The dichotomy of 2D and 3D platformers.

[Kuzu]

So between the resurgence of the platforming genre as of late, and Sonic's...recent less than stellar performances , it's gotten me to reexamine the genre a bit and what about these games do I love and why. And in doing so, I've learned that are a lot of nuances that the extra dimensions adds that I never actually thought about critically until now. So I wanted to talk about the two, what I like about them, what I don't  like, and gauge other opinions. I'll try to keep this short and to the point as to not lose people.

 

2D Platformers

 

Arguably one of the most iconic genres of all time. I love 2D platformers, to death almost. They're challenging yet rewarding, and all have their level of charm to them. One of the main things I love about these games though, is the focus and consistency they offer. The devs took something as simple as "Jump on platforms" and created some truly unique shit. It's magical, and in it's simplicity comes added depth of trying to master the movement and level design. There's no real better feeling than holding down the run button in Mario games, and just expertly dodging any incoming obstacles. And I cannot even go into how many hours I've spent in Sonic 3, I can make an entire essay on that game, but that's what I'm here for. If I had to think of something I don't like about them though.. they are prone to fake difficulty and quite frankly, obnoxious level design which was of course, entirely intentional to incentivize replay value...but Mega Man games have caused me some of the most frustration I've ever had in my life. 

 

 

3D Platformers

 

3D platformers on the other hand are a different beast, having an entirely new dimension to work with. With the video game leaps in 3D, developers decided to go all with the ideas and gameplay elements. You got fishing, treasure hunting, shooting, stealth sections, you name it. There's so much variety in 3D platformers, you have multiple playable characters all with their own unique goals to progress through the levels. Some even go further beyond and flesh out whole worlds with NPC's and some have more intricate storylines to entice the player. Anything is possible with 3D dimensions; more production values essentially. Its what I love about them, having these huge ass worlds to explore and transverse. But...many 3D platformers I've played are bloated as hell with fluff, so much fluff. It's fluff that I thought was enjoyable and fun the first time around, but I found on subsequent playthroughs that I don't enjoy them as much and just found them intrusive. To this day, I still haven't completed Super Mario Sunshine and I very rarely go back and play the Sonic Adventure games compared to the 2D counterparts. 

 

 

I guess what I'm saying is that, 2D platformers, to me, have a much higher degree of quality to them. They're focused and know what they want to do. I don't have to worry about the game throwing something unexpected in my face at any point like in 3D platformers, and as a result, I have a much easier time going back to play them. That's not to say that I do not enjoy 3D platformers, but I can only take them in smaller doses. I've wondered why that was the case, and I guess the idea is that with 2D, there's more restrictions, so there's less the developers have to account for and what they can get away with, not to mention, the games had a whole decade over their 3D counterparts (1985 to 1996), while 3D games have a lot more to account for and much larger margin of error, not to mention that developers might feel pressured to add something to justify creating all of those huge environments that probably costs so much money to make. Of course you're gonna do what you can to flesh out that world. 

But that's just my take; I've always wondered why 3D platformers are the way they are, and what could be done to tighten them up a bit. 2D platformers seem like they've become a timeless genre in of themselves, while 3D platformers come in and out of style. It's really recently that the genre has had some nostalgia to it, so this is the best time to explore these thoughts. How do you guys feel about the difference between 3D and 2D platformers? 

 

[Solister]

Wow, this made me realize how long I don't try a different game from my collection. Also, how much I don't play any platform which isn't Sonic.

Well, I think there's lots of other things to analyze rather than just development production, the first thing which comes into my mind, is the genre popularity. Even if we think it's been 3 years since Super Mario Odyssey, I don't remember any time Platform games got so popular in recent times. The current "popular" genre is FPS/TPS Battle Royales, and in no way you can give Sonic or Mario's a gun, and we do have strong memories of what happened the last time we tried (Shadow the Hedgehog, I'm looking to you).

