It doesn't matter. Genre is arbitrary
Then how come games like Red Dead Redemption is considered genre busting and these games aren't?
Marketing.
What? Marketing??? I'm still confused.
People like to associate anything with a little bit of variation as being revolutionary or "Genre-Busting" when they aren't. Ratchet And Clank and Jak And Daxter are platformers at their core with a bit more combat elements than most. I haven't played Uncharted but it seems to be primarily an adventure exploration game in the same vein as Tomb Raider.
But trying to lock down one, solitary genre is difficult because genre's are never static, we once had Space Opera and The Western as separate genres but then it became popular to mix them and you get a Space Western or Wagon Train to the Stars.
Pretty much what KJ said. "Genre busting" is a term more often used by the people to market their games than anything else.
Know it's been a year but I'm still confused over the matter, I mean they're a mixture of other genres from the way I see it, but YMMV I guess.
- Ratchet & Clank: Platformer, Third-Person Shooter.
- Uncharted: Action Adventure, Third-Person Shooter.
- Jak and Daxter: Platformer, Third-Person Shooter.
Jake and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank are platformers, Uncharted is a cover based shooter.
edited 17th Aug '15 12:23:57 PM by RoboZombie
Ratchet & Clank is a 3D Platformer with Third Person Shooter aspects, Uncharted is a Third-Person Shooter, and the first Jak is a pure 3D Platformer while 2 & 3 are 3D Platformers with Sandbox aspects.
I've been thinking about this, what is the primary genre of Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank and Jak and Daxter? I see them in the third-person shooter genre page but don't know if they truly belong there. Because I often see Uncharted as an action-adventure game with elements of adventure and shooting, Jak and Daxter and Ratchet & Clank I've always felt were platformers with third-person shooter elements, more genre-busting really. So are they primary third-person shooters? Do they fit in a certain game genre? Or are they genre-busting?