The Best Games That Blend 2D And 3D Platforming

Key Takeaways

• Platform games have evolved from classics like
  Pitfall
  to 3D masterpieces like
  Super Mario 6.
• Neko Ghost, Jump!
  offers unique gameplay mechanics by shifting between 2D and 3D platforms.
• Super Paper Mario
  and
  Sonic Generations
  demonstrate successful integration of 2D and 3D platforming.

Platform games have been around since…well, sometime after the beginning of time. Donkey Kong and Pitfall turned up way after the likes of Pong, but they showed that letting a player leap from platform to platform in real time was a hit. The genre rapidly grew from there, with the NES providing classics like Super Mario Bros and Mega Man, and Sonic the Hedgehog inspiring hosts of other animal-based mascot platformers.

Then 3D graphics came along and literally introduced a new dimension to gaming. Players could now move in all directions, with Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot showing how it could be done to great effect. These games didn’t put an end to the old sidescrollers, as some 3D platformers have mixed their multi-directional moves with classic 2D gameplay.

8 Neko Ghost, Jump!

Early Access To Feline Fun

• Developer: Burgos Games
• Platforms: PC (Early Access), Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Atari VCS (planned)
• Release: January 2022 (Early Access)

If indie PC games are anything to go by, people love puzzle platform games. Then, judging by decades of internet pages, they also love cats. By that logic, putting a feline figure in a game can help it catch on quickly, especially if it has inventive mechanics to go with the cat-based cuteness, like in Neko Ghost, Jump! In this game, Nekoman has to save his bride, his friends, his family, and the entire Nekoworld from the Space Dog Pirates by running through levels.

To get through them, he’ll have to use two uncanny abilities. First, he can shift between 2D and 3D planes to find new routes around blocked paths. Second, his ghost can leave his body to fight off foes. Players have to be careful where they leave Nekoman’s body though, as it can still take damage. If players can master these mechanics, they can race through levels. The game is technically still in Early Access, but with 40+ levels and a ton of customization options, it already has a lot to offer.

7 Crush

Experiencing New Dimensions In Virtual Reality

• Developer: Zoë Mode
• Platforms: PSP, Nintendo 3DS (as CRUSH3D)
• Release: May 2007 (PSP), January 2012 (3DS)

The Nintendo Switch is a great console that finally lets people take big games like Yakuza Kiwami and Super Smash Bros Ultimate on the go. However, now that the line between portable and home gaming has been cut, some have lamented that there won’t be a place for inspired, mid-budget puzzle games like on the old handhelds. Niche as they were, they could be more inventive than the big AAA games.

For example, Crush was a Burton-esque puzzle platformer where a boy named Danny faces his traumas with the CRUSH system, or tries to escape CRUSH’s virtual world. The story differs depending on whether people played the PSP version or its 3DS port. Both require the player to switch between 2D and 3D gameplay to avoid hazards and solve puzzles. They can even use a 2D top-down view, a la classic Zelda games, to find a new perspective with which to progress.

6 Perspective

Taking A Fresh Look At Platforming

• Developer: DigiPen Institute of Technology
• Platform: PC
• Release: December 2012

Speaking of perspective, here’s Perspective. It keeps things simple by not really having a story, let alone two port-exclusive stories like Crush. Players just have to get their little blue avatar from the beginning of the level to the end goal. It sounds simple, until they come across impassable barriers. To get by, they have to look at things from a new angle, literally.

In 2D mode, players can move about, but can’t change the camera angle. Then, in 3D mode, they can move the camera around, but not the player character. To avoid resetting their progress by hitting the orange platforms, players have to use the 3D mode to find a new, more passable 2D path across the walkable blue platforms to make it to the goal. With each completed level, they’ll come across more tricky dimension-shifting brainteasers.

5 Fez

A Fancy Hat Capable Of Fancy Tricks

Here’s a blast from the past. Today, Fez is perhaps mostly known for its outspoken creator, Phil Fish, who canceled the game’s sequel and left the video game industry after drawing the ire of gamers. Even with his acerbic personality (“Compare your life to mine…”), he didn’t deserve the mass harassment he received. Not when there are figures in the industry who are still thriving despite doing stuff that makes Phil Fish look like Mahatma Gandhi.

