General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

Doesn't change that people complained about the alternate gameplay style before Unleashed. That part is just plain wrong.

The Friends were the ones who Had the "Alternate game-play styles" which was one of the reasons people complained about them in the 1st place.

I know that, but it was the characters themselves that received hate instead of their playstyles.

Because it was them who had the playstyles and being forced to play as them to complete the game....along with some over-reactions. Also some people legitimately hated the other characters.

edited 23rd Apr '14 9:57:29 AM by randomness4

It was pretty much both in the end. Knuckles was still quite liked because he was funny, but his playstyle was another story. Big himself didn't get love on either angle. Heroes and Chronicles fixed that up a bit, but not enough to erase his poor playstyle in Adventure 1.

There really was no specific hate on gameplay or characters only. It just plain varied.

Big was flanderized in chronicles...if one could believe it...people thought he was "retarded" the writers made him "retarded", it was terrible.

Flanderized into being an awesome character with tons of snark, that is. He also had non-sucky gameplay in return. Never mind being immune to poison-like stuff. I forgot exactly what type of air he could walk through. Pretty awesome.

That game saved his character, ultimately, since it's the only one where he wasn't just a derpy annoyance. His dialogue wasn't lame like in his first two appearances either. Talking down to Sonic was pretty funny, imo.

His simpleton voice didn't really explain his entire character...I didn't really like how he was just treated like the "idiot" character.

That's just me though.

edited 23rd Apr '14 10:09:46 AM by randomness4

Big's fine as the "idiot" character.

Just as long as he's a speedy, strong badass like in Heroes.

Seeing this argument, I can kind of understand why Sega just washed their hands of alternate characters altogether rather than jump into that can of worms. I intensely dislike their decision to do so, but I will admit that sometimes it could be seen as better to avoid a situation where you're probably just going to get disapproval for every conceivable reason.

How can you watered down a poorly implemented gimmick with horrible controls?

And Big being an idiot character gave him more of a personalty than hisflat personalty in the Adventure Titles and Heroes.

edited 23rd Apr '14 12:30:57 PM by AfroWarrior27

Not really...no. It just made him say typical idiot things or non-sequiturs.

edited 23rd Apr '14 12:48:15 PM by randomness4

The speed is barely different. I cannot control Sonic at super high speeds regardless. The boost mechanic is just a hit and miss for me. Either I'm invincible, or I get bombarded by enemies. Nothing inbetween. I've constantly ran off the side or couldn't get the new Homing Attack down right, or even got bombarded by enemies. I barely got through one day stage.

To be honest, I find them barely more tolerable than any Mach Speed section in the game. But they're ultimately just as boring and non-fun overall. Unfortunately, none of Unleashed's gameplay styles were fun for me in the end. Werehog is too slow and slightly unresponsive. The Hub area didn't do anything of note, and they didn't bother to make dying keep you at the same lives as before(something that 06 did, which was a godsend. And not because of the glitches, but because I've found it dumb to be able to lose lives in any Hub area. Just make it levels only) Tails' sections were poorly designed. My reflexes cannot handle the shooting areas. They were just fine in Adventure 1, mind you. Still challenging, but not Press X to Not Die levels of challenging.

I like to be challenged. I don't like to be wafflestomped with no real way to have fun during the challenge. I wouldn't bother to call the Day Stages in Unleashed ultimately better. If and only if the Homing Attack was the old version, I might've been able to actually enjoy that area. But that change seriously hurt my ability to play and slightly enjoy the game. At least the cutscenes were neat. But 06's were great too. Then again, most Sonic games have awesome cutscenes in general, so that's not worth noting all too much.

Big was always an idiot. All they did was give him actual lines that could be comedic in Chronicles. That's what saved the character for me. I found him fun to play as in Heroes, but nothing about his dialogue was interesting there. Him snarking and making fun of Sonic in Chronicles, however... never mind his gameplay was still pretty good. The game itself is far from great, but it does have its moments. Namely the great dialogue.

edited 23rd Apr '14 12:50:43 PM by Irene

I'm just not a fan of the Boost games' reaction based game-play in general...its not for me.

Big is "Simple" that's the way he lives and that's how he is...he's not an idiot. None of his lines even give off an idiot vibe(With the exception of a few lines said during Heroes levels), he just has "that" type of voice. He's obviously not smart, but he's not an idiot.

edited 23rd Apr '14 12:56:09 PM by randomness4

Nor am I. I'd gladly trade that in for the slower-but-controllable gameplay from the old Genesis titles. They own the damn engine, just re-use it instead of remaking it. Most hacks are far easier to play because of this. It's more or less why I find the non-platformers generally more interesting now. The gameplay just isn't borked nearly as much.

They don't keep track of their stuff...they seem to go on trying to replicate it to the best of their ability or using the "Sonic Rush" engine(Sonic 4).

To be fair, Boost was most comparable to Mach Speed in Unleashed, where they didn't seem to know how to compensate the extreme speed and near invulnerability of boost with an actual challenging gameplay experience. It got much better in subsequent games - yes, even in Colors.

The usual things were either ineffective (lol, badniks) or impractical (the butter-like way Sonic controlled in that game made large amounts of precision platforming unwise) so as the game went on they began relying on "dodge or die!" (and Press X to Not Die, which is even worse) for the bulk of their difficulty. That's the major issue with Unleashed - it's either repetitive running/grinding-at-top-speed sections where nothing can touch you (they look cool, though) or essentially being tricked into dying. Little inbetween.

