Cloning Clyde was a refreshing change of pace for me. It is a platformer with some pretty nice graphics and some interesting play mechanics, like turning into a chicken or a frog to get through different levels.
Both my wife and daughter said, "Oh, that looks like M
Gameboy advance (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gameboy advance (Score:1)
Re:Gameboy advance (Score:2)
Re:Gameboy advance (Score:2)
Re:Gameboy advance (Score:1)
Re:Gameboy advance (Score:3, Interesting)
I suggest you look at the difference between a movie and a game. If it's about the graphics then you should question why you're playing the game instead of one which is fun even if it looks worse.
Re:Gameboy advance (Score:2)
I hear that same mantra again and again on Slashdot- "graphics don't make the game fun."
But fantastic graphics can make a good game even better- and GRAW is a good example. The game is solid- fun, well balanced, good off-line and good-online.
But the graphics really send everything over the top. The game is beautiful, which makes it even more fun to play. Just as watching a movie on 70mm film is a much more enjoyable than the same on Super-8.
I don't t
Part of this Complete Breakfast (Score:2)
Too often people go on and on about how graphics don't matter and gameplay is the only thing that should matter. Get over yourself. Graphics can be just as important as gameplay. I enjoy classic 2D gaming I also enjoy cutting-edge 3D gaming, I'll go from Project Gotham Racing 3 over to Street Fighter 2 without hesitation.. however graphics can make or break a game just as much as gameplay can. A game that looks amazing but has poor gamplay will have me put it down after a few minutes fro
Re:Gameboy advance (Score:2)
Re:Gameboy advance (Score:2)
2D has had its day and will only survive as a retro genre mostly through emulators. All the good 2D games, and/or
Re:Gameboy advance (Score:2)
Remember the old days? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Remember the old days? (Score:2)
Re:Remember the old days? (Score:2)
Wow (Score:3, Informative)
(Page 1/31)
Why the hell do I have to go through 31 pages when each page doesn't even display a full browser windows worth of context? We have mouse wheels in 2006, lets use them for more than skipping banner adds and FPS weapon changes.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Re:Wow (Score:2)
The problem is 2D control. (Score:1)
That's why Mario 3 kicks Super Mario 64's ass all the way up and down the block.
But I'm not biased, I swear.
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:1)
Then again, I might be biased, I didn't really start playing video games until 2000 or 2001. Ahhh, Half-Life 1 and BZFlag...
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:2)
aside from myself, no
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. I've argued many times that there are things that 2D can do that 3D can't. It's much harder to make a fun 3d platformer because you can't expect the player to have things we take for granted in 2d games. What 2d games have that 3d don't is precision (i.e. moving, jumping and landing with near pixel perfect accuracy) and clear perspective (the enemy, and hence his attacks, are frequently not in view to the player in a 3d games). When you can't expect the player to have precision and situational awareness things end up being more boring.
I can't help but zero in on this part of the article:
"The real problem was the language barrier and a lack of understanding each other's creative goals. When I would pitch say, a 'platform shooter with racing bits inbetween levels, set in space', they told me it was unmarketable. There was no hook for them. For me, I was imagining the potential fun aspect, but for them, it was about trying to find something sexy or 'MTV" within the concept they could sell to a shop. Fair enough."
Any gamer or half decent developer thinks of video games in terms of their gameplay, and thus thinks in terms of controls. Marketers and publishers don't know anything about videogames. They think we play video games to literally play as the characters, not for the underlying gamey elements.
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:2)
Got me there. Now we actually have to use real-world measurements, like centemeters. Per-centemeter accuracy is something you often can achieve in a 3D world.
Then the camera sucks. That's not a problem of 3D, it's a problem with a specific game. Would you claim all 2D games have
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:2)
Yes, some games focus on story more than gameplay. So what? Why bring Tetris into it, of all things?
Do you know how many games I've played and enjoyed which had either no plot or one that is incredibly easy to dis
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:4, Interesting)
We need more platformers like Viewtiful Joe. (Score:2)
Now I want to go play Viewtiful Joe again. If only it wasn't so friggin hard!
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:1)
What was he pitching it to? Sounds a lot like Ratchet & Clank, and those games are not only excellent, but pretty big sellers.
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:1)
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unless someone has played SOT/WW/TT they have no right to talk about any platformer because they lack context, unless they have played Ico of course, but what's the chances of that?
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:2)
In Mario 64, you can chose your own path through all of the levels (Even some of the more linear ones, such as the Bowser levels, give you some choice). You also get a quite large variety of moves, and you can use the ones you are most comfortable with.
