Sonic Superstars: A New 2D Sonic Game (Fall 2023)

Screenshot of the mini-digital soundtrack (which has 10 tracks) and who composed each piece:

 

There was a quirk I noticed in other Unity games I played on my PS4, it appeared here again, and i am not sure, is this really an engine issue or my old PS4 issue or HDD issue

Talking specifically about the stutters whenever Zone names title cards appears, anyone else experience that?

example of what i mean -zone 3-

https://imgur.com/a/KPq9FR5

playing on base PS4

Rest of the game itself plays fine with no issues

 

So I played through the first three stages today plus the first act of the fourth stage, and I'm very happy to say I'm having fun. It's a relatively strong start in what it does, which I think feels very different from what any classic game would do, to be honest. As I'm playing on a keyboard right now, it feels very clumsy to use the emerald powers, even though I remapped the keys the best I could. But that hasn't been much of a problem so far,¹ though I'm sure it'll come back to bite me later on.

The game's general philosophy seems to draw from Sonic 3 & Knuckles in that it will try to make every act unique and all about its gimmicks, but it's so much more hellbent on it that it actually reminds me of the 8-bit Sonics or even Sonic Advance 3 in that regard: each act is very focused in doing its own thing, and makes sure that's what you'll remember it for.² It's a more traditional platforming game take on it, and I'm very happy for all the platforming and physics manipulation stunts it offers you if you want, especially in Bridge Island Act 1, Speed Jungle Act Sonic and Pinball Carnival Act 1. I'd say you'll only do it if you really want to, though: looking for more rings, special stage rings, fruits or medals feels vapid because the game sets the pace it wants for you to do these things, and you don't have much of a choice (if I got it right, you'll get one emerald per zone and that's it. Trying to access the special stage again in the same zone yields medals via the blue big ring, I guess?). The bosses are the main symptom of this overarching situation (wouldn't call it a problem, exactly, but it's an approach I'm not entirely comfortable with): they are meant to be killed with a certain pace and no amount of skill or stupidity will change that. I feel like some bosses will even become inconsistent for that. Sometimes they'll just not be affected by your attacks, but some other times they'll straight up hurt you for trying to hit them while they're moving. Their appearance didn't change: the game just really doesn't want you to break the pace it wanted to set.

You don't get to feel like you're breaking the game in any way, ever -- like Sonic is actually so fast you ended up where you were not supposed to, or lost control over his momentum so now you're at the stage's mercy. And even if it's inherently fun to spindash and jump on a slope to reach a high platform, there's this constant sensation of futility to it. If I do this little trick, I might get a fruit! But what for? Oh, to get to the Fruit Act, which is a fun little bonus stage that yields a lot of rings and medals! But what do I even want these for?

That really highlights how having infinite lives changes things. It's one of the more important discussions we had on this thread, and everything @Laura said abut the importance of a life system in classic Sonic comes back in full force here. It's almost a given that I'll finish the game eventually, and there's no such thing as "one playthrough". So I'm free to pursue the many extra, positive little secrets the game offers instead of focusing on survival, replaying for score and resource management! But I'm not entirely sure I want to. It's not the game's fault. It's not my fault, either.

¹ Except when the game very explicitly asked me to, then very explicitly killed me for it in the third stage. I don't mind that, because if anything I'd like the game to be more vicious than it already is, but when I found out what it actually wanted me to use the powers for, I was disappointed.
² Which makes it look very silly to me how there are some elements that appear in multiple stages. It really feels forced, especially in the case of that purple ball badnik.

 

I am having fun with the game. There's a lot of influence from the originals, to Adventure, the Advance and Rush games.

But it clicked with me more when I felt like this game is sort of a sequel to CD. I always felt like if you're not careful the stage design in CD can take control away from you and push you around, creating a chaotic feel in the player. And this game has that same feeling, but not as big.

Even the bosses feel like the ones in CD, in where you can't quite cheese them like the ones in the Mega Drive. And they also have more elaborate setpieces where you can't attack.

The only thing that I wish was better was the music. It's not bad, but it doesn't feel like an unified vision like past games.

 

Spoiler

Keep playing.

 

Finished the main game. It's good!

