Ok, come on, you guys know me. I'm old school; the Sonic fan who's just as jaded, or more jaded, than anyone about any Sonic release. I'll call out any smell a mile away, as will most of us here. Been there, been there, been there. SA2 was the end for me; I haven't felt hope about anything other than Sonic Mania since.
But ok. Ok.
I watched this with a friend nearby and I consciously had to play it cool. I had to stay calm a little. It would be off-brand for me to freak out over a Sonic trailer. I'm too smug and jaded to admit that there was a bit of excitement here.
Because a little piece of me that died 20 years ago started freaking out a little.
I remain ready for the letdown; something will go wrong. Homing attacks will appear, or rubbish Dimps level design, or microtransactions will drown the whole thing, or it will be overrun with gimmicks, or it'll be 30 minutes of content and not even 6 zones, or ... who knows. Yeah, I'm ready.
But I can't deny that this time, hope is the thing. I maintain interest not for the lolz; not for the smug satisfaction of yet another Sonic game being godawful. This one, this time, I have to admit I am actually hopeful and ... apprehensively excited.
Last edited by Deef on 31 Oct 2023 11:21 am, edited 5 times in total.
I'm expecting content will be the letdown. Too short, pricey DLC or some microtransaction model. Possibly too gimmicky with what sounds like chaos emerald powers.
But I'm convinced it will move like the classics at least. Someone did a side by side of a downhill run into a loop between this trailer and Sonic Mania. Basically identical in motion.
I suppose it will have the drop dash.
So anyway, disappointment can happen but at least it will have classic motion. That's the thing that has made everything else a write off for me. This is the first time (except Mania) that I won't be disappointed by the same old "why bother" feeling.
Mmm I've got Sonic Frontiers here but they didn't hold my kids attention so I haven't had a go yet.. maybe, maybe this is too but I'm so jaded now it's hard to get excited. I did see earlier today this game has some serious interest though.
Uff, that video has actually knocked the wind out of my sails.
Leaving that for a moment, @Madmya, I was going to say that I felt like they must have the physics settled. They really doubled down on promoting the classic feel in the promo trailer; they appeared to understand the weight of the language and references they were using. Then with a few examples that appeared legit, I was pretty convinced.
Now going back to that video...
Immediately hated the music. Instrumentation straight out of Sonic 4, and the tune simply wasn't appealing to me. A Twinkle Park bit in there but still, no good. Replaying the video, I was annoyed at having to listen to it again.
And the physics? That video really showed how much things can still go the other way imo. Sure, when you looked for some classic motion you could find it.... in the approximately 0.2% of the video it appeared. For the other 99.8%, that level looked pretty awful to me. The Sonic 4 smell from the music was fitting, since nearly the entire level's motion was automated.
Branching looked good. That's one positive I can say at least. A few gimmicks in there were interesting too. The 10-ring badnik. The sticky bombs. The kind of grapple ramp. Nice enough.
But the obvious stale gimmicks were quite common too. Too much spring into tunnel into rail-grind.
The rail-grinding vines looked cool, but I wonder how they control. Looked really cool actually, but I can only think that they are all less playful than simply running down the same slopes. Less options for the player to actually play with; I suspect that all you can do is jump off or not jump off. Not try to slow down, not jump forward for the speed boost, not curl up and exploit the increased downhill acceleration of a roll. Instead, just flash over substance. I wonder if every level is going to have significant rail grinding chunks. Maybe not.
Two more concerns:
1. The small ferns appear to exist to un-curl a rolling Sonic. That worries me, since they very much appeared to do this to control the player, rather than actually be some playful device to toy with. End of a big curled speed section = forced uncurl.
2. At 0:29 Sonic loses half his speed and I can't figure out why. The ferns don't always do that, nor do the sticky bombs. Whatever it is, that it happened at all wasn't nice to see.
So overall that level gave me the impression of overly-forced motion, with gimmicks controlling the easy majority of the player's time playing; gimmicks that both created and deleted speed for nothing, while the classic physics were there but quite literally suffocated off the stage. Top that off with music I wanted to stop hearing.
That video and music really just makes me feel like it's another Sonic-4-esque Dimps creation.
Lel, more disappointed by that than I expected. Took 1 day, Sega, and you already got me.
Ohh it's placeholder music. Thank god.
It's actually White Park Zone Act 2 from Sonic 4. No wonder I didn't remember it.