This is huge flame bait, but I'd even go as far as to say the level design in the werehog segments is better. It's a least more controlled.

I like to think that's why they dialed it back in Colors, to it's benefit (the focus on platforming using top speed in moderation really made that game), before perfecting Boost gameplay in Generations - the level design in Generations is leaps and bounds ahead of of the level design in Unleashed.

edited 23rd Apr '14 1:03:20 PM by KnownUnknown

The focus on more platforming in Colors kind of bogged down the game, its pretty much generic blocky platforming, that's just "really" slow.

I've barely been able to play Colors/Generations. But yeah, I do agree with that assessment. Unleashed just didn't really do those things too well from my experience. It had a nice idea, but I felt the overall way it was done was more of a beta testing for it in this particular game. Of what I played of Colors(console), it was way easier to play. Albeit, I still had trouble, but I liked it a lot more.

^^ I disagree - especially about the "slow" part. Sonic is about as fast in Colors, even without boost, as he is in Adventure 1. Sonic was slow in Colors in comparison to Unleashed, but imo he probably shouldn't be that ludicrously fast again anyway.

As for the platforming, I disagree about that as well - though several of the levels were gimmicky and lacked replay value, there was enough variety in platforming and exploring in the rest of the game to make up for it, especially as the game went on and the stages got more creative. Aquarium Park -> Planet Wisp -> Asteroid Coaster is one of my favorite sets of levels in the Sonic series - especially with the temporary gameplay shifts that the wisps cause.

It doesn't take a lot of flash have a good platforming experience - sometimes it's all about making sure your platforming is challenging and works well, which Colors' certainly did.

edited 23rd Apr '14 1:13:37 PM by KnownUnknown

The major platforming areas were just really slow and blocky...not all of them, but its there. Those sections really break the flow of the level because they don't transition well...

I like Sonic 2's platforming.

edited 23rd Apr '14 1:13:49 PM by randomness4

<shrug>

When I think of Colors' platforming I think of examples like the challenging factory segments of Planet Wisp, with it's moving platforms and slick enemy placement, or the mix between wisp-based exploration and faster-paced straightforwardness (if you so chose) that was pretty much everywhere after Sweet Mountain, or the high-flying hurtling through space and spaceship invasions that you got in Asteroid Coaster and Starlight Carnival - especially with the gravity manipulations of the former and the lots of freefall and free-running of the latter, etc.

Except for on some of the really short levels, I rarely felt a lack of speed, and I don't really know where you're getting "blocky" from. I'm not even sure what you mean by it.

It'd say the mix of platforming and speed is comparable to the older Sonic games - where you had to stop and deal with platforming challenges just as often (if not morseo) than you were showing off your speed. It reminded me a lot of Sonic 2 and 3, especially stages like Mystic Cave or Launch Base.

edited 23rd Apr '14 1:22:27 PM by KnownUnknown

By "blocky" I mean that the platforms are just regular looking square shaped. That's what most of the platforming is done on, they rarely did interesting things with it. They had things like those "Lollipop" swinging things...but they rarely used those types of things in other stages. So most of the platforming is jumping from one square platform to the next.

I say its slow because its also usually just waiting around as well, because trying to go faster on those sections is awkward to do with the recent game's control. It doesn't feel like I'm going fast through a level when I'm doing slow and basic platforming things. Not all of the stages are like that, but most of them are...and it doesn't feel right going from a fast paced boosting section to a much slower puzzle or platforming section.

The difference between that and the Classic games is the transition from fast to slow, it doesn't feel as jarring because while its slower, it can still be passed by quickly with some quick jumping skill and there's rarely a time where you have to actually wait around.

I don't mind the alternating gameplay styles of the Adventure games. Sure SOME sucked (Big), but I found them either between meh (Amy),good (Knuckles/Rouge, Silver), and great (Gamma/Tails/Eggman).

And I think Sonic Team can make at least Shadow playable in a game again with Sonic, even though he does play the same.

Shadow played pretty different in some of his appearances. He has similarities, but that's it. He's only ultimately identical in Adventure 2, Heroes, Mario & Sonic games, and the Rivals games. I may be wrong on the Black Knight game, though. He's highly differentiated in his own game, including his own Rings rule, something nobody else has. Never mind specific guns, another first, and only. Only Eggman might've used a non-laser gun, but it's cutscene specific. Then there's his Chaos abilities, namely in 06, his special version of Chaos Control, and of course, Chaos Blast. That doesn't count his Chaos Burst, Magic, and Roaming in Battle.

He does have still have a similar high speed(sometimes faster) than Sonic, same jumping and homing attack(well, till Sonic got a new version of the Homing Attack, which I don't remember Shadow being able to do? I'm not sure that much matters). But I think they're pretty different from each other now. It's not like how Rouge barely has differences from Knuckles, with them only slightly separated in Battle, either. She has a unique Shot and Trap card set. However, their Power moves are... fairly similar. A super kick vs a super punch. And both a spinning punch and a spinning drill kick. Albeit, their dash attacks are actually more different. One's a spinning lariat kick, with the other being just two punches. That said, not as much as the Sonic/Shadow differences.

...A lot to say, but to be fair, many don't realize how different they are.