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:2)
1. You are mostly platforming in 2D despite the 3D environment. It rotates somewhat, but the way it works is walls and narrow ledges. In other words, your 3D polygonal character is restricted by elements of the 3D environment, most of the time, to 2D movement. Now, this isn't 100%, but much of the game works this way.
2. If that's not enough, you can rewind your death so that if you make a catastrophic mistake, you don't die.
I still like Super Mar
Re:The problem is 2D control. (Score:2)
I don't agree with your first point. Simply becuase *any* movement in 3D can be mapped on a "2d projection" of the 3d world. Your argument would mean that going in a hallway is 2D since most of your movement is limited by walls and roof. Actually that would make it 1D when I think about it.
IMHO POP:SOT had plenty of 3D puzzles. A lot of the time you had to move up and down a
The problem is 2D television. (Score:1)
Re:The problem is 2D television. (Score:1)
Re:The problem is 2D television. (Score:2)
"3D" isn't and 2D is really 1D (Score:2)
Old school platformers are really 1-dimensional. All you go is left and right, gimmick levels aside. You're really only using the d-pad to go left and right.
Look to the past... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Look to the past... (Score:3, Insightful)
Pinball??! (Score:2)
Can you, or anyone else, explain why pinball would sell?
No, not Pinball. (Score:2)
Shadow The Hedgehog (Score:1)
I know you're joking, but Sega actually tried this already with Shadow The Hedgehog [metacritic.com]. It was both a critical and commercial failure.
Stinkoman (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Stinkoman (Score:1)
Fun little game with a great sense of humor.
Platform Games aren't dead yet.... (Score:1)
They Still Exist (Score:5, Interesting)
Platformers are still quite alive. 3 of the best platformers ever made were made in the last few years: the Sly Cooper series. On the GBA there was Drill Dozer by Game Freak last year, which was also quite fun. Nintendo is currently working on a sequel to Yoshi's Island (which same rate better than Super Mario World, both being amazing games). While Super Mario Sunshine was no Mario 64, it was still fun and had some moments of ingenious platforming (like the tighrope walks).
The difference is that platfomers aren't the "in" thing anymore. In the 16 bit era, if you made a game you made a platformer. That stayed true for a little while in the 32 bit era (Crash, Croc, Gex 3D, etc) but it faded as other kinds of games became the new "in" game. Right now, it seems to be a combination of FPSes and WW II games.
First Person (Score:2)
I think it's mostly because back in the day you didn't have the technology to make a realistic looking enviroment, so you adopted a mechanism that communicated whatever was most importat to you.
Now graphics are pretty close to photorealistic, look at Crysis for example.
With near-photorealistic graphics you have the simple goal of making things look cool and you don't have to do something as risky as innovate and try creating a new k
Re:First Person (Score:1)
why do people keep saying that games are near photrealistic? They're clearly not!! not even oblivion which probably cant be fully rendered on 95% of current systems looks very convincing. To be honest I wouldn't even say it approached the final fantasy film in terms of photorealism (and final fantasy wouldn't fool many people).
When you look at screenshots of unreleased games they always show the most favourable ones. People were making a fuss about Gotham Cit
Re:First Person (Score:2)
And i've seen an actual gameplay video from a game convention, so this is not just some prerendered hype generator, this is actual gameplay.
The enviroment looks pretty close to real to me...
Urgh. (Score:2)
Christ.
Re:First Person (Score:2)
Because we are pretty close to photorealism, just look at this (GT on PS2) [seul.org] or that (Crysis) [gamesfirst.com]. Its not quite photorealism, but already pretty close and those are games either already out or to come out in a few month, a late PS3 game or XBox360 game might look quite a bit better, not even mentioning what PS4 or XBox720 will be capable of. However this is just photorealism, as in non-moving images, where the realism falls apart is soon as you add mo
Re:First Person (Score:1)
Re:First Person (Score:2)
Half-Life 2 is the "problem", not the "solution", there is nothing in Half-Life 2 that behaves remotly realistic. It might be closer to real physic behaviour then a MarioBros, but really not that much, weight, speed and other parameters for example are still totally wrong and gravity gun doesn't really help to make the scene any more believable. Destructive environments are also almost non existant and stuff life that. The physics in Half-Life 2 make some interesting new gam
Re:First Person (Score:2)
Admittedly, we're probably starting on the up-slope of the far side of Uncanny Valley. Trouble is that the down-slope started with games like Kung Fu Master, where there were obvious attempts at realism but things just didn't move right. Assu
Re:First Person (Score:2)
Quite possible, the thing is just being able to render one scenerio in a almost photo realistic fashion, doesn't mean that you are able to render everything in photo realistic fashion. Doing some rendering of one human in-door is a different beast then rendering an army of thousands of soldiers in a gigantic landscape, doing the first one in a "close to Final Fantasy look" should be quite doable in this generation, doing the second might
dead??? (Score:4, Interesting)
http://uk.ds.ign.com/articles/705/705537p1.html [ign.com]
Admittedly NSMB is partly 3D, but I believe that this game still shares the same foundations and roots as a 'true' platformer. I think developers these days just havent got it into their head that it doesnt matter how many more polygons at an object you cant add gameplay with pretty graphics.
