Top Ten: [2D] Platforming revisited

Rules for ALL top tens: 
DESERT ISLAND DISC! These are the ten games I would take if all other qualifiers were forever destroyed. That means there is a strong preference to take only one game per series/creative unit; however, this is not a strict rule. I may find myself unable to dispose of either Highway 61 (Revisited) or John Wesley Harding.
NO RANKING! The ten are presented arbitrarily ordered unless otherwise noted.
NO COLLECTIONS! Re-releases and remakes are okay, but no anthologies. Games must be originally intended as a standalone work. 
WHAT I SAY GOES! These are my choices. They aren't the games considered the best, or that were the most influential or successful. They are my subjective preferences. I will provide as much objective reasoning as I can, but at the end of the day, I like what I like and am always right, and you like whatever stupid things you like, because you're an idiot.

Yes, you've read the introduction, now read the list. Special criteria: only looking at games that are more 2D than not (gameplay, not graphics: New Super Mario Bros. is in but Super Mario Galaxy is out), only looking at games that are more platformer than not (Legend of the Mystical Ninja is probably the cutoff there, being exactly half-and-half), and not necessarily judging by which has the best raw platforming - just which is the best platformer.

For the sake of brevity, I'm going to focus on one or two elements that make each game great, rather than giving you a broad overview that you could get from Wikipedia.

1.) Sparkster (SNES)
Ah, Sparkster, ye long forgotten god in the pantheon of '90s animal mascots. Not to be mistaken for Sonic, Socket, or Sbubsy, Sparkster is a uniquely action-heavy platformer featuring the original Rocket Knight. All four Rocket Knight games have their virtues, but RKA and the SNES Sparkster (note: from here, I'm going to be using "Sparkster" exclusively to refer to the SNES game) are in a league above the other two, and most other platformers for that matter. RKA is known for its unique bosses and uh kind of gimmicky levels, while Sparkster has more expansive environments and paced obstacles. What's particularly great about Sparkster is how well it nails these broad environments.

See, most linear 2D games suck at encouraging exploration. They degenerate into collectathons (Plok, Bubsy, DKC), dilute the level design (Sonic), or make you explore every last inch of the stage to find a needle in the haystack (Sonic again, Genesis Sparkster). Sparkster succeeds though, because of Sparkster's own abilities moreso than the landscape itself. Sparkster has a jetpack which can blast him screens ahead or can be carefully used to eradicate enemies. This allows the designers to decompress the stages and also introduces an element of surprise and randomness. Sparkster doesn't have to lurch at a snail's pace (Sonic AGAIN) or make awkward unintuitive leaps of faith, because he can be launched wherever you want.

The boss battles also shine as they did in Rocket Knight Adventures, the hybrid shooter/melee combat tends to be fun, and there's a SHMUP LEVEL!!!!!!!!!! Sparkster's one downfall is that a few bosses are TOO hard, halting the game's pace.

2.) Super Mario World

When they turn the pages of history - when these days have passed long ago - will they read of Super Mario Bros. 3, or of Super Mario World? Perhaps the world will have been divided through the debate over which of these games is better, and two meganations will arise: Dinosaur Land and Mushroom Kingdom.

Dinosaur Land will tout the virtues of free-form navigation, its individual areas each offering countless forms of transport, from direct speedy bullet-trains to meandering hot-air balloons suited for methodical exploration. Airliners and underground metros will allow visitors to visit exotic locales in any order they please, such that more welcoming regions can be used as a base of operations in approaching those less forgiving.

Visitors to Mushroom Kingdom will find themselves surprised by the lack of this freedom of travel; stuck on maze-like and jammed surface roads, only the occasional one-way highway bypass will allow point to point transport. Worse yet, on entering each province tourists will find themselves forced onto a predetermined guide-path covering virtually every inch of ground, and when they've left they'll be unwelcome to return.

Did you get it? It was a metaphor. That's what a pet is for. Point is, SMB3 sucks, SMW rules.

3.) Abe's Exoddus
Cinematic platformers are a beast I've discussed before. They rely on methodical progress, trial-and-error, and thinking. Abe's Exoddus is just about the thinkingest among them. The game is littered with all kinds of puzzles of both the adventure game and Zelda variety, constantly having you slam your head against the keyboard asking why. But as I covered in my previous article, a lot of what makes these games fun, especially in the case of the hilarious Abe, is that fucking around with the tools given to you. I can't tell you how many times I've grabbed control of a Slig just to hear them babble at each other and then shot Abe and all the other Mudokons anyway. This gameplay is familiar from Oddysee, but what sells it this time around is the quicksave feature, allowing and encouraging experimentation.

Oddworld's greatest strength is no secret: the game world is an intricate, sometimes beautiful, sometimes reviling satire of the modern industrial world. Never before has an adaptation of Roger Waters' adaptation of Animal Farm been so poignant. Abe and his sheep-like friends only exist to consume and try to escape consumption, bullied into submission by Slig dogs, with all ruled by the iron-fist of the pig Glukkons. Okay, I'll admit I never read Animal Farm, because Orwell is a bit too dry and pedantic for my taste. But Animals is one of my favorite albums of all time, so at the very least I can tell you Oddworld's allegory corresponds to it.

