Platformer Archives - Taro Omiya

Back to them classics! This week’s #WeeklyGameMusic is from Insomniac Games’ classic, Ratchet & Clank. Planet Novalis: Tobruk Crater, composed by David Bergeaud, merges together action, thrills, and a little bit of swing to create a unique track like no other. Come take a listen:

Ratchet & Clank stars a humanoid feline creature named Ratchet, and his robot buddy, Clank. The story begins with Clank crash-landing onto Rachet’s home planet. Fortunately, Ratchet is a very handy repair-creature, and fixes up Clank in no time. Thankful, Clank informs Ratchet that a greedy race of aliens are planning on overtaking Ratchet’s planet to use up all its resources. The two agree to team up and defend their home from these incoming forces, which of course meant they’ll have to up their…arsenal.

Ratchet & Clank is a third-person collectathon, much in the same vein as Banjo-Kazooie. Platforming and swinging wrenches will be one of the early moves the player will be learning when starting this game series. That said, perhaps the most stand-out feature the series has is its creative library of long-range weapons. That’s right, that raunchy pun in the prior paragraph isn’t just for show (or a reference to a subtitle in one of the series entries): these games are all about guns, and lots of it! Get ready to pummel aliens in sci-fi city environments, all bundled with wonderfully smooth and expressive animations that really adds to the cartoon-factor.

The first Ratchet & Clank was originally released on Playstation 2. It has been re-released for Playstation 3, Vita, and 4.

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Let’s get those blood pumping with this week’s #WeeklyGameMusic! Blue Chair, composed by Blind Digital, is one of the many fantastic themes composed for Pwnee Studios’ procedurally generated platformer game, Cloudberry Kingdom. The indie game’s extraordinary algorithm can generate both reasonable Super Mario-like stages, and Kaizo-level, controller-breaking ridiculousness.

Oh no! The evil king, Kobbler, has kidnapped the fair (…and sarcastic) Princess! And to add to the insult, he stole the infinite level generator orb as well! It’s up to a brave…tired…middle-aged hero named Bob to save her.

You know…

That same, bland, sexist plot again.

Obviously poking fun at the usual paper-thin Super Mario plot, Cloudberry Kingdom plays like the Nintendo classic, but with more focus on flow rather than precision. The platformer’s algorithm always calculates at least one plausible path, meaning a lot of the levels are generated with constant movement in mind. To further add variation to the play, the game provides many different control variations, including inclusion of double-jump, jetpacks, Sonic-like momentum-based movement, no-gravity, always-bouncing, etc.

Another innovation the game provides is actually having a demo-mode where an AI demonstrates how to complete a level. This is particularly impressive when one drastically ramps up the complexity of the game to generate levels that are absurdly difficult. One would think like Nintendo’s assist mode, this would help the player to understand the level better, but…

Cloudberry Kingdom is available on Windows via Steam, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and the Wii U

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Tag: Platformer

#WeeklyGameMusic: Planet Novalis: Tobruk Crater (Ratchet & Clank)

#WeeklyGameMusic: Blue Chair (Cloudberry Kingdom)