5 Favourite Platformers

5 Favourite Platformers

5) Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

Just visually Brothers looks like a fairytale book brought to life: dwarves, trolls, giants and sinister wolves populate the world. But it’s not hard to see past Brother’s child friendly demeanour and find a game drenched in themes of grief, loss, the hope to keep moving on and most importantly, family.

After a single father has become sick, it’s up to two sons to venture across a fantasyland in search of a cure. It’s a simple premise but it’s really the relationship that’s built between the two brothers that makes the game such an endearing adventure. Throughout the world, anything that looks remotely interesting, you can probably interact with, with both brothers. Seeing both the older and younger one react to the same things differently is a charming character building technique, but the moments where they’re interacting or working with each other are the highlights of the game. They have a natural bond that’s easy for anyone with a sibling to relate to. They tease each other, argue, play, joke and have primal instincts to protect one another.  While its narrative is excellent, it’s the games fantastical yet grounded tone that puts it on the list. It walks the line between being heart warming and heart wrenching. Human moments depicting the joys of life are just as profound as the scenes of pure despair and hopelessness in the game. It really is a game that evokes emotion so effortlessly and will have you smiling as hard as it'll leave you crying.

4) Ori and the Blind Forest

At first glance Ori and the Blind Forest looks like nothing more than a cute children’s game with an even cuter protagonist. However, within the first 10 minutes the Pixar-esque opening will be pulling on your heartstrings, amplified by a transcendent, orchestrated soundtrack and a vibrant, naturalistic art style.

But Ori and the Blind Forest isn’t all looks; it’s just as brutal as it is beautiful. Ori's airy but precise jumps are accompanied by a whole collection of different moves that you can string together consecutively, and Ori’s best moments are the ones that force you to do this, almost without touching the ground once. The progression system walks the line between giving you too much at once and nothing for long periods of time. You’ll gain abilities at steady pace, helping you to slowly be able to juggle all of Ori’s abilities. Most of the challenge is separated nicely with stress-free exploration of the metroidvania forest and a handful of dungeons filled with puzzles. There’s never a dull moment in the game thanks to its stellar pacing, agile movement and superb atmosphere.

3) Celeste

The newest game on the list, Celeste, is undoubtedly a modern masterpiece. Starting with its actual platforming; Celeste is definitely one of the most precise games I’ve ever played, missing a jump by just a few pixels can make all the difference, but of course this stops the game from ever getting frustrating since every failure can only be blamed on yourself. Pixel perfect jumps and dashes are only complimented by increasingly difficult level design that leaves no room for error especially in its secret levels. Each chapter presents you with a new challenge/gimmick: heavy winds that affect your speed and direction of jumps, moving platforms that give you momentum to cover ground etc. It’s a game that never feels repetitive.

For me however Celeste’s sweat-inducing gameplay is only worth it because it’s married so well with a beautiful and sensitive story about mental health. Our protagonist, Madeline, comes to climb the titular Celeste Mountain to escape and deal with her anxiety and self-consciousness. Celeste’s delicate and relatable writing accurately depicts what it’s like to deal with self-doubt, but it’s more importantly the most appropriate story to mirror the player's own struggles through the sometimes seemingly insurmountable mountain, making the climb up Celeste mountain an even more intimate and relatable one. Jaw dropping pixel art, a nearly orgasmic soundtrack and hours of extra content is just icing on the cake for the spiritual experience that is Celeste.

2) Banjo-Kazooie

For a game approaching its 20^th anniversary, Banjo-Kazooie holds up incredibly well. Camera issues, which still haunts many 3D platformers today, is surprisingly, almost never a major issue. Aesthetically, while Banjo’s 64 bit graphics can’t compete with today’s games, Banjo-Kazooie’s charming, cute art style endures while its endlessly catchy tunes are exceedingly optimistic. However it’s Banjo-Kazooie’s boundless charisma and creative design that’s helped it retain that ‘classic’ status two decades later.

The entire world of Banjo-Kazooie is just overflowing with personality. Banjo, the bear, carries Kazooie, the red bird, in his backpack, making them literally attached at the hip. Banjo’s hilarious dopey nature and ignorance is matched perfectly with Kazooie’s sarcasm and wit. Their chemistry never takes a break and it’s a welcome departure from the typically silent Italian plumber that dominates the genre. When the evil (and ugly) witch Gruntilda kidnaps Banjo’s sister for her beauty, it’s up to the endearing duo to venture into Gruntilda’s lair and meet a whole host of equally entertaining anthropomorphic animals. It’s definitely a simple and cartoony premise that works thanks to great writing.

It’s not just the game’s comedy that sets it apart from most platformers, it’s the imaginative but expert level design. Banjo might have all the clichés of a platformer: the ice world, the desert world, the Halloween world, lava, island, swamp etc, but it never fails to put its own twist on it. For example, the typical end world of a platformer, the lava world, is instead transformed into a hilarious game show. Or the impeccable Click Clock Wood level that features the same massive tree in four different seasons across a year, changing each time based on your actions, essentially incorporating time travel into a level. Plenty of collectibles keeps the game at a steady non-stop pace. But it’s really Banjo and Kazooie’s combination of moves and abilities that makes the game so much fun. If you can forget about the game’s blocky, but still endearing, graphics, then Banjo-Kazooie’s one of the most joyful adventures in gaming.

1) Inside

I’ve never played a game that manages to shock as consistently as Inside. Similar to its spiritual predecessor Limbo, the game begins with you taking control of young boy in the middle of the forest. What follows can only be described as a nightmare in the best way possible: strange, disturbing and unflinching. This doesn’t mean jump-scares however, sure, there are more than a few heart-pounding moments, but Inside’s horror works not only by getting under your skin, but into your head. Playing as the boy you adventure through an Orwellian dystopia and deep into an uncanny science experiment. It’s scary in the way the best dystopian stories are: different enough to be entertaining but tangible to the point where it could - in theory - be very real. Saying much more would be a spoiler, but saying much more is also impossible without writing an essay full of theories about what actually happened. Inside’s wordless narrative is as ambiguous as it is quite. It shows you a lot without telling you anything, meaning you can interpret what you want from its story; of course the most widely accepted fan theory online is guaranteed to blow you away, but even if you don’t want to ponder its story and piece it all together

However, Inside is a masterpiece because of how it marries its narrative with its gameplay. Inside’s puzzles might not be as complicated or intricate as Limbo’s, but they are believable and important to Inside’s expert world building. While Limbo was full of generic switches and boxes to push and pull, Inside’s puzzles focus on things in the environment that would believably be there, and all of Inside’s puzzles or obstacles add to another piece of the larger narrative puzzle trying to be clued together. Inside also doesn’t present any significant platforming challenge that Limbo or other games on this list might, but that works in the game’s favour. It’s more about experiencing the story and not necessarily its mechanics. Limiting the amount of deaths you have in the game is also an extra benefit since when it does happen it’s horrifying. This all sits on the shoulders of the game’s unparalleled animation and style: every object’s movement is, sometimes even grotesquely, realistic.

Inside is a nearly peerless work of art that can be enjoyed as a thrilling and cinematic sequence of events or as a layered, complicated story with meaningful things to say. It’s a game, tonally unlike any other; rendering plenty of haunting and powerful images guaranteed to be burned into your memory. Poignant, yet disturbing, Inside is simply unforgettable.