Still, not liking the level almost entirely living off its gimmicks. Longer video here:
So I am still back in the camp of very apprehensive.
Opening animated trailer looks nice enough though. Here's a shoddy off-screen recording:
Not as great as Mania's; I think the difference in passion shows. But still decent.
I'm still not convinced they have the physics right. It should be soo fucking easy to do.. and yet they keep wanting to mess with shit that should be locked.
I get a little 2D Sonic Generations PTSD from this... The physics for that.. ugh.. whoever thought that was a good idea clearly had a head injury.
The video was really just to show off the physics, I'm trying to find examples of where it's not right and it's pretty hard to find it. I haven't watched all of that 10 minute video Deef posted, but at 1:15 is the only example where I would have expected sonic to lose speed.
I'm still on the side of "physics look right but will they still stuff it up anyway". The above video's level -- Speed Jungle Zone -- just looks like a really good example of their capability to do that. 3DS Generations was the same thing, no? Classic physics, messed up by bad level design.
Admittedly still a few moments of speed being a little weird in that level. Still not sure those cases were physics or gimmicks.
But on the whole, I'd go so far as to say I suspect this will be such a strong copy of Mania's physics that we might be able to pick out the small Mania/classic motion differences in this game.
(After watching new content)
So we have this (Bridge Island Zone):
It was a little irritating to see this guy still mess up even quarterpipes at times. You just want someone to get in there and actually check things properly. This guy didn't even check what the double-jump situation was. Annoying. I remember how no-one even knew how bad Sonic 4's physics were for weeks (months?), despite a number of people playing it early. >:|
Anyway.
4:44 ... uh oh.
5:50 didn't feel right either, but I can't say exactly what went wrong if anything. Just felt too slow.
But on the whole, from that level I am actually pretty satisfied.
Visuals: Good, with the animation in particular carrying most of the entertainment there.
Level design: So much better than the previous vid. I'm quite impressed with it, both in its openness & branching, and in its balance between speed and paced platforming. They've ticked those boxes well from what I can see. And then the emerald powers opening up new paths on top of that? In a restricted fashion? And the 4 characters are going to have their own ways of moving around the zone.
Yeah nah, I'm satisfied with this level. It's a Simon Cowell yes from me.
The whole level (and whole game) being something fresh is a big plus too. For me, this zone was a nice balance between a new place and nostalgic details.
To end on a negative though, I suspect all the acts are going to be a bit short. Nothing like Carnival Night, Marble Garden, or the majority of S&K imo.
Gimmicks: Even the gimmicks look good this time. A few "super free speed" things in there, but they were dialed back just enough, with a good range of other goofy things. The wall run looks great; a neat little throwback to the times the classics do something similar, and looking more smoothly integrated. The super loop... that was a fun little punctuation mark at the end. The double loops looked cool too. The CD-esque background platforming isn't my favourite thing, but eh. One thing we can it though is that at least the transitions were super smooth this time. We didn't need the boosters inside the loops though guys, bah. And the little 360° swings looked good too.
Special stages: I thought the Special Stage was quite good (especially in that it appears to have non-emerald variants). From the little we saw of it, it has a bunch of playful weird little motions to toy with. The weird little "ring fall" bonus stage... mmm, that will get stale in literally no time. I hope there's more to that.
Emerald powers: I'll admit I want to say "Hey. HEY! I thought of this ages ago!", but lel... I know pretty much every other kid would have too. Pretty cool nonetheless. I like that they're just an extra little thing and (hopefully) not an overbearing part of the game that you're required to tap into too much. Hopefully.
Bosses: Definitely wasn't in love with the Act 1 boss but eh. I can live with bad bosses. From this and the earlier boss we saw, it looks like they're going the Sonic CD/Mario approach to bosses: ie., only about 3 hits after some dodging and faffing around. I dunno guys, don't break what already worked eh?
But the Act 2 boss looked on point. Verrrry slow going, but I think that's the player, not the game. More hits, and more room for the player to just have at it. That's how Sonic bosses should work imo. Still only 6 hits though; would prefer the full 8. I'd like to dream and say maybe those bomb hits counted for double? That'd be a cool little mechanic to add... but I doubt that's what really happened there.
Happy with the bosses overall, even if the first was very average. Good to see it putting a boss in both Acts.
