[Edited for politeness] - OMG I spent like hours writing this and the god damn website signed me out and ffs oh my god.
Like I had literally already signed in manually. I had already used the Preview button. I was already signed in.
But for some god damn reason, nope, not any more.
I had even Ctrl-C'd just in case, but I'd forgotten that I overwrote it with one of the god damn links.
God damn. What is this 1999 website.
Like, whytf do I have to re-sign in every time I visit this site anyway?? I tell it to remember me every time. God damn can't even remember me for a few hours even when I'm actively typing in it. Burn it down.
[Another edit] - Ok so it's hours later and I have come back to edit this post. I find that I'm signed out again. Nothing has happened, I just went out and left the computer on, logged in, even Apex didn't idle me out.
But this site? Yep, logged me out again. Wtf.
Last edited by Deef on 29 Aug 2023 12:42 am, edited 4 times in total.
Here are your 4 videos. Everything there is to say about them I've already said. And is gone.
Just a full zone run for each of the 4 characters, either Bridge Island or Speed Jungle, so nothing super new, just good for looking at the details.
Off-screen, Switch gameplay. Get ready for some bad quality. Not sure if the visuals look better on other platforms.
*fumes*
Oh my god I'm annoyed at the time I just had wasted.
Music is mostly disappointing. A couple of okays. Several utterly awfuls.
Ring-attracting ala the lightning shield is back.
I think the drop dash is faster than in Mania.
Levels indeed both look a little too forced-speedy, but I am still appreciative of the many paths in SJZ, like we saw in Stardust Speedway, and I'm generally still apprehensive but optimistic about the level design. That said, layer transitions looked like set pieces more than something to play with.
SJZ Act 2's main gimmick looks like a fail imo. Irritating idea topped with bad implementation.
Bosses looked not as good as I'd hoped.
A new build has had a play or two now. GameXplain and IGN have commentaries, but they share footage, so it looks like we're not seeing their actual playing.
GameXplain (More thorough. Says co-op bad):
Yes, it's an exhausting Youtube voice. Bro, settle down, talk normal. But thanks for telling us that it's not about speed speed speed. That's a hot take for sure.
This is possibly the co-op player's article too, with most the same impressions.
Praises the boss fights. I'm still very skeptical on that.
Loves the levels' design.
The article (linked above) remarks that they felt the physics weren't quite 1:1 "in the way that Sonic Mania was". That's interesting.
Very easy to agree with this guy's impression of why co-op doesn't work well. Sonic gameplay just doesn't do single screen. Fair.
Dislikes the Emerald Powers.
Auto scroller act! (Pinball Carnival)
IGN (Fairly shallow. Says co-op good.):
Opposite to GameXplain, IGN praises the Emerald Powers. Amusingly, the one power that IGN highlights as "particularly handy" is the one power that the GameXplain vid pauses on to punctuate its lameness: vision. I'm very much on GameXplain's side here; I think vision is pretty trashy to have in the game.
Also opposite to GameXplain, IGN praises the co-op, and a particular part about it (respawning) that GameXplain writes off.
IGN have said "The most prized chaos emerald that I experienced grants a power called avatar". Now... I suspect this isn't quite true. From the earlier videos, I believe the avatar power is actually already accessible from the moment you start the game. You only collect 6 more Emerald Powers, while the 7th emerald delivers Super Sonic only. So either something about that has changed, or IGN is just dribbling whatever they think of that sounds fitting. My money's on the latter.
Not really much else to get from IGN's commentary. They really only opine about co-op and little else.
General
"The team got through Act 1!"
Oh yeah, each player in co-op has their own rings count now. That's probably the biggest distinction between this and Sonic 2's little brother mode.
One more zone known now: Cyber Station.
Yep, disliking how the Emerald Power icons keep prompting automatically as you progress.
I feel like IGN's comments are the more "sell outy" of the two.
I'm thinking the game will be decent in co-op if you play as a co-op pair/group. But if you want to play as a pair/group simply each playing their own way in the same world, nope, it'll fall over.
I think it looks fantastic but it's all about playability. I really don't like the power ups in Sonic games that morph the character into a drill or something, hopefully not much of that.
