What's your favourite 2D game of all time? | Team Talk

With the release of the excellent Pentiment this week (which you should absolutely read more about immediately) we’ve been wondering what games make the most of a 2D art style, hand drawn or otherwise to become our favourite examples of the format.

Gaming leapt into 3D in the mid 90s, and these days only tends to look back to a flatter perspective if it has a specific reason, or if the scope of a project is limited, perhaps because of the size of the studio.

There are countless indie darlings to choose from alone – Hollow Knight, Stardew Valley and Cuphead to name but a few – but what takes the crown as your favourite of all time? Let us know in our Discord.

by Team PTC

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@pass_controller

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Mark of the Ninja Remastered | Chris Brand

On the surface, Mark of the Ninja is a simple 2D stealth/action game but that simplicity hides a surprising amount of depth. Tools and abilities are unlocked as you progress, offering new ways to distract and dispatch enemies, and after a while it almost feels akin to a sandbox game as, despite the linear levels, it's possible to play through sections in numerous (though, of course, still limited) ways, even more so when you've finished your first playthrough and open up New Game Plus.

​The New Game Plus experience makes your first go around seem like an extended tutorial, as Mark of the Ninja is at its best when you've got a good grip on how to remain stealthy.
 
Our protagonist, while being a deadly ninja, is rather squishy and open combat is best avoided. Enemies are well equipped and can take you out quickly, especially in groups. Variation is added to later levels with more advanced units, which often require a little more thought to outwit, with each room having a puzzle-like nature to it. Patience is key to successfully completing missions with ease so, obviously, I struggled to push through many areas, but generous checkpoints meant I was never losing too much progress and every time I tried again, I'd get a little further.

​Executing the perfect plan through trial and error is satisfying yet there's a, not wholly unpleasant, sense of frustration from battling through a particularly tough encounter and then realising the myriad ways in which you could have made it much easier if you'd happened to use different tools or approached things in a different way.
 
The plot is intriguing but only in regards to the overall narrative. While this may not be the biggest compliment, it ensures the story is unintrusive and you're not pulled away from the action for long periods. It's not necessary to care about the little details, as gameplay is the real draw.
 
Mark of the Ninja is not only my favourite 2D game, but it's up there with my favourite stealth games and probably one of the more accessible titles in the genre.

Castle Crashers | Liam Andrews

While I could have easily looked to the past for a favourite 2D title, I’m going with a (relatively) modern game in Castle Crashers. I played this around 2013 on Xbox 360, a few years after its initial release, and though I haven’t been back since, it was definitely one of my favourite gaming moments on a console that had plenty of them.

Castle Crashers struck a good balance between difficulty and welcoming newcomers. As a fairly regular player of games, I found many of the boss battles challenging enough to keep me entertained, while my playing partner, who never played games, was kept engaged thanks to the game’s pick up and play nature and simple control scheme.

It was also pleasant to look at, with a bright, bold cartoon-like art style, and had bags of character and plenty of visual gags. While the developer The Behemoth took that humour and art style into their other games, none of them managed to grab me the way Castle Crashers did.

The hack ‘n slash gameplay might not have been ground-breaking, but it was bloody good fun, and I missed it once the credits rolled around. Here’s hoping for a sequel, one day.

Aladdin (MegaDrive/Genesis) | JAmes Parry

There were a lot of games that crossed my mind for this question. In recent years the likes of Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends immediately came to mind, but arguably they still would have been effective as 3D side-scrollers, though the Ubi Art framework makes the designs far more endearing.

This led me to delve back further in time, to the MegaDrive era, where the likes of Streets of Rage 2, Sonic The Hedgehog 2 and Gunstar Heroes all defined what an amazing 2D game looks like, but in the end I chose Aladdin.

Licensed games have come a long way since, but in those days, they were almost always terrible, and Aladdin flew (on a magic carpet, if you will) in the face of that to give us a game awash with the designs straight out of the film, and the consistency would only work by the game being 2D.

From the idle animations to how accurately the characters and locations are realised, especially in the opening levels, the game is the quintessential representation of the film and its characters.

What makes the game even more impactful is that there is a SNES Aladdin game, produced by Capcom no less, released around the same time, which is completely different and, ultimately, not as good.

Plus, I challenge anyone to find a better, and more impossible endless running escape level than Rug Ride.