A Hat in Time
Originally funded through crowdfunding, A Hat in Time has managed to capture the hearts of all that play it with its cute presentation, memorable characters, and Mario Sunshine-esque presentation and stage progression. You jump into acts of a level, complete the objective and return again to complete a new one with the levels changing with the developing story and world elements like weather and bridges adjusting to meet that need. Now is as good as time as any to jump into the super cute platformer as they have just released the DLC on PlayStation and Xbox!
Sonic Forces
Race through as Sonic, Classic Sonic and your own avatar at blistering speed
A controversial pick, but Sonic Forces receives a lot of negativity for its short length and bland levels, however, what’s often missed is the Avatar system, the challenges and the ease of time trial levels. If you aim for completion and try and master all the games’ stages you will learn about the hidden depth of the gameplay and easily quadruple your time spent with the game. From completing particular requirements to getting the best time, some of the challenges presented in Forces offer a worthy challenge and the avatar levels offer different routes and options to master depending on the item equipped to your avatar. If you’re on the fence, Sonic Forces is almost always on sale and is worth getting for a smaller price just to play through at least once to judge for yourself.
Yooka Laylee
Another crowdfunding success story, Yooka Laylee is created by much of the team that made Banjo Kazooie in the ’90s, now reformed as Playtonic Games. Yooka Laylee is far more than just a throwback to classic collectathons. The game features expansive worlds that the player can make even larger by expanding them with the game’s main collectibles and a growing arsenal of abilities you can learn throughout the game, exploring these worlds with new abilities only opens up more possibilities for collectibles.
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
After losing Crash Bandicoot to Universal Interactive (now owned by Activision), Naughty Dog decided to step into the collectathon genre with a new IP and whilst the sequels took a massively different direction, the original game holds up as one of the best platformers of the era and has been ported to each generation since. Unlike Naughty Dog’s newer outings, Jak and Daxter follows two unlikely heroes through the usual conventional levels whilst wielding the power of Ico to solve different puzzles and problems for the world’s inhabitants to earn collectables. Whilst it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll ever see a follow up to the series, the first entry is definitely worth playing at least once.
