When Super Mario 64 showed the world exactly how 3D platformers were meant to work, it was seemingly a death knell for the classic 2D platformer. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that it was New Super Mario Bros. in 2006 — ten years after Mario 64 — that seemed to kick-start a minor revival in the genre. Two of 2008′s most innovative and impressive titles, Braid and LittleBigPlanet, were also 2D platformers, and now, in 2009, 2D platformers seem to be back with a vengeance.

‘Splosion Man hit Xbox Live Arcade two weeks ago, and I’ve been playing the hell out of it over the last few days. Gameplay-wise it’s a essentially old-school 2D platforming, with levels that are really quite punishing at times, but the feeling you get when you pull off a quick succession of crazy jumps is just awesome. It’s really the presentation that puts it over the top, though — from the ridiculous and varied animations of the protagonist (running along making aircraft noises, arms outstretched, has to be my favourite), to the fact that scientists get turned in to neatly processed cuts of meat when you blow them up, the entire game is hilarious. It also has a co-op mode with up to four players, through a set of 50 levels that are entirely separate to the single-player game’s own 50 levels.

This week’s XBLA release was another 2D platformer, Shadow Complex, which is a very modern take on a Metroid/Castlevania-style game. I’ve only played the demo, but it’s very promising so far — the gameplay is solid with a few modern touches, such as being able to aim with the right stick, and it’s jaw-droppingly beautiful to look at, seamlessly moving between full 3D cutscenes and the 2D gameplay.

Perhaps the biggest news, though, is the new video of New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Nintendo gets exactly zero points for naming skill, or for pushing the Wii’s graphical capabilities, but it sure looks like a hell of a lot of fun, with lots of new Mario abilities and co-op gameplay to be had. There’s no official date on it yet, but it’s due some time this year.

I’ve actually played a few games lately, so rather than going in to depth I’ll just give some quick impressions:

• Penny Arcade Adventures, Episode 1 — otherwise known by its appropriately convoluted subtitle, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, the PA game what you’d get if a Lucasarts point-and-click adventure and a Japanese RPG made love and had babies. You click the mouse to navigate the world, and you do a lot of talking through dialogue trees, but when you come across enemies, you drop in to a hybrid turn-based/realtime RPG-style battle system. The combat is fun, and while the basic gameplay is straighforward — most tasks involve simple puzzle solving or fetch quests — the story is well written, and the dialogue is fantastic, especially if (like me) you appreciate dick jokes. Ep 1 is out on PC, Mac OS X, Linux, 360, and PS3 for about US$20; Ep 2 is out now as well for all but the PS3, for US$15
• Plants vs Zombies — this is the latest nicotine-laced crack from PopCap, and it’s great. It’s a very simple tower defence-style game, where you grow offensive and defensive plants to protect against zombie hordes that lurch in from the right of screen. In classic PopCap style, the early levels are simple, but the complexity and difficulty ramps up beautifully, keeping you challenged and interested right to the end. It’s also very, very funny, particularly when the zombies leave you helpful notes. It’s available on PC and Mac OS X for AU$30, which is a bit much I think, though you can also get it on Steam (PC-only, though I ran it under Wine) for US$10. It’s coming to the 360 soon, too.
• Dead Space — EA’s other big new IP for 2008 (the first being Mirror’s Edge), Dead Space is ostensibly a survival horror game, but it’s really more of a third-person action game. It’s an exercise in execution: the graphics, sound, and general presentation are phenomenal, the controls are smooth, and it does a fantastic job of creating a creepy vibe. The gameplay is solid, too, though it’s fairly by-the-numbers; enter room, kill everything, pick up everything you can find, and then enter the next room. Still, it’s good fun — I’m nearing the half-way point, and I’m pretty sure it’ll hold my interest until the end. It’s out on PC, 360, and PS3.

No-one’s ever quite cracked the magic formula for the perfect first-person platformer, but Mirror’s Edge takes a good stab at it. Like the survival horror/action game Dead Space, which came out around the same time last year, Mirror’s Edge is an example of the new, non-sequel titles we’ve been told to expect from the reformed EA.

It’s set in a brilliant, white, clean world under totalitarian rule, and the player takes the role of Faith, a messenger (or “runner”) who represents one of the last communication channels not monitored by the state. That sets you up for spending a lot of time running and jumping, navigating rooftops and buildings as quickly and smoothly as possible. There’s combat in this game, but you’ll rarely find yourself carrying a weapon, and when you do, your agility is limited, so it’s often better (or required) to duck and run rather than taking down enemies by force.

When it all comes together, Mirror’s Edge is just fantastic. Faith is extremely agile, and the world is often set up so that you can, with practice, cruise through it at quite a pace, leaping and wall-running over gaps, and ducking and vaulting to avoid obstacles. The game has no UI to speak of — just an almost-imperceptible dot in the middle of the screen that you can focus on to avoid motion-sickness — and Faith’s arms and legs are often in view, so you get a great sense of being in her shoes. When you get in to the rhythm of things, it’s an amazing experience, and there are some clever aids to help you, such as “runner vision”, which highlights potential paths.

Unfortunately, it often degrades in to a frustrating experience. Whether it’s due to problems with the combat, or the sometimes hit-or-miss navigation of the environment, the result is the same: having to replay some sections of the game until you find, or just manage the execute, the proper path through.

Apparently Mirror’s Edge didn’t sell terribly well, so it’s unclear whether or not EA has plans to produce a sequel. I’d really like to see one, though — there’s some real promise in there, and with a bit more time polishing the mechanics and level design, it could just be a great first-person platformer.

