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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Does stuff like Uncharted/Tomb Raider count? I mean those were solid games that are basically platformer shooters?
