Sonic Superstars Ultra Mega Spoiler Containment Thread for Spoilers [SPOILERS]

A few zones in and I have to say it also has me missing the Advance games. Those games had issues (bottomless pits), but for the GBA, the presentation was very good. Superstars feels cheap.

 

Yeah, so I'm up to Golden Capital, and I'm not really seeing the legendary "latter game decline". I feel like the level design still holds up pretty well! The soundtrack is not terrible either. Way more hits than misses, though the hits aren't AMAZING or anything.

Actually.

Brace yourselves.

Press Factory is my favorite zone in the game so far. Here's a real hot take: Press Factory Act 1 is not only a good track, but it's one of the more memorable ones in the game, and for a good reason. People shit on the hard Genesis twang in the beginning, but... that's my favorite part? It fits the zone, it stands out, and it's nowhere near as obnoxious as people made it sound. The transition between Act 1 and Act 2 is also good. I feel like the Act 2s aren't that much different than Act 1 but Press Factory pulls that off. And I love its ending, where you ride a rocket and skydive to fireworks.

The zone is also pretty good. Neat gimmicks, the press gimmick is interesting but not intrusive, the bomb gimmick really kicks your arse into overdrive, even the bosses are the better ones in the game. However, wayyyyy too reliant on crushers and instant-kill obstacles. That's my only issue, that and this randomly being the 8th stage instead of the one before the final zone or something.

 

Okay I played through Golden Capital, it's the first zone I'm "mixed" on. Not bad as a whole, but Act 1? Probably the most forgettable stage in the game, which is a shame because individually its gimmicks are pretty cool. But it definitely has the worst and most repetitive music in the game, and it kind of meanders.

Act Knuckles is better, and it's nice to see it really be built around his skillset. Sonic and Amy's acts were fun (surprised how short the escort mission was) but they were more like, remixes of the Act 1s. Knuckles' act felt like for Knuckles and benefited from it. At the end of the act, he finds a chest that has the Emeralds you didn't collect. I was confused because I thought it was giving you Super forms for free. Then Fang takes the Emeralds the next act and it made more sense.

Act 2 was more fun. Tighter level design in general. Has a fun Sky Chase-like segment, which it uses for the boss.

So about the boss; conceptually and even in execution, this is actually a pretty awesome boss. Really makes Fang stand out. But goddamn is it long, and it has no reason not to have checkpoints. Come on.

I read an impression elsewhere that the game succeeds in having a bunch of "oh, that's pretty cool" moments pretty much constantly, and yeah, I see exactly what they mean.

Anyway yeah. I'm stopping now because it's late but definitely feel like playing more. At this point, the game is a rousing success to me.

 

So I played the game and got all the Emeralds and played a bit with Trip let's just say I got mixed feelings for sure. The good is really good like the first half of the game is solid and the physics are on point. But the second half of the game feels RUSHed like heck. Gone are the open levels and here comes the more linear stuff. Plus the amount of faux Chiptunes soundtrack start to come in hard which makes me believe that a day 1 patch might remove em but idk. Also Trip turns into a dragon what's up with that? Overall it's 7/10

 

This game is fine. If you like classic sonic you'll probably like this but I don't see it adding any new members to the fan base.

I also don't feel the $60 price is justified considering the graphical quality or amount of content. Especially when Mario Bros Wonder and Spider-Man 2 are coming out very close to it and those games have way bigger budgets and way more content for around the same price.

But...I still like it and I'm glad it's here. I love how they clearly actively tries to do new ideas the classics haven't tried before. And I think a sequel would be even more incredible if we get one.

Overall it's fine and maybe that's all it needs to be. I just don't see $60 for "fine" being something anyone but the hard-cores bite.

 

I finished the main game and... yeah, it didn't really decline. I enjoyed it very much throughout and can easily see myself replaying it. But I'll save that for Trip's story.

I like the bosses in a creative sense but I also recognize me being good at Sonic games gives me a bias. Casuals will have an extraordinarily hard time for no real reason. The bosses benefit from being cut in half. The best ones are the ones where you can cut the fat yourself, but there are unfortunately bosses where you have to wait it out (without the Avatar, that is).

This is on the upper half of Classic Sonic. Better than 1, CD, and 2. I think it's presentation and relative lack of consistency (though Mania and S3&K had the problems with the final stages not being as great as the beginning) holds it back from being better than Mania and S3&K. But those games are a 9-10/10 to me while Superstars is "only" an 8-9/10.

Superstars has flaws but the game kept me more than engaged for me to not notice or mind them except when it gets egregious.

 

Oh boy the frame rate drop is bad and it looks like the gane is skipping and I watched this in 2160p. Just pay attention to the background and not the gameplay and you'll see. I've seen this multiple times on different videos rather it was a Nintendo Switch, PS4 or PS5. The developers did say that the game is going to play the same on all consoles including PC. I'll be waiting for the PC version to see how that look. And I myself will be playing on the Xbox series x and recording clips as well as streaming it so I can take notes.

 

That green emerald looks the hardest to get from what I've seen.

