Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

I can't believe this, into the bin it goes.

 

Not enough movement options, really. If I have to deal with fucking Cyberspace turning again because they refuse to give it options in the levels I'm actually gonna lose it.

 

Oh trust me, it's been my biggest peeve with this fandom for years. Concepts and potential are nice and all, but it sure would be nice to have a well polished and structured game from a franchise as iconic as this one. I can get that from other franchises, but wanting that from Sonic is asking for too much apparently according to some people.

It's fine, I've slowly accepted that these games aren't for me anymore and just take what I can get. I hardly even associate with the fandom at large anymore because I just don't vibe with it. I got other franchises to indulge in if I want to play an actually good game, instead of the rough draft of one. And of course, there's Sonic fan games.


Shadow Gens looks like mindless fun and it tickles my 2000s nostalgia. It's probably not going to be that good, but it's fine.

 

Oh my fucking God, finally in-game imput configuration. No more of that awful PC config tool that never saved the changes I did for whatever reason.

 

It's not too grandular, if you catch my meaning.

 

They put the "de-instant the deceleration" slider in the game to pacify me specifically. I'll accept. Begrudgingly.

 

See, I reject this popular motion that it was Colors that brought a lighter tone to the series. The shift had already started with Unleashed and the Storybook series. Even if we disregard the Storybook games for being spin-offs, Unleashed was deliberately silly, cheesy and cartoony. It was the game that gave Eggman a sassy robot sidekick, featured Professor Pickle, and gave Sonic a "saturday morning cartoon" chocolate-loving cowardly sidekick. It also had hammy Pixar-esque humans, silly bouncy Gaia monsters that you fought as jazz music blared, and the cartoony Werehog with stretchy arms. And have you seen the tie-in Night of the Werehog short?

The difference is, Unleashed didn't let the silliness completely consume the plot and characterizations like Colors did. Sonic and Eggman didn't get flanderized into deliberate meme baits, Tails didn't get derailed into a snarky bro (granted, it was Unleashed where his yellow streak started, but aside from that one scene he still acted like before). In terms of plot it, had an actual one, with occasional serious moments (mainly the ones involving Dark Gaia), but unlike Sonic 06 or Shadow it aimed at an adventurous feel, rather than edginess and deep drama. I say this as someone who thought Unleashed's story was meh (though certainly better than Sonic 06, Shadow and the Pontac/Graff games).

Of course, most of the common public saw the Werehog and passed up Unleashed, chalking it up to another cringe attempt at edginess by Sega. There is also the fact Colors received decent reviews while Unleashed was lambasted (primarily for the Werehog gameplay), giving them little reason to try it and judge its tone from first hand experience.

 

So we had seen Shadow's C, A, and S rank animations (And some variants after the Biolizard fight/when he gets a Black Arms McGuffin) but now we've got a look at the D rank animation too. Very nice and expressive. As for how people are managing to get D ranks, well people just really suck at playing the game.

 

Of course they suck. It's not even out yet.

Hmmm, but honestly? I'm pretty sure I got an E rank when I beat OG Biolizard for the first time. The Biolizard can be a tricky one to beat.

 

SA2's ranking system has a mind of its own, really.

To this day, I've never seen anyone get a rank above E in Metal Harbor on their first playthrough.

 

Theres no ranking for the boss fights but i do agree that boss is pretty tough on your first go and the last phase still kills me

 

Oh, right! There is no ranking.

But I swear it would have been an E rank. ^^

The Biolizard boss fight does a few things I found confusing at first. Moving grind rails (the green tubes along its body), you need to *land* on it in order to land the final hit (nothing indicates that this is possible), the purple energy balls it shoots in the air don't look like they can be avoided by somersaulting (they even grow size-wise), the water can sweep you away... I found that challenging, honestly.

Metal Harbor, on the other hand? A cakewalk. =P

 

That's because the SA2 ranking is based on point total rather than just time, on a first playthrough most people miss out on the point bonuses gained by grinding and getting to the top of the rocket, getting hit and loosing rings doesn't help either. For some reason metal harbor specifically is really tight on getting an A rank even if you do get the point bonuses so I usually just go for a perfect ring bonus to get it. I really wish we returned to the SA2 ranking system though, it was much more interesting than beating the level as fast as you can being the only option.

 

Unleashed had a pretty decent ranking system too. You basically couldn't get hit once most of the time.

 

To this day I still don't understand why Lost World didn't have a ranking system using points. The levels are practically made for going out of your way for score, all the high routes are detours while the fastest path forwards is running straight ignoring everything, the enemies themselves have score pop up above them when you get a high combo on them, the score itself pops up mid-level sometimes, and the end-level capsule brought the Sonic 1 jump scores back...! It feels so obvious that the game would be better for it, to the degree that interacting with as many enemies and rings as possible on a tube would be outright encouraged and maybe even enjoyable, but it's just... missing...

They didn't even bother including the score tally for levels in the online leaderboards, either :\

 

Not gonna lie, I've always hated Colors' S Rank requirements. Seriously, there were so many stages where I was like "Oh come on, what did I do wrong?". Turns out I didn't find enough Red Rings. Oh, sorry so caring so little about those things I completely ignore the ones not in my way. And don't even get me started on the bosses. Seriously, this is already the lamest set of bosses in 3D Sonic in my opinion, but replaying them makes me so bored it feels like I'm playing Classic Sonic.

I've actually only ever gotten all S Ranks in Forces. I would try to do it in Unleashed, but you can't even pay me to go through Eggmanland again, I never finished Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic 06 is Sonic 06, Sonic Gens is a very unremarkable game to me, Rise of Lyric doesn't have Ranks (I did 100% it though), I wasn't really interested in ranks while playing Lost World, and while I did S Rank all of the Cyberspace stages in base Frontiers and even unlocked the Cyberspace power boost, the stages in TFH are so atrocious I didn't even bother with them after I tried probably 2-3 of them. This game was not made for precision platforming, and TFH proves that to a t.

 

Here's a look at rerecorded Omochao lines. due to Gens having complete button remapping, they've been generalized. For reference, even using a keyboard on PC just acts as if an Xbox controller is plugged in:

(Ignore the mod I have on )

 

That's definitely Erica Lindbeck's voice, but a very different delivery than she gave in Team Sonic Racing. Less of the super heavy voice filter too, which is nice.

 

The voices are super similar and I can't really tell them apart. Plus I'll have Omochao disabled or will avoid him so he might as well be mute in every game except TSR. And who besides me even plays TSR anyway?