Nonetheless, Fez sees Gomez don the titular hat to discover his 2D world has a third dimension, which he can rotate to take new paths he hadn’t seen before. By using the power of the fez to rotate the world around him, Gomez can solve puzzles and collect cube fragments in order to bring balance to the universe. Fish didn’t think the mechanics were especially unique, but they were unique enough in 2012 to make it an award-winner, and it still holds up as a solid game today.

4 Super Paper Mario

The Paper Plumber Ditches Stats To Go 3D

Beyond their mechanics, Fez, Crush, and Neko Ghost, Jump! all have something in common: They’ve all been compared to Super Paper Mario. The first two entries in the series caught on as popular RPG spin-offs of the iconic plumber’s adventures, but controversially, Super Paper Mario returned to platforming, where Mario has to save the very fabric of reality from Count Bleck. To do that, Mario, Peach, Bowser, and Luigi had to jump along a 2D plane through various worlds in search of Pure Hearts and helpful partners called Pixls for special abilities.

One such ability lets them shift into a 3D plane to find hidden routes and objects behind the 2D terrain, but if they stay in 3D too long, they’d take a hit. They could unlock the ability to go 3D for as long as they liked, though by then the game was basically over, and outside the hidden goodies, there wasn’t a lot to see. That’s why some fans still prefer the original RPG gameplay of Paper Mario and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Still, Super Paper Mario is a fun game in its own right, and pretty dark for a Mario game too.

3 Super Mario Odyssey

Mario’s Dimensional-Mixing Comes Full Circle

For a while, Nintendo kept Mario’s 3D games and 2D games separate, with the former being all about getting Stars and Shines as in Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine, and the latter about hitting the end-level flagpole, a la New Super Mario Bros. Then they got creative, with Super Mario Galaxy mixing 3D roaming with the odd 2D-style segment. Super Mario 3D Land and Super Mario 3D World did the same by letting Mario and co. move up, down, and all around in search of that last flagpole.

Even with Super Mario Odyssey changing things around, it still managed to fit in some 2D segments for players to traverse to grab those moons. They usually came in the form of pipes that would turn Mario into an 8-bit mural, where he’d run and jump over foes and hazards like it was 1985 again. As such, players still had to put those old-school jumping skills to the test, as they couldn’t rely on Cappy to extend Mario’s jumps like they could in the 3D overworld.

2 Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

A Crashing Crescendo

All the classic Crash Bandicoot games could find a place on this list, as basically all the marsupial’s levels involved running and jumping either left and right, or into and away from the screen. The character lost his mojo when he went full 2D for handheld games like Crash Bandicoot: The Huge Adventure, or full 3D like Crash of the Titans, but those games had more issues than their dimensions. This is why the series went back to basics by remaking the classic games into the N.Sane Trilogy.

The remakes were enough of a success to get a new sequel in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. Crash, Coco, Tawna, Dingodile, and Dr. Cortex’s multiversal platforming offered longer, larger levels where players really had to master the game’s 2D/3D gameplay and unique power-ups, especially when they had to beat its increasingly difficult 2D Flashback levels, or its flipped and filtered 3D N.Verted mode. Players could also ignore them and beat the game normally, though if they wanted to 100% the game, they had to beat everything it included.

1 Sonic X Shadow Generations

The Best Boost Game Gets Better

After years of experimenting with one 3D style of gameplay or another, often to questionable results, Sonic found a solid 3D niche with the Boost formula. It was basically the same into-screen/out-of-screen, left/right mix of 2D and 3D platforming that Crash Bandicoot did. The difference was that, in this case, the levels were much longer to fit Sonic’s high-speed runs, jumps, rail switches, and more. It made Sonic Unleashed a half-decent game, and Sonic Colors a fun time on the Wii.

However, it arguably peaked with Sonic Generations, where Modern Sonic’s mix of 2D and 3D levels mixed with Classic Sonic’s exclusively 2D gameplay. The controls were more intuitive, complete with better drifting and levels. Still, it did have some rough points, like the dull final boss. Sonic X Shadow Generations brought the game back, warts and all, but threw in a new campaign for Sonic’s edgy rival Shadow, which refined the Boost formula with exclusive power-ups, levels, and bosses.