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2½D: Difference between revisions

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2½D (view source)

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* The player can only move in two dimensions, but the ''path'' doesn't have to. The "plane" that the 2D character follows curves through three-dimensional space, and the [[Player Character]] follows along that. This is by far the most common, and the trait that is most likely to get a game labeled "2½D".
* Off-path objects. While the player is stuck on one path, there are things outside the path that can be interacted with.
* Layers: There are things visible in both the background and foreground, and it is possible to switch between paths to reach the goal. This gives the level a [[Exactly What It Says Onon the Tin|layered]] feeling, like a delicious, platforming pastry.
* Other tactics that are more localized.
 
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== Adventure Games ==
* ''Super Castlevania IV'' allowed Simon to use gates in the first level to go in front of, or behind, a fence. Doing so would allow him to traverse obstacles in front of or behind said fence. There were other similar parts through the game as well, including enemies that appeared from the fore- or background.
* The DS ''[[The Legend of Zelda (Franchise)|The Legend of Zelda]]'' games have managed to blend this trope with the traditional Zelda [[Three Quarters View]]. You can only interact with things on your plane, while going up or down allows you into others, while everything is rendered in 3D. When you are on your boat/train, you gain the ability to fire at things with your canon in full 3D, but you literally use a 2D map to plot your course.
* ''[[Shantae]]: Risky's Revenge'' features a "layered" approach, where you can hop between the foreground, regular-ground, and background in certain areas.
 
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* Classic [[Neo Geo]] fighter ''[[Fatal Fury]]'' (and its descendants) allow a player to jump from the foreground to the background, and to launch attacks back and forth. The jumps were replaced by slides and the system was progressively refined over the course of the series until being completely dropped in ''[[Distant Finale|Mark of the Wolves]]''.
** As does ''[[Savage Reign]]'', allowing an upper and lower plane. Especially notable is that in some stages, the "upper plane" consists of hanging off something. [[Rule of Cool|While fighting.]]
* Modern fighting games like ''[[Street Fighter IV (Video Game)|Street Fighter IV]]'' and ''[[Mortal Kombat 9 (Video Game)|Mortal Kombat 9]]'' feature 2D combat with 3D engines, allowing different cinematic views during certain moves or scenes. (Such as Ultra Moves in the former, and Fatalities in the latter.)
* The ''[[Bleach (Manga)|Bleach]]'' fighting games for the [[Nintendo DS]] allow you to 'line jump' between two planes to avoid attacks and play keep-away.
 