That's a start for you, I'll be back tomorrow with the next couple top ten!

Oh, those cinematic platformers, revisited

Cinematic platforming is something that comes in and out of fashion from time to time, so let's take an odyssey to another world where a prince lights the way to the future. Okay. Writing device of the day taken care of. What? I kinda left off in a way that doesn't lead into the subject? Of course I did. It's called BAD WRITING. Try it sometime! Coming off a brilliant segue like that, FUCK, GODDAMNIT, IT'S NOT A SEGUE IF IT'S AT THE BEGINNING. Whew. This is going poorly. We better take a line break.

*That's him.

Ha! What a pun?! Don't think it was a pun. Cinematic platformers are those games where you have to jump from one movie theater to the next. Or jumping games based on Stephen Spielberg's latest output? No, no more word games. I'm not the kind of guy to do a joke and then do the same joke again. And then do the same joke again and then do the same joke again. That's not me*. A cinematic platformer is a game in which the players interaction initiates a tiny cutscene. This probably isn't the first definition that comes to mind for you, but I'll tell you why it's the right one. Because it is.

That's what cine-plats are. When you're playing Mario (regular platformer), you press right and Mario scoots a bit right. He may animate for a second, but the end result is - and I'm going to get really technical here so bear with me: [while player presses right -> Mario_x_velocity = 1]. Remember that games operate on a coordinate plane, familiar to you from high school math and your brother, Descartes. When you're playing a cine-plat, its more like: [if player presses right -> trigger step_right_cutscene]. It's the WHILE vs. the IF. Continuous vs. Discrete. It's hard to convey this in words, so do me a favor. This'll sort it out. Go get your local NES emulator [legal] and a copy of Super Mario Bros., and a copy of Prince of Persia. Boot Mario, start the game and hit the [right arrow] key once. Mario moves like basically not at all. Boot PoP, get into the level and hit the [right arrow] key once. What happens? That's right. He took a step. That's a logical, observable process with a beginning and an end, fully animated (with rotoscoping!) for your delight. There you have a cinematic platformer. A game you kind of play, but you also kind of watch.

The game that brings this subject to the tip of my tongue is the recently released XBLA title Deadlight. At first glance, Deadlight is yet another woefully unwarranted zombie game. This one seems to crib heavier from Half-Life 2 than Resident Evil, but it's just exhausting. Does our entertainment media really need to cycle between fascination with zombies and vampires? It's so boring. So I couldn't get even remotely excited about Deadlight, and playing [the demo] has taught me a little cine-plat lesson. About how important it is, what you're watching.

What you have to pay attention to here is framing. These games present you with one screen at a time. One 'room', as it were. Entering a room is both a reward and a challenge - you're high on the rush of beating the last room! but holy shit what's all THIS about?! You have to want that next room. The puzzle element of the game is manifesting! Puzzles I'll talk about a lot, because along with exploring and killing, they're one of the primary tools for interacting with worlds. So cine-plats are puzzle games! - not exactly news. Moreover, they are hard-line narrative-driven. If you don't care what's beyond that door, you sure as hell don't feel like fucking around with Abe's love of accidentally taking one too many steps. This is your discretized linear adventure narrative. You get it in chunks, so to speak.

That's structure, so let's talk substance. Cine-plats tend to opt for instant-kill hazards and invincible enemies - this is their heritage in PC and adventure games. What you get from this is trial-and-error gameplay. Sure it feels good to run the right route the first time, but I bet you feel like you missed something. A lot of the fun of the cine-plat is in those mistakes - both the "hey cool death animation" and the "HAH you got that far just to screw up THAT" type. Remember - this is a game that we kind of play, and we kind of watch. If two people are in the room, it doesn't really matter which one has the controller, they're both getting the same experience. Each failure is in itself a scene - otherwise every obstacle would be the same exact spike.

And that's where we get to the problem with Deadlight. See, here's a game that's being advertised as cine-plat - but wait! even more! it's ALSO a survival horror! Awesome, this could be great! Awesomely enough, this could also be completely fucked from the concept, and the demo leads me to believe the implementation hasn't helped. It's just that one word - survival - that gets it so fucked up. If you're always playing it safe, if you're actually trying to stay alive, there's no trial and error. There's nothing to watch - it's just a guy running through rooms. You have a health bar for christ sake! Trip up here, take a scratch there, you keep going. It's BORING. By supposedly adding tension, they've actually completely drained what made the style worthwhile. And why, what for? You guessed it.

Combat.

Can't sell a game to the kiddies these days without some ax hacking and ammo managing. So even if another boring brown screen of decomposing whatever and society fallen into whatever wasn't a poor enough drive for the narrative, we have a cinematic platformer with essentially no cinematic platforming. And what a shame it is. Do yourself a favor and grab some of the Oddworld games off Steam or GOG, or check out last summer's criminally overlooked War of the Worlds instead.