Everyone (well, most people) that missed out on Braid due to its initial release on the Xbox 360 can now rejoice, because the PC version has just been released! As you’d expect, it’s a digital download from the usual places, including Greenhouse, Impulse, and Steam, priced at $US15. Braid is a wonderfully clever, beautiful, and moving game, and — dare I say it — an important game, since it pushes gameplay and storytelling in ways that only a small, independent title can. For those reasons and more, Braid was, in my opinion, 2008′s finest game.

It’s also worth mentioning that the PC version works fine under Wine on Linux — it didn’t go full-screen for me, but apart from that it seemed flawless. There’s a Mac port on the way, too.

I haven’t been gaming much lately, beyond my Saturday Gears of War matches, which are basically social events, but I’ve been back in to it this week, and on the Wii of all things. I have both Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge sitting there, ready to play (and have had for a few months now), but the game that’s taken my fancy is the only 3D Zelda game I haven’t played — Majora’s Mask — which finally arrived on the Virtual Console last week.

Majora’s Mask is definitely the strangest Zelda game I’ve played, with the game’s core mechanic — a series of masks that transform Link, giving him unique abilities — almost paling in comparison with it’s secondary mechanic, a fixed 72-hour clock (about an hour in game time) that controls the game world and it inhabitants. You have to save the world within those 72 hours, but by using the Ocarina or Time, you can warp yourself through time and relive those hours as many times as you need to.

Beyond the fact that, like most PSX/N64-era games, its graphics haven’t aged well (though I’m not too fussed about that), my only issue with Majora’s Mask is with its save system. You don’t get any opportunity to save your game until about an hour and a half in, and after that, you save primarily by resetting the clock to 0, which saves any major achievements, but drops you back at the hub world and reduces your bank balance to 0. There’s an alternate system of savepoints, but I’ve only found one so far, so I’m not sure how widespread they are. Saving has never been ideal in Zelda games, though — most drop you back at the start of the current dungeon when you load, which isn’t conductive to short play sessions — so I’m sure I can deal with it.

I have half a dozen games that I should be crapping on about at length, but instead I bring you some flash brilliance about a phenomenon that any regular PT user can relate to:

Metro Rules of Conduct is a game about the awkward situation of commuting in my hometown, Stockholm. Look at mobile phones, ties and MP3 players for score, but whatever you do – avoid eye contact!

I love it not just because it’s a bit of fun, but also because it’s a perfect example of how powerful an expressive medium gaming can be. You could explain how people on PT behave in writing, but ten paragraphs later, someone who’s never caught a train might still not get it. A game, though, can express the same concept in seconds, with nary a word of exposition or dialogue, by having the player experience it first-hand.

I’ve only put a couple of hours in to Left 4 Dead, but I’ve had a lot of fun with it so far. In terms of gameplay, it’s the co-op shooter that the world has been waiting for — four players, which can be any combination of human or AI, fighting for survival against hordes of zombies across four unique campaigns. The zombies (or “Infected”) are more 28 Days Later than Dawn of the Dead, running, jumping, and climbing their way across the landscape rather than shuffling along. Beyond the anonymous hordes, there are a few super zombies as well, like the Boomer, which showers the survivors in horde-attracting bile by either vomiting on them or exploding nearby, and the Tank, which is huge and super-tough.

The co-op focus of the game is reinforced at every turn. Resources like pain pills and first aid kits are limited, so you have to share them around, and healing someone takes a few seconds, so you’ll need to provide cover to both the healer and the healee. Several enemy attacks can pin you down as well, so you need to rely on your buddies taking care of the offending zombie for you before you can get back up. If you run out of health and are knocked down, your teammates can revive you, but again, it takes time.

There are two other aspects of the game that help make it greater than the sum of its parts. The first is that the whole thing feels like a movie — the best way to put it is that it’s not a zombie apocalypse simulator, but a zombie apocalypse movie simulator. The graphics are starkly lit and awash with film grain, the music is full of subtle cues that clue you in on upcoming attacks, the origin of the zombies is left deliberately ambiguous, and even the four characters are your classic misfits: the tough biker guy, the IT worker, the Vietnam vet, and the horror-obsessed college girl.

The other is the Director, an AI that oversees the entire game. It wouldn’t be much of a zombie flick if you could memorise what was around every corner, so the Director mixes it up, changing the numbers and types of zombies and changing the locations of items and weapons on each play thorugh. It’s definitely not random, though — the Director makes its decisions on-the-fly, based on how you’ve been playing the game, and it does an excellent job of throwing just enough at you, so you can make it through by the skin of your teeth, just like a good zombie movie.

I finished Braid last night and man, what an ending. The whole game has this bizarre, surreal charm, but it’s really intensified in the finale, and it’s only in the epilogue that you get the first clues as to the story’s true meaning. It feels like I’ve just lived through a David Lynch film, and I’ve been going over the whole thing in my mind repeatedly since I finished it, slowly making sense of all the pieces with the help of some observations made online by other players. Short of Jonathan Blow coming out and saying exactly what the game is about I guess we’ll never know for sure, but I doubt that’ll happen, and with good reason — people are going to be discussing the meaning of this game for a very long time.

Again, an awesome game — if there’s any way you can be playing this right now, make it happen! There’s no word yet as to how far away the PC port is, but I’m sure I’ll mention it when it arrives.