The levels and core gameplay are truly great. Everything I want from Classic Sonic is here. I thought I wasn't gonna like Speed Jungle 2, but the darkness ended up being set-dressing that barely even affected me. Sky Temple and Lagoon city were fun, and Pinball Carnival's shift to a ghost train ride in act 2 was really cute. Lagoon City was a very tolerable water level with a weirdly...game gear feel? Press Factory's Rhythmic shockwaves were an interesting obstacle. Golden Capital was...still fun, but it felt like a weird rehash by basically being another pinball-centric stage. Frozen Base 1 is fine, 2 was hilarious, in that it was completely mindless. And I liked floating around in Egg Fortress, and the inverted level design in the second act.

Overall the level design is stellar, tons of ways to go and tons of neat little level gimmicks, and the character-specific acts are...interesting. I mean, they're perfectly-good stages all the same, but the fact that they unbalance a game that's essentially just as long as Sonic 3 is questionable to me. Frozen Base only had one real act to go around to begin with! Tails has to carry the other entirely on his lonesome. Either way, these stages still provide a good blend of fun and challenge. They're truly worthy of being considered with the prior 5 classic Sonic games.

The special stages are probably the best that Classic Sonic has ever had, a good blend of lenience and challenge, and dead-simple to boot. I especially like that you can prolong your time to get the emerald by grabbing rings. Unfortunately I was very so-so on the chaos emerald powers. You never really have to use them, which is good, but I never found an opportunity to use them where it felt like a really strong game mechanic. Maybe that's cause I only have 5/7, but I dunno. I just didn't care that much.

I was waiting for the so-called "downhill second half", and while I didn't love Sand Sanctuary, I think this is a mischaracterization because of 2 things: One, the music of Press Factory and Golden Capital is full-on Sonic 4, and the bosses mix all of the worst of that along with being waaaaaay too fuckin long in the lategame. The stages themselves never stop being fun, but knowing you're heading towards something you'll have to wait for 20 seconds to have a chance at hitting and not even know how much health it has is truly grueling. Cyber Station was the worst at this, ambushing me with a second phase to its running boss, only for it to only take a couple shots. Same deal with Frozen Base, that bird only takes 3 hits but the speed and danger make it exhausting. Proper boss healthbars would have fixed this...but nothing would fix the Egg Fortress 2 boss. Holy fuck, does this guy take like six hits in each phase? And you have to dodge so much shit in each. The second phase is definitely easier, but after the extreme trial-and-error design of the first phase, I was shocked each time I hit him and it wasn't the final hit. No fucking thanks, guys. Try again.

Yeah, so this one is a good time, but hoo boy those bosses. Never tell me 3 or Mania's bosses are bad again.

I'll do the chaos emeralds and *spoiler postgame content but you know what it is* later, but first playthrough impressions are positive. I just wish it hadn't ended on such a sour note with the marathon bosses.

 

Glad to see my copy of the game is now on its way - less glad that it looks like it'll miss my lunch break, as that means I may have to wait until tomorrow to actually get into it depending on how busy things get this evening.

Has anyone who signed up to the newsletter received their code for the Amy skin yet? I got confirmation and everything when I originally signed up, but haven't seen anything in my inbox so far.

 

So far, this game really is "ok" but I think I'll learn to love it.

Btw.

What the game reviewers complained about not being able to change the characters on the go is ass because unlike the classic games, you can leave an act whenever and come back with another character to carry on. It's not like Mania or 3/K where save files are dedicated to the character you choose and then you need to create a new one and start over if you want to play as another character.

Also, the bosses are pure CD bliss. If you hated the CD bosses you'll hate these, but if you loved them like me then these are going to be very fun.

 

Played up to Pinball Carnival and I had a great time.
What I realised quickly is that while Mania was full on inspired by the classics and nothing else, this seems to be a comeback to the Dimps era of handheld platformers with more gimmicky stages. And honestly? I love it haha, the stages are fun to explore and every act somehow manages to feel unique so far.

The bosses tho are...yikes. They just...won't...die...and knowing they apparently get even worse later on doesn't fill me with joy, lol
Presentation is also strangely hit and miss. The character animations in gameplay are probably the smoothest we've had in the series ever, and then you immediately transition to a cutscene and have some sfm-tier animation that honestly gave me second hand embarrassement with how clunky they looked. Who thought this was okay to ship?

