Planet Platformer 2

[Gaetan Horton]

Thecinematic platformer is very much a dormant genre. The rise of 3D exploration and a rush towards procedurally generated worlds and roguelite or Metroidvania mechanics seemed to have consigned the narrative focused linear platformer to the history vaults. Planet Alpha is unashamedly a return to the 16-bit favourites of Another World or Flashback, whilst its bright and gorgeous aesthetic brings the genre bang up to date. After a recent diet of quality Metroidvanias, it was a pleasant change to sit down with a game that unashamedly pushed you ever forward with no need to remember shortcuts or complex routes back to small pockets of unexplored map.

Planet Alpha is a mysterious game. Very little is clearly explained and most storytelling is left to the environmental challenges to convey. You begin as a humanoid alien figure trudging slowly through an arid desert. The frustratingly pedestrian nature of your movement in this early stage forces you to look for meaning in the background and the slow walk lasts just long enough for you to wonder if something has gone wrong with the controls before your avatar collapses and is rescued by a shadowy figure.

The dangers in Planet Alpha range from rockfalls and predatory lifeforms to the main antagonists, an invading army of robotic colonisers that have a wonderfully retro-futuristic 1950s look. Determined to exterminate everything in their path with no real explanation, you are forced to flee and watch the verdant world burn around you. This battle between natural and mechanical forces gives the game an air of ecological criticism and metaphors for climate change and deforestation soon become powerful, but this all happens in the background and all you can do is watch it happen and run.

Your own engagement with the robot enemies takes the form of stealth or puzzle sections that require you to use the environment to your advantage, whether that be hiding behind movable rocks or tricking the robots into being crushed by giant beasts. I was impressed by how fresh a number of these environmental puzzles felt but an element of repetition crept in thanks to the limited interactions your character is capable of.

Aside from running and jumping you can drag various blocks and also manipulate the passage of time. Unlike the freedom of games such as the Prince of Persia, however, this timetravel ability is limited to particular areas marked by rune covered statues. Consequently, there is a definite feeling of setpiece to these puzzles, and as such they can break the immersion created by the more adrenaline-fuelled chase sequences.

Whilst the clearest standout aspect to Planet Alpha is the beauty of its backgrounds, this can become a negative in places. The stunning layered environments are a joy to look at, but there are too many times when the setting gets in the way of the platforming mechanics. Ledges are often indistinct or blocked by foreground details, and too many deaths come as a result of too busy a screen distracting you from the correct place to jump.

Fortunately, there is a generous checkpoint system in place so you only rarely have to repeat lengthy sections. This was particularly prevalent in the boss encounters and the surreal void levels in which hidden artefacts can be found. These latter sections have a radically different physics system with much reduced gravity effects. Adjusting to this change takes some time, but does allow for some interesting and enjoyable platforming puzzles where you must rely on momentum to make leaps that seem impossible at first glance.

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Advanced Planet Platformer is a platformer engine with 360 degrees gravity. The engine features a player that can move around in space and planets with interactions/physics. You can easily customize all the elements of the engine by changing simple values and settings.

At first look, most people would say that Freedom Planet is nothing more than a Sonic knock off. Well, they are maybe about 25% right. Freedom Planet by GalaxyTrail Games was originally a fan-created Sonic the Hedgehog game. Inspired by the 16-bit era Sonic, it was meant to pay homage to that fine series, but with original characters and a darker story than most classic Sonic games. In the end, Freedom Planet is a well-polished, 2D platformer that incorporates the best elements from the Sonic and other classic platformer games.

There are 14 levels in Freedom Planet; all of them are huge and they get more difficult as you go. Gameplay is vintage action-platformer with mostly linear levels mixed with combat, platforming, and the occasional light puzzle. Each character's moves are different with attacking, jumping ability, and special moves. The platforming and combat is very good; the controls are tight and work very well for each character. Level design is well balanced, even with the higher difficulty later in the game. The boss fights are the true highlight. Every level has a boss and they are long, heavily involved fights that pattern to them like any classic platformer should.

Overall, Freedom Planet is a great homage to those 8 and 16-bit era platformers like Sonic and Mega Man. Anyone who loves platformers will love this game. Levels are colorful, the story is good and the characters are memorable. In the end this really could be the classic Sonic style game we have always wanted and one of the best games on the Wii U.

In between game of the year contender The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and personal favorite Star Trek Resurgence, a beautiful little puzzle platformer released earlier this year: Planet of Lana. From Wishfully Studios, Lana is a wonderful game, and certainly deserves consideration for best indie of the year.

I spent just over five hours with Planet of Lana, which, for me, feels like the perfect length for this sort of game. It never overstayed its welcome, though I imagine some players might wish it were longer (plenty of YouTube playthroughs clock in around three hours or so).If you need a break from the life-consuming game of the year contenders this fall, Planet of Lana cannot be recommended enough. It offers up fun but not too challenging gameplay, an engaging story, and an absolute home run of a cinematic score that make it one of the best indie games of the year.

What matters most though is the gameplay and I have to say Planet Cube: Edge surprised me in some of the best ways possible. Many indie platformers rely on having an abundance of short single screen levels that serve to pad out the content. Planet Cube has eight levels that are significantly longer, taking around thirty minutes to an hour to play through, which helps make the game feel more cohesive.

Most of the levels and sections focus on some form of platforming, with light combat sprinkled throughout. Moving platforms, disabling lasers, and timed puzzles are just some of the trials that need to be overcome. Each level has a baseline form of challenge that most sections of the level will focus on, but there is enough variety in each one that the platforming never begins to feel stale.

As is also becoming more standard in these kinds of games, there are optional collectibles you can pick up if you feel like challenging yourself more. But beyond that, there is little reason to actually go for them unless you want to 100 percent the game and get that 1000 Gamerscore ticked off.

That being said, this is a platformer that takes several hours to get through and it is quite challenging, so if you were thinking of picking it up for an easy completion, then you will want to reconsider. If, however, you are looking for a well-made platformer with a fun story and plenty of obstacles to overcome, then Planet Cube: Edge is a great find.

Planet-based diets will ensure everyone on the planet has healthy and nutritious food and will help bend the curve on the negative impacts of the food system, moving from one which exploits the planet to one which restores it for nature and people.

Nature restoration will depend on a combination of dietary shifts, reduction in food loss and waste and adoption of nature-positive production practices. Dietary shifts are potentially the quickest action to achieve, and can help facilitate the other two actions.

The Earth-2 accelerated systems will let climate scientists produce kilometer (km)-scale climate simulations, conduct large-scale AI training and inference, and achieve low-latency interactivity. NVIDIA Modulus integrates support for numerous neural network models for climate and weather simulation.

NVIDIA Omniverse enables ultra-large-scale, high-fidelity, interactive visualizations that depict weather conditions across the globe. Omniverse Nucleus includes a data federation engine that offers transparent data access across external databases and live feeds.

City-scale simulation data is now incorporated into the Earth-2 planetary digital twin. In this video, we demonstrate the combination of high-resolution simulation data from ICON, WRF, and PALM with Google Photoreal Tiles served by Cesium using the Earth-2 visualization service to help address questions in the urban environment.

By accelerating analysis 700,000X, NVIDIA Omniverse and Modulus can help engineers with planning and operating carbon capture and storage, ensuring safe operation and long-term storage and reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released into our atmosphere.

Built on NVIDIA Omniverse and the OpenUSD 3D framework, the Earth-2 platform enables aggregation and visualization of diverse, global-scale climate simulation and geospatial datasets. Made possible with cloud-native technology, visualizations can be explored by anyone around the globe.

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