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.
A Hat in Time is an example. I really don’t enjoy that game. Idk why. But Yooka Laylee sucks as well. Pretty much every one just isn’t good. The graphics aren’t realistic or gritty like Ratchet, Jak and Sly for example, the worlds are empty or unexpansive. The combat is lacking. I could go on
There seems to be one or two specific platformers that you loved and you using that(those) specific game(s) to state that PS2 3D platformers were generally great and universally better than today’s platformers. One does not follow the other.
And you are taking your personal preference for a very specific art style and using it as your justification for calling these platformers “objectively superior”. You keep telling people to “prove” you wrong but no matter how many specific examples people give you, you are very strongly objecting based on your subjective preferences. We cant prove you out of your own particular desire for a particular game.
You’re…just objectively wrong then. A Hat in Time was one of the best platformers released in the past 10 years, and even if you don’t like it you can’t base the entire genre on your own opinion.
From what i’m gathering your issue is less that the genre is bad and more that there aren’t a lot of “dark, gritty, realistic” platformers…which…there never was.
Like unless PS2 somehow had literally all of them *you haven’t given examples other than ratchet and clank) You got Sonic and Mario in early 3D, Banjo Kazooie and DK 64 at the peak of early 3D, conker’s bad fur day which is dark but also extremely cartoony…
Then you got platformers like Okami which again…cartoony. Goemon’s 3D platformers and thats all cartoon
Like I’m basically trying to say more games in the platformer genre were cartoony than not throughout 3D platformer history and we need more examples of what you really mean
But like you’re basically making a claim the entire genre currently is bad over an opinion of something that was never really that common to begin with.
edit: I even tried looking up platformers on PS2 and was greeted with Sly2, Rayman (did that have a 3d platformer?), psyconauts, Spongebob: BFBB
Like great games yeah, but the thing you’re basing the entire topic on really seems to be a minority if your issue is a particular art style…
Rayman 2 was a 3d platformer. I think the 3rd one was as well, but never played it so I can’t be sure.