So on the whole, if I had seen this video first my impression would have been a metric tonne better. There really isn't much I can complain about here, except for those 2 places where the motion looked questionable. Slight concern about unintentional bugs then.
The burn from that Speed Jungle level is still there... I'm still feeling more wary than hopeful... but this Bridge Island has definitely helped a lot. If it were a game-full of that kind of impression, I'd be super happy. As it is, it's probably worked its way back to "Day 1" for me.
Tee Lopes has been brought back to help with the music too, so that's a good thing.
Also, the designer of Mighty and Ray works at Arzest; the studio developing this game. Maybe DLC. Ray was pretty great in Mania so I wouldn't be against seeing him return.
It looks to me like Sonic takes a bit too long to get up to speed from a dead stop, and the transition from walk to run is a bit too sudden. That's one of the things that keeps turning me off the non-classic Sonic games. It's just weird that nobody ever gets that right, ever since S3K (and Mania, naturally)
Last edited by unfnknblvbl on 15 Jun 2023 11:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The sky calls to us; if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars
Will have more to say on this when it's appropriate, but the Mania physics were indeed fully translated to modern 3D
A couple of other bits I've picked up:
- Drop dash is in. Oddly I haven't seen it used once, but it's been talked about and definitely in.
- The Sonic 1-3&K roll jump direction lock is pretty much guaranteed not in, same as Mania.
- If Amy uses a similar command to the drop dash, she gets a kind of wall-breaking move.
- Apparently there will be 8 stages. I take this with a grain of salt... maybe 6 full zones and 2 small things for padding. The 2 zones we've seen so far didn't look massive either, so I'd say the full game will be smaller than ideal. Definitely shorter than Mania/3&K. But at least they're meant to be all new zones.
- Tails' flight might not have the same vertical gain as the classics. Not too fussed about this personally, as long as it feels good. It wasn't all that playful in S3 anyway.
- The title screen has clearly deliberate nods to the Sonic 1, Sonic 2, and Sonic Mania poses. That's pretty neat imo. Here it is, skip to 1:20. I'd say that's more the Sonic CD posture too. But nothing Sonic 3-ish I can spot.
He and Simon Thomley (Headcannon studio/Stealth) were approached by Iizuka to work on it, ideas got kicked around, but for whatever reason "talks fell through" and they didn't take it on. That quote was simply CW expressing insider knowledge.
The game is being developed by a studio called Arzest, notable in that it is run by Naoto Ohshima; the artistic half of Sonic's original 2 creators. (You might not know, but the other half - Yuji Naka - is actually in prison lel.) Apart from Sonic's original design, Ohshima is also the guy that's behind the noodley Sonic Adventure artwork and NiGHTS' character design. He also did some level design in Sonic 1 & CD.
I see Sonic Team also referred to as Superstars' developers, but I have no idea what the balance is between them and Arzest. Feels like it's mostly Arzest.
Arzest don't appear to have any massive hits. They did create Balan Wonderland but it was terrible. I mention it because if you google images of it you will immediately recognise NiGHTS in everything about it. Except that it's bad.
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Jun Sunoue is back for the music in Superstars, which really does not excite me. Crush 40, that guy, the early 3D Sonics, live and learrrrrnnn... Sonic 4's music, and a fair bit in between. Mother fluffer loves his electric guitar. I do not. Sunoue actually did a bunch of the accompanying tunes and jingles in Sonic 3 also... Act clears, game overs, menus, bonus stages.
Fortunately Mania's Tee Lopes is also back, just as a bit of help it seems. Sunoue is still directing things. The only impression I've seen of the music in Superstars is that it sounds more like Sunoue's, but that it was decent. "No Studiopolis but no Splash Garden either". Something like that. Definitely not like Sonic 4's, as reassured by everyone who has heard it, and a gigantic sigh of relief to everyone who hasn't.
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For me the big question for how "trustable" this game's development is comes down to level design and who's doing it, which I haven't heard anything about.
A few new things to look at in here. Sorry in advance for the voice.
0:12 I still think these bonus stages will get boring pretty fast.
0:15 Amy is dipping into the ground quite a bit, doesn't look great.
0:18 That nice touch where Sonic levels out before the ground levels out. Mania does that too. The classics too, but out of necessity with only the 8 directions of animation.
0:22 Tails' flight is definitely different. Not necessarily a bad thing.