Plus, I feel you write about as if Sonic 2D/3D transition was the worst nightmare the series had. As someone who didn't live the era, I personally really thought Sonic Adventure made a smooth transition, especially taking into account Sonic X-Treme. While I dislike most of it, if you want to find people who love Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic's Subreddit is the right place to go. So I don't think this transition was bad. In fact, the 6th to 7th Generation transition was way more painful.

Even if you think 15 years ago in the Sonic franchise, the attempt of keeping 2D and 3D gameplays still was taking into account, almost as 2D being, accidentally, an alternative for old fans looking for 2D platformers. (Meanwhile games like Sonic Heroes, Sonic '06 and Unleashed were being made, "accidentally" less powerful consoles received the Advance series, Rush/Rush Adventure and Colors DS which now, are seen more as "rogue ones" on the series). This, of course, not taking into account the 2D sections on games like Sonic Colors, Generations (mainly Modern Sonic) and Forces.

And, if that was the scenario 15 years ago, the point today is: Is Modern Sonic style 3D or 2D? Is Classic Sonic exclusive to 2D? It's probably not viable to divide the series in two and whenever a new game is being developed, two must be announced, a 3D "Main" game and a 2D counterpart in the style of Pokémon. Especially to keep the quality of both (Not helpful when Mania is a complete success and Forces a complete failure).

So without much more dissertation, I think the most cohesive thing, at least for Sonic, is probably step onto 2.5D, but at least this one done right. You can have levels with 2-4 acts, but at least 2 of these being completely 2.5D and the other half being complete 3D, and no unwanted 2.5D sections (Which, I'm not sure about everyone else, but it completely screws up the game). I think the simplest solution is then, a hybrid 2D/2.5D/3D game with both types balanced equally.

[Kuzu]

Well I wasn't really talking about Sonic specifically; he's definitely the most infamous, but a lot of 3D platformers were basically doing the same at the time. Donkey King 64 comes to mind. 

[Salamander]

I think "focus" is a good feature to highlight.  2D platformers are necessarily focussed in that they have primarily only two directions to go in: Left, and right.  You can also jump up, or fall down, but these are generally more limited in one way or another (you can only rise up a short way, you can't control the stopping point of your descent).  It's natural for 2D platformers, therefore, to be highly linear.  This isn't to say that you can't make a 2D platformer with a more circular orientation; that's basically what Metroidvanias are up to.  But the meat and potatoes of your 2D platformer lie in two directions and two only.

Once you move into 3D platforming, though, then the added dimension means that "left" and "right" are suddenly only two out of an infinite number of possible directions.  (Up and down, meanwhile, become a lot harder to perceive visually and tend to be somewhat de-emphasised.)  The scope is no longer narrow, but wide.  And so in my view it's natural that a lot of early 3D games went for this collectathon premise, responding to the fact that it's natural for players to be moving in all directions by giving them goals in all directions.  Even more linear, adventure-focussed games found ways of doing this, with things like hub worlds, Hyrule Field, expansive towns; always at least some open areas.  RPGs feature wide-open fields, open worlds, towns stuffed with sidequests and minigames.  The converse of this is those games which used 3D largely as an opportunity to make prettier games rather than wider ones; Crash Bandicoot, for instance, is basically linear even when you have full circular movement.  Sonic is another example, though that's more problematic as Sonic games need to have this speed element which starts to break down when it requires people to go in anything other than a straight line - which is why 2D Sonic works on its own while 3D Sonic has been increasingly automated to stop you from skittering into every single wall every time the path undergoes a slight turn.

The problem, as I see it, is that that "wide" method of construction is something players respond to in two very different ways.  You have people on the one hand who are willing to just collect what they find until the game lets them move on, and are fine with not experiencing everything; and then you have the completists, whose fear-of-missing-out compels them to try and get everything in order to be sure they're getting the complete experience and their money's worth - which frankly can result in a player coming to hate a game when there's so much content that it becomes tedious and repetitive to collect it all.  I've never played any of them, but this seems to be behind some of the responses to DK64, or Odyssey or BotW; people feel compelled to see everything even though you aren't really meant to.  (This isn't a criticism of those people; I'm one of them, which is precisely why I haven't played any of these games.)

