Most platformers are oriented to be accessible to any gamer. Cartoony graphics tend to appeal most easily to any age, gender, and perspective.
Platformers oriented toward more "mature" gamers (eg, Prince of Persia, Castlevania, Legacy of Kain, Tomb Raider) favor less cartoony graphics. The likely reason you're not seeing many examples of non-cartoony platformers is that "mature" 3D platformers have moved more toward an emphasis on action-adventure gaming (a direction shared by the franchises listed above). Thus, more "mature" platformers tend to emphasize the platforming less, in favor of combat and puzzles.
That said, have you considered Mirror's Edge? I don't know if the parkour flavor is to your tastes, but I don't think the graphics come across as overly cartoony. Also, if you haven't had time to play them yet, the Portal games are pretty platforming-emphasized in their approach to puzzle solving, the first game especially.
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Yeah, a lot of platformers have moved into the action-adventure genre (Tomb Raider is the most notable one), but doing that most of them totally lost their platformer elements, prioritizing storytelling, shooting etc. It's like you can't have a "mature" game that doesn't rely heavily on its story and plot, or that doesn't become a third-person-shooter (or an hack n slash) after a while. Even God of War was a mixed action/platformer when it first came out, but now the series is mostly made of (good) action hack n slash games.
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What about A Story About My Uncle? I'm not sure if you would consider that too cartoonish, it's kind of inbetween. It's also first person, so there isn't really a player character. Are you looking for 3rd person games?
Edit: I guess that's more a first person parkour game, that's probably not what you are looking for.
I haven't played it yet, so I'm not sure what it's like, but maybe ENSLAVED: Odyssey to the West
Again, I haven't played, so I don't know what the gameplay is like, but maybe Contrast
Papo & Yo is a good game.
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I wouldn’t have thought of ENSLAVED, but now that you mention it, I would say there are definitely parts of it that were jumping puzzle-like. There’s a lot of brawling, too, though, and I would say that’s a much larger part of the game than the platforming, even though there is a lot of climbing and leaping.
Good call on thinking of Papo & Yo, too.
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I used https://www.lorenzostanco.com/lab/steam/ on my profile and viewed only "3d platformers". Much easier to look though a list.
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Very handy. In my library that also brings up I Am Bread and Human Fall Flat - the latter may be a bit cartoony, depending on one’s opinion about art styles.
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If you are interested in first person platformers like A Story About My Uncle, I think there are quite a few of those where the world is not cartoonish, but most of them have no characters.
Also I added Contrast to my previous comment, not sure if you saw that or if it is they type of game you are looking for.
Edit: Maybe, Woolfe - The Red Hood Diaries. I have not played this either.
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I recently played Contrast and loved it (really, it's a wonderful game!). Woolfe looks nice but it's mostly a 2.5D game (like the Trine series), made with a fully 3d engine. Recently, I've also been trying Grow Home, that's a strange kind of platformer but it's cool.
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I enjoyed Grow Home. I was going to recommend it because it's different, but thought it fit too much into the child category and might not be what you were looking for.
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Do you even have a jump button in Enslaved? I played it a few years ago on consoles but can't remember...I think the term 'platformer' should only be used with games that let you jump whenever you want.
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I think a lot of 3D platformers try to appeal to nostalgia, and cartoony graphics were both what were within the capabilities of consoles at that time (coarse shapes and simple textures) and consistent with the game/console vendors target markets at that time (more kids than adult gamers; now that style game is often aimed at adult gamers looking for something like what they played as a kid).
In addition to Sooth’s recommendations, you might want to take a look at A Story About My Uncle, Cloudbuilt, Clustertruck, Deadcore, Disoriented, Ilamentia, NaissanceE, Refunct, and SEUM: Speedrunners From Hell. I’m not sure how many of these will give you what you’re looking for in gameplay, but they all fit the category to a certain extent while avoiding being cartoony.
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Nostalgia.
The same reason why 2D pixel graphics games are a "thing" right now.
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The thing is that this is the one of the two genres that heavily relies on that feeling (the other is the point-n-click adventure games, like Deponia, but not as much as the 3d platformer games) and I was wondering about why that happens. If you think about first person shooters, you have STRAFE which is a really retro-style nostalgic game that recalls Quake and Wolfenstein, but you also have things like Titanfall 2 or Battlefield 1 that have a totally different approach. In 3d platformers you only have Banjo-Kazooje and Mario 64 "clones" (from an aestethic point of view) or remake/remastered of old games like Crash and Ratchet&Clank. It's kind of sad...
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Pixel art is mostly common because its quicker to produce then 3D art actually. Still takes quite a bit of skill to do it well though (Steam is filled with games made by people that are terrible at pixel art).
Personally I love pixel art (when it's done well).
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My very favourite example of it done right, with an incredible sense of atmosphere, is Slain: Back from Hell ツ
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Maybe I used the wrong words. It's obvious that a game like Yooka-Laylee finds its target among adults who enjoyed games like Banjo-Kazooje 20 years ago, and that's fine, but it's clear that its "modern" audience (people who buy Yooka-Laylee without even knowing Mario 64 or Banjo or Spyro) is mostly made of kids. And, in any case, that doesn't change the fact that there are no true 3d platformers with a different theme/tone/style.
