A peek at this week's Celeste—which favors pixellated designs and squishy, bouncy characters—could make any skeptical passerby sigh in that "Gosh, another one of these?" way. I get that.
But I insist there's something here. In the past few years, we've seen a few super-beautiful, far-from-pixellated platformers emerge with serious fans. Cuphead made a huge splash in 2017 by emphasizing brutal difficulty and hand-drawn beauty. Fans of 2014's Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze swear by its breadth and production values. And 2015's Ori and the Blind Forest injected gorgeous designs and wild platforming maneuvers into a "Metroidvania" adventure.
Celeste doesn't look much like those three games, but its brilliance comes from borrowing their best ideas—and boost-leaping past their pitfalls—to deliver the most intense, memorable, and satisfying platformer yet released in the 2010s. Put Celeste at the top of your side-scrolling shelf, right next to Super Meat Boy and Yoshi's Island.