Personally, I've recently found myself tiring of 3D games and yearning for some of the focus of 2D games again.  This I suspect is partly an adulthood thing; I no longer have the time to get lost in a vast and expansive world.  But it's also a natural reaction to 3D games which even now are padded, padded, padded; which feel obliged to give players too much to do, but aren't great at making it interesting to do.  I would be happier with them if I had a mindset which could be content without seeing everything; but even then, I think these games have genuine flaws, flaws which 2D games simply did not have to deal with.  Over the past decade or so, developers have increasingly come to realise this.  That's why 2D games have made such a comeback - that, and that they're easier for indies, with their limited production values, to create.  And rightly so; at the end of the day, it's all just style.  Style is never truly outdated or illegitimate (though some styles have it easier than others).  It's just a matter of taking your style and understanding how to make it work for the players.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, FFWF said:

I think "focus" is a good feature to highlight.  2D platformers are necessarily focussed in that they have primarily only two directions to go in: Left, and right.  You can also jump up, or fall down, but these are generally more limited in one way or another (you can only rise up a short way, you can't control the stopping point of your descent).  It's natural for 2D platformers, therefore, to be highly linear.  This isn't to say that you can't make a 2D platformer with a more circular orientation; that's basically what Metroidvanias are up to.  But the meat and potatoes of your 2D platformer lie in two directions and two only.

Once you move into 3D platforming, though, then the added dimension means that "left" and "right" are suddenly only two out of an infinite number of possible directions.  (Up and down, meanwhile, become a lot harder to perceive visually and tend to be somewhat de-emphasised.)  The scope is no longer narrow, but wide.  And so in my view it's natural that a lot of early 3D games went for this collectathon premise, responding to the fact that it's natural for players to be moving in all directions by giving them goals in all directions.  Even more linear, adventure-focussed games found ways of doing this, with things like hub worlds, Hyrule Field, expansive towns; always at least some open areas.  RPGs feature wide-open fields, open worlds, towns stuffed with sidequests and minigames.  The converse of this is those games which used 3D largely as an opportunity to make prettier games rather than wider ones; Crash Bandicoot, for instance, is basically linear even when you have full circular movement.  Sonic is another example, though that's more problematic as Sonic games need to have this speed element which starts to break down when it requires people to go in anything other than a straight line - which is why 2D Sonic works on its own while 3D Sonic has been increasingly automated to stop you from skittering into every single wall every time the path undergoes a slight turn.

The problem, as I see it, is that that "wide" method of construction is something players respond to in two very different ways.  You have people on the one hand who are willing to just collect what they find until the game lets them move on, and are fine with not experiencing everything; and then you have the completists, whose fear-of-missing-out compels them to try and get everything in order to be sure they're getting the complete experience and their money's worth - which frankly can result in a player coming to hate a game when there's so much content that it becomes tedious and repetitive to collect it all.  I've never played any of them, but this seems to be behind some of the responses to DK64, or Odyssey or BotW; people feel compelled to see everything even though you aren't really meant to.  (This isn't a criticism of those people; I'm one of them, which is precisely why I haven't played any of these games.)

Personally, I've recently found myself tiring of 3D games and yearning for some of the focus of 2D games again.  This I suspect is partly an adulthood thing; I no longer have the time to get lost in a vast and expansive world.  But it's also a natural reaction to 3D games which even now are padded, padded, padded; which feel obliged to give players too much to do, but aren't great at making it interesting to do.  I would be happier with them if I had a mindset which could be content without seeing everything; but even then, I think these games have genuine flaws, flaws which 2D games simply did not have to deal with.  Over the past decade or so, developers have increasingly come to realise this.  That's why 2D games have made such a comeback - that, and that they're easier for indies, with their limited production values, to create.  And rightly so; at the end of the day, it's all just style.  Style is never truly outdated or illegitimate (though some styles have it easier than others).  It's just a matter of taking your style and understanding how to make it work for the players.

I somewhat agree with you. It can be difficult to make a true 3D platformer that isn't a collectathon exploration type game. And when it happens, it ends up very linear like Crash or Sonic's boost titles, which is basically just 2D in gameplay but with prettier graphics and angles.

