The Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Megathread

You're talking to a big James Bond fan who loves the shit out of most of the films in a series that has gone through huge changes over the years. I've loved almost all of them, and hated only Quantum of Balls.

Change isn't the issue here (at least not for me), but Sonic 4 being shit most definitely is.

 

As said 4 or 5 times, what I was saying wasn't addressed at you. I know your reasons for hating the game are legitimate.

Wasn't talking about you either. Apparently you still don't understand what I'm saying. I didn't mean "you" in a literal sense, I meant as in for those people who don't like certain things because they're new.

THIS is what I was talking about:

That's the post I was responding to, remember?

 

Sure, you can say certain aspects of Sonic 4 don't interest you, so you're not interested in Sonic 4 -- but, I'm mainly targeting those who say certain aspects of Sonic 4 are going to make the gameplay shitty, when they've never experienced the changes. Like, in your gay sex scenario, sure, you can say it's not of your interest, that's fine, but don't say taking dildos in the ass makes the experience terrible, when in reality, you may love having a giant dildo in your ass.

 

I don't really remember anyone saying that they "hate the game only because of the name". What I remember, is people saying that the name is stupid, and makes no sense as the game is now - and that's why it bothers them.

 

I've heard plenty of people saying (quite recently too), if this game had any other name it would be okay, but since they named it sonic 4, it's doomed to mediocrity. Not to mention the quote from SOTI I just mentioned, obviously he has reasons for hating the game beyond those complaints, but complaints about the separate boss act and HUD are only because of the title and past games in the series, not because of them actually being issues with the game.

 

Its doomed to mediocrity regardless. Its the fact the the "follow up" to Sonic 3 and Knuckles is being doomed to mediocrity that gets people.

 

I like the graphics of the game, the physics are not totally shit (they are bad but they don't make the game unplayable).

Come on, don't you find this to be attractive?



Well, I do.

 

You can say its doomed to mediocrity, which I'll agree with, but it's all opinion, really. There are people who think it's great and people who think it's terrible, but there are also people who only think it's terrible because of the things they think sonic 4 should be, rather than actually disliking the game. You act as though everyone thinks the game is terrible, but you're forgetting the game still has a very positive response outside of retro.

Edit: And I've gotta be honest, I think this looks really fun.

 

I find it to look like half-assed CGI from the mid 90's. I can't find it to be visually appealing at all. When examining the actual game tiles, they mirrored the tiles, that's why the shadows come from like 8 directions. They couldn't even render them properly making it so they don't actually tile normally, so they had to mirror them to make them match up decently. It's all just really lazy and unappealing to me.

I was expecting them to at least draw nice 2d art like this.



Or this.

 

Here comes my post, so I've filled the quota for the month.

Whatever your opinion is on the beta of Sonic 4: Episode One is, let's not forget that it's episodic. Episode Two will probably be design with the changes in-mind from the ground-up, and will be better because of them. I don't want to be overoptimistic, but I don't know how much they would change the game if they received the criticism in the beginning of development versus how they got it now.

Let's hope that nothing really changes if you skip an episode.

 

Come on I'll play the game not analyse it on each second of my life. I didn's say it was perfect, of course it can be a lot better but that doesn't make it unappealing ;p.

This.

 

I have to admit I actually agree with Polygon Jim on this one: the visual style has been my biggest complaint since day 1.

Drawing all the character sprites, level tiles, and backgrounds as 2D images? Fine. Rendering everything in 3D but keeping the camera at the angle of a side-scroller? Also fine. Mixing the two? Not the greatest effect.

This isn't the era of Donkey Kong Country and Vectorman where we're only using pre-rendering because technology just hasn't caught up enough for such games to be full-3D and still keep the aesthetic. If the original sonic games were trying to look 3D, then shouldn't a continuation of those in the modern day be using actual 3D instead of this schizo aesthetic they've got now?

 

I'm sure I said this like 8 times before, but I hate every one of you.

 

Wow! It's bad enough that you're even taking ratings into account to begin with, but comparing favorable reception for a relatively recent game over a rerelease of a game everyone's already played 20 years ago and acting like it actually means something? Do you think before you post?