Just the complete roll of footage used by the above videos. Music missing for much of it.
A couple of other things known now:
Cyber Station is another single-act zone
There are "fruit" acts. One is confirmed in the above footage; the auto-scroller in Pinball Carnival. And the earlier multiplayer video shows a similar thing happening in Bridge Island. Not sure how these fit into the game; maybe they're a co-op only thing, who knows. Both are auto-scrollers.
Aye, that looks utter shit. As opposed to seeing my nephew playing Sonic Mania on switch the other day which had me thinking 'man, that looks great still'.
Why on earth am I actually logged in today after my PC was shut down, but most other days it logs out of this website if I sneeze funny?
Anyway.
You can see some new Pinball Carnival stuff at the end of the previous post's vid. Since TGS, a bit more stuff has appeared.
First we have this. 40:00 for Act 1 of Pinnnnbull Carnivore Zoh, played multiplayer. 53:45 for some Battle Mode stuff.
At a glance it looks like the main campaign multiplayer is indeed as cumbersome as you'd expect. Odd that they've marketed it so much.
I don't really know what's going on with the Battle Mode; it's not a big sell for me. Neither the skins.
We also have another playthrough of Bridge Island, with 2 players. One interesting thing here is seeing the Special Stage in action with 2 players (*cough*) at once. 28:55 for the level start. 29:45 for the multiplayer Special Stage.
Turn on sound to enjoy the translator too.
The Special Stage is actually looking pretty playful. Liking it. Nothing will ever beat Mania's special stages though.
Then we have the music for all 3 Speed Jungle acts.
We've heard acts 1 & 2 before, but not "Act Sonic" or whatever it is. Honestly only Act 2 is a bit down for me; the others I'm quite happy with. The other disappointment is that instead of being rearrangements of the same tune, the 3 acts are now each a different tune written by a different composer. Would have been great if they'd just centered on the same tune, but eh.
More on Battle Mode from IGN:
I legit care so little about Battle Mode that I haven't even bothered watching this, so if you do watch it and see something interesting, please share.
And finally we have what was a live stream of Iizuka on stage with 2 guys playing. All 3 guys are lacking in stage presence. Timing is a bit trickier on this one. ~20 minutes in for Bridge Island. ~29 minutes in for Pinball Carnival. ~38 minutes in for Battle Mode with even Iizuka playing. Poorly.
A better play of Pinball Carnival in this one, with Amy and Knuckles for a change. The gimmicks and pace of the level look decently fun, though I'm still not excited by the visuals. That said, I'm pretty sure everything I've posted so far is the significantly uglier Switch version.
It's still a bit impressive that even with Iizuka there, they still aren't all that great at playing the thing.
Once again, multiplayer is looking a bit silly. At one point in Bridge Island, the Sonic player uses their emerald power to climb a waterfall, and the camera just cancels them. And the Pinball Carnival play is just all over the place.
Wrong bumper sounds on the yellow wall bumpers arrrrgh. Meanwhile, the big spinny wheel things indeed appear to have no conservation of speed; once you're in, your exit speed is set.
I hope the special stages aren't all super easy.
A couple of other things appeared about a week back; the Pinball Carnival music, and the boss tunes. No-one is really excited about Pinball Carnival's music, main complaint being that it channels Studiopolis too much. While the boss music is terribad, sounding legit straight out of Sonic 4.
A few other bits of news are around, but I've been too lazy to write about them.
There's a playthrough of Pinball Carnival, and one of Cyber Station. Cyber Station does indeed look cool, but very gimmicky, more than is really desired. As nice as Cyber Station looks, the general vibe it's getting is that people aren't into it. Probably good that it's only 1 act. I'm still wonder if these supposed 3-act zones are really just going to be the (possibly 4 zones) that come with a character-specific act.
There's also a run of Speed Jungle Zone act 1 that shows it's over very quickly... 1'15" for a very sloppy run of the high route with Amy, followed by the miniboss dying in the fastest way possible simply by using the Avatar ability once then doing nothing.