I think the Sonic Adventures got this somewhat in the right direction though- no hidden collectibles in the levels, and although some levels are a bit too linear, there are hidden sections to get to. I think this is the best direction transition from 2D to 3D for a platformer. Because not every platformer fan wants to explore a vast space to find everything, and it's not always obvious that we "aren't meant to". I'm missing a lot of stuff in Odyssey, but I beat the main game so will I ever go back to get the hundreds of moons I'm missing? I got what I could on my own. To find all the others, I'd need to use online guides, and at that point, why bother? Still love love love the game but it does have a bit much at times. I may go back to do some of the more interesting ones I may have missed though.

As for the main topic at hand- I was born in '92, and some of my earlier memories of games had it that 3D was the focus, and the best games were all 3D. So I was biased for a long while. Then I went on a 2D kick for a long time, because 3D platformers were essentially dead. Now they made a comeback, and I don't know what to think. Sonic Adventure was my first 3D platformer, so that's the style I ideally want. I think the collectathons are great too in their own way but I prefer something with more linear levels, but still with areas to explore.

I think 2D need to do some different stuff though. I'm getting so sick of the "old school pixel" art style. Which is why I didn't play Mania yet. I may eventually, but my first games ever were Sonic on Genesis, so I've had so much of that in my life already. There weren't quite enough changes to make me excited for Mania. I definitely want to see 2D platformers continue, but they need to offer something unique, and reinvent themselves, sorta like how the Sonic Advance and Rush titles tried, even if they didn't fully succeed. Just re-making the same style of the 8-bit or 16-bit days seems so lazy and overdone to me.

Whereas 3D games in general constantly reinvent themselves, so it's likewise that 3D platformers change, albeit for better or worse.

[Kuzu]

It honestly comes down to what you value in a game; originality or innovation. 3D platformers in general tend to have far more things to do, they may be clunky, unrefined, and unpolished but they are by no means, boring. 2D platformers are basically "solved" at this point, as making a good 2D platformer is both simple and cost effective, so developers kind of need to come up with more creative ways of keeping interest. Additionally, because 2D platformers are so simple, they can get repetitive because tends to be one type of playstyle, so usually your time is spent trying to master that style, which can be incredibly problematic depending on the difficulty; if its too easy, it becomes mindless. If its too hard, it becomes frustrating. 

2D games tend to have more substance, but not a lot of style while 3D games may not have much substance, but there' certainly a lot of style and flair to them,

[Tornado]

I'm not so sure how many of these criticisms of 3D platformers apply to the ones made after the industry course-corrected hard away from the Rare house-style when DK64 showed how awful a game structured like that could be.

[Kuzu]

1 hour ago, Tornado said:

I'm not so sure how many of these criticisms of 3D platformers apply to the ones made after the industry course-corrected hard away from the Rare house-style when DK64 showed how awful a game structured like that could be.

Well most of the ones after can barely be called platformers; Ratchet and Clank is mostly a third person shooter, Sly Cooper is a stealth-action game, and while Jak and Daxter started as a collectathon, it quickly changed gears to another third person shooter in the sequel. 

[Tornado]

I think you need to actually play something made in the past two decades instead of getting these absurd hot takes about an entire genre of games. "3D games may not have much substance, but there's certainly a lot of style and flair to them,"? "Well most of the ones after can barely be called platformers"? "2D platformers seem like they've become a timeless genre in of themselves, while 3D platformers come in and out of style"? The fuck?

Even the biggest, highest production value 2D Platformers with the longest playtimes and the most things to discover (and ignoring the Metroidvanias), your Super Mario Worlds and your S3&Ks and your Rondos and your Popful Mails, didn't have as much stuff as an average 3D one from just a few years later; and the overwhelming majority of them were not like that anyway. Certainly not in the wake Sonic left, when you had shit like Awesome Possum where the entire extent of the game's existence was copying Sonic's style and slapping whatever in after.

