The Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Megathread

The title screen animation isn't supposed to be smooth, it's supposed to be choppy—just as choppy as the animation it's imitating.

 

It's a damn shame that Johnny must've been too busy to attend this event along with Jun, he would've done a much better job. And then this guy couldn't even pronounce his 'bandmates'' names during their introduction. He seriously must have made everybody in the audience a few levels dumber. He was obviously listening to the prerecorded song over a headset and trying to sing along. This fucker belongs in a karaoke bar, and I mean the kind in the bumfuck southern US filled with drunken rednecks singing nothing but "Some Beach" and "Margaritaville."

I've got half a mind to record myself singing Reach For the Stars, a capella, just to see how it compares. I've got nothing to do for the rest of the day since my coffee-slave shift is finally over, so I might as well squeeze that in somewhere between playing SADXBLA, ordering pizza, and guzzling all the alcohol in my fridge.

As for Sonic 4, just to stay on topic, I love seeing Sonic's running feet more often. That alone makes the game feel less like the (2nd and 3rd) Advance and Rush titles everyone's comparing it to. Title animation kind of irks me though. I don't know if it's the video's quality or what, but after he opens his mouth and swings his fist into the air, it looks like it skips straight to the still image with the tween-hand, as if there's frames missing.

 

That's stupid though. It's not like they used only 4 frames for Sonic's running animation in game. I get what they're going for but they could have at least made a smooth transition for the title screen to make it look nice

 

I don't get why they used a pre-render for the title screen rather than the in-game model.

 

That's another thing I don't get either. It's not like the model is that bad, and it'd have been a hell of a lot easier to animate than the pre-render thing they have now.

Not only that but the in game model doesn't show the eye ridge as much.

 

Don't bother listening to it. Save your ears

 

No, I'm going to have to stop you right there. While it's nice that they made it roughly imitate the Sonic 1 title screen, who cares? It still looks choppy and rather cheap. Like the music, it seems whoever decided that this game should be totally "retro" thinks "retro" means low-quality. Uh uh. That's not how it should be.

That was quite an underwhelming performance. I'm glad I wasn't there, because that was just a pathetic rehash of stuff we've already seen, topped with the inconsequential cherry of a few static frames added to the intro screen and a less than impressive on-stage performance of the game's music. I expected something a little more lively and animated rather than cardboard and lifeless.

It seems like SEGA's confused about what hardcore gamers/Sonic fans want out of this game, or how a retro Sonic game would best look and sound. The music's fine, sure, but it could do with some more instruments and perhaps even a little remixing. The graphics are kinda like shiny plastic, at least as far as Splash Hill Zone goes, and there's no need for a plethora of boost pads and automatic acceleration mechanisms in every stage in every zone. Clever usage of velocity and original eye-candy action is fine, though; lack of player input is not.

As for the running: is it just me, or does Sonic go way too fast? We seem to be running into a weird Unleashed phenomenon without the availability or necessity of a boost button, where Sonic goes too fast and then stops too short. I guess you could say it's smooth and fast, but I find it somewhat choppy and abrupt. This whole unveiling thing worked a lot better at SGC.

Yeah, you know what? This lackluster presentation tells me this game would benefit a lot from some kind of meaningful development delay. There is no set release date, so it's not like you'd be legitimately pissing people off. Make it a late December release at least.

Maybe not competing with Colours simultaneously will be better for the game, too, eh? I don't see what's wrong with this suggestion.

 

And yet Capcom made Mega Man 9 all pixeltastic for some reason. Hm.

No, seriously, the Sonic 1 logo had fewer frames than the Sonic 4 one. Dress it up all you want, I can still count them on my left hand. Let's not confuse intentional throwback for laziness just because a few other aspects of the game may have jumped the shark rather unsuccessfully with that.

For the record, I consider the title animation a charmingly successful retro-nostalgia throwback. I consider the music an unsuccessful attempt at one.

If I were to pick another throwback detail that charmed me, it would be the way the Casino Night badnik swaps his shield from hand to hand when he turns around as a visual play on the days of sprite-mirroring.

 

It's a simple Jekyll-and-Hyde syndrome that happens to lead to poor execution. On the one hand, they want Sonic 4 to look updated and all high-quality with the static and plastic prerendered 3D graphics and modern 2D game mechanics. On the other hand, they want Sonic 4 to look and feel retro, so they deprive the the number of audio channels and available instruments to an admittedly accomplished musician, and they skimp on the animation. What? That's totally wrong. The difference between Sonic 4 and Mega Man 9 is that the latter went all the way in one direction and did it justice. Sonic 4's trying to do two different things and does it less than well.

Fair enough. It's not worth complaining about, but it's noticeable enough to point out. It would look nicer with more frames of animation to smooth it out.

That's fine too.

 

That guy sining, I couldn't help but imagine some sort of label on him that simply reads, "Just happy to be working".

It's almost like he forgot how to speak English or something.

It falls flat because New sonic can't display emotions.

It's jerkiness reminds me of this one time in FF VIII where the hatch on a boat closes and the closing animation is about 4 frames. I did a double take because watching it briefly made me think I was playing a SNES game.

 

I was enjoying the video until that random guy showed up...

Anyway, the new running animation looks cool and shows up nice and quick like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. I like that a lot.

As for the new title screen animation, it looks pretty neat and captures the classic feel in my opinion. The frame where Sonic has the crescent shaped smile surprised me since new Sonic doesn't usually show that much emotion. Is it just me or is Sega making Sonic look a lot happier for 2010?

 

Game still looks like crap. The title animation is better than before but it's still god awful looking, static imagery just looked out of place for a full render of the worst Sonic design ever opposed to sprites. Nice to see they fixed the amount of time it takes for Sonic's wheely feet to kick in but the level design looks virtually unchanged. They really didn't do a damn thing during the delay.

 

>Lost Labyrinth and Casino Street 2

 

The delay has ultimately amounted to the following:
1. New Lost Labyrinth act
2. New Casino Street act
3. Several very minor changes, the vast majority of which which are just cosmetic.

It may not be 'confirmed' yet since we don't know all the changes, but I'll be dammed if I'm wrong. The changes are all good ones so far, but none of them really tackle the issues that actually hinder the game in a big way. At this stage I'd actually be glad to see a second delay because however frustrating it'd be to wait even longer for the game, it would be great to see them really try to get it right.

 

What are you talking about? They worked hard!

 

Your use of the word "ultimately" for a game for which we don't even know the release date is a bit unjustified. While they could've made more changes than they did, they may still have another two months of development time left.

Also, we don't know how old this particular build is, only that it's newer than the E3 build.

EDIT:

Yeah, because SoA's PR department are making this game.

 

That's just a joke, you know?

 

Do you really expect to see anything else of substance? It's a guess, but from what we've heard and now seen from those little clips in the TGS video I think I'm right. The main hindrances to the game don't really seem to have been addressed at all.

 

The main hindrances may already have been addressed. The main hindrances may be addressed in the coming two months. The main hindrances may never be addressed. We don't know.

The TGS video may have been produced two months ago, using an old, only just post-E3 build. It might have been produced the night before, using the latest build. We don't know.

Nothing is certain right now. Sure, little has changed in that build. But how old is that build?