 
== Platformers ==
* [[Shadow Complex]], an Xbox LIVE Downloadable arcade is a 3D setting with a 2D Movement area.
* ''[[Virtual Boy]] [[Wario Land (Video Game)|Wario Land]]'' has foreground and background areas given a 3-D effect with the system's dual projections. There's trampoline blocks in specific places Wario can use to jump between the two layers, and all of the bosses use foreground/background movement as part of their attacks. The first boss demonstrates this perfectly when flinging his ball-and-chain at Wario from the background- the spiked ball appears to come hurtling towards YOU, the player, stopping just short of crashing through the fourth wall.
* ''Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers: The Movie'': In the game for the SNES, you could press the shoulder buttons to flip to the "back" or the "front" to avoid obstacles, such as in the very first level to avoid cars. The enemies could do this as well.
* ''[[Bug! (Video Game)|Bug]]'' An experimental take on 2½D, the titular character could move left and right, or "in and out" of the screen, but not both at a time. Vertical movement was possible at all times.
* ''Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a Half Century!'', a Nintendo 64 game, was a 3D platformer with 2½D sections.
* ''[[Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards (Video Game)|Kirby 64 The Crystal Shards]],'' mostly with the 3D curving path elements.
* The ''[[Klonoa (Video Game)|Klonoa]]'' series, which uses all of the tricks listed above and more. Klonoa can even be controlled in three dimensions, even if he's limited to only two.
* The [[New Super Mario Bros (Video Game)|New Super]] [[New Super Mario Bros Wii (Video Game)|Mario Bros.]] games are a bit like this: 2D side scroller, but 3D characters.
* ''[[Pandemonium (Videovideo Gamegame)|Pandemonium]]'' was a 2D platformer in a 3D environment. Stuff like spiral stairs, or two paths at different heights splitting into different directions, was common.
* Some of the two-dimensional segments of ''[[Super Mario Galaxy (Video Game)|Super Mario Galaxy]]'' are like this.
** In ''[[Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Video Game)|Super Mario Galaxy 2]]'', there are levels which go from 3D to 2D just by walking past a certain point. It's the entire gimmick of the Rightside Down Galaxy, but the Flash Black Galaxy and Honeybloom Galaxy have elements (former starts 3D, becomes 2D and turns back to 3D) while the latter has 3D for a secret star area. Bowser's Gravity Gauntlet is this taken to the extreme.
* ''[[Tomba]]''
* ''[[Trine (Video Game)|Trine]]''
* The Super NES ''[[Scooby Doo]]'' game had doorways that Shaggy and Scooby could enter by walking toward or away from the player.
* ''[[Yoshis Story (Video Game)|Yoshi's Story]]'' on the N64 is another fine example of a 2D platformer with 3D levels, Yoshis, and such.
* The 2D segments in ''[[Sonic Unleashed (Video Game)|Sonic Unleashed]]'' are really this. The only thing keeping them from being 3D is the complete inability to move to the side under ''your own'' power (which you have in the 3D segments) -- you can easily be, and often are, moved in the third direction by bumpers, spiral paths, and paths with loop-de-loops.
** ''[[Sonic Colors (Video Game)|Sonic Colors]]'' also does this, but with greater focus on the 2D platforming aspect.
** ''[[Sonic Generations (Video Game)|Sonic Generations]]'' plays with this trope to varying extents with its two playable characters: Modern Sonic's use is similar to [[Sonic Unleashed (Video Game)|Sonic Unleashed]] and [[Sonic Colors (Video Game)|Sonic Colors]] with its 3D/2.5D shifts at certain points of a given level; Classic Sonic's use, on the other hand, is all 2.5D. The 3DS version, meanwhile, is entirely 2.5D except for parts of the final boss battle.
** The ''[[Sonic Rush Series (Video Game)|Sonic Rush Series]]'' series plays in 2D (except for bosses, in which the paths curve and twist, thus being 2.5D), but Sonic and Blaze are cel-shaded 3D models. This allows segments where Sonic and Blaze are "closer to or further away" from the screen during certain level specific gimmicks.
** The underrated ''[[Sonic Rivals]]'' series for the PSP has 3D graphics, and linear paths that twist and curve.
** ''[[Sonic CD]]'' had Metallic Madness zone, where you could go behind certain walls to progress and get powerups, before going back infront again to continue the level proper.
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== Role Playing Games ==
* Some gaming media outlets classify the ''[[Paper Mario (Video Gamefranchise)|Paper Mario]]'' series as this, depending on whose reviews you read. While Mario can move in three dimensions, the areas he moves through tend to be narrow and reminescent of traditional sidescrolling levels—and ''[[Paper Mario the Thousand Year Door]]'' gets a lot of milage out of the "Layers" variant. ''[[Super Paper Mario]]'' only complicates things by being a 2D platformer you can ''flip'' to 3D in some instances.
* There's an example of the "3D game with a 2D interlude" variety in the 2D platforming stages of [[Kingdom Heartscoded (Video Game)|KingdomHeartsReCoded]].
* ''[[Pokémon Diamond and Pearl (Video Game)|Pokémon Diamond and Pearl]]'', despite being nicknamed the "3D Generation" of the main series, is 2.5D; the player walks around in a two-dimensional grid based world, but structures around the player change perspective as (s)he moves around. The one exception to this dynamic is the Distortion World in ''Pokémon Platinum''.
** ''[[Pokémon Black and White (Video Game)|Pokémon Black and White]]'', on the other hand, are the first main series games to feature full 3D, more or less. The biggest difference between the 3D featured in Generation V and the one in Generation IV is that the camera plays around in the former, while being completely fixed in the latter. It can also be even argued that Generation IV is itself the first true 3D generation, as there are a few hacks for those games that allows you to play with the camera angles, proving that they have fully 3D worlds.
* ''[[Dragon Saga]]'' has an interesting take on this. The game is in full 3D and some sections of the game allow 3D movement. However, most ''combat'' areas only allow the player character to face and aim attacks to the left or right with movement towards or away from the screen causing them to slide sideways. Needless to say the few sections of the game that allow 3D combat take some getting used to and reveal that the hit boxes for attacks are always much longer on one axis than on others.
 
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