0:30 Amy is using a double jump, then a 3rd jump press and hold (ie., the same control as the drop dash) to activate her running-smashy move.
0:43 That's an emerald power we haven't seen. Looks attractive enough, pretty basic mechanic though.
Also, magnet power up. Lightning shield without the shield maybe?
0:58 Fang looking like a midboss of Speed Jungle, except we've already seen its bosses, so just an interactive cutscene I guess.
0:59 Tails carrying Knuckles. Interesting that Tails was holding so many rings. So this was 2 people playing, losing rings separately? Or maybe either player losing all rings. Probably not.
1:01 Visuals look a bit average there.
Special stages look pretty good really; I like the much-needed inventiveness of it.
Watch the landing carefully at 0:21. It looks wrong. Then instead of watching the landing, watch the background. It all pauses. I think that shouldn't be happening.
Showed a non-Sonic-playing friend. They noticed it straight away too.
Confirmed 12 zones at Nintendo Direct. Nice.
Maybe some will be padding, but still great to see there will be a solid amount of new zones. Was the one thing about Mania I wasn't in love with.
No OG Icecap, no lives in widescreen mode, and they've removed the horizontal control lock on rolling jumps for all the games now... something I actually liked. I'd definitely feel that missing.
So it gives me the impression of being something that would slightly irritate me, even with all the new shinies.
Not to mention they replaced all the supposed Michael Jackson tracks in Sonic 3 with the originals that were unearthed from that Sonic 3 prototype a few years back. They're not bad tracks, they're just not as great as the ones that were in the original release.
Also apparently the sound quality in the S3K port is very muffled
The sky calls to us; if we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars
Yeah, it's a shame about both the music, and that it sounds like they dropped the ball on it a bit. Even just the little things - no control lock, infinite lives - break the whole point of the purchase for me. If you're gonna cater to precise oldschool values, don't start making up your own rules about which ones the buyers want, dammit.
Relevant to the thread topic, Amy is now in Origins, including the ability to play as Knuckles and Amy. It relates, because the Amy added to Origins is the same as the Amy that will be in Superstars; same moveset. So Amy in Superstars is like a throwback to a reverse retcon.
Game Informer got a play through of 6 zones. 8 zones are now known in total. It seems some zones, perhaps only 1 per character, have a special character-exclusive bonus act too.
Game Informer also have an article covering the 7 emerald powers, which have all been revealed too.
I've thrown the screens from both articles below, and a couple I found elsewhere, and summarised the interesting bits of the play through article. If you want to read about the 7 emerald powers, use the link above. Click bait: Homing attack is in.
Sky Temple Zone
Sky Temple Zone is unique in that Act 1 takes me around nine minutes to complete, but is the only act of the zone.
Iizuka says " [...] the team wanted to break that tempo up and have the gameplay with a different beat. So, some of the zones are going to have maybe three acts, and some of the zones will only have one act.
The zone also features [...] a repeated minigame reminiscent of the classic game Breakout, where your character becomes a ball, and you need to aim to break through various bricks.
Pinball Carnival Zone
Act 2 of this zone transitions the area to nighttime, with a haunted carnival theme emerging and the badniks taking on a ghostly aesthetic.
Lagoon City Zone
Act 1 takes place mostly above water, making for high-speed action set against the watery backdrop. [...] this Hydrocity-meets-Aquatic Ruin area [...]
Before going to the next zone, I take on Episode Amy, a character-specific stage in Lagoon City. This fruit-themed stage lets me use Amy's hammers to blast through huge fruit and fruit-based robots, including a grape robot and a watermelon with a gun. There's also a seal that throws explosive barrels.
Act 2 includes more fully underwater sequences, for which Tails' ability to swim comes in handy.
Sand Sanctuary Zone
Sadly, we don't have a screenshot to share of Sand Sanctuary.
Fans of Sonic 3 & Knuckles may draw comparisons to Sandopolis Zone, and it wouldn't be an unfair line to connect. However, throughout the entire stage, a giant snake is present, giving you distinct platforming situations.
All I see of the next zone is that it's called Press Factory Zone, but the team turns the game off before I can take in any details, and my hands-on session ends.
Press Factory Zone (Not played.)
Golden Capital Zone (Not played.)
