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

I finally reached the head-slam part...and got killed straightaway. I hope it doesn't need many more hits.

 

Just two at that point I think. Good luck surviving long enough to land them.

 

@Starduster I appreciate the solidarity haha!

I still have to ruminate on my thoughts on this game. But I will say this: I hate the bosses and they drag this game down to 5/10 for me. I cannot stomache playing Trip's story. I just cannot endure those horrific bosses.

I still enjoy playing the levels in time attack despite their faults. But I need to think more about the level design. It's certainly not as good as the classics and @Palas is correct that it's nothing like CD.

It's a game I enjoy because I'm a hardcore Sonic fan. But I would never recommend this game to anyone, which says something.

I will say I'm bitterly disappointed by how lame the story is. Real potential at places but just completely squandered. I'll say much more on it later.

As an aside, I really do think the game is disgusting visually. I like the character animations a lot. But I think it is visually repellant. Worse than Sonic 4.

 

It also doesnt help that they're not well-arranged for the style and use a significantly more limited set of percussion samples than, say, S3. It feels less like homage and more like parody, and I say that as someone who holds the controversial position of liking the "classic" tracks in forces

 

I know you said you give up, but in case this tip makes a difference: + - You can use the dash to escape a black hole when you're caught by it.  

With that said, yeah, I agree with a lot of your critiques. I personally like the graphics enough (though some animations are lacking), and I enjoyed my run of the main story, but the game really sets itself up for a poor last impression if you're gunning for the obligatory Super boss.

 

I have a mid-tier laptop from 2018 and just got superstars… I’ve only played the first 2 zones but 99% of the time the game runs smooth as butter. There’s a tiny bit of lag when the zone title cards appear, and when the boss animations play, other than that the game feels great. Playing mania controls in 2.5d is a dream come true!

 

Does the PS4 version run well? I'm wary of buying it on PC unless they remove the DRM/fix the EOS integration, and I haven't found any 60 FPS footage of that specific version to judge. I assume it looks and plays fine, but I wanted to make sure.

 

Bruh these are seriously the worst bosses in Sonic history. It's like they took all the most frustrating aspects of Sonic bosses and multiplied them by 100.

 

Made it through Press Factory Act 1 with 6 emeralds.

So far I really dont understand the frustration with difficulty and bosses. I one-shotted every emerald, and I quite like the bosses so far, actually. They remind me of Sonic CD more than anything, which I dig.

 

I don't think the bosses are super-hard (found out how much they suffer when you use the emerald powers), but you have to admit you do a lot of waiting around for an opportunity to hit them compared to most classic games. Think about how much you had to stand around watching that gorilla boss hop back and forth, where his head was plainly in-view, but even if you damage-tanked the electricity, it just wouldn't damage him.

 

Definitely. I'll see how I feel about them on subsequent playthroughs!

 

I'm only at Press Factory, so I haven't seen all the bosses yet, but I'm curious. Would it be possible to mod the game to make the bosses always vulnerable when they're reachable?

 

Don't know, but I'd rather just add a checkpoint halfway through some of the later bosses.

 

Neither Trip nor does the knock off Spryo dragon have a purpose in the game plus the story isn't fully explained. How did Trip pull the dragon egg out of her butthole? And what happened to Fang because he had some of the best boss fights even though they're long and draining. I don't think I'm going to finish this game.

 

So I've preordered this game so you'd expect me to have finished it by now but alas, I'm still on zone 7 or 8. This has to be the most mid Sonic game ever made. The perfect 6/10. First two zones were great! Beautiful and fun, the music was great too but then followed a cavalcade of uninspired nothingleves where I was simply going through motions because there is nothing interesting about them. Allegedly the game's last zones are fun again so I will come back to finish this game this weekend. So far, however, this is a moderate disappointment.

 

Bro, what are you talking about? That range falls along what the big mainline console games outside of the Genesis have hit over the last 20 years based on the numbers we do have publically available. Frontiers and Heroes are the only one to have gone past 3 million. Are you trying to convince me that almost every Sonic game hits that number "eventually" when one of the best reviewed and publically received games struggle to even hit 2 million? Everything else is pure speculation since we have no concrete updated numbers provided by Sega. The highest estimates we have available for a spin-off/handheld title is Sonic Advance at 1.21 million. I can't even find solid total or near total numbers for the spin-offs that don't just fade off from report charts, but they sure as hell don't end up reaching 2-3 million.

KaiGCS already mentioned that the only numbers we have for Mania were its over a million milestone statement made before its physical + release. When it hit the actual 1 million milestone, we don't know. How far above that million did it hit? We also don't know. How much did + sale at retail? We don't know. Vertette also raises a solid point about the console sales. We've already seen examples of the overwhelming differences between console sales and PC sales through other reports. Here's some of Capcom's titles for example. Using the 703k "estimate" and applying the Phoenix Wright Console vs. PC performance, that would land Mania (and JUST Mania, not the physical + release) at around 2.4m units sold. Mania would be right next to some of the top performing games in the franchise post Genesis. We don't even know what the actual numbers are for Forces, the direct "Sonic competitor" of that year. All the data out there is full of unreliable estimates since the numbers are bloated due to the game being given away through PS+.

I wasn't able to look at the thread before as I didn't have an account but after reading through it, it's just more doom posting from a wacko trying to push some sort of agenda that Mania was not a success. Once again, context is incredibly important here. Sonic as an IP today is in a completely different place than it was in 2017. It's seen with a little bit more respect from general audiences thanks in large part to the success of the films, the toylines, the comics and the new Netflix show. Mania helped regain some critical trust in the videogame front, and Frontiers is generally seen in a positive line despite the mudslinging here. Sonic Superstars is reaping the benefits right now of Sonic being relevant again. Superstars outselling Mania should not be a surprise to anyone and shouldn't be used as some sort of weapon against Mania. Mania represented far more than just a return to pixel art, that's not the only thing that made that game special. It didn't hit a cap because of its pixel art, we don't even know what that cap even is so why are you making/supporting that dogshit argument? The attempt to reach out to Whitehead and crew was made but the deal wasn't struck. There was clearly some interest to directly follow up on the success of Mania but whatever their reasons were, financials sure as hell aren't it.

 

I think he's less saying that Mania sold poorly and more that it didn't make SEGA as much money as Superstars likely will or Frontiers already has due to being a $20 title. I don't think anyone can deny it was a pretty big success, and definitely regained a lot of goodwill for the franchise, I think he's just saying that it wasn't exactly the money printer people make it out to be due to it's low price tag.

 

Based on what I know, Mania's production budget wasn't tremedously high either. You have to take that into account. Mania has also never had a price drop. It's had several discount sales, but SEGA is still selling it at full price. The game has also had numerous retail refreshes with the initial Plus, the Vanilla re-release, and the repackaging with TSR. The game is a consistent seller.

 

Beat the game fully, yeah I liked it. Just work on the bosses next time and don't tell anyone they're making "music" for a Classic Sonic game and I'd say I want Arzest to stick around!
8/10 because I feel like it

 

Pretty sure Mania did far better than SEGA expected it to. I remember that being the conversation back in 2017/2018.