Apparently the physics aren't as direct a conversion as I was thinking; with much eyeballing and tuning to make up for the differences in engine requirements between this and the oldschool methods. Mania actually uses the same tile-based logic for its physics as the classics, but Superstars doesn't, so the team apparently found it "extremely difficult", to the point of recreating some classic levels in Superstars, as well as overlaying classic gameplay onto Superstars testing to try to refine the accuracy motion. The community at Sonic Retro has no concern about this process, which surprises me, trusting those they've heard from who have played it.
Street dates already broken release heh, 5 days early. So there are spoilers out there if you want to go dig them up. I'll give them a miss myself. Rest of my PC should be arriving today or tomorrow so that'll keep me occupied.
Several concerns over the last month, and not really enough showstoppers or convincing fundamentals to balance them. I've definitely lost my excitement, so I'm feeling like I'd be buying it for the sake of knowing rather than enjoying; just accepting that it's not worth the money but buying it anyway. I mean, that is basically what would be happening. It's not a $95 game.
Being at that price means that if/when something goes bad, my response would feel more like "this was insulting to fans", and less like "well we've got the foundations down, next game can improve". Of those 2 responses, one reduces my entertainment a lot more.
Anyone here jumping on day 1?
Oh, and since it's already in the wild, please keep things spoiler free/tagged for now, including scores.
Edit -- Bit the bullet. I'll probably not post impressions because I don't like writing a lot about ga--OfcourseI'llpostimpressions.
Last edited by Deef on 15 Oct 2023 01:27 am, edited 1 time in total.
I saw that price in JB the other day and just laughed to myself. I'd pay that for Mania 2, but Sega have proven time and time again that old school Sonic fans should not trust them with their dollars. Even if it plays really well, am I going to get $95 of entertainment out of it?
I highly doubt anyone will be playing this in 30 years as often as they play Sonic 2 now
The sky calls to us; if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars
Even for $95 I personally don't need that much. Get the physics right, get the levels right, and give us enough of them, and I'm happy. If I can sit down and things move well, there are lots of zones, and they're good zones, then I'm not that fussed about what else isn't perfect.
I'm just still pretty apprehensive about those things, particularly the acts' qualities.
Watching it develop over the last couple of months, my impressions have been formed by 2 main factors:
The sense of prioritising selling points over the game itself.
Heavily promoting a campaign multiplayer mode that 2D Sonic games just can't carry by design, while eschewing split screen racing; the mode that works well.
A battle mode that's a MTX driver.
Emerald powers that betray a pretty clear lack of creative effort. Vision just tells you where to use it all the time. Avatar can defeat at least 1 mini boss in the fastest possible way while you put the controller down.
All of the above look good in a trailer, and in a list of bullet points.
The absence of reassurances.
The mention of "some zones are 1 act, some are 3 acts". My suspicion is that this is using character-exclusive acts as justification of there being 3-act zones, and that the game will have less than real 24 acts that all 4 characters can play.
Nothing yet showing some really big zones, like S3/K/Mania. Speed Jungle 1, for example, can be run in about 40 seconds with Amy.
SJZ2 and CSZ are overly gimmicky.
So signs of too small or gimmicky, but no signs of large or having 3 acts.
It's only fair at this point to emphasise that my impressions are very heavily founded on suspicion rather than content. The confirmed dumb bits aren't really important. The really important bits aren't confirmed.
So I could be completely wrong about my main concerns (physics & zones). Maybe the game delivers a good number of acts that are large, explorable, and flow well. And I do appear to be the only person at Sonic Retro that holds some apprehension about the physics (which is still odd, imo).
But Sega with their 25 years of fumbling the IP, then palming it off to a team with a very average track record anyway, then the above lists of concerns and absences of reassurances, all have my suspicions pretty well dialed in at this point.
So I get a bit of humble pie, having started this thread with a bit of hope squeezed out of me. I did the "Maybe, maybe this time!", something I think we'd all sworn off doing. Now that has turned into heavy apprehension/suspicion.
But I'll still acknowledge that motion and the levels could still be good, and that this could still be a pretty solid classic Sonic game that just has a few meh bits that aren't important, even if I'm feeling fairly skeptical right now.
And all that said, $95 is still just stupid. They're just going to turn around and go "Welp, see, classic Sonic doesn't work on a modern audience", as they ignore how hard they're self-sabotaging with this price.
