Best Platformer Games Like Ratchet and Clank

The best platformer games like Ratchet and Clank are Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Jak and Daxter and Sunset Overdrive. Below are 8, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to platformer costs you.

Why Platformer Is a Good Answer for Ratchet and Clank

Filtering to platformer means you want the movement itself to be the pleasure. It is the right filter when the thing you liked was getting from one place to another.

What you get: A game you can judge in ten seconds. Platformers live or die on the jump, and a good one feels right before anything else happens.

What made Ratchet and Clank worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the platformer part of that answer, and only the platformer part.

8 Platformer Games Like Ratchet and Clank

  1. 1. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

    The best-looking and best-feeling entry, and the weapons are the star.

  2. 2. Jak and Daxter

    The other PS2 mascot series, and Jak II adds the guns.

  3. 3. Sunset Overdrive

    Insomniac again, with the same weapon design philosophy.

  4. 4. Astro Bot

    The current best 3D platformer, and full of one-off gadgets.

  5. 5. Sly Cooper

    The third of the PS2 trio, if you want stealth instead of guns.

  6. 6. Psychonauts 2

    Powers as a toolkit in a platformer, with better writing.

  7. 7. Conker's Bad Fur Day

    For the same cartoon-with-weapons combination.

  8. 8. Kao the Kangaroo

    A straightforward modern mascot platformer if you want more of the shape.

What This Filter Leaves Out

Weight. Platformers rarely carry a story you will think about afterwards, and the collectible-led ones can become checklists if you let them.

Specifically, these are strong answers for Ratchet and Clank that are not platformer games, so they are not on this page:

The full list is on games like Ratchet and Clank — 9 picks, no genre filter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best platformer game like Ratchet and Clank?

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart. The best-looking and best-feeling entry, and the weapons are the star.

Are all of these on the PlayStation 2?

No. Ratchet and Clank released on the PlayStation 2, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.

What separates a good platformer from a bad one?

Whether the move set is complete early. The great ones give you everything in the first level and spend the rest asking better questions of it; the weak ones drip-feed abilities to disguise thin level design.

2D or 3D?

Different games. 2D platformers are about precision on a single screen; 3D ones are about reading space and camera. Each pick below says which it is.

How are these chosen?

By hand. Each pick was written for the full Ratchet and Clank list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is platformer — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.

Other Angles on Ratchet and Clank

More Platformer Games Recommendations

Or read the platformer guide for where to start in the genre generally.