Please prove me wrong and suggest me some modern ones that stand up to the older ones.
Also, why are there no 3rd person shooter/3D platformer hybrids aside from Ratchet & Clank / Jak series? This seems like an untapped genre hybridisation that works well together. Like literally why is no one making games like this. I would love some examples of 3rd person shooter platformers to prove me wrong again.
Edit: It’s not a nostalgia thing. The quality of the PS2 platformers was actually better. Even ones I discovered recently that exist on PS2 or that I hadn’t played before. If I compare them side by side with modern 3D platformers, they look like s*** compared to the PS2 ones. And case in point, there are literally no open world 3rd person shooter-3D platformers with detailed worlds/graphics outside of PS2 (that I know of) and those are the kinds of 3D platformers I enjoy most… give me an example to prove me wrong. Ok technically I know of a few examples which meet some but not all of this criteria (only because I’ve looked far and wide for them) but they’re very basic and nowhere near as intricate as these games.
You’ve answered your own question. You like 3rd-person shooter platformers, a genre which isn’t as prevalent as it was in the 6th generation of consoles. Not as many games are coming out that fit your tastes. You’re also nostalgic, which is perfectly fine, but you have to take off the goggles sometimes. I like Mario Sunshine better than a lot of modern 3D platformers, because I’ve been playing it for years and it was a big part of my childhood. But just because I love revisiting that game more than playing a new game sometimes, that doesn’t mean modern games aren’t reiterating and improving upon the things that made it great. A Hat in Time, Psychonauts 2, The Cosmic Shake, Spark the Electric Jester, Orbo’s Odyssey, SEUM, Frogun, New Super Lucky’s Tale, Supraland, Crash 4. So many great 3D platformers in recent years, with a ton of improvements to quality of life and control compared to where we were back in the day, as well as many new concepts.
Also, claiming that PS2 platformers as a whole look better than modern platformers as a whole is ridiculous, and you’re also giving no examples of either case.
A Hat In Time is great.
As much as you deny it, you are just experiencing Nostalgia. I was an N64 and GameCube kid and never really had much to do with PlayStation. I played Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter well into the PS4 days and was underwhelmed with both.
Can you give us better lists of games that fall into both your good and bad categories?
My hot-take answer was going to be that it’s all nostalgia and there haven’t really been any good ones (at least that I ever was aware of). Given your edit on nostalgia, maybe it’s not nostalgia for an individual game or games, but rather a a time and a style?
Can’t comment on the 3rd person shooter/3d platformer hybrids, but games like Mario Odyssey are fantastic modern 3d platformers. Meanwhile I’ve recently replayed some 3d platformers from the n64-gamecube eras and found they didn’t hold up as well as I remembered.
Super mario odyssey is the most polished and impressive 3d mario game ever made. Not sure how people think that n64 mario is better except for nostalgia.
I think it comes down to the combo of nostalgia in combo with iconic games. For example, Mario 64 was so cool when it came out. Even the feel of it was new and different to anything else available.
It laid the groundwork for what made future platformers good
Does stuff like Uncharted/Tomb Raider count? I mean those were solid games that are basically platformer shooters?
Can’t really work with this without examples. I don’t think 3D platformer quality went down but I also think it’s always been all over the place.
Like Hat in Time wasn’t that long ago.
let’s see…got a picture of “3D platformers in past 10 years”
https://libreddit.kylrth.com/img/ad57oxhe2pfa1.png
I’m looking at it and honestly I need examples as to where you think Ps2 beat out this list so blatantly that there’s a clear issue.
You’re remembering the cream of that era and comparing it to all of the current area. It’s natural, but misleading.
Thing better when I was a teen that now that im adult. It also works for music and basically everything.
Every now and then I think about this and I keep going back to Yooka Laylee. In theory that game should be everything people want from a 3D collect-a-thon platformer, but something (at least for me) felt wrong. I think the game is too big. Like, the developers in this modern era had all this space to go, “I can fit everything,” whereas in the past on there were much harder limits. Sometimes a limit forces creative solutions that feel better. Kinda the same idea of a huge open world with nothing in it vs a small map filled with things to discover.
Ratchet and Clank had at least three good games on the PS3, and Rift Apart definitely counts as a modern game. I wish Insomniac (and other game devs) woul devote more resources to making hybrid shooter/platformers, but the devs who made those great PS2 games are being replaced by newer devs who want to make different things. Also publishers want to cash in on big money-making trends like live service games.
What modern 3D platformers?
Would you consider Jet Set Radio a platformer? If so then Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is really, really good (and it has a kickass soundtrack like the JSR series did). Other than that, I haven’t really spent a lot of time playing platformers. At the very least there have been some good remasters like the Spyro Reignited trilogy and Crash Bandicoot remaster.
I think I’ve heard some of the recent Sonic games have been good, though I don’t really play Sonic stuff so I can’t verify that myself.
I’ve heard Super Mario Wonder is really good, but that’s not really 3d (though iirc there are some 3d wonder flower sections).
Warframe might help scratch the 3d platformer itch, it’s got a decent amount of platforming tiles, especially on Jupiter (the maps are proceedurally generated from a tile set, the Jupiter tiles have a lot of verticality); though platforming isn’t by any means a focus.
If you’re okay with foregoing 3rd person view, you might give Mirror’s Edge a try. It’s a 1st-person parkour/freerunning game.
If you like the collect-a-thon aspect, check out the Lego games, especially stuff like Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, etc. those are very much collect-a-thons and tend to have platforming elements to them. They’re a lot of fun.
Otherwise… Maybe platformers just need a revival like the boomer-shooters got. From what I’ve heard, Yooka-Laylee kinda tried, but it ended up being nostalgia-bait and not too great standing by itself.
There is a lot of games that are like that that are very high quality. Splatoon 2 and 3 have pretty extensive single players that focus massively around platforming and shooting, plus online multiplayer. Mario Odyssey is an obvious one, Mario 3D world/Bowsers fury. A hat in time. Sonic frontiers. Yooka-laylee has two games. Psychonauts 2. Super Lucky’s tale. There’s remakes like Spyro reignited and crash insane trilogy. Ratchet & clank rift apart. It takes two. Bomb rush cyberpunk. Hell, I know it’s not quite the same genre but I would count Fall guys.
I know that 3D platformers are nowhere near as commonly developed, especially by big companies, but let’s not act like there’s a drought of good quality games to play that are as good if not better than the PS2 platformers…I’ve been playing Journey To The Savage Planet lately, and while the gunplay is not awesome, and the unlocks involve collecting materials, the “rare” materials for each enemy are behind a boss or mini-boss, and it’s effectively a 3D metroidvania. There’s enough hard platforming that I take more fall damage than enemy damage (or at least close), even in the boss fight I’m currently stuck on.
I really enjoyed MDK/MDK2 as a kid. I don’t know any modern platformers to comment on quality now vs then.