I just... can't spend that money on this. I mean, I still can't get past the fact that Alan Wake 2 is cheaper than it (not by a lot, but still cheaper).
I watched the IGN review on youtube and the reviewer lamented that it was too slow, which is a positive for me. You have to earn the right to go fast, I've missed that about Sonic.
One particular impression after completing 7 zones.
Spoiler!
It's the music. The music is the biggest problem this game has.
Everyone knows the complaints about Sonic 4's instrumentation; that Sonic 1 drum synth in particular. And when it comes to jumping on the bandwagon for that complaint, I'm the damn guy up front, holding the reigns on said wagon, running us all around town. I *hate* the Sonic 4 music. Is it bad in its own right? Is it just that it's tied to such a poor game, which itself was tied to such disappointed expectations? Is it simply too obvious nostalgia pandering?
I don't care. Whatever the reason, god I hated it. I honestly get a little pukey vibe with some of it and when I hear it, I need it to stop.
And I never really went for the compromising perspectives "Hey sometimes it's just an instrumentation problem". I just didn't like the whole Sonic 4 OST wholesale, perspectives be damned.
But now I very much get it. Give me Splash Hill Act 1 over some of this music. PLEASE. I can sit here and happily... freaking... "doo doo, do dooooo" Splash Hill to myself right now because it makes me feel better after the last 2 zones of Superstars I have had to listen to.
Superstars does indeed use that crappy, nostalgia-abuse drum synth once again, but only for accessory content.
Now, we knew about this before it was released. The bosses, the menu; we knew they had that crappy drum synth again and those tunes sounded bad. There was no disagreement on this. The main acts, however, they were fine. Modern tunes, no nostalgia pandering god awful drum synth.
So what I'm feel pretty gipped by is that... this was a load of crap. They only let us hear the good zones. As you get further in Superstars, the music turns more... and more... into Sonic 4. And every time you go back to the world map, oh my god it is in your face again with that god damn drum.
So after just not even enjoying zone 7 because of it, zone 8 fires up with yet more of the meow meows and the drum synth and I just... I am struggling to even. I'm just not enjoying this freaking music. I had to stop, and have rant, so here I am.
God dammit. Can someone actually in touch with the IP please direct one of these games?
So, expanding this impression a little more: There is a cheapness to the game; the visuals in particular. So when you then put on top of that this crappy nostalgia abuse drum synth that is so stale even if it didn't suck... you just get that feeling again, a little like Sonic 4, of not playing a game that's really up to the platform you're playing it on. It feels cheap. This isn't even talking about its ridiculous over-pricing; it just feels cheap regardless. Its visuals and its music lack pride.
I... don't think anyone really cares about spoilers Here
I am completely unsurpassed. Sega haven't made a properly great soundtrack since Nights. And certainly not a great Sonic soundtrack since S3K. Don't get me wrong, Sonic Adventure was a decent soundtrack, but none of that cock rock was Sonic , ya know? Tee Lopes understands what makes a Sonic soundtrack great better than anyone. And again, every single fangame developer knows just how important it is to have a banging soundtrack.
The sky calls to us; if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars
Eh, I dislike spoilers so much it borders on mental illness, so I'll tag things even if illogically just for my sake heh.
"Ok now it's entirely possible that you've come to this video specifically because you can't do emerald number 5... "
Yyyyup. Tried maybe 20 times. It's not just that I keep failing, it's that I still don't even know how not to fail. Feels like the whole stage is just the emerald saying "NO" as it flies around wherever it wants, however fast it wants.
Edit -- Dammit. All he told me was what I'm already doing.
Edit 2 -- Of course, literally 5 seconds after I finish that edit, I enter the special stage again and complete it with over a minute remaining.
Also randomly saw the stub for IGN's review, calling the music phenomenal...
.
Another fun fact: You have to sign in with your Epic account, even if you're playing through Steam.
If you don't, you can't play any of the online modes... which you might not care to anyway. But it will still bug you every time you restart the game. To stop it bugging you, you either have to sign in and let it remember, or go through some file twisting to stop it popping up. Brilliant.
Last edited by Deef on 25 Dec 2023 02:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
