Spin Dashing is an exaggerated version of tire burnout. Not outside the realm of possibilty for Sonic to do. Jumping into a roll and somehow gaining a smaller turn radius is a stretch. That's nitpicky sure, but stuff like that bugs me.
I miss the Sonic Adventure 1 spin-dash. Not that this was necessrily intended, but you could use it as a normal spin-dash or effectively use it as a boost when already in motion.
I'd take spin dash over boost any day, but honestly I can't imagine they'd ever return to the SA1 style spin dash. It was so utterly overpowered and broken that given one little incline you could launch yourself way higher than the dev team intended. Back in my day, I glitched through a TON of walls and objects by abusing that thing. Fun as anything, yes. But very difficult to contain. SA2 and subsequent games nerfed it too the point where it lost so much utility it wasn't even that much fun anymore. For the time being, they appear to be dedicated to the boost formula.
It's also a really bad sign that this isn't going to feel like a Sonic game. Honestly, the first bit of gameplay footage tipped me off, when I saw how loose Sonic's turning circle was, and how poorly it scales with his speed. Sonic should have more freedom of movement than a 1994 Honda Civic. Sorry, detractors to valid criticism, but a good Sonic game needs Sonic game feel. It's not something Colors or SLW had at all. They felt like a floaty Mario in 2D, and Sonic Unleashed with an unfair amount of airtime (for the player, anyway,) in 3D. Platforming CAN be too easy.
I don't ever want to see Adventure-'06 styled spin dashes in a 3D game ever again until we get some real slope physics. If I'm gonna be using it to gain a short burst of speed or consecutively to emulate the boost, it might as well be like the one from the Lost World games.
Honestly, I think you could absolutely fuse the Boost and Spindash into one nice, homogeneous move. Remove the input buffer from the SA1 spindash, and give it a slightly greater initial release speed for all charge levels but the lowest one. Somewhere in between the initial burst of speed from the Unleashed boost (which isn't as much as you think, the FoV change actually fakes a lot of the speed), and the release burst from the spindash. Then, widen the turning circle, so it's easier to control, then make it so that he decelerates just a little when turning. I think that would probably work out pretty well.
The problem with trying to balance the Spin Dash in the 3D games is that if it isn't spammable or very easy to use in many situations, then hardly anybody would use it. For example, Shadow the Hedgehog's spin dash was nerfed from how it was in Sonic Adventure and SA2. Its starting launch speed was small and it required a longer charging time in order to reach max speed. Those things make people disregard the spin dash even though it can be very useful in certain situations.
Ok thats like saying Mario Sunshine doesn't feel like Mario because he doesn't control like he did in Super Mario World.
The spin dash became "useless" the moment they dropped the momentum gameplay. The Spin Dash arguably only exist as a byproduct of that play style, and as a result can only truly work with those mechanics. Otherwise, cheap workarounds must be made just to incorporate it. There is no delicate balance here, because the move has a particular function that is not being fulfilled by the design of the game. Like a lot of things in Adventure, rolling and the spin dash have been haphazardly carried over based on how they operate in the original titles. I'll commend games like Lost World for at least trying to reincorporate the move in a way that better compliments the game's style, but that doesn't suddenly mean it works. It's kind of weird how the Homing Attack is more of a series staple than the Spin Dash.
If you're able to repeatedly mash the button to repeatedly spindash and maintain a high speed, then it's similar to the boost. However, in SA1 and SA2, you can make multiple sharp turns while Sonic is curled into a ball.
Why did Sonic careen into different directions if you tried to roll him down a hill without holding forward? This happens much more in Adventure 2 then 1, but it was very aggravating. I wonder how we'd perceive boosting if it was only able to maintain your current speed and changed how Sonic interacted with the terrain (more like a marble)?
In that case, boosting would seem to be more like a better version of rolling if you don't suffer from any penalty when traveling on level ground. What would happen to the air boost? It's useful for completing the stages quickly when used along with the stomp. I have thought about a hypothetical Sonic game that uses Sonic Advance 2's boost state mechanic, but I'm not sure how well it could effectively work in the 3D space.
I dunno about no penalty. Maybe you burn more of your boost meter the slower you're going? Or rather, you burn it at the same speed, but since you're not getting anywhere if you're moving slowly, it'd be a waste anyway. While Sonic is rolling, with his forward vector predictable and the movement stick freed up, you could then tilt him and turn him almost like a motorcycle. It'd be pretty rad, actually. I personally don't like the air boost much, so I guess it'd be gone and the level design would have to change to compensate it. For that matter, I don't like grind boosting either. It's just, they both seem a bit out there really. Sonic can run really fast, sure, but how does that translate to impelling himself through the air or along a rail at the same speed he can run? It makes his speed seem like an otherworldly super power. Like a....Sonicforce.
You know from Adventure 2 to Sonic 06, I more often used the homing attack to build speed quickly than a spindash (exceptions include a spindash before grindrails in SA2). To be perfectly honest, I like the boost, and I definitely see no need to have the spindash back from a gameplay perspective in the boost game, if there's not gonna be much slope physics. But even then a well timed boost would probably do the job better. I wouldn't mind the boost animation becoming a roll every time we hit a dash pad and stuff like that though. I had an idea before that the drift could incorporate a spindash. So the drift would be like the Generations or Riders drift, but it would drag you back slightly and you'll be revving up for a spindash at release. Kinda like ya know SEGA All-Stars Racing and Mario Kart too I guess haha. Might make Sonic even more like a car, but I frankly do not have a problem with that. Out of every move Sonic has, I really felt the drift worked well with the boost. At the current state, a spindash may be just as useful as the light speed dash. (all that said, still would love a day where rolling physics are in 3D like Utopia man)
That's exactly what I meant I don't want in a Sonic game: that's complicating the controls, not improving the quality of the gameplay; if we had proper mechanics, classic Sonic skills would fit and cover anything we would need. Of course, if Sonic maneuvers worse, addtional tricks may fix those arbitrary controls, but that's degrading the game by making it unnecessarily complex, not going forward by adding new speed skills. The only real additional mechanic we need in 3D games is the homing attack for obvious aiming reasons, the rest of it is not implementing things the right way and then try something else instead of repairing their faults. I can accept a boost as a spindash that doesn't need Sonic to stop in order to activate, but that's all that should really change from one to another.
