Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

I loved the game, but the last reaction (Radial Highway) was a little poor and felt like a return to the old Sonic game of little iffy controls and cheap deaths.

 

I really can’t identify with the idea that Frontiers has terrible controls. It has issues, sure, but going back to Sonic Generations after having played Shadow’s portions makes that game so difficult to play now. Sonic had basically no turning circle between Unleashed and Frontiers without having to rely on a dedicated drift move, and it doesn’t even work in a game that’s built around it. Generations can at times ask you to manoeuvre with a precision that just isn’t reliably practical with the way Sonic handles, something I feel is almost never true of Frontiers. I remember being shocked by certain moments in Frontiers (usually while boosting on walls) in terms of how tightly Sonic could manoeuvre, and Shadow Generations only leans into that further.

This isn’t surprising, really. Sonic Frontiers needed to have good handling or the cyloop just wouldn’t have worked - never in a million years could you do something like that in Generations. I would assert that Shadow Generations wouldn’t handle as well as it does had Frontiers not first provided the foundation and used its divisive sliders to almost certainly collect data on what people actually want a Sonic game to feel like.

 

Frontiers has terrible controls. At the very least, everyone should be able to agree that Frontiers 2D's controls are the worst in franchise history.

 

I don't agree. Lost World exists.

Frontiers Open Zone controls stink with default settings but fine tuning them makes them acceptable than the previous entries that aren't Adventure. Not that it matters because how automated the Open Zone objectives are and the alternative controls for Cyberspace.

 

Last World had bad controls but the 2D controls in that game are a 10/10 compared to Frontiers. The 2D controls in Frontiers are some of the worst controls in any platformer ever made.

 

I don't think you've played many platformers if that's your claim.

I've said my piece.

 

I don't get how anyone can say Frontiers had terrible controls myself

 

Frontiers' controls are dogshit but it takes 3 minutes to install a mod that makes it actually fun to play so I don't really care personally

 

I implore people to play Bubsy 3D and the CD-i Zeldas

 

I certainly don't think Frontiers 2D controls well but I would say I can generally make it do what I want. It's like...I have control, Sonic moves predictably when you're used to it, but it feels bad to do things. So I don't know how to quantify that. Forces Classic Sonic is the opposite case, where he's smoother than 2D Frontiers (though admittedly not by much) but I feel like I never have a damn clue how exactly he's going to move when I make him do anything.

I can't say I think Shadow Generations feeling okay is because of slider data though, because they would have to have noticed that people overwhelmingly prefer Sonic to be able to turn as much as he fucking wants to when boosting and they still made it suck in the stages anyway (and frankly it's only passable in the open zone). I don't know what the point of "gathering data" is when it's only going to be relevant to the hub world and the part where control is most important still has the shitty stiffness we haven't been able to shake since Forces.

 

I played Bubsy 3D when it first came out, long before it became an internet meme. It's not in 2D, as you might remember and note from its name! I think people really are underestimating how atrocious Frontiers' 2D controls are.

 

between Frontiers, Shadow Generations and Superstars there's definitely an attempt to rethink how these characters should control and funnily enough the end result is the reintroduction of Classic/Adventure era elements.

I like how Shadow turns his head and looks in the direction he's skating, that's another thing they haven't done since Adventure 1.

This is true and I'm sure the cyloop is what encouraged them to refine Sonic's turning circle.

I can't say that Frontiers controls perfectly, Shadow Generations is an improvement but idk, something still feels missing. I think there's still a level of rigidness that needs to be smoothed out.

I know it seems like a nitpick to complain about animation styles but it really does make a difference to how your game feels to control and gives characters a sense of weight. I'm really interested to see what their big follow up to Frontiers will be, I think they need to ditch the bad habits they've built over the years. I'd be disappointed if the next game was just more of the same.

 

Honestly I don't have much negative to say about Shadow Gens' controls, for the most part he feels and (most importantly to me) looks smooth. Only issue is the air boost effectively being nonexistent, yeah there's the Chaos Spear tech but I dont like having to rely on advanced tech to make up for something that the character should already be naturally capable of doing.

Regardless, big improvement from Frontiers where Sonic mostly felt good to move in general but his animations were so jerky and some of his moves had very awkward momentum shifts and halts that it ended up making an overall janky feel. And of course Cyberspace controls were complete dogshit, no idea how Sonic Team ever thought that was ok after all the effort they already put into the open zone controls.

As for how they compare vs Sonic Gens, I wouldn't complain if the turning was a bit more like in Shadow Gens and the jump had a bit more height to it, but other than that the controls work with what the game demands of the player and there weren't any instances where I wished the game had different controls

 

It's funny because 2 years ago almost everyone agreed that if Frontiers did ANYTHING right, it was that they made a Sonic that was extremely fun to control.

But then again, 2 years ago Laura was making 3 to 5 posts a week about how Frontiers was nearly irredeemable in all aspects. I don't know why anyone would think that would change or that you can use words to change her mind, when it's clearly been set and will not bend.

 

Speaking as someone whose opinion is more or less opposed to Laura’s (though I agree cyberspace controls are pretty shit): You’re being a miserable git, you know that?

At any rate, to elaborate on my opinion some more: I’m talking specifically about turning arc in the open zone, but I do think that’s very important to game feel, especially for Sonic games, and I maintain that Frontiers walked so Shadow Generations could run (heh).

 

I don't recall Lost World's controls being significantly worse than any other game in the series, though the thing that modt infuriates me is that in basically every game with these 2D sections they make Sonic slower and stickier. Given that the whole appeal of the 2D sections is fewer degrees of freedom and better visibility of upcoming obstacles, the 2D sections should always have been faster than the 3D ones.

I think if Lost World stands out it's mainly due to designing the spin dash as just a slightly worse version of the boost. Without the boosting, the 2D controls almost always feel awful, irrespective of the game.

 

I think Sonic's turning arc was good in Frontiers and I appreciate the effort put into making that feel good to control but idk if I could ever bring myself to say that Frontiers was "extremely fun" to control. His aerial control is godawful, there's no real sense of flow or momentum to his movement, his punches bring him to a dead stop and overall there's really nothing remotely interesting about moving Sonic from point A to B. It's not like he has any particularly robust movement abilities or options beyond just boosting.

Sonic's turning arc is the only saving grace of an otherwise bland and boring moveset, so bland that they sprinkled automated sequences everywhere so that the game can take control away from you and play itself lmao

 

No one likes these Forces-esque moments in Cyberspace, but at least they let you do this:


Which felt like a game changer to me.

The Drop Dash sucked big time, though:


I'll never get tired of posting these clips.

 

Frontiers controls like total shit.

The reason ShGens feels miles better (despite only seeming slightly different) is because they cleaned up a lot of what was under the hood. Smoother turning, tighter air control, snappier acceleration, less herky-jerky deceleration, the Homing Attack doesn't rattle the screen and pull you to a full stop, air drag isn't a total speed-killer, the slightest bumps in the geometry no longer send you flying, and you no longer glue to the floor when you're not supposed to. All around major improvements.

And they had enough strength in their convictions to not leave it to the player to decide how the game's physics should work. I feel like the fact that they put that in Frontiers was a telltale sign that they didn't believe in their own work. ShGens evading that (beyond allowing you to tweak your decel speed) shown a lot more confidence in their decisions. Which is good. Because ShGens feels good to control.

 

You still glue to the walls (as we chatted about before), but yes, Shadow's a lot better than Frontiers in terms of default controls. They only had one hidden slider for de-acceleration I think.

How would they have collected data on Frontiers's control configurations though? Are they proven to be sending diagnostics?