Let's review a bunch of PS Vita 3D Platformers

In 2014, I was struggling in college due to a barely medicated personality disorder, I was dreaming of becoming a financially stable pianist, and I was failing and flailing to make my dream game in Unity (despite the prototype for said dream game being observably terrible). I was too stubborn at the time to drop out, but I also had no chance of scoring a job in my chosen field (not because of that other stuff, I’m just kind of dumb). I was depressed and anxious and I’d wished I could start over and major in something like film or animation, and I had just bought a Sony Playstation Vita, a device that would ultimately alter my life trajectory to what I am now doing today, and may well course correct me into the future–I like Sly Cooper, okay? I mean, I REALLY like the Vita ports of Sly 2 through 4.

The Sly Cooper games really came alive for me on Vita, but I remember liking them as a kid as well (okay, I was 17 when I first played them–that’s still a kid, right? I would consider that a teen)--mostly, I liked freeroaming around hubs with the missions and all the side content completed, and picking pockets of any guard I happened to see–you can see where that experience might have impacted my current work. I’ve wanted for pretty much since 2007 to make something LIKE Sly Cooper, that was as GOOD as Sly Cooper (and maybe didn’t have the racism, lol, oh my god those stories are kind of hard to go back to these days).

Really, I just wanted something, anything at all, that was remotely similar to the beauty I saw in the Sly games–I had to try and make it myself because I couldn’t find any games that were remotely similar, and, in 2024, I can safely say it wasn’t for lack of searching.

I probed Gamestop’s shelves for anything close, but with only my allowance to buy games, I couldn’t turn up much of anything good. In 2014 though, with the Vita, I had access to:

Every Vita game (including several PS2 collections)

Every PSP game (excusing some hacks required to play some of them)

And a decentish variety of PS1 games

And so, in the years between 2014 and now, I played every game I could find that warranted a remote comparison to Sly Cooper, no matter how small. Mostly, this meant I played a lot of really bad platformers that I don’t like and do not recommend, UNLESS you’re a connoisseur of bad platformers. And I guess I am, now! So come with me on this journey, we’re going to talk about as many PS Vita 3D (and some 2D) platformers that I could think of interesting things to say about. We’re NOT talking about Sly Cooper, however–I’m saving that for another day.

Jumping Flash

This game has kind of fallen by the wayside in recent years–you see a lot more people than you used to who openly don’t like it. But they’re wrong! This game is amazing! It feels good to jump high! I was always the biggest fan of the city levels–I would hang out in the second one until my thumb started to hurt. I hated the corridor levels, though–Jumping Flash’s controls really don’t support that kind of design (The Hardcore Gaming 101 article claims those levels are the best in the game–what the hell?)

Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier

I think if you go into this game anticipating a lot of bullshit, there's fun to be had here. Some of the more notorious segments are easy to handle if you take some time early on experimenting with the flying mechanics and finding the strategies the game rewards (hint: lasers are OP), and a lot of the other commonly cited issues were also problems in the original Jak trilogy, so I don't see why people are complaining now. That said, after enjoying my first time playthrough, I later replayed it to reexperience the story and just yelled “I hate this mission” at the beginning of every single mission. So I guess it's actually not very good?

It always bugged me how people shoved the blame for this game entirely on High Impact Games--this IGN article kind of implies Naughty Dog did most of the work! Feels like High Impact's job was mostly just tying Naughty Dog's ideas together after they abandoned it (Dark Daxter was definitely High Impact's idea, though). Fun fact: Big Red Button, the developer of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for Wii U, is credited in The Lost Frontier's credits roll. I guess bad games work together?

Daxter

By which I mean the PSP exclusive starring a solo Daxter from Jak and Daxter. Much worse than The Lost Frontier! I'm kind of surprised people don't remember it as being that bad. I remember getting to the fish cannery level, with its obfuscated stage hazards and inexplicable puzzles, thinking “Ah, this must be this game's Snowbeast Award moment.” And then each subsequent level was just as bad! Goes to show how much a coat of visual polish can fool most gamers.

