Best platform games on PC
Cuphead
Cuphead.
Weve all seen it.
Some of us have tried, and tried, and tried to beat it.
The game is not easy.
The popularity of the game has allowed developers to release the lovely Treasure Trove collection.
Multiple villains litter your path and must be dealt with accordingly.
Theres even the ultimate fighting experienceShovel Knight Showdownin the Trove, too.
Many of the games on this list champion player freedom, to leap and swoop and soar.
Inside is more or less the opposite.
Thats not for everyone, but it is the point.
And the seven characters who star in The Cave are all uniformly terrible people.
Very often a solution involves stepping on somebodys head, metaphorically and sometimes physically.
That way youll have more time to soak up its wry malevolence.
Like every truly great platformer, Braid is a restless machine for ideas.
Like Elgars Enigma Variations, Braid is elegant, constantly changing, and just a bit pompous.
High resolutions have only made the blades sharper.
The satisfaction of dropping from a vent directly onto somebodys head becomes far more frequent.
The beginning of a kill is like embracing a lover, Mark of the Ninja tells you.
The end, of course, is not.
Klei condenses, but it doesnt compromise.
It didnt call the protagonist Mark, though, so missed a trick there.
Thatll be his Bullfrog brand hypertrousers.
If that fails, you’ve got the option to always jump out of the nearest window.
Its smart stuff, but daft with it.
Instead they leaned into the clumsiness, creating a stumbling, glitchy, and deeply charming robot named BUD.
But soon enough youre zipping through the air beneath a glider fashioned from a leaf.
There are no XP unlocks, nor stat increases to your health.
Every run begins the same way, and only finesse can get you further than last time.
What keeps Spelunky fresh is its systemic depth.
The defining characteristic of the sentient steak is his precision.
The moment you let go of the jump button, Meat Boy begins to drop.
Hit the sprint key, even in mid-air, and hell speed up instantly.
Hed be spaghetti within seconds.
Robotnik has got it right, floating above it all in his jet-powered egg cup.
Mind you, when I play Mirrors Edge, I can almost imagine loving Sonic.
DICEs first-person platformer makes a virtue of memorising routes, turning the act into a form of composition.
The first-person persective has an important implication for a platformer, and that’s the expectation of realism.
N++ is the games final form, and a very fine one at that.
You only need to get it right once.
In multiplayer it becomes a different game entirely, about dependence and sacrifice.
Levels are frequently designed so that one player can reach the exit only if the other dies.
Theres nothing else like it in either platforming or co-op games.
It is, by and large, a genre to be taken at face value.
That’s not the case with Celeste, a challenging ascent from the team behind TowerFall.
Not long after her journey begins, Madeline comes across a mirror which shows an unflattering reflection of herself.
Once that cruel self-image breaks out of its prison, it never leaves her alone.
“I know it’s not your strong suit, but be reasonable for once.
you might’t handle this.”
The game’s masterstroke is in not letting its difficulty induce the feelings it tackles.
While hardly the only platformer to flip gravity, there are none better than Terry Cavanaghs opus.
Like Cavanagh, composer SoulEye picks from a limited palette, and achieves similar feats of virtuosity.
But once Tim Schafer got hold of it, that all changed.
Crucially, they got the basics right.
If the first installment leaves you wanting more, then fear not -Psychonauts 2 is availableto satiate the cravings.
But that very nothingness has made him flexible where his peers are fixed and conservative.
Finally, Rayman became this: the ultimate expression of momentum in classic platforming.
Theres a fantastic French energy that runs throughRayman Originslike the stick of cocoa in pain au chocolat.
Slapstick defines its rules, and makes co-op hilarious.
Experiment with time trials, and youll start to notice the racing line in each level.
The sequel, Rayman Legends, is every bit as accomplished.
But I still prefer Origins for its simpler structure, carrying you ever onwards.