 

Are you referring to the clouds in BI2? Looks fine to me in other videos.

PS5 - 4:33 - No Issues


??? - No Issues


PS5 - 6:30 - No Issues


Yuzu on Deck - 6:07 - No Issues


Switch - 3:35 - Stutters if there's vertical movement


I don't think this is a performance issue. There is something that went wrong with specifically that background layer that broke on loading. The other layers update fine. The effect is made worse on that IGN video since they have some God awful video compression.

Edit: fucking mobile clipboard

 

Who knows but I watched it on my TV and yes I'm referring to the clouds and background frame rates. Or it could be the video compressor from IGN. I just seen another video and it wasn't bad like the IGN video. Very few frame rate just close to none. Anywho there's definitely bugs and glitches in the game which I hope they fix.

 

Yes I think there is an issue there, but I'd be hesitant to blame anyone for it - if it's only happening once in a blue moon and was never spotted during any of the previews, I can see it easily slipping through the testing process. Unlike the final boss background issue that's always there on every platform and is very much in your face.

The bigger crime here is IGN compressing the footage to hell and back.

 

So, if a patch does release "day 1", does anyone have any idea about when that would actually drop? I believe Nintendo releases often release their patches a bit before launch, but I can't recall, and Sega could be different...

That and whether or not the PC version has Denuvo is the last piece of info I'm really waiting on. I want to know if we truly have the final OST or not here, as I don't personally think we do.

I also strongly doubt music will be patched 'after' day 1.

Also, most other issues don't seem to be bugs, but are design choices (long bosses with no checkpoints), that are unlikely to be fixed by anything but PC mods, 'if' one thinks they need fixing, that is...

 

ooh ooh ooh: "Day 1"

It doesn't look as if the internet is logging this stuff very well - I don't know how common it is to see day one patches, particularly the sort that make any meaningful difference to the game. I know Digital Foundry have been caught out a few times by pre-release patches but I don't know if these are exceptions or the rule, or whether it's something some publishers subscribe to more than others. I know Activision have shipped discs with half the game missing, but that's Activision - Japan might have different expectations.

I don't recall a Sega game being leaked a week in advance in a state that might need a patch, but I don't follow their modern output too closely since I'm unlikely to buy games at launch. My hunch is there won't be anything, and then in a week or two's time we'll have the "we're sorry there are issues" spiele.


The approach to Sonic Origins was to wait a year and release a Plus version. You might see that.

 

Day 1 patches are relatively rare for Sonic games, yeah.

It's funny because you'd think Sega, with how they release their games, would embrace such a practice.

 

Sonic Orgins Plus got an update to fix the blurriness, sound for the game gear games and other things. But there's still other things not fixed in the game including that music in S3&K.

 

They are fairly common for Switch releases, it seems. A lot of Nintendo IPs do them (Pokemon, Xenoblade, even Mario, ect ect)

But the "day 1" element is a bit misleading since they often come online 'before' release. With SEGA, I'm less sure of what's been done before.

Again, there is evidence of there already being musical differences between versions, so I highly suspect some kind of patch is coming. Though unlike a lot of other launch titles, there's relatively few bugs in terms of gameplay that I've seen so far. The game is not by any means broken... there are just some design choices that people may not like.

 

Oh my God, THIS. There’s a reason I’m getting it exclusively on the Nintendo Switch right now - to avoid THAT. Sure, I’ll miss out on PC Lego Eggman, but that’s a small loss comparatively.

If it doesn’t have Denuvo on PC, maybe I’ll snag it later down the line. Maybe.

 

Watched the Super Sonic final boss and it's honestly kinda hysterical how much of a pushover it is compared to even the main campaign's late game bosses, let alone the two final bosses for the main campaign. I can't tell if it's because they for some reason chose to actually stick to historical boss design conventions for Super Sonic (instead of changing his mechanics so it would be in line with the other bosses); or if they probably did plan to do something much more overwhelming but ran out of resources. But where you had previous Superstars bosses giving you extremely small windows to attack, no rings whatsoever, and attacks that seriously hampered your controls or point-blank killed you; this boss has zilch of that. It's very much another Super Sonic fight in the same style as Doomsday and Egg Reverie, except arguably easier than those.

Though as someone else said earlier, the entire evil dragon component feels completely shoehorned into Superstars, it's there simply because someone at Sonic Team felt the series had skated by long enough without a Super Sonic exclusive boss finale against a giant flying evil lizard. It's actually really surprising IMO that Trip doesn't even fight the final boss herself with her Super dragon form (with or without Super Sonic). Again, wouldn't be surprised if that was the original intent, but it got axed to help get the game out the door.

 

The Switch leak which is what most of us been playing has the bad Sonic 4 tier FM that feels like demotracks that would later be fleshed out. It's hard to explain but I think starting from Golden Palace it's full FM. My hope is that that's going to be patched because good lord is it dreadful on a modern 60 dollar game.

 

So far, Denuvo has not been confirmed on the storefront yet. Some people suggest that it doesn't work with unity so that could lead to them dropping it.

The EULA says it's possible, but they've never waited this long to confirm it before either.