General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

I hope I can turn the commentary off. They may be interesting for the first time but it would get irritating quick if I want to retry stages.

This. The Boost gamplay isn't inherently bad, but it just doesn't work for a platformer, which is what Sonic is supposed to be. Boost is basically a racing game already, so take that to its' logical conclusion and officially make it one. Make Sonic R 2 and give it the Boost gameplay while letting the mainline games stick with actual honest-to-God platforming. It's the best of both worlds and everybody's happy.

Also that. Adventure had some good ideas; they just really need to be polished up with some more refined level design. If Sonic Team brought its' A-game, they'd have a knockout.

edited 22nd Aug '17 8:21:18 PM by kkhohoho

Wait, I was mistaken. Custom Hero is Modern's 2D/3D mix. Without Boost nor Spin.

Personally, I love the boost. If you think you can just Boost 2 Win, we're playing different games since that's a great way to get yourself killed (especially if you're playing the earlier Boost games). Sonic Rush, in particular, was great about it since keeping the boost going the entire time was a pretty solid challenge and a lot of fun.

As for the Forces gameplay, while I still think that should be Tails, it looks reasonably fun.

Oh, I don't think it's Boost 2 Win by any means, but there still isn't much actual platforming involved, and that's what I want out of my Sonic games. Keep in mind that I'm really only talking about the 3D games here. The Rush games had problems of their own, but Boost wasn't one of them. It was important, but it didn't feel like the be-all end-all, and you could go through a decent chunk of the game without using it if you wanted to. It was nice thing to have, but the game didn't revolve around it. Which I can't really say about the 3D Boost games.

I can say with first-hand experience that you can beat Sonic Rush without using the boost at all.

That's clearly a lie since the final hit of Sonic VS Blaze is Sonic Boost VS Fire Boost.

Not really the same as the normal boost, though.

I don't even think that was the point...

Boost game-play and level design = go fast reflex style

No explore, just gotta go fast...

Has anyone noticed that the Avatar may be voiced after all?

The boost kind of wore out it's welcome a long time ago for me. It embodies "style over substance". I loved it because "ZOMG SO FAST" but once that wore off, I quickly began to realize how shallow it is and doesn't offer much in the way of innovation under it's current rendition. I'd really prefer they tried to go back and expand on Adventure's gameplay since there's way more leeway there.

Indeed. Adventure needed more polish and level design that can accommodate most of the characters in the games.

The only Boost game where I agree the boost mechanics really made the platforming elements suffer in Unleashed, before they got a handle on how the mechanic is supposed to work. The end result is something subpar that got overlooked because the stuff it was bundled with was even worse.

Colors was aware of it and tried to fix it by seriously mitigating the amount of boost the player had access to, but by Generations they had tweaked the system enough that integrating the sense of speed and the challenge of platforming was far more organic (though they still ended to rely on 3D for speed and 2D for platforming), so I wouldn't agree that the system inherently doesn't work.

That said, it's still clearly difficult to make a lot of platforming level design around, due to how streamlined the concept is in general, and I wouldn't mind if they refined something else.

I'm a bit tired of the "this style is superior" wars, though. Especially after Mania. The first thing I felt upon finishing that game was hope that Capcom would apply that level of polish to more of Sonic's myriad styles. I'd love an Adventure-style game with that level of refinement, in addition a Boost-style game with the same attention, etc and so on, as long as it's all in all a step forward.

edited 23rd Aug '17 12:03:37 AM by KnownUnknown

^^False. If you wanted to get all the red rings you had to explore different paths. Boost gameplay doesn't remove depth nearly as much as its detractors claim. My only issue with boost is that the camera makes backtracking a lot more of a hassle than it needs to be due to how it doesn't want to turn around . That's an easy fix though.

I did notice some alternate paths in that avatar level but the enemy placement seems too simple and lined up. Being the demo level it's probably built to be easy but I'm glad it's not only 2D.

It didn't wow me but at the same time it didn't look terrible. It could stand to be a bit more exciting though,it'd be really lame if you could just boost jump the entire level.

Getting Red Rings was simply a matter of either doing a trick to gain additional height, or run down a quick shortcut. That's not really what I'd call innovative.

And I said under it's current rendition. Generations was by far the best use of it since the level design actually allowed you to do more with it beyond just go forward really really fast.

Despite those improvements...there's still not much you can really do with it.

It has limited room to expand.

Platforming in 3D can't be too interesting, any and all gimmicks might only be in 2D.

This is why I wanna go back to Sonic Adventure. Despite what people have told me about liking the boost, nobody has really given any merits it has over Sonic Adventure.

So I'll keep holding out for that lovely SA 1 and SA 2 remake. If fucking Crash can get his first three games remastered, I can get the two Adventure titles remastered as well. I'm keep fighting for this...

It also helps that Crash's gameplay was based off of Sonic's to some degree or that is what I heard.

It was not...

Crash 1 definitely doesn't encourage speed-running...

edited 23rd Aug '17 1:32:56 AM by randomness4

No it does not...

I don't think Crash was inspired by Sonic (directly), but when working on Crash 1 the devs did jokingly call it 'Sonic's ass game'.

EDIT: Because the camera was looking at the player character from behind.

edited 23rd Aug '17 2:37:50 AM by Numbuh1234

Unless some other (new?) developer steps up, it ain't happening.

Adventure style is janky as hell though, not to mention they would to get rid of those dumb mandatory minigames that adventure 1 and 2 forced on you.

I feel like there's got to be some way to refine and reduce the jankyness.

Also, like. I feel like all the gameplay styles in SA 1 basically worked except Big's.

...And I think that the Treasure Hunts and Mechs in SA 2 were worse than Knuckles and Gamma levels in SA 1 because the radar didn't work in any order, and because they made the mecha a lot slower and heavier than Gamma ever was.

The only real problem I had with Amy's levels was her speed, and the fact that the levels themselves weren't that great. And there weren't that many of them and they were kinda samey.

...So basically I only really liked her hammer jump.

I really loved that hammer jump though.

...For a while now my ideal Sonic game has had Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy as the main/only playable characters. Which so far has only really been done in Sonic Advance 1 and Sonic Boom Lyric.

...I'd rather the concept be done a little more like the former than the latter. In terms of competency, at least.

edited 23rd Aug '17 5:43:39 AM by unnoun

Put PlatinumGames in charge of the Adventure gameplay refining and Ian Flynn in charge of the script and you will have both my curiosity and my attention.