So Killarapp! long time no blogging, so why now at 1 in the morning on a Wednesday?
Well i've been busy getting stressed and annoyed with college and such and after a few hours of frenetically attacking my ICT project with a highlighter and the delete button. So I decided **** it, im going to explode if I don't get out the house or sit down and relax.
But alas its winter, nobody goes out in winter, (my mates are all unsociable since the introduction of msn...) and for the next few months my social life will be on the back seat for lack of activity and crushing amount of coursework and homework) We've all been there stressed and overworked, unless your youthful fresh meat like the majority of us here. Luckily those guys arn't writing blogs yet, and I havent had to give up mine yet from inactivity
(Pried from the hands of my dead body of course)
So yes, like any gamer with common sense im overtly lusting after Super Mario Galaxy, its not a case of I would like but a case of I WANT, allas Im forced to wait till I hit my 18th, which is so close to xmas it may as well be xmas. So I found myself rummaging for something to whip up my appititite, to stop me going on some inevitable stressed frenzy but whats out there like Galaxy?
Reality nothing, not because Galaxy is undoubtably original but because platformers seem to have totally declined on home consoles. The last major release of a platformer would be Super Mario Sunshine (whenever that was)
and that game has gone down as a dissapointment (not sure why)
It seems like the generation before this (PSX/DC/N64) we couldn't find enough of these 3d platformers. Mario 64 kicked off the party for Sony's two mascots Spyro and Crash Bandicoot of (insomniac games and naughty dog studios respectively) both to become successful francises that would after a trilogy of great games be sold for slave labour to apathetic or simply idiotic firms that killed them with an overdose of cuteness and too little common sense.
But the creators of those two titans sold their guns for a reason, to create new licences Ratchet and Clank and Jak and Daxter. These formed the first major innovations in the platformer genre for many years. Albeit they really just added guns and ripped GTA to peices respectably but they did it with an element of humour and finess. There was also a more teenage orientated feel to these series, compared to the Spyro and Crash series of old, it was like we were growing up with these two developing firms and it felt good. We were the Sony generation.
And i'm stuck where to go from here, these licences are still going but platformers are few and far between. Mario Galaxy will mark the most significant platforming release since 2001 and thats pretty sad in the grand scheme of things. Not that the golden age of 3d platforming games was that golden, just a load of Crash / Spyro and Mario 64 ripoffs but at least they existed. Platformers were fun on the element they were just paying homage to the classics with enough playability to be entertaining. What happened, why did they die?
Profitability, platformers never really sold. The big 3 we mentioned before may well have but Ratchet and Jak never matched the popularity of their predeceasors, fading off to obscurity sometimes not even reaching platnium status. And the gamers? we got bored of the platformers and gained an unhealthy obsession with the second world war and inner city gun crime. The GTA series was seen as the biggest revolution since Mario 64 and nobody has really looked back. Sandbox games are everywhere and so are FPSes now the more powerful technology allows for such realistic things, and as for the simple easy and cheap to design surrealism of a platformer, well I miss them terribly don't you?
:( Whatever did happen to the platformer
MK Friendlies: 2148 8276 9222 (RYE)....MK Leagues: 5198 2631 7528 (Scott B)
Linear Mode
