Collectathon or Point to Point B (Platformers)

[Duronos]

What's everyone's opinion on playing Collectathon or Point A to Point B platformers?

I've always wondered this and I guess a little poll will give me an idea, personally I'm a big fan of collectathon's they just give more of an immersion feeling due to devs usually making a whole world out of it. Examples of this are Banjo Kazooie, Overworld is Grundtilda's Lair and level entrances are in different parts. It's weird but Collectathon's generally just feel more epic to me, they just make the game feel alive so to speak. Spyro (Original three) is another good example of doing it right and there are many others.

To restate my question, which do you prefer?

[barackopala]

Platformers definately metroidvania style, which could be called collectathon(?)

[chazus]

The game my studio is currently working on is sort of a combination of the two, where there is a moderately linear path, but players can choose what to do to follow that path. It really depends on your design of the game. Games like Braid and Journey are very straight forward, yet are highly praised. I guess I'm not quite clear on what 'collectathon' implies. Can you give an example?

[Deleted]

I really don't like having to collect stars or coins or whatever. I want to follow the story and have good gameplay. But then again, I also really hate minigames in a game. If I wanted to play a bad version of wack the mole I could go to an arcade.

[Remilia]

Collectathon is like Banjo Kazooie / Tooie, DK 64, and such. Where the goal is to 100% / 'collect' everything in the game.

[Mechazod]

While I enjoy Metroidvania style scrollers with lots of secrets and back tracking, one of the three of my favorite genres of all time is 3D "open-world" platformers that most collectathons seem to fall under, DK64, the Banjos, 3D Mario games, Spyro, Jak&Daxter. I much prefer them to the more linear style platformers like Rayman 2/3, Crash Bandicoot, Sly Cooper and the Sonic Adventure games. Its not even so much the act of going around to try and get 100% complete in the games that I like, but more the idea of: "over there is something to collect, you can do whatever you want to get over there and then figure out how to collect it". While I guess in essence I should enjoy a lot of open world games in a similar way that are out now a days, and I do have fun with them, but they just cant compete with the style of older platformers from the mid-late 90s/early 2000s had, maybe its just the fact that I prefer more cartoony style games and worlds.

[Duronos]

While I enjoy Metroidvania style scrollers with lots of secrets and back tracking, one of the three of my favorite genres of all time is 3D "open-world" platformers that most collectathons seem to fall under, DK64, the Banjos, 3D Mario games, Spyro, Jak&Daxter. I much prefer them to the more linear style platformers like Rayman 2/3, Crash Bandicoot, Sly Cooper and the Sonic Adventure games. Its not even so much the act of going around to try and get 100% complete in the games that I like, but more the idea of: "over there is something to collect, you can do whatever you want to get over there and then figure out how to collect it". While I guess in essence I should enjoy a lot of open world games in a similar way that are out now a days, and I do have fun with them, but they just cant compete with the style of older platformers from the mid-late 90s/early 2000s had, maybe its just the fact that I prefer more cartoony style games and worlds.

You know I fully agree with you on this, I'd say Crash Bandicoot is probably one of the best linear based platformers though and compares to collectathons in my opinion. I've really been wanting to play DK64 but it's hard to get/find, I hear the game is long and has a lot of collecting, how long would you expect it to take me to finish it?

[Borfl]

Collectathon by far

They tend to give the player the freedom to explore the world anyway they wish without restricting them to specific objectives. SM64 and Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie, DK64 do this very well where getting 100% requires you to really explore every nook and cranny of the level, and there were alternate paths to reach the same objective. It's unfortunate that this style of 3D platforming is dying out. I find Sunshine was where Mario 3D series started going more objective oriented, where depending on which star you picked, you could only get that star. Now with SM3DW, its become old fashioned point A to B.

[Mechazod]

You know I fully agree with you on this, I'd say Crash Bandicoot is probably one of the best linear based platformers though and compares to collectathons in my opinion. I've really been wanting to play DK64 but it's hard to get/find, I hear the game is long and has a lot of collecting, how long would you expect it to take me to finish it?

I dont even remember really, haven't played it in years. I remember getting to the last stage didn't take to long, but actually getting to see the final boss battle requires collecting everything in the game, similar to the Lost World stages from the SNES Country games. The actual collecting of the stuff in the worlds is pretty easy and fast, however each world is filled with mini-game type events sort of like Banjo-Tooie, that's where I found you will spend most of your time going back to complete to get everything. Also if you want to get to K.Rool you also need to play some rounds of the old home computer version of Jetpack and then the arcade version of the original Donkey Kong in order to obtain 2 special coins, I cant recall exactly but I think Donkey Kong required reaching a certain high score and Jetpack just required beating a set level of stages. I would say the game is definitely longer then Banjo-Tooie if you have ever cleared through that.

[Cattleya]

Definitely prefer "collectathon" over the linear point A to point B trip. That said, I prefer metroidvania style over both.

[Duronos]

I dont even remember really, haven't played it in years. I remember getting to the last stage didn't take to long, but actually getting to see the final boss battle requires collecting everything in the game, similar to the Lost World stages from the SNES Country games. The actual collecting of the stuff in the worlds is pretty easy and fast, however each world is filled with mini-game type events sort of like Banjo-Tooie, that's where I found you will spend most of your time going back to complete to get everything. Also if you want to get to K.Rool you also need to play some rounds of the old home computer version of Jetpack and then the arcade version of the original Donkey Kong in order to obtain 2 special coins, I cant recall exactly but I think Donkey Kong required reaching a certain high score and Jetpack just required beating a set level of stages. I would say the game is definitely longer then Banjo-Tooie if you have ever cleared through that.

I've played Banjo Tooie, in fact I have it on the Xbox since I never played it on the N64. I've heard the versions of each are relatively the same anyways so it's the same game exactly (though Kazooie is different regarding notes meaning it's easier since when you die you don't lose note progress in a level). I've made it clear to myself that I will not look up anything regarding Tooie when it comes to finding something and boy I'll tell you what, that game is hard sometimes, especially fucking Grunty Industries... I actually had to look up how to open the door and that's all I've done. From what you're saying DK64 seems to be more collecting than puzzle solving so I might give my friend a ring because he said he had an N64 with a DK64 cartridge so I might as well give it a shot.

P.S. I still haven't finished Banjo Tooie to this day. Fuck Grunty Industries.

[Wynnyelle]

Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie have always been my favorite games. I love collectathons. It's a damn shame that they don't make games from that genre anymore. There are a few indie collectathon games coming out in the near future that have caught my eye, but they are definitely past their prime. Luckily, I don't think I'll ever get tired of replaying all my favorites.

[Duronos]

Banjo Kazooie and Banjo Tooie have always been my favorite games. I love collectathons. It's a damn shame that they don't make games from that genre anymore. There are a few indie collectathon games coming out in the near future that have caught my eye, but they are definitely past their prime. Luckily, I don't think I'll ever get tired of replaying all my favorites.

There's this game on Kickstarter called A Hat In Time. I'd look it up if I were you.

[Pendulous]

What happened to games like Donkey Kong Country, where the collecting was optional? I think the only thing those games were missing was extra incentive to actually getting 100%.

[Duronos]

What happened to games like Donkey Kong Country, where the collecting was optional? I think the only thing those games were missing was extra incentive to actually getting 100%.

Donkey Kong Country, I must play that... I've heard far to many good things about it.