Get Over Here!; or, Swing, You Sinners!

[Dr. BUGMAN]

Y'know, grapple rope games (or whatever you call 'em). Seems high time this vaguely defined genre had its own dedicated thread.

Super Grapple Duck is a little gem I found via Game Maker's Toolkit's GameJam. It's an arcade style single-screen clear-'em-up wherein you control a duck by clicking a point and clicking once again to have it drag itself there. Every drag costs you a second from your time; killing an enemy replenishes one second; the timer cap is lowered as the game progresses. Mines cost time if the duck makes bodily contact with them, but can become useful projectiles if the grapple hook does instead. Simple stuff, really. The GameJame's theme is "contradictory mechanics," which seems like the sort concept all decent games should be built upon, but then maybe that's something developers lost sight of. Well, whatever sparks the creative process.

[Jingles]

I hate to diverge from 2D games so early in the thread, but Team Fortress 2 has had a grappling hook mode since 2014. I haven't played it myself, but by all accounts it seems to be yet another game-style the development team implemented hastily, designed a single map for, then left for dead. (By my count, this makes 3.)

There's obviously Umihara Kawase, which seems to have quite the cult following on this board. I really can't get into it - I always get up to the first boss, try to beat him, get bored after a few rounds of his tadpole pooping, and lose the game and my patience. Sayonara fares a little better, but it's agonizing to see a secret exit that you might be able to get if you were just a little bit better and have to beat the level the plebeian way. I find neither game particularly interesting.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

Phantom 2040 for the SNES/Gen. It's based on the hella-long running comic series, specifically the animated adaptation with characters designed by Peter Chung of Aeon Flux and Rugrats fame. Unlike most Batman and Spider-Man games which feature grapple ropes, the physics here are a step above (from what I know of*) with nice pendulum-like physics to the swinging. It's also comparable to Super Metroid on account it's a methodical, non-linear run-n-gun adventure; though arguably not as good as SM, its grapple rope can attach to any surface instead of designated tiles.

*There are lots and lots of Batman and Spider-Man. Spider-Man for the C64 had commendable pendulum physics, as did Konami's Batman & Robin, but beyond that nothing noteworthy comes to mind. A few actually had the rope anchor to actual surfaces instead of some nebulous point off screen, which is somewhat requisite of this "genre" for me. A lot of the 3D Spider-Man games have nice pendulum physics, but they're more like flying games with a weird arc. I really haven't played enough of 'em to really do a proper write-up, so take my judgement with a grain of salt.

[Malchik]

I hate to diverge from 2D games so early in the thread, but Team Fortress 2 has had a grappling hook mode since 2014.

Quake 2 beat them to the punch by a couple of years.

[G.Silver]

*There are lots and lots of Batman and Spider-Man. Spider-Man for the C64 had commendable pendulum physics, as did Konami's Batman & Robin, but beyond that nothing noteworthy comes to mind. A few actually had the rope anchor to actual surfaces instead of some nebulous point off screen, which is somewhat requisite of this "genre" for me. A lot of the 3D Spider-Man games have nice pendulum physics, but they're more like flying games with a weird arc. I really haven't played enough of 'em to really do a proper write-up, so take my judgement with a grain of salt.

Anyone looking on the superhero end of things might want to give the DS Spiderman games (the ones by Gryptonite) a try. They aren't the best games, but somebody there clearly loves swinging and made a really cool system that mixes both pendulum-style swinging physics and zipline-style, so you can swing gracefully through environments or launch yourself directly at a wall or ceiling for a quick escape, or a quick attack on an enemy. I didn't finish either of them but I did enjoy messing around with the swinging.