Balladeer wrote:But yep we've got very different tastes in games, and that's very interesting! For example, see what I said about how important a character's movement is, and see what you said with Lucky (whose movement I didn't think was all that); and see again what you said with Lunistice's movement, both parts! I would posit that a double-jump doesn't have to be good, and can quite often feel like a crutch for bad design.
I think it's interesting to dig into where this comes from - a damn sight more interesting than speculating on future unknowns anyway. Some of this surely has to come from which games we played in our formative years? You mention Sonic Adventure, I've never played one (or any of those Sega/PS 3D platformers that Lunistice had to be based on, surely). I was solidly Mario and Rare stuff and that space for a long time. These things have to be the origins of our different takes you'd think? Mario never had a double-jump, and Banjo's was a bit rubbish.
Your takes in Wonder tie into here as well I think, 2D platformers trade off the same principles as 3D ones for the most part. Celeste is the gold standard for me there.
Plot twist: I've never had a PS1 nor Dreamcast, and Super Mario 64
might be my favourite game. So we might have had a more similar diet than you think!
Sonic Adventure I've briefly dabbled in - though I can't exactly remember where - but really any rail grind comparison would work (Tony Hawks, Splatoon, whatever) - I think it's just the occasional cinematic cutaways in Lunistice and the elastic camera work on/off the rails that seems like Sonic.
But yes maybe I played more platformers in general aside from Nintendo/Rare stuff - now I'm remembering all sorts, from stuff like SSSValley to loads of PC/Indie stuff like Knytt and whatever else.
But I still wonder if there's more of inherent bias in terms of nature compared to nurture - there's a reason I played and sought all those platformers in the first place! And I think things like Double Jump (when done well) only became popular not because people got used to and started expecting them (nurture), but because they are just fun and open up mid-jump management and pivots and stuff in a way that is awesome (nature).
I would say that your dislike for Lunistice is more idiosyncratic (looking at general reviews/impressions) than the average, and I don't think that's just because of all those people's nostalgia/gaming formative diet - it is just apparent to me why its Gaming Good and Movement Fun in a way that must be happening at a frequency that clearly doesn't resonate with you, for reasons nature and nurture. Yet that's nowhere near as much an outlier as my disinterest in the movement of Galaxy, say!
Celeste is brilliant and a Gold Standard for lots like ingenuity and surprise within a constrained set of dynamics and so on, but it's also a specific flavour of platforming proper. In terms of 2D platformers on Switch, Rayman Legends would also easily be up there for me.
And the redneck vocal jibberish sounds are funny