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I'd recommend Jak & Daxter 2-3, both have cartoony characters but with a much darker tone (kind of like Sonic SatAM). Psychonauts also looks cartoony but has some really dark parts (I'd mention some but they'd be spoilers).
That said, a realistic collectathon game huh...I'm not sure how that'd work. I mean, floating coins/stars etc. would obviously be very out of place. So what would they be trying to collect? Maybe a Tomb Raider 'esk game where you collect artifacts from undiscovered ruins, or maybe your a gangster collecting drug money from people that owe you? :p
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Why do 3d platformers always target an audience of kids? Why do they always have a cartoonish "wind-waker-like" art style?
There are adult-themed cartoons (I'm not speaking about porn, uh), or cartoons meant for both adults and kids (with different levels of jokes). I would not say that Cartoonish == for kids. But I recognize that in the case of "A Hat In Time", yes it does try to appeal to kids.
Why 3D platformers are in cartoonih style ? I think it's to match the atmosphere.
A Resident Evil or a Outlast would look weird drawn as cartoons. I do'nt say it's impossible to make a horror game in cartoons (I'm thinking about Five night at Freddy for exemple) but it need to match the atmosphere (and FNAF is revolving around kids' toy if I understood well).
Well, platformers games are most of the time a strange place with platforms convenient placed for the player, but which doesn't make sense in a real world. So it would be weird to make a world looking place like nothing IRL and making it looking like IRL. Or you turn to game like Tomb Raider, but to make it more "real", they had to include shootings and stuff so... Platformers enemies have a pattern, which wouldn't make sense with a "real" environment. Same for objects to grab, what could the player could collect ?
I'm pretty sure there are games matching this anyway, because there is always some well made exceptions. But it will stay exceptions.
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Well, think about it. There are 2D sidescrolling platformers that are Horror games (Limbo? Inside? Grimind?), other ones that are HnS games (basically every metroidvania out there), there are RPG, even Dungeon Crawlers etc. Now, I acknowledge how hard it can be to move from 2d to 3d in terms of "building a game world" that doesn't seem absurd, but I still cannot understand why other genres have made that change but the 3d-plat genre is not able to do it. Look at what puzzle-games were and what they've become. Look at shooters, there are all kinds of shooters (even shooters without guns), look even at sports games (Rocket League is a football, or soccer, game without actual human players, then there is Blood Bowl, and many others). On the other hand, 3D Platformers are still heavily tied to this idea of having a kid (or a furry character) as a protagonist in a sort of wonderland, and they always have been. That's the only genre that's not evolved from the setting/storytelling/theme/art point of view. It's sad, at least in my view. There are of course people that are perfectly fine with 3D platformers being how they are, and that's ok.
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Perhaps someone has said this already, but most 3D platform game play is fairly open to all ages (as far as puzzle difficulty and viewer friendly themes), so the cartoon style will also adhere to a larger area (kids will be attracted and most adults won't be dissuaded from it). I would also like to note that children have a larger amount of time to waste (lack of work and only school to worry about), and both with a child's interest in video games and perhaps a parents need to distract and/or please said child its much easier to buy a more "friendly" visual game. (but I digress.)
As far as 3D Platform that are not cartoon-esque? Hmm, I believe there are still quite a few. Tomb raider series, particularly early on (however dated), is a set that comes to mind (unfortunately there are a few others that I just can't remember). After that it depends on how important the 3D platform is in the game. Games like God of War or Castlevania: Lords of Shadow utilizes the platform aspect fairly heavily and still look fairly realistic as opposed to cartoon-ish though are much more action. Either way, I hope you can find a game that satisfies your search. ^_^
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When I was 8 or 10 years old, I loved 3D Mario games, I loved Spyro, I sort-of-liked Crash Bandicoot (and let's not forget about Rare games). I loved the way they could teleport you as a kid in all the worlds that you had always seen only on TV. Today, 15 years later, I'd love to get back to 3d platformers (and platformers in general) but I can't. I am not able to. I still enjoy a few "side-scroller 2d games with a jump mechanic" (I won't call them platformers, because it's not what all of them are) while I've started to completely avoid 3d ones.
I think I've found out why: they do not look appealing to me anymore.
Recently I've played The Last Tinker: City of Colors, and I loved the story and the message behind the game, but I though the game looked unappealing during my entire playthrough. (Ps: it was not that great in terms of gameplay too).
It's a shame because I'm sure that in terms of gameplay I'd still love to solve jump-puzzles in a 3d world, but the art-style of pretty much all the games in the genre kinda kills any interest in even trying those games. 15 years ago, I'd have loved A Hat in Time. Today, I will never play it, on purpose, because of its art design, and there is no other game in the genre that's not like that.
So, the question is: Why do 3d platformers always target an audience of kids? Why do they always have a cartoonish "wind-waker-like" art style? Do you know any 3d platformers that try to be different in terms of art design and character design?
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