Bridge Island Zone
Speed Jungle Zone
After completing Act 1, I'm given the option to play Act 2, or a different section called "Act Sonic." This alternate act of Speed Jungle Zone lets you run through the stage as Sonic, but with Fang terrorizing you the whole way.
seemingly optional, more challenging stage,
"One other fun thing about Speed Jungle is that it starts introducing the storytelling elements and what's going on in the world as you're playing the game," Iizuka says.
Other random quotes
I get a glimpse of the world map, which is reminiscent of Sonic Generations' hub world, where you are running around a 2D plane and selecting your zone. This hub area houses all the zones, as well as the customization shop (with unlockable parts for head, body, arms, legs, accessories, color, pattern, and something called "prototype" using in-game medals) and the ability to swap characters.
The boss battles of Sonic Superstars are among my favorite I've encountered in the series, alongside Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Speaking with Iizuka, there may be a reason why they feel similar in that way. "We thought about the boss fights like Sonic 3, with a mech sub-boss after Act 1 and an Eggman boss after Act 2," he says. "I wrote boss fight specifications for Sonic 3, drawing on that experience to work with Arzest staff on the design."
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My thoughts:
The character customisation sounds worrying; a possible gateway to microtransactions. I don't mind microtransactions, but I do mind when they are put in your face. Imo, for a premium price game, they should be basically invisible unless you go out of your way to access them.
The character-exclusive acts sound like a nice extra. Not much, but nice. Nothing's going to beat Sonic 3 & Knuckles in this area, with many of the already-huge zones holding entire massive areas just for Knuckles. Even Mania didn't come close to that.
I don't mind the mixup of act counts, too much. Depends. In S3&K it was great, working really well with how the last chunk of the game really emphasised the different stories, and still delivering at least 12 full zones' worth of content. But in Sonic 2... Metropolis Zone.. ugh. Discovering that went into a 3rd act was The Worst.
I expect to be underwhelmed by the emerald abilities, since I imagine they will mostly be "Press button here to proceed". If the ways to capitalise on the abilities are well hidden, and appear to naturally blend into the level, that's at least a good start. But I doubt even that will be the case, and the game might come to feel like a distraction of identifying and using what are effectively keys and doors. Meanwhile the actual control and physics of the abilities... eh. I imagine most of them won't even really have any actual inherent play; they'll just be things to do when the level lets you do them. The Vision ability in particular is the perfect example of everything I'd fear they do with these abilties.
The homing attack, at least, might escape this "obvious & unplayful" concern I have, but it also might not. Sega have shown plenty of times that they like to deliver the homing attack as a tool more than a toy.
Not to mention, having to design all levels with 7 different mechanics for accessing new areas is just a bit of design overload, imo. I expect to see maybe 6-8 cheap uses per act; nothing really playful, creative, or deep. Could be good, but it's a lot for them to make good.
The water level being described as a mix between Hydro. Period. City. Period. and Aquatic Ruin sounds great to me. I actually feel like Aquatic Ruin is the best balance we've had of all the water levels, with Hydrocity at least erring on the side of safety with its heavy speed emphasis. Only problem with Aquatic Ruin was its tiny size, so I'm looking forward to seeing what Lagoon Something Something gives us.
Very happy to hear their impressions of the boss battles too. S3&K did get the bosses quite right imo. Mania got more inventive, but sank way too far into the "Wait, identify opening, hit once, repeat" routine; something the other classic Sonic bosses have always avoided really well. So... as much as it irritates me to hear Iizuka say... practically anything... I am admittedly happy to hear anyone saying that they did some bosses in S3&K, and that they're channeling that again.
The few screens we have of Press Factory and Golden Capital show quite a variation in scenery. That's a pretty good sign imo. Golden Capital looks pretty cool, tbh. Meanwhile, "Press Factory"... wut? Why we using the word "Press" again? What's this association Sonic is having with newspapers now?
I would have expected better textures on many things, really. For a full price game, and only 2D, there's no reason this should be looking barely comparable to Generations, released more than 10 years ago. Some of the smooshed objects and clipping textures don't look good. Sky Temple, for example. The character models and animations look excellent, so the priorities are in the right place at least, but I still would have expected less basic visuals in the levels. But eh, if it plays well, it won't matter.
Took 1 day, Sega, and you already got me.
and a fair bit in between. Mother fluffer loves his electric guitar. I do not. Sunoue actually did a bunch of the accompanying tunes and jingles in Sonic 3 also... Act clears, game overs, menus, bonus stages. 