Re:dead??? (Score:2)
It's all about the Ds (Score:5, Insightful)
I can explain the problem in two characters: 3D.
When it was still okay for games to be 2D, then platformers were super common. Jumping about in a 2D platformer is pretty trivial, and such games are fun. The past decade (ever since Mario 64, really), most games are in 3D. Jumping about in a 3D platformer is not trivial, and even usually frustrating. So developers have to decide between making a 2D platformer: and risk looking technologically out-of-date, or making a 3D platformer that just isn't as fun to play.
Google for 'hell is full of jumping puzzles' for a related perspective.
Now, I'm not going to say that it's impossible to do 3D platformers right. Obviously there are a few out there that really pull it off. But the majority do not, in my opinion.
Re:It's all about the Ds (Score:1)
Yep. With Mario64, you had complete control over the camera, which means you could line up your jump precisely if you needed to. And if not, you could make yourself feel like a hero by jumping off-angle.
Then they decided that controlling the camera was too hard for us stupid, 19-year-old CS majors, so every game since then, on every 3D platform, camera control was totally dropped. Now you have to wait
Re:It's all about the Ds (Score:2)
...and then it would needlessly swivel around the moment you pressed a control button. Sorry, but no. You could position the camera while standing still MOST OF THE TIME, but the camera really had a mind of its own when you tried to move. I'm playing Mario 64 DS right now, and I'm noticing it again, and more than ever. The most obvious example is the falling bridge in the "Womp's
Re:It's all about the Ds (Score:1)
Mario was unique because it emphasized the 3D environment. You were like a cat, crawling through every nook and cranny. After games reverted to a fixed camera, they became more linear (Banjo Kazooie, and One for psx com
Re:It's all about the Ds (Score:2)
Re:It's all about the Ds (Score:2)
But really, I'm kind of sensitive to drawbacks o
Re:It's all about the Ds (Score:2)
Re:It's all about the Ds (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. I will never forget my first real foray into a fully 3d platformer, analog stick and all. it was MediEvil for the playstation, bought with the then brand new dual shock controller.
I loved that game. I still think its one of the best that the playstation has to offer. But I completely sucked at any jumping whatsover. there was this one level, the forest, and you had to jump over three quite large toadstools to get to a certian area. Failure meant instant death. It took me about twenty attempt before I could make it.
Nowadays this is no real problem to me, but I've had years of expierience with 3D titles. Every time I see a young kid trying to play the industries latest ateempt to woo them, I see an excercise in complete futility. The child will not be able to adequately move the character around flat ground, let alone coordinate a jump in three dimensions. They quickly lose interest in the game, and it languishes on a shelf. These same children immensely enjoy any 2D platformers I put on the emulators for them.
3D platformers are not simply 2D platformers with an extra degree of freedom. They have on average about five more degrees of freedom when you include the all the new axes, including the camera. They're really hyperplatformers, and their difficulty, and subsequent collapse of marketshare reflects this.
Re:It's all about the Ds (Score:2)
Another highly recommended one if you have an XBox (not 360) is Voodoo Vince [amazon.com].
Pandemonium did it (Score:2)
The clockwork level (which you get to play twice, and the first part, where the clockwork isn't in motion yet, is already difficult enough) still gives me nightmares.
The genre is too limited. (Score:4, Insightful)
What the genre needs is a new Kirby (the SNES version, I dunno any other one), a game that just comes and changes the way the whole "Pick up mushroom/coin/magic fruit/hash bag and touch the enemies in a particular fashion", and 2D/3D shouldn't be an issue. Some games will feel better in 2D, others much less.
platform is not doom3d (Score:1)
Viewtiful Joe?.. (Score:1)
Metal Slug (Score:1)
You can play the older ones in mame.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Slug_series [wikipedia.org]