...Sonic Heroes? Sonic Heroes's style was "Sonic flies horizontally to the left or right and latches onto a rail if one happens to be there." =/
There were two drawnbacks to SA's grinding system. The first was the rail not being a target for homing attack, or if it was, it didn't work well at all times. Once you get hang of how rails work, it's not hard to either land on them or grind them up (most obviously, Final Rush). Sometimes however, missing them still happens. The second was the inability of checking if there was a rail to the direction Sonic/Shadow was jumping to, while holding the crouch button. If there was, they (most of the time) switch the rail correctly, but if there isn't they give a small jump anyway, and if over a bottomless pit, they're dead. After many of these, the player eventually learns to let go of the crouch button when a normal jump is required but it breaks the speed they were building up before, not allowing to use the momentum at it's highest peak. Heroes' grinding system was... peculiar. The rate of switching fail was bigger than SA2's, I never got the hang of the balancing and there was no momentum or physics associated to them whatsoever. The player can travel forwards and backwards just by facing that direction and pressing crouch, while in SA2 such thing was not possible. Grinding up a downwards rail required some skill (and luck sure) but in Heroes this was a casual affair. I can't remember about 06. It's been awhile since I played that one. Unleashed was cool about the switching (certainly eliminated all the problems SA2 had) but except some well used level design choices (I loved the Mazuri one), there was no skill involved when dealing with the rails themselves.
O_O Really? you need to homing attack things to accurately land on them? The things had a huge collision radius, you couldn't miss them. I support them not being homing attack targets. You don't have to get go of the crouch button to jump, just slide your thumb over abit. You can do the button switch quickly enough to not lose any momentum. Besides if you were balancing and crouching in-tandem and balancing perfectly, you were probably moving fast enough to not make a difference in whether or not you jumped.
I know that. I said the game was generous about the landings after all :P. However, it's hard for the average player to navigate from one side to the other at high speeds, especially with a camera that refuses to cooperate at the most inane times. It also lowers the amount of freedom and increases the chance of failure, even for a skilled player. I'll give an example, you seem to be familiar with the game, you'll know what I'm talking about. I can't remember which check point is right now, but in Final Rush there's a rail with six item boxes, two of them on the rail and four in the air. To catch these four, Sonic must jump out of the rail and home attack his way back to the rail. The last box is so close to the rail that not moving Sonic at all will make him land successfully on it. However, you're sacrificing time and if you try to gain a small burst of speed by using the home attack and then try to land on the rail at the same time, Sonic will probably miss it. Maybe skilled players manage to do this without hassle every single time. I'm not that skilled but I managed to A-rank all the levels and I still miss that rail sometimes. The rails have a large collision radius sure, but that doesn't make a difference if you can't detect where the rail is, either by time restraints or camera issues. Parts such as these become memorization instead of skill, but making the rails a target would eliminate this. The way it's done however, you need to do what they want you to and when they want you to. It eliminates most of the freedom as well. That wasn't what I was saying. The problem isn't with the switching, but when you want to jump out of the rail. If you're crouching, Sonic/Shadow will try to switch rails and therefore jump just slightly, when there is no rail to the side to jump to. I don't fall for this anymore, but again for the average player, this is just irksome because these switches are over a bottomless pit and if they screw up they're dead. Maybe it's a matter of being user friendly, but the classics punished the lack of skill by dropping the player to a lower route. Failing didn't meant death, which is fine, because the opposite is damn annoying. SA2's rails were all about skill VS death. It wouldn't be so bad if most rails weren't above a bottomless pit. That's why Heroes rails are so annoying. They are over bottomless pits, therefore fail equals death, and there's no fun using them.
I still think that's a lack of skill, not memorization issues. The camera is nowhere near as bad as everyone makes it out to be, although SA's camera is better. That being said, those rails are supposed to be challenging and even if you miss them half the time you can still land on the ones below. Besides, if you make the rails homing attack targets you get the 06 problem of "I need to leave this rai... DAMNIT WHY DID IT SUCK ME BACK IN" You said its hard for the average player to time those jumps... that's the point. The average player is meant to just stick to the main rail and not try something that looks tricky from a distance. Hell the really advanced player knows it's faster to balance perfectly the whole time and use a homing attack entry on the main rail, you just fly through the whole thing. This is simply not true. The only time they do short jumps to switch rails is when you hold the control stick left or right while you press the jump button. Yes it has killed me before but usually because I was too quick in pressing the analog stick when I should have jumped first. Besides, at least this rail system gives you alot of variables and interactivity as opposed to sonic unleashed and sonic colors where all it is is a switching fest/space filler. There's no balancing involved, no speed preservation, nothing. Its just a 'look how cool sonic is!' sequence.
There is no rail below. The example I posted isn't the ARK roundabout rails. Maybe I wouldn't be so picky if it did had one below, or platforms. Most of the time where there are tricky rails, there is no other option. It wasn't about going the fastest either, it was about options. That homing back to the rail is something to think about however. I didn't remember it being a problem in 06, but I don't recal much of that game anyway. The average player is supposed to have some kind of appeal to improve his skills, at least get all the emblems. If it's that tricky and even skilled players prefer other methods or rely on memorization, there is no appeal besides stubborness to improve. It's exacly that situation I was mentioning, sorry if I wasn't explaining it clearly. Why would they do short jumps if there is no rail where the direction the control stick is facing? Wouldn't this be something easy to program or am I mistaken? Oh yeah, I'm not saying otherwise. The rail system in SA2 was fun. From Heroes onwards it was not fun. That coupled with them all being over bottomless pits made the rails a pain.
Eh, I've never been a fan. It's just another lame effort to make Sonic more real-world and less cartoony, I'm glad they've stuck with the tradition super sneakers since Heroes.
I have to disagree, I think 06 did that more than the Adventure games did, and it was a horrible blend. SA2 felt like a mix of Sonic and PSO.
'06 was moreso, but looking back at SA2 there was way too much realworld blandness going on than I could handle.
Swapping Sonic's shoes for soaps was the equivalent of giving Mario a red Nike baseball cap and having him wear it backwards. It was an absolutely fucking stupid deal and I'm glad the series has been free of product placement since.
Like, I didn't mind it in that game but seeing it in Heroes, Unleashed, Sonic 4, etc would be extremely out of place.
Yeah his soaps werent exatacally the pinnicle if realism, they were super unreal with a huge golden grind flair on the inside lol I genrally thought they were a great evolution of his shoes, and really the only reason I can think for them not comming back is literally some kinda shoe design document between soap and sega that sega are just to cheap to buy, or cant be bothered. Atleast they got into Sonic X, thats pretty much the only thing that gave Chris any real value XD
It was horribly dull in R&C. And Sonic isn't supposed to be dependent upon time attack either! Edit: And this.
Oh come-on, tis nothing like that, but as far as product placement goes, I can agree with you, but only on the billboards everywhere There is FAR less 'epic' product placement out there XD this is just great footware evolution, that coulda happened naturally, dosent look particually forced, nothing like slapping Nike everwhere, no logo's on the shoes, just awsome'ness. To be honest though, id kinda like a whole thing with Sonics shoes, like an unlock bonus for ingame models, all the shoes he's ever had, use your fave, whatever XD