But the actual game is so fun to play, man. Since I played a lot Forces and Gens, I was so used to 2.5D Sonic controlling like a rock that my brain had a hard time adapting to the megadrive accurate physics and I kept overshooting my jumps, lol

As someone that grew up with this era of games, it's so good to see a comeback to budged 2D titles for the first damn time since like, Rush Adventure? I honestly want more of it going forward, and maybe not take 6 years between each releases, pretty please?
Either way, with this and Wonder in 3 days this is one hell of a week for platformer fans.

 

I had this weird snafu after grabbing the first Chaos Emerald, where I was selecting the avatar power for the tutorial and it just...wouldn't get selected? The wheel stayed there and I wondered if I was doing something wrong or if it was due to me using a Switch Pro Controller.

Otherwise, I have an issue of Sonic having...a delay to his movement? I think. Just trying to move from a standstill I mean - feels a bit better with the control stick as opposed to the d-pad but maybe that's just placebo. I am playing on a 2017 GTX1050 laptop so maybe it's to do with perfomance issues.

Only played the first zone so far and it's fine, not really formed much in the way of opinions yet but I think it's so far avoided being the worst classic Sonic console game (sorry, CD).

Edit: Oh, and I STILL haven't received my Amy skin code!

 

I'm feeling this, but not really at the same time. I love most of the bosses designs and attacks, but their pacing gets so weird due to the whole window-of-opportunity thing in a way that doesn't remind me of Sonic CD at all. Stereotypically CD bosses (Collision Chaos, Quartz Quadrant, Wacky Workbench) are very rhythmical and dance-like in nature: if you're offbeat, you'll just make mistakes repeatedly until you die, and the boss feels completely alien and unfair. But when you act in their tempo, they're quite easy. The fact that you can only hit them once in a while makes sense, because there's a rhythm to the hits that, I think, feels very satisfying.

Here, on the other hand,

Spoiler: Stage 3 spoilers

In Sky Temple you CAN actually hit the boss basically whenever, but it only lets itself get hit after it shoots at you. It's very annoying, actually, and there's no dynamic to it. It's not like it COULDN'T, because there are some cool bosses like Lagoon City Act 1 in which the boss' invulnerability visibly hurts you, and it gives it up to attack you. I like that.

I will, but unless the coore loop changes dramatically and I couldn't possibly have seen it on streams, I can't see why you would say that.

 

I'm jealous right now.

Now that you mentioned that when I read the article about the patches the other day I seen that they didn't mention Xbox Series X which is what I downloaded mines on. It only said Xbox one although I also have an Xbox one X but choose to use the Series X. I'll check mines as well to see what version I have.

You can switch between the characters once you decide to change a character. Click on Sonic and there should be an arrow to to click right and you'll see the other skins.

You can switch between the characters once you decide to change a character. Click on Sonic and there should be an arrow to to click right and you'll see the other skins.

 

Variable rebound is only technically in, it has a max height cap and it’s too low to do anything crazy with from what I’ve seen. The maximum height is about as high as you get from bounces in other 2D platformers.

It’s not uncommon for games to stutter like that during during load screens, not sure why other than the priorities for animating them being extremely low while 99% of processing power is being spent on loading and decompressing data.

 

@Kiyana Heads up, you can quote multiple posts in a single post by pressing quote for each one of them. Posting in rapid succession as you've done here is frowned upon.

 

Thanks I don't really know how to do that since I just signed up for this form and never used one before I joined this one.

 

Arrived at Cyber City. Thought I'd hate it but I love it.

 

To anyone wondering if the Digital Deluxe content would be available separately, Nintendo's page for the game now lists "Digital Deluxe Upgrade" (as a purchase option rather than a separate DLC), which appears to be a bundle of the Extra Content Pack and LEGO Fun Pack DLCs. So for folks who want that content but bought the physical edition or didn't opt for the Digital Deluxe version from the start, it seems there is at least a method of getting the extra content. Just don't buy the LEGO Fun Pack DLC separately first, or you'll have paid for it twice!

 

ah, so we're back in Sonic 2 levels of end-game difficulty here then

 

In battle mode now and don't hear this music