Where are these people? SOTI's the only person I've seen in this thread with this sort of mentality, and yeah, his complaints are pretty pedantic in the grand scheme of things, but dragging the entire thread into this over one individual's opinion and acting like it's some huge fucking problem that concerns us all isn't the brightest idea. He's obviously not dismissing the entire game because the HUD is wrong, it's just one bonus discrepancy in lieu of a growing pile of bullshit that deserves a mention all the same. I doubt he would have treated this game any better had it been titled Rush 3.

It's not a matter of change or taste we're dealing with here, but a game that is objectively flawed in ways you wouldn't have to play to judge appropriately. There are some design conventions that are universal among games, and deliberately constraining interactivity for the sake of simplicity or appearance is never a good idea under any circumstances. Pretty much every new addition to this game is guilty of that.

 

You are aware that New Super Mario Bros (and to a lesser extent, NSMBWii) did the same thing, right? In NSMB, Mario was realtime 3D, but most of the enemies, and all of the level blocks were prerendered. And the games looked great.

It's not even a matter of mixing prerendered with realtime 3D. It's a matter of doing a sloppy job at it.

 

So the torch replacing most of the minecart in Act 2 constrains interactivity?

Heyoooooooooh!

Look, just for the record, I agree with glem3's sentiment that Sonic 4 not being constrained by the standards of the Genesis games doesn't automatically make it a game worth nobody's damn. Incidentally I can use the same premise to suggest that Sonic 4's got significant room for movement. And there's no end to how much support that argument will get here.

And yeah, I can also see how much of Sonic 4's problems consist of general design-related missed opportunities. The foregrounds and backgrounds could use a little more life and immersion of the 3D variety without sacrificing the 2D perspective. Hell, LittleBigPlanet is restricted to a 2D perspective, but they're able to move toward and away from the environment. Not necessarily what I'd ask for in a Sonic game, but that'd be pretty damn interesting.

The game still looks and sounds fucking gorgeous, though. The music could use some embellishment, but I still really enjoy the soundtrack as it stands*. Still plenty of room to wow me in the physics department of course.

*'Cept for the boss music, it can die in a fire.

 

On that note, I love Sonic's model animation. It's extremely fluid and expressive, and the watercolor palette helps. I can't wait to see how Knuckles and Tails look when fully animated in stage.

Seriously, has anyone thought about that? Much less the prospect of Super Knuckles and Hyper Tails. There's gotta be Super Emeralds in this series. There's just gotta be.

 

Of course, but I didn't say I was keen on how those games looked either. The Wii game does a much better job of handling it, but I really didn't like how the DS game looked. You've got a point though.

Part of it is probably just a conflict with my personal taste, really. I must admit that Iizuka interview in which he played up that they were using the outdated technique in Sonic 4 like it was some sort of stunning display of artistic magic didn't help either.

 

I found the pre-rendering a bit off-putting at first, since it seems like such an archaic process today and it felt like a bit of a cop-out, but honestly, I think they had the right idea in taking that approach; what's the sense in using live 3D when a strict profile view offers little to see in respect to dimensionality? Pre-rendering an environment sacrifices a superficial degree of parallax for a dramatically more polished result, with the added bonus of circumventing hardware limitations and freeing up avenues for a multi-platform release. It makes perfect sense to me.

And for what it's worth, I think they did a decent enough job with the art, at least good enough to the point where I feel like ramming my cock into the mouth of everyone who thinks that 3D MHZ video is a drastic improvement to stifle the nonsense. There are some rough patches in Splash Hill, but Lost Labyrinth and Mad Gear look pretty fantastic to me.

Both of those games look like shit to me, though. Granted, the Wario game had some exquisite sprite animation, but the foreground art looks like something from a flash game with the background resembling an anime still ran through a posterization filter.

 

I've gotta say, MegaDash, you've got the most well thought out posts I've ever read. Stop it, it's not right, not here of all places! (kidding)

Anywho. I'm not exactly too big on the whole pre-rendered 3D either. It looked good back then because the limited palletes, at least in Sonic and Vectorman's cases, made the sprites look not like 3D, but just very detailed. Donkey Kong Country on the other hand... well, no, that looked 3D.

Were it up to me, instead of using Pre-rendered 3D, why not just do 3D? It wouldn't look bad, or at least may look better than what we have in my opinion. Then again, I don't find the pre-rendering all that bad either.

Using the "cartoony" style as seen in Wario Land and ABAHB would look vastly out of place here. To my knowledge there has never been a Sonic game to attempt this style, and would look too different unless it was some sort of game based on the cartoons.