And platformers with combat being more important aspect of the gameplay than the platforming itself have existed functionally just as long. Ghosts 'N Goblins came out less than a week after the first Super Mario Brothers did.

And not every 3D platformer had the long term reception of the Sonic Adventure games and DK64, either. The reason that there are 500,000 generic interchangeable SNE-sque indie platformers on Steam is not because of inherent nostalgia/timelessness to a genre most game players nowadays probably never experienced to begin with. It's because they are cheap to make and can still be reasonably be made by one guy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, this genre roulette crap that you've predicated most of your arguments on were things that most platformers had already stopped doing by the time the PS2 came out; because games (including Sonic Adventure and Spyro 3 and Donkey Kong 64) had already been getting shellacked for it in reviews by that point even when the games were still very well received. The collect-a-thon gameplay itself being the entirety of the experience is something that people were growing annoyed with in Rare platformers before Rare even stopped making them, and games that deliberately leaned into it heavily later on (like SM64 DS and Yooka Laylee) were torn apart for it when they came out. This is all shit that effort was being made into making it so there was more to the gameplay than jumping to a place to collect a thing so you can get to the next platform to collect the next thing even when Rare was putting 400 minigames and padding the game out with arbitrary character abilities in their games. Sometimes it actually unlocking new character abilities adding a Metroidvania elements to the level design or by focusing more heavily on action mechanics (or both); so the core gameplay loop itself was the rewarding part rather than just a means to collect more shit to pad the game out.

You're not describing 3D platformers as things you're taking umbrage with in this thread. You're describing the design ideas of the Sonic Adventure games and Donkey Kong 64 specifically did that have aged infamously poorly; and expanding the problems those games had onto the rest of the genre when they didn't even fully apply to their contemporaries. I didn't give two shits about the Big fishing levels or the DK arcade minigames when I was playing Spyro 2; and if I boot up AHiT or Crash 4 I'm not going to care that Yooka Laylee was dumb enough to bring them back.

[Wraith]

I've always preferred 2d platformers but I don't know if it's really a fair comparison. 3D platformers require way more of a kick off just to get started and the industry has been kind of hamstringing them these past 15 years or so. 

I remember when the genre was initially on the decline and Nintendo did everything they could to remove the second stick from the equation, along with countless other layers being peeled back until the 3D Mario games were basically top down versions of the 2D ones. This was all because they were scratching their heads at how NSMB could run laps around the 3D titles, sales wise. 

This turned out to be the wrong approach because Mario Odyssey is on track to outsell the entire mainline series and introduces just about every "no-no" back into the series and adds even more layers. "Interruptions" from the main gameplay style are even frequent in the form of captures. a host of improvements were made from Sunshine to Odyssey but a lot of the same spirit was kept. I liked Galaxy and 3D world a lot, but Nintendo's idea that something was inherently wrong with 3D platformers that needed fixing was just an incorrect assertion. 

Aside from the quality of mainline Crash, Spyro and Sonic games basically tanking all at the same time, I think the thing that made 3D platformers fade away for a bit is that there was just more money to be made elsewhere. Jak money is fine, but Halo or Uncharted money was much more appetizing. AAA publishers wanted one or two franchises they could recycle and exploit endlessly, which lead to a lot of genres that did more than well enough to justify their existence but not quite well enough to compete going on a decline. Platformers are one of the most notable victims, but they were hardly the only ones. Try hunting down a new racer or extreme sports game that's not an indie. 

I don't think anything actually contributed more to their resurgence than talent and marketing budgets actually being thrown at those projects again.  Compare Activision committing fully to the explosive return of Crash this gen by putting three of their studios on different projects to the IP to that Sly game Sony passed over to a shovelware studio and just kind of farted out with no real marketing or the sloppy handling of LBP3 or fucking Knack. That new Sackboy game and Astro bot both look pleasant, but I'm not sure just yet if it's the start of something or an anomaly. 

