Rayman® Origins
Rayman Origins is my favorite 2D platformer ever; it’s probably the best ever made. It comes from Ubisoft Montpellier - a studio that is, by all counts, the least dank and sticky of all the dank and sticky folds of Ubisoft’s titanic corporate mass. Montpellier is responsible for Beyond Good & Evil, as well as the original Rayman titles. I never played the original Raymen, so I’m not at liberty to say whether or not this ‘prequel’ in massive quotes actually tells us much about the origins of Mr. Man - what makes him tick, why he does what he does. Quite honestly I’ve pumped dozens of hours into this game and I’m still not 100% on what he does, let alone why. More importantly, I couldn’t care less - Rayman Origins could be about a man named Billy Forks with forks for hands who fights AIDS with the power of friendship for all I’m interested in the story, as long as it looks, sounds, and plays like this.
– Real player with 54.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Platformer Cartoony Games.
Except for the game breaking bugs (I’m lucky that I only faced one of them and able to get past it after several tries), it’s a really good game.
The Good:
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Amazing artwork / graphics.
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The flow of the game is really good. You’ll see what I mean when you try to run a level in time trial mode.
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Level design is really good. In most of the levels, you’ll see that there are several ways to complete a level. At first try, you can play slowly and try every single opening to collect all lums. For the second try, you’ll realize that some of those openings / change in route is there to support your time trial activities. Although, I’d loved if they used the dimension changing mushrooms more like they used in the mobile versions Jungle Run and Fiesta Run.
– Real player with 31.9 hrs in game
Double Jump
This game is fun. I didn’t play with 2 players, but coordinating myself jumping and moving was still a big challenge. Try out the game. It’s good for what it’s worth.
– Real player with 11.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Platformer Casual Games.
Fantastic Game 10/10 Have Played Twice
– Real player with 7.2 hrs in game
Koloro
Ever thought of driving a car at high speed with no brakes at all while trying to solve a map puzzle with road blocks? Well, this game is precisely that… and sometimes “blindfolded”…
For game control, this is a platforming game with a “sliding” movement and we can’t change direction unless we hit a wall, the only single button we could use to control the whole gameplay is spacebar/mouse button for jumping. The rest of the movements are out of our control…
And, the game require precise timing, only giving a few seconds of rooms between each action point… there’s no HP bar in this game, it’s instant death on a single mistake. And death means you have to restart the whole stage again.
– Real player with 36.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Platformer Co-op Games.
Music and sound design
I’m not sure how I feel about the electronic parts of the soundtrack but they’re not common and don’t feel too out of place. Otherwise it fits the game’s atmosphere perfectly. The sounds are good.
Visuals
I like the art style and the way the game looks in general but I’m not a fan of the character animations in cutscenes. It feels kind of clunky.
Controls
You only have one button so it’s as simple as it gets.
Story
Starts off very abruptly and then you get almost no story until you reach the final boss. And even then there isn’t much that’s happening. This is definitely not a selling point of the game.
– Real player with 16.0 hrs in game
Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)
I like it when a game, apart from delivering a certain amount of fun and challenge or aesthetical sensations, actually offers me something valuable, something that I can use to broaden my horizins a little, to fill certain gaps in knowledge or give insights into topics I would normally never explore.
Kisima Ingitchuna does exactly that. Not only does it look and sound great, but it also brought closer to me a certain culture and places that I may never have a chance to experience in person.
Anyway, the review:
– Real player with 12.3 hrs in game
Never Alone is an atmospheric side scrolling platformer that tells us the touching story of a girl and her companion, a white fox, set out to find the source of the eternal blizzard which is ravaging her community.
The story is based on an old Iñupiaq tale, a symbolic legend of a civilization that has been dealing with nature’s hardships for centuries. You guide Nuna and her friend an Arctic Fox in a journey through the Alaskan wilderness.
The art style is so amazing, with beautiful graphics and lovely drawn characters. The stunning environments possibly make Never Alone one of the most beautiful games out there.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
Rayman® Legends
Rayman Legends is quite possibly the best 2d platformer released in the past 10 years.
It’s the follow up title to Rayman Origins (also a great game) and if you missed it, 40 of the stages from Origins have been included in Legends as additional re-mastered content.
It features over 120 different stages each with varying atmosphere, amazing music, and plenty of hidden collectibles. Each of the levels are hand drawn and beautiful to look at. Despite not being overly impressive on a technical level, Rayman uses a timeless style. While games like Crysis 3 probably won’t look that great 10 years from now, Rayman Legends will no doubt retain its charm.
– Real player with 34.0 hrs in game
Rayman Legends is absolutely legendary. However, if you plan on playing single player, you are missing out on one of THE best co-op games of all time. I’m not even sure what the storyline nor do I care, because the gameplay is reason enough to play through this side scrolling platformer.
The graphics are gorgeous with what looks like handdrawn sprites in 3D worlds. The animation is smooth, fluid, and the control of the characters are on point. At times the game moves really fast where you have to run constantly or face death, and other times you can explore the level at your own pace. It is fun to watch, and even more fun to play.
– Real player with 29.6 hrs in game
Adventures of Shuggy
A pretty decent, decevingly cute, casual puzzle game.
