Rev Up Those Sonic Cycles

[Rökkan]

Small tweaks can't really fix an overall broken game. There is no way Sonic 4 can be anywhere as better than just "mediocre". I'm glad that Generations proved me wrong on how the differences of Sonic 4 with the classic games were not its main faults.

It's not just the physics. It's a level design that constantly breaks the flow of the game to make room for an uninteresting gimmick, it's a whole game not designed around constant speed reward (like Generations was), it's the whole boring straightforwardness of the game and complete utter lack of any challenge other than the Special Stages and small bullshit moments of artificial difficulty.

The teaser hints some sort of co-op ability of Sonic and Tails. I'm not going to make any sort of rapid conclusion, but when was a co-op ability ever implemented well? In Sonic 3, flying with Tails was interesting at first, until you realize how pretty pointless it is. In Sonic Heroes, it had the potential, but it turned out to be boring and gimmicky (basically, outside of combat, each formation's unique abilities were just "keys" to unlock the next part of the level. And inside combat, the variety that different attacks could give you is sort of rendered useless because enemies aren't that hard to dispatch, with key moves that are useful in most situations, and because you'll always just end up using the character with the highest level or the power formation anyway, with the possible exception of aerial enemies that just fall back into the whole "key" thing.), and in Sonic Advance 3, feel free to disagree, because I didn't play Advance 3 much, but it just felt tacked on, none of the abilities are essential to get through the game. Some just allow you to explore or move slightly easier through stages (but the stages not really tailored to cater to them), and others just fall into the "key" thing again. (Metal door. Use Knuckles.)

I'm not saying that there is no way to not design a Sonic game with a speed-based gameplay that uses co-op abilities interestingly, but it is damn hard to do. This will probably end up hampering the game (by making it not feel like a sequel to the classics even more, or/and by just being an uninteresting tacked on abnormality to the gameplay).

Also, considering Sonic 4: Episode I was recently announced to the PC, Episode II will probably launch to PC too (and they're just waiting to announce that later to make sure people buy it in the other systems and not pirate it like they did with Generations, or they're delaying its release for the same reason)