Rev Up Those Sonic Cycles

[Koopaul]

While I do agree a lot of people bitch about games more than they used to, I think this game is receiving more praise than hate.

Oh and its not just games either, I can find many examples where people used to love "x" and now they hate "x".

[Rökkan]

Know what everyone's problem is?
You all need to let go of the Genesis games. Sonic will probably never be like that again.
I just treat the new games as a completely different series. And buy them when they're half decent (Unleashed/Colours)

I never have any expectations. For all i care Sega can do what the h*ck they like, and if i think it looks cool I'll buy it. If i don't think it does, i wont.

Colors was really good though.

The first problem is when you market something as being exactly like the classics and guess what, it isn't!!

And another problem, which is the worst, is when you have a move that gives you incredible speed and invulnerability, leaving just running, keeping your pace, and jumping with some good timing completely useless, although it requires a lot more skill to pull it off. Thus speedruns are going to be Sonic Adventure all over again, instead of being skillful and having that skill rewarded with speed. It also can be a huge problem that Sonic uncurls after a while with no warning, and that may cause some problem on later levels (yeah look at me destroying all those badn-- oh i got hit because he uncurled out of nowhere)

I mean, how can a move like the Spindash is right now be anything balanced? The Spindash is not supposed to be Modern Sonic's boost, SEGA. It's supposed to be an easy way to get some speed going. Easy but fast - easy come, easy go - if you use it out of place, you decelerate and lose a lot of time. A good player will not resort to using it much, if not at all, because he'll constantly keep his high speed due to dodging obstacles and being skilled.

Plus the scriptedness of everything and the uselessness of rolling are pretty bothersome too, all of these not only affect how close to the classics they are, but also how enjoyable the game is, regardless of being closer to the classics or not! It makes the game unbalanced as hell in regards to time attacking, because:

- Skill is not exactly necessary to speedrun, just memorization, thanks to the overpowered spin-dash.
- Because of the scripted events, to speedrun you must avoid them like the plague. That's right, avoiding structures that were supposed to give you speed by going to alternate paths that you won't encounter those = more room to spin-dash and get insanely fast.
- Rolling being completely useless means less gameplay variety and less fun. How would you like Castlevania if a couple of subweapons didn't actually work or were exactly like the whip but worse in every way?

See:





Which one relies more on the player's skill, and which one relies only on spin-dashing and occasionally jumping?

Don't get me wrong, Generations was a huge step forward in comparison to Sonic 4, and I trust that the level design of the Classic Sonic stages will be interesting, but those flaws are glaring and really irksome. Although the main thing with Classic Sonic was that you could play it with one button only (besides the directional pad), to boast superiority against Mario, that you had to use two, I don't mind if there's a separate spindash button, if it's balanced. Like, the separate button would let you spin-dash without stopping, but the boost wouldn't be at full-power, while revving up by holding down and pressing A could let you power your spin-dash further, kinda like in Super Smash Bros, in which you could hold A to charge a Smash Attack, or press a C button to use it in an instant way, but not fully powered.

If SEGA choses to fix those things, I won't even mind the shitty choices of levels, because I know that the Classic Sonic gameplay will be simply outstanding. If not, I'll just have a bad taste in my mouth playing it.

[Shadowth117]

I can live with it not being the Genesis games, I just hate how they keep trying to act like the game really plays like them. Perhaps I am just nitpicking, but when they go and call it "classic" gameplay they kind of invite it.

I said this before I think, but I have can certainly enjoy the game for what it is. Its just I can't say I'll love those sections of it. Modern Sonic gameplay has gotten fun enough for me lately that I can enjoy it though it'll never be the same as the Sonic gameplay I grew up with and admittedly that's somewhat hard to accept.

[Kriven]

I don't care if it feels like Genesis or not. What I care about is being able to see what the fuck is infront of me before it kills me.

[Rökkan]

To illustrate my point a bit further, look at Sonic Colors' Sweet Mountain speedrun:



Stages were pretty well designed, and they were designed for you to be fast on them. Sure, there are a few "scripted events" or supposed-to-be-obligatory things that were supposed to make you go faster but only drags you down, and you can see the player avoiding some of these in the video (can we also please ignore Stage 11? It's a dumb level anyway), but notice how to speedrun levels, you don't just need to hold the boost button to win, you need to know very well the level design, and you need to use a bunch of Color Abilities, too. If the stages weren't designed pretty well, we'd just see Sonic boosting forward forever, avoiding rails, curves, color abilities, or anything else that'd keep him from just boosting forward - but we see some legitimate showcase of skill here.


