37 years since Prince of Persia, Replaced is the bombastic cinematic platformer I've been waiting for

Sometimes in gaming, genres vanish. When was the last time that you played a full-on rail shooter, for instance, or a God game? Such is the fate that befell cinematic platformers, but they seem to be making a resurgence as of late with titles like American Arcadia and now Replaced filling the void that they left behind.

Cinematic platformers are often defined by their relative realism: gone are double jumps and being able to stop on a dime and crisply rotate 180 degrees in a single move. But my true measure of whether a game is a cinematic platformer is much simpler: does it make the protagonist do a whole lot of pull-ups, a la genre classics like Prince of Persia or Flashback? In Replaced's case, the answer to that is yes; it passes the pull-up test within five minutes.

Blade Run-and-gunner

Replaced puts you in the shoes of R.E.A.C.H., or, Reach to his friends (really), an AI assisting a man named Warren in the cyberpunk past of Phoenix City, 1984. An unspecified nuclear disaster in 1945 reduced the world to dystopic cities that harvest organs and defend their walls from those unfortunate enough to be stuck outside.

While planning a raid to harvest organs, another accident occurs and Reach and Warren become one, with Warren being Replaced in his own body, you see. Events transpire and you end up outside of Phoenix City, being aided by the very people you wanted to kidnap for their organs. As you might imagine, not everyone is as helpful as the refugees outside the city, and this is where the game proudly seizes another genre mainstay: combat.

Historically, combat in platformers, even cinematic platformers, has been hit and miss, but I'm happy to say it's a hit here. It uses a form of combat pioneered by the Batman Arkham series, but rendered in a 2.5D plane. A set number of enemies will fight you at any one time, with the others cheering on their buddies in the background, grimly joining the fight as you take one after another down.

You get a good range of abilities, chiefly tied to your combined baton and gun, a true Gunblade for the dystopian year of our Lord 2025. Standard hits charge the gun, which you can then use to unleash a devastating insta-kill laser blast, while another weapon joins the fray a little later allowing you to viscerally shred enemy armour with grinding precision.

If I have one key complaint about the game, it's that the visual design is very busy. The art itself is gorgeous, and often shows off the 2.5D perspective with some interesting camera shifts, but the level of detail on characters is pretty low, and with so many oversized pixels clamoring for your attention, it can be hard to get a real grip on the situation you find yourself in. Platforming is sometimes finicky, too, especially when you're dancing around deadly environmental hazards like vents that belch flames or columns of water that threaten to knock you to the ground, far below.

Light, camera, hack-tion

Despite this minor issue, it's wonderful to see a genre become revitalized. Replaced isn't the only cinematic platformer that's made me sit up and take notice in recent years. American Arcadia, the Truman Show-inflected game from Out of the Blue Games recently blew my mind after finally getting around to playing it.

In many ways, both the grim, beautifully brutalist dystopia of Replaced and the funky '70s styling of American Arcadia represent two sides of the cinematic platformer. Replaced inherits the dark and strangely brutal visual stylings of something like Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee and American Arcadia reflecting Prince of Persia's lighter colour palette.

Other touchstones for Replaced are obvious: Escape From New York, Unwind, and Dreamweb. Its sense of being out of time (despite strong roots in the 1980s) being spruced up with some modern combat sensibilities works in its favour, given the genre it seeks to emulate. Special mention must also be made for the music in Replaced, which is fantastic, and had me bopping my head along.

While the real pioneers of this genre, Delphine Software and Jordan Mechner, may not be making games anymore, it feels as though we're starting to see their influence trickle back into digital storefronts. Whether you're a veteran or curious to learn more, I would strongly recommend checking out Replaced, which has so far been largely a delight. It's got interesting, satisfying combat, an intriguing plot, and isn't quite like anything else in the store. Time will tell whether it gets a cult following, but it has the feel of a game that's going to garner one.

Explore all out coverage on platformer games, from Mario to Prince of Persia and beyond!