Ratchet and Clank Collection

You know what? I never liked Ratchet and Clank. I feel like the PS2 games were patients 0 for some of the worst elements of modern AAA excess. To be fair, the games *are* well polished, but there's nothing underneath it all (as you can plainly see in the PSP versions of the game)! The first game is particularly dire--i remember looking at this unwatchable commentary on legendarily bad let's player Darksydephil's run through the game--the main speaker is furious at DSP for making mistakes that clearly aren't his fault? You don't have to like the guy, but DSP had a very normal first time experience!

My dislike of the series only grew with the addition of superfluous RPG mechanics starting with the second entry. I learned through a developer's commentary on YouTube that the RPG elements are somewhat faked--the game raises the amount of EXP you get from fights if you're behind where the game wants you to be, and lowers it if you're ahead. Like, why? Why even have the RPG elements at that point? I feel like if you're going to put RPG elements in a game, grinding to max level early on/going underleveled is just something you have to accept the player can do. Are they there to “trick” the player into having fun? To give them some of that sweet sweet dopamine? Why do you gotta “trick” them into having fun? Couldn't you just make a game that's fun for real? Isn't that the whole idea? (They're probably there to obfuscate the overbearing dynamic difficulty system)

Secret Agent Clank

Secret Agent Clank is Ratchet without the polish. Truly awful. The real freakout comes early on when the game inserts a mandatory rhythm game where the button prompts are unrelated to the music (the developers of the PS2 version also worked on the PS3 port of Sly Cooper, where they similarly struggled with the rhythm game sections). Most of the rest of the game is barely playable, with terrible weapons and minigames that needed any time at all in the oven. I gave up on the game when it introduced a disguise mechanic where you can transform into enemy NPCs--it was too hard, man.

Ratchet and Clank: Full Frontal Assault

This is probably the best Ratchet game on Vita. It was originally envisioned as a competitive e-sport type game, but the servers for that part were offline by the time I gave it a shot. This one has tower defense segments built into the levels, that introduce actual strategy into the design. It's a little light, but it's probably the most developed version of Ratchet and Clank combat to date. Unfortunately, it has the Trololo song in it, so objectively it's one of the worst games ever made.

Crash Bandicoot: Mind Over Mutant

When this game first came out, I think most people dismissed it as a cynical cash-in, so you can imagine my surprise when I cracked it open and found a real game. If you look at retrospectives from a lot of youtubers on this era of platformers, a common refrain is that characters in games talk way too much (like when you're playing the game)--Well, characters in Mind Over Mutant talk all the fucking time, but it's glorious. It seems like the writer took a comedy class, cause all the lines are actual jokes, and they come at you one every few seconds, like a Zucker brothers movie. Game itself has some ideas too, using the “possession” mechanic from the previous entry to set up some remarkable setpieces.

The original Crash Bandicoot trilogy is sort of playable on Vita--it didnt take me long to get sick of them back in the day. Eventually, the shit wank saving system in the first Crash Bandicoot killed my ability to pay attention. I guess I don't actually like hard platformers! Mind Over Murant's good though.

Crash Bandicoot Tag Team Racing

I like that they added a miniature Banjo Kazooie to their not very fun racing game! I like that this is I believe the only Crash game where you can make Crash do his spin attack in a continuous endless loop like the Tasmanian devil! It shares a writer with Mind Over Mutant so it has some of that energy too. These games tricked me into thinking I liked Crash Bandicoot for a few years!

My love affair with Crash Bandicoot ended with Crash Team Racing: Nitro Fueled, Activision's ground up remake of the original Crash racing game for PS1. They added microtransactions to a 20 year old game! That's already pretty insulting, but what really got my goat was that the youtubers who cover this stuff seemed to claim they had NO idea this was going to happen! We knew from an early stage that there were going to be microtransactions, buddy, you could have warned people!

See??

That's probably the most insulted I've ever been by a videogame--just an utter refusal to honesty. So foul was the taste, I never even touched the recent Crash Bandicoot 4 for PS5 (didn't they already make a fourth Crash Bandicoot game?), not that I have a machine that can run it. Gaming Youtubers should be in prison!