I'm not sure how I feel about Modern Sonic's gameplay on Generations though. His gameplay was sorta repetitive in Unleashed, since most levels relied mostly just on boosting and avoiding things, having little variety to it, and I really enjoyed Colors because it added really good level design, a whole lot more platforming to it, and the Color Abilities, which opens a whole lot of variety to it. Modern Sonic though, will not have that much platforming, and will not have the Color Abilities (unless in Planet Wisp maybe?), so it pretty much counts only on a better level design that has more variety to it.

[Cobalt Blue]

you know, i dont really see much "skill" going on there but rather someone replaying the same level over and over until he could memorize each level's timming and path.

[Rökkan]

you know, i dont really see much "skill" going on there but rather someone replaying the same level over and over until he could memorize each level's timming and path.

If you want to strive for the absolute best time, speedruns will always be about replaying a level and finding the fastest paths, there is no way around it. The difference is whether the player is rewarded with speed for being skillful and exploring the different abilities well (like the classics) or by just spamming a button over and over again.

It's the difference between a balanced fighting game and one that's not. You can fiddle around with your different moves and create and "memorize how to do" effective combos and strategies against specific kinds of situation, until someone finds a more effective way to do it or a counter strategy to that, or, in a bad fighting game, you can just spam "hadoukens" or kicks that are so broken that they will be effective in any kind of situation, not letting the enemy touch you.

[GrooveMan.exe]

Put it a better way -

To get S ranks in Colours, you don't necessarily have to know the stage inside-out, but the mechanics. When you learn that clever and extended Wisp use is necessary for the big points, and that there's a Opportunity Cost of time bonus Vs. level collectables, you have to make some careful judgements to maximise your score. The stages are short enough that it's easy to retry for a better score, but varied enough that Acts in 2 different worlds may require two different sets of skills.

THAT is how you make a Score-Attack style Mascot Platformer. In a way I don't much care if Classic doesn't play like 'Classic', as long as the best scores aren't achieved by just holding right.

[Rökkan]

Sonic Colors' stages are designed for score attacks, not necessarily time attacks, yes. I got a bit carried away, and the actual reason why I posted the Sweet Mountain video was to show how the player had to explore all of these different skills to do it instead of relying on just holding right and boosting, which is what the Classic Sonic gameplay is relying. I'm trying to show how incredibly broken the Spin-Dash is there, and how it makes a complex game flatten like a paper sheet.

The thing with Classic Sonic is that knowing how to play well the game, how your character plays, his skills, how they act in different situations (different speeds and different surfaces), and how to use them at the best opportunities, the game awards you with speed, doesn't matter which path you take (although as a design choice, they made it so that the fastest paths are most of the times, the top ones, because it requires skill to keep yourself up there). And now it's just about Spin-Dashing and avoiding some obstacles that are hard to see'em coming.

Nitpicking would be complaining that there isn't the "rolling jump" present in the game, that the game doesn't have Sonic CD's "Super Peel-Out", or that Sonic doesn't have Sonic 3's "Insta-Shield" ability, or maybe even, although I'd prefer that this was present, that there's always a "set height" when you bounce on badniks, no matter how high you land on them. (But I can forgive this, since it seems like they're designing the stages with this in mind, plus, designing stages with that, like Sonic 1 did, is kinda hard, and maybe not very practical in this "2.5D" world, after all, this high badnik bouncing made it so that you could sometimes skip huge parts of levels in Sonic 1 and 2). This extremely powerful spin-dash and the complete uselessness of the most important ability in Sonic 1 isn't nitpicking, this is trashing the whole concept of the original games. Again. :I As I said though, the rest of the game really is great, the game IS right to be receiving more praise than hate, but these are huge problems, that's why I'm emphasizing it so much.

[Woppet*]

oh dear god

[Marth]

Oh what the fuck Sega

[Rökkan]

I'd be okay with the autotune if it wasn't that really high-pitched fucking ear raping thing that they're using as the main instrument for this song.

It sounds like a fucking 12-year old youtube user remix.

[Vipershark]

could they not have like
just done a 16-bit genesis mix and then added vocals or something

[Kriven]

What. The Fuck.

Instrumental mix would have been much more awesome.

[a babyass man]

sounds fine to me, i think you guys are overreacting a bit

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