The Messenger

The Messenger released on PlayStation 4 in 2018 as a tribute to 8-bit ninja platformers of the Ninja Gaiden type, one that surprisingly and cleverly transforms during play into something far bigger. The player controls a young ninja from a clan whose village has been wiped out by demons and must deliver an important message across dangerous lands full of enemies and traps, with combat built around precise timing of strikes and bouncing off enemies, projectiles and chasms with a sword, allowing the player to reach otherwise inaccessible places and chain long combos of jumps over pits and lava.

Roughly halfway through the game there's a surprising twist, where the linear action platformer turns into a sprawling metroidvania with backtracking through already-visited areas and new abilities that let players discover hidden parts of the map, radically changing the pace and structure of the rest of the playthrough. The game also plays elegantly with a shift between an 8-bit and 16-bit graphical aesthetic, which unlocks new parts of the world, changes the musical arrangement and the look of the environment, and symbolizes a shift in time within the story. Both chiptune and more modern music alternate the same way and complement the humorous, self-deprecating tone of a narrative full of references to retro gaming classics, including a shopkeeper character who is well aware of his own role in the story and regularly breaks the fourth wall with remarks about the platformer genre itself.

The Messenger was very well received critically precisely thanks to its bold structural transformation over the course of play and its carefully tuned controls, which respect the difficulty of the original games while removing their unfair elements. Studio Sabotage built a reputation with this title as creators who can combine sincere reverence for the past with the courage to break the genre's expectations. To this day the game is often cited as an example of how a tribute to the past can also be innovative game design, thanks in part to a wealth of optional side quests and collectibles that reward thorough exploration.

Why play it: For fans of retro platformers unafraid to break their own rules midway through — a bold structural transformation and fairly tuned difficulty make The Messenger an exceptional tribute to the past.