The Xbox One offers tons of fantastic platform games. Here are the ten best platformers.
Platformers are for many of us our first exposure to video games, and we’re living in a real platformer renaissance. Tons of them have come out over the last five years and really reinvigorated the genre. There’s a certain feel to a good platform game that’s just right.
So what are your options if you’re playing on an Xbox One? We looked for the titles that have tight controls, original ideas, and the most interesting environments to come up with this list of the Top Ten Platform Games For Xbox One.
Super Time Force Ultra
The pixel-art style in Super Time Force Ultra may put some players off the game, but we think it looks great: the environments all have their own distinct character, weapon effects pop, and the characters themselves all bring a lot of pizzazz to the game. It’s got everything you could want from an ‘80s Saturday morning cartoon, too – dinosaurs on skateboards, explosions, and space ships.
The neatest thing about the game, though, is the team-based rewind mechanic. You’ve only got a short time to make it through each level, and in order to make it through all the enemies and obstacles, you use the “time out” feature to rewind time and insert other characters (or duplicates, even) into the action. What winds up happening is a mind-bending co-op session with yourself.
This mechanic sets up all kinds of crazy action-based puzzles, including the boss fights. While they seem impossible to complete in the time limit at first, as you add more and more characters to the fight, you’ll eventually take them down in a couple seconds. Satisfyingly, too, once you’ve completed a level you get to watch the action replayed in real time.
Tembo the Badass Elephant
Tembo is an elephant commando, and his job is to save his town from destruction at the hands of the evil PHANTOM. The game is reminiscent of old Sonic the Hedgehog titles, with some Metal Slug thrown in for good measure: Tembo jumps and buttstomps his way through the PHANTOM forces, collecting golden peanuts and charging (literally) headlong into enemies. You’ll want to break as many PHANTOM tanks, structures, and soldiers as possible, while rescuing hostages scattered throughout each level.
A lot of folks were pretty surprised to see Tembo the Badass Elephant come out of Game Freak, who are known primarily for developing the long-running Pokémon series, but as it turns out this isn’t their first crack at the action-platformer: they also made Drill Dozer for the Game Boy Advance back in 2005.
Trials Fusion
Hey, we know, this looks like a motorcycle game, but at its heart, it’s a speed-focused platform game. If you’re new to Trials, the idea is to drive a dirt bike along a track to the end of a level, shifting your weight forward and back to stay upright throughout all the insane jumps, flips, catapults, and explosions that happen along the way.
Fusion offers a single player story mode to the formula, but it keeps the series addictive time trial elements – it’s always possible to shave another couple tenths of a second off a run, or, maybe just make it to the end without falling off this time.
There’s also four-player head-to-head racing, plus a fully-featured level editor. Once you’ve played through all the tracks in the game (plus six DLC packs), you can try out homemade tracks handpicked by the Red Lynx team.
Volgarr the Viking
This is a game for those players who pine for the old days of platform games being arcade-tough. Fortunately, Volgarr the Viking doesn’t make you pony up quarters every time you die, which will be often.
While it could be mistaken for a brawler, Volgarr is much more about careful memorization of enemy patterns and trap locations, and about perfect execution. Death is always imminent – getting hit knocks off a piece of equipment or armor, similar to the classic (and brutally difficult) Ghouls ‘n Ghosts.
Volgarr has tons of style, too. It’s a very obvious homage to the cabinet games of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and features terrific art, enemy design, and music. Remember, though – this one is definitely aimed at the hardcore crowd.
Guacamelee
One of the best in class in the last couple years, Guacamelee combines the unlockable open-world of the best Metroidvanias with a combo-based combat system from brawlers. As the game progresses, you find new abilities to bring to bear against enemies that deepen the solid fighting system.
And Guacamelee is downright gorgeous. It’s a whimsical, colorful world with masterfully-crafted characters and animations set in a world of Mexican folklore. As Juan, you are resurrected as a magical luchador wrestler, and must save El Presidente’s daughter from an evil skeleton from the Land of the Dead. It manages to treat its subject matter respectfully without ever taking itself seriously at all.
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