Super Monkey Ball Adventure

Gloriously bad. This game departs from the Monkey Ball formula by offering numerous open world overworld segments, of such bewildering confusing layouts matched with difficult game control that it's, almost, as good as CLOP. Apparently Monkey Ball fans don't like the physics in this game, but I wouldn't know cause I'm bad at Monkey Ball. I've actually never gotten far in this game cause I'm so bad at it, I got to the second stage, a carnival level, entered an area consisting of a large hedge maze, said “hahaha this sucks” and walked away content and satisfied. I'd like to get further one of these days, and maybe even finish it, but that ain't happened yet.

Pac Man World

Sucks. It's one of those 3D platformers that's presented mostly from a side view and might as well be a sidescroller--the actual “Pac Man” elements of eating pellets and ghosts are mostly superfluous. I guess Namco at the time wanted to monetize their famous IP, but couldn't find any developer's who could imagine what a triple A Pac Man game would look like? So it's as generic a platformer as you can get.

Pac Man Championship Edition

We just covered a Pac Man game that's a 3D platformer so I will give myself permission to also talk about a Pac Man game that's 2D with no jumping.

This game was a big deal in 2006, remember that? People hadn't seen a 2D game on console for a while so seeing Namco put one on TVs again made an impressive splash. The effect is somewhat lost on the tiny Vita screen.

I liked this game back when it was new more than I do now--when you first play it, it feels like a riotious action game where you need to think on your toes. Play it enough times, however, and patterns start to appear--much like the original Pac Man, ghosts have no randomized elements, instead roaming the maze based on easily predictable AI patterns. Thus, the game eventually becomes a puzzle of determining the one route through the various shifting layouts that produces the highest score. It turns from a game about chaos and excitement to a slow game about careful optimization. I don't like it!

Rayman Legends

This game's a 2D platformer with no 3D elements? Oh well. I was only lukewarm on the base game, but I looooved the online daily challenges--various randomly generated setpieces (endless runners, time attacks) cast over a handful of preset templates--it’s slop, but sometimes slop is what you're in the mood for. And optimizing my routes through the various layouts gave me kind of a sense for how speedrunners might view videogames. The detailed art really sold it for me--randomly generated levels don't usually look this good! They didn't in 2015 anyway. Ubisoft kept the servers on way later than you'd expect, too--there must have been a single unpaid intern keeping the lights on towards the end. It's okay!

Spyro the Dragon

Insomniac’s platformer series they made before Ratchet. I pretended to like this series for years! I like a lot of stuff about it, anyway. Running around is fun, the enemies are all neat little puzzles, and the first game specifically has a sort of energy to it. But, ah, I don't think the games are that interesting? I've never finished any of them cause I always get bored a little ways in. I wish they had more of a story focus, or at least gave me an excuse to go back to earlier levels other than to collect gems I'd missed. I just want to hang out in your world, but you made it boring to do so!

It's not totally related since it never got a Vita release, but I really hated the “Reignited Trilogy” remakes. I thought they totally drained the charm out of the art direction. It looks more expensive, sure, but it's nowhere near as evocative. Every youtuber I watched that talked about it said the new graphics were an improvement, too! Am I just not supposed to trust my own eyesight anymore? Sheesh. And it had really bad motion blur that gave me a genuine headache and you couldn't turn off without a patch, and yeah. Bad games.

CONCLUSION

So yeah, most of the platformers I’ve played on the Vita and in my life aren’t that great. Most of them are pretty bad I guess! It doesn’t matter, I still think it’s important to have a good appetite when it comes to media–I think if you like videogames (or you think you like videogames) you should play as many as possible, and take the good with the bad. The good ones can be really good! And even the bad ones can be interesting, can move you in ways you might not expect. Playing a bad game might be even healthier for you if you dream of making your own games–it can be a great exercise to imagine how a bad game might be “fixed!” So I don’t regret the games I’ve played.

Skip Secret Agent Clank, though. That game sucks to its core.