 The genre needed games besides Mario that were worth playing, and now we're starting to get them at pretty regular intervals again. Now that they've actually been given the chance to iron out their kinks it's hard to find any fault with them. Crash 4 remixes running and jumping on crates endlessly without ever taking the spotlight off of it and AHIT is straight up one of my favorite platformers ever. I haven't found a 3D game game I like as much as Tropical Freeze, Celeste or Dustforce yet but odds are they'll get there sooner rather than later.

[Kuzu]

23 hours ago, Tornado said:

I think you need to actually play something made in the past two decades instead of getting these absurd hot takes about an entire genre of games. "3D games may not have much substance, but there's certainly a lot of style and flair to them,"? "Well most of the ones after can barely be called platformers"? "2D platformers seem like they've become a timeless genre in of themselves, while 3D platformers come in and out of style"? The fuck?

Even the biggest, highest production value 2D Platformers with the longest playtimes and the most things to discover (and ignoring the Metroidvanias), your Super Mario Worlds and your S3&Ks and your Rondos and your Popful Mails, didn't have as much stuff as an average 3D one from just a few years later; and the overwhelming majority of them were not like that anyway. Certainly not in the wake Sonic left, when you had shit like Awesome Possum where the entire extent of the game's existence was copying Sonic's style and slapping whatever in after.

And platformers with combat being more important aspect of the gameplay than the platforming itself have existed functionally just as long. Ghosts 'N Goblins came out less than a week after the first Super Mario Brothers did.

And not every 3D platformer had the long term reception of the Sonic Adventure games and DK64, either. The reason that there are 500,000 generic interchangeable SNE-sque indie platformers on Steam is not because of inherent nostalgia/timelessness to a genre most game players nowadays probably never experienced to begin with. It's because they are cheap to make and can still be reasonably be made by one guy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, this genre roulette crap that you've predicated most of your arguments on were things that most platformers had already stopped doing by the time the PS2 came out; because games (including Sonic Adventure and Spyro 3 and Donkey Kong 64) had already been getting shellacked for it in reviews by that point even when the games were still very well received. The collect-a-thon gameplay itself being the entirety of the experience is something that people were growing annoyed with in Rare platformers before Rare even stopped making them, and games that deliberately leaned into it heavily later on (like SM64 DS and Yooka Laylee) were torn apart for it when they came out. This is all shit that effort was being made into making it so there was more to the gameplay than jumping to a place to collect a thing so you can get to the next platform to collect the next thing even when Rare was putting 400 minigames and padding the game out with arbitrary character abilities in their games. Sometimes it actually unlocking new character abilities adding a Metroidvania elements to the level design or by focusing more heavily on action mechanics (or both); so the core gameplay loop itself was the rewarding part rather than just a means to collect more shit to pad the game out.

You're not describing 3D platformers as things you're taking umbrage with in this thread. You're describing the design ideas of the Sonic Adventure games and Donkey Kong 64 specifically did that have aged infamously poorly; and expanding the problems those games had onto the rest of the genre when they didn't even fully apply to their contemporaries. I didn't give two shits about the Big fishing levels or the DK arcade minigames when I was playing Spyro 2; and if I boot up AHiT or Crash 4 I'm not going to care that Yooka Laylee was dumb enough to bring them back.

I'll admit, I neglected that there were more platformers than the likes of Mario, Mega Man or Sonic and the like when the 2D platforming genre was in its infancy and gave it more credit than it deserved due to my own bias, so I'll admit to that. Ghost N Goblins is weird to me because while there is an obvious combat element to it, the focus of the game is still on platforming itself, which is the main point I was making. 

On 3D platformers, you're right, most of the issues I laid out were only true in their early years and had started to be ironed out by the time the PS2 titles came out. I didn't really pay much attention to them because as I said, the focus of those games became more action orientated than platforming focus, but the skeleton of the genre is still there. By that point in the PS2 era, 3D platformers were on their way out as the industry was moving along, with the exceptions of Mario and Sonic, so I erroneously assumed their mixed nature as being the reason. 

 

 

I'm not saying that there are tons of outside factors that go into how 2D and 3D platformers are presented and their reception, I was just explaining what I ultimately preferred, but I will admit that most of what I said was misinformed.