Playing as Shuggy, you merely have to collect the green diamonds in each level to obtain keys, that will unlock further levels. The game presents you with five “Worlds” with their own theme and some short story which I didn’t bother reading (that part was really for kids tho).
The first puzzles are very trivial, but the difficulty increases. However, don’t expect any masterpiece. Moreover, it is not strictly required to solve all puzzles in each a world in order to progress to the next world.
– Real player with 20.4 hrs in game
This is not a horrible game, but it’s still hard to recommend.
Adventures of Shuggy is an unremarkable puzzle platformer with a story so generic it might as well not exist.
The premise is simple: find all the gems in each level with the help of a given level’s mechanic, while avoiding any source of danger.
Most levels have one (rarely more) of several quirks: infinite jumps, super high jumps and gliding, rotating levels, a rope to hang on to and activate mechanisms with, etc.
Sounds like a diverse experience, and at first it is! So, what is wrong with it?
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
Arnold Bounty Hunter
“Arnold Bounty Hunter” - it is a fantastic adventure according to genres like Beat ‘em up / Shoot’ em up / Platformer, which was created as the spiritual heir of the iconic classic games of the era of the NES (Battletoads, Double Dragon). The heart of the project is diversity and complexity. Each level contains unique mechanics and is not similar to the previous levels.
The main characters of the game are Arnold and Miko, bounty hunters. They receive a contract to capture a very dangerous criminal, the leader of the Star Corsairs space pirate clan. But having begun the task, they fall into a trap, and crash on a little-studied planet LV-4.26 in the Zeta Grid cluster. To survive and complete the task, Arnold and Miko will have to endure many dangerous adventures.
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Bionic Commando was a decent enough arcade action game, when it debuted in 1987. Cartoonish, tricky, demanding, full of genuinely vexing little obstacles here and there. Its NES port, technically a sequel to the arcade game, remains the gold standard “home version that clobbered its arcade counterpart” in my book, adding many more stages, many more enemies and obstacles, and some genuinely hair-bristling cruel and unforgiving claw-swinging physics challenges that made you feel really accomplished when you finally cleared them. Bionic Commando was the first NES game I finished, partly due to being a very late arrival to the NES world, but partly also because it was the first game I owned to seem, frankly, as though its unfolding story justified the work involved. I felt like I’d really accomplished something, the day I finally arrived at that endscreen with Joe’s signature.
– Real player with 48.0 hrs in game
Easily one of the best games of the PS3/360 era and from back when Capcom was willing to experiment both with new IPs and with their wide library of existing IPs to the point of reviving old forgotten franchises such as Bionic Commando and Dark Void (With varying results overall) and also from a time where they outsourced a lot of their projects to North American and European companies (In this case, the game was developed by GRIN. A company which eventually transformed into OVERKILL and went on to develop PAYDAY: The Heist on the same engine as this game).
– Real player with 35.2 hrs in game
Exploaris: Vermis story
The game looks good, the music is great, but I would like more dynamics, the developers really tried over it. Early access due to the small amount of content, takes 2-4 hours. and tutorials would be great!
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
There is a lot of good stuff going on here.
-Hand drawn art is beautiful.
-Soundtrack is very relaxing and solid.
Unfortunately, the bad stuff needs a lot of work.
-Tutorial needs to include how/why to control 2 characters at once.
-The fighting feels sort of pointless.
-There are apparently upgrades and other attacks but I never got to do anything other than a simple punch.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
The Cave
A Scientist, Hillbilly, Timetraveler, Knight, Monk, Adventurer, and Twins walk in to a cave….. No this is not a joke set up seriously these 8 people walk in to a cave in groups of 3 to launch a nuclear weapon, travel back in time to kill the caveman ancestor of their co-worker, burn a carnival down and have other adventures.
A fun puzzle-platformer that requires at least 6 play throughs to get the entire story so you get your money’s worth. Each character has their own level and powers that you can play in any order. They do drag after serveral replays considering no matter what set of characters you choose you need to play the same 4 levels but the puzzles are challenging and real thinkers if you are in to platformers and headscratchers this is a game for you. Puzzle solutions are very creative such as using a parrot to record a dog barking, making yourself stink like a dinosaur to attract a live dinosaur to crush with an ancient wheel to make oil to run an ancient engine and other crazy puzzles. Ther are 2 endings for each character fun visuals, sorta silly jokes and a quirky narration by The Cave itself. Pretty much The Cave is the American cousin of the the Narrator from The Stanely Parable who is not as funny but would get a one shot Comedy Central 30 min special that is mildly amusing and watchable 2 more times before becoming less humorous each and everytime afterwards and you end up flipping the channel to some reruns of Bob Ross to get his voice out of your head.
– Real player with 26.1 hrs in game
I am quite the fan of Double Fines work, and I’m glad to say this game wasn’t a let-down for me. I’ve heard it didn’t get the best reviews, but in all honesty, i think they couldn’t be more wrong.
You start your adventure choosing your selection of characters, there is about 7 completely different characters, with different personalities, story lines and lives. All looking to venture through the cave to find something they desire.
You pick three at a time, so it takes about 3 play throughs to see each story. I found the way you navigate the cave quite clever, your characters can only get into the section that’s for one of the three, so you aren’t dragging yourself through stories for people that aren’t even there.
– Real player with 20.1 hrs in game