LogFAQs > #932859740

#32





Years of release: 2018 (PC/XB1/PS4/Switch), 2019 (DLC)
Beaten?: Only the A's

Do you guys remember Jumper? I know you guys remember Jumper! At least a few of you, anyway. That was definitely a thing back in the late 00's, back when indie games were mostly something someone made in Game Maker or Flash or something else that was suitably low brow. And yet, I'd say that Jumper sparked the birth of a genre - something I like to call the Infinideath platformer. A linear series of rooms filled with spikes and other death traps, where you have to navigate the room with very careful precision at every turn, but death doesn't matter too much - you just go back to the start of the room and try again, over and over, until you beat it and move onto the next room.

These sorts of games were very in vogue and still are today, and while I did enjoy Jumper and its sequel for a while, I sort of came to dislike the genre; I just didn't find myself all that satisfied by trying the same obstacles over and over and over ad nauseum until my muscle memory had perfectly solved the problem. I prefer platformers in which you have room to make mistakes and you need not be so precise at every obstacle, but which demand that you overcome a longer series of challenges with minimal mistakes before you can proceed. It's just kinda what I'm used to, I guess, and while it would be wrong to say I found Jumper at the like to be not challenging, the challenge felt strangely hollow when all I had to do was eventually fluke into clearing a room once and then never have to see it again. Of course, I could play more to see how few deaths I can beat the game with, but... I don't know, the whole precision-platforming thing doesn't really appeal to me. Never got into IWBTG or its many clones; even Super Meat Boy wasn't really much to my taste (though I did think it was a fine game).

Now, the creator of Jumper has made his magnum opus, Celeste. And it is incredible. It's a testament to how flawless this game is that it's a type of game that I don't even really like, and I'd still easily rank it among my top 100 games of all time.

It's really awesome to remember the humble origins of Jumper and to see how far it's come. Celeste is stunningly well-crafted. It's visuals and music are gorgeous, its ambiance and tone cozy and charming. It even has a story that I think is well executed for what it is, managing to touch on topics of anxiety and self-fulfillment directly without feeling too hamfisted. But most of all, for me, the gameplay of this genre has finally found itself a sweet spot in which it's tricky, but not too mindlessly or annoyingly difficult to turn me off entirely. Madeline's jumps and wall climbing feel absolutely perfect, and the level design always feels like it has exactly the right number of obstacles to make the level exactly as challenging as it ought to be, no more, no less. Everything feels perfectly fair. I never found myself frustrated even once. I was always delighted by how new stage elements would be taught to me, then cleverly re-used and combined to create new challenges. Each new world brings with it new gimmicks that add to the game.

It's really only not higher because it still remains a genre of a game I feel at arm's length with. I really couldn't get into playing the B-sides, and let's not even speak of the C-sides, thank you - I'm aware of them, and I could probably beat them with enough time, but I just don't really have it in me. I don't mind, though, that there's optional content in this game that I don't feel like playing - I absolutely love watching Celeste speedruns, and I felt like I got a complete experience out of playing this to its basic conclusion. I haven't played the DLC yet - I'll probably return to this game at some point and finish it off, maybe even give the B-sides another go, who knows? Celeste may not be my first love, but it's undoubtedly deserving of my time.