Best Clover Studio And Platinum Games

There are very few game studios with as important games as Clover Studios. Despite releasing several acclaimed games, Clover was shuttered by Capcom in 2007 after only four years of making games. After the shutdown, famed developers Hideki Kamiya and Shinji Mikami, alongside Clover CEO Atsushi Inaba, formed a new independent studio called Platinum Games. Since then Platinum has gone on to make some of the best character-action games of all time.

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Not all of them have been hits, games like Transformers Devastation, MadWorld, and Anarchy Reigns run the gamut from underrated to forgettable, and some of the studio’s other games have been notoriously bad. However, when this creative team gets it right, it knocks it out of the park

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11

Bayonetta 3

Not every Platinum Game has been perfect. The Legend Of Korra is only good if you want some easy achievement points. Star Fox Zero is one of the worst Wii U games. And Babylon’s Fall was such a disaster it was shut down after less than a year. While Bayonetta 3 has amazing moments, it still isn’t as strong as most of the studio’s output, which lands it near the bottom of this ranked list.

Whether it was the change in combat systems, the controversial plot and direction for the titular character, or the ageing Nintendo Switch hardware causing some serious performance issues, there is something about Bayonetta 3 that isn’t quite right. Getting more control of demons in normal battles is a great addition, but it feels like Platinum tried to reinvent the wheel most of it was already perfected.

10

Astral Chain

Astral Chain is an excellent character action game. The combat is fast and fun and controlling Legions with the right stick in surprisingly intuitive and adds a new layer to the action. However, it has plenty of problems. The investigation mode sections bring the pacing to a grinding halt, and the politics of a police force enslaving Legions to serve them is questionable at best.

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Astral Chain is the sort of game that has a lot of neat ideas, but you hope gets a sequel so that the developers can go deeper on mechanics, and the writers can interrogate the morally grey nature of the world they’ve set up. It’s also another Platinum game that is somewhat hamstrung by the Switch, but its anime styling helps it feel less noticeable.

9

Viewtiful Joe

Viewtiful Joe isn’t only Clover/Platinum’s spin on the superhero genre, but its striking 2D platformer style infused with what would become Platinum’s character action sensibilities make it fascinating. It’s not a perfect mix, and it feels repetitive despite only taking four to five hours to beat. However, that really doesn’t matter when it is so much goofy fun.

What makes Joe stand out is its love for cinema and classic TV shows like Super Sentai. It’s ridiculous and chaotic, and while it may not have aged as well as some of Clover’s other games, it’s still well worth your time.

8

Vanquish

If Viewtiful Joe is over the top, then Vanquish leapfrogs past “the top” and is in a different category altogether. Someone at Platinum must have decided that what Devil May Cry was really missing was a bunch of machine guns and giant robots, and you know what? They’re totally right.

On a scale of 1-10, Vanquish is somewhere at around 26. From the so cool he’s actually just a hilarious one-liner spouting loser protagonist, Sam Gideon, to the ridiculous plot that sees Sam hired by the President of America to wrestle control of a giant space station away from Russian ultra-nationalists, it is all extremely dumb in the best ways possible.

7

God Hand

We all know someone that has one game that no one remembers that they’ll swear up and down is one of the best games ever. More times than not, that person is talking about God Hand. It’s not surprising most people have forgotten about Clover’s last game, as it was a very late-era PS2 game, launching a month before the PS3 in North America, and after the PS3 was already out in Europe.

However, if you missed the boat on it at the time, or never heard of it before, then you should make it your business to play it now. With a fighting system that lets you string combos and juggle enemies and an outlandish story about a wild west infested with demons and a man only ever referred to as God Hand, it embodies the best of Platinum at its weirdest. Best of all, it’s just a lot of fun in its own right.

6

Bayonetta

It’s hard to remember it now, but there was a time when Bayonetta wasn’t a Nintendo series. What’s more at the time it wasn’t an unmitigated success. While the game did well with critics, it didn’t sell particularly well, to the point Sega decided not to publish the sequel.

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In the years since, Bayonetta has aged like a fine wine. Its combat laid the groundwork for modern action games, while its story and the character of Bayonetta have become queer icons and symbols of sexual freedom. It’s still somewhat surreal that usually ultra-family-friendly Nintendo ever decided to publish the franchise going forward, not to mind treating it like a first-party release, but we’re glad that it did.

5

The Wonderful 101

The Wonderful 101 was the team at Platinum’s spiritual successor to Viewtiful Joe, and it could not be more different. Gone was the 2D platforming and controlling one character, and in its place was some light puzzle solving, a lot more combat, and a herd of 101 superheroes thrashing enemies.

This is yet another game that only saw the light of day thanks to Nintendo, and thankfully in the years after it struggled to find an audience on the Wii U, it has seen ports to PS4, Xbox One, PC and the Switch. If your friend that loves character action games more than anything isn’t recommending that you check out God Hand, then they’re probably trying to convince you to give 101 a go.

4

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

We really don’t need to say much about Revengeance, thanks to its now iconic meme status, which is somewhat fitting for the story it tells. The non-canonical follow-up to Metal Gear Solid 4, somehow manages to be more of a Komjia game than any game actually developed with Hideo Komjia involved. In the first mission, you fight a metal gear, a walking nuclear missile silo, grab it by its sword, witness the greatest needle drop in video game history as Rules of Nature starts to blare, flip the metal gear over, run up its sword, and cut it into a thousand pieces.

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And the game only gets wilder from there.

3

Bayonetta 2

Bayonetta 2 could probably be considered the culmination of all of Platinum’s work. It’s by far the best the studio’s brand of combat has ever been and proved the studio’s dedication to the Bayonetta IP was worth it.

It’s one of the tightest feeling games to control and feels like every goal the studio set for itself was surpassed. It would, of course, be nice to be able to play Bayonetta 2 on something other than a Switch or Wii U, but it runs so well on those systems it’s hard to complain.

2

Okami

This might be nostalgia talking, but Okami is one of the most magical game experiences out there. Playing as Amaterasu and running through the field of Japan, with the game’s beautiful soundtrack is an all-time gaming moment, right up there with traversing Hyrule’s fields for the first time in Link to The Past.

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It’s somewhat fitting that Okami lives up to that game since for the most part it is designed to be a modern interpretation of the classic Zelda games’ design. It’s not perfect, and it’s probably about 10 hours too long, but it has created some of the best moments in games.

1

Nier: Automata

Nier: Automata is the definition of being more than the sum of your parts. It was the first Platinum game in years after years of licensed games and the panned Star Fox Zero. It was the follow-up to a game considered too strange for western audiences, which itself was a spin-off of the obscure Drakengard series. It was developed with a smaller-than-average budget with lofty ambitions to tell a sprawling narrative, and an auteur creative with complete creative control. And it all just works.

For a game that wallows in the pain humanity can cause, it manages to be one of the few games that will leave you feeling like a better person having completed it. Much like Platinum’s catalogue, it is patchy, faulty, and somehow perfect.

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