S3&K tends to be the game(s) I found most boring of the 3. It's hard for me to say exactly why. I know I didn't like the soundtracks and artstyle as much as the others, and this tends to be a bigger thing for me than it should. Maybe this could be seen as the turning point of when they started to not "keep it simple, stupid," that led to the Adventure series with a clusterfuck of characters and game play styles and not enough polish, except Sonic 3 had polish and a reasonable amount of character choices. I think it more had to do with some stages feeling more tedious than anything. I guess I kinda liked Angel Island zone. I found Hydrocity Zone boring. I found Marble Garden to be boring and it's boss tedious to control. I found carnival night to be annoying. Ice Cap was fucktons of awesome. Launch base was meh with some fun bosses. Thought Mushroom Hill was boring and ugly, though I did like the season changing in Act 2. I thought Flying Battery was really fun with a lame boss. Sandopolis was meh. Lava Reef/Hidden Palace were pretty cool. Sky Sanctuary was pretty awesome, as was Death Egg. Doomsday was cool at first but later just becomes an unwelcome gameplay change. The thing is, I am having trouble exactly pinpointing why I don't like the levels I didn't like... Except maybe Marble Garden and Carnival Night. Also, this.
Somehow, when I was playing with a friend, we were able to jump Sonic and Tails up and down enough to slip Sonic through without pressing up and down. Woo!
First, saved onto my computer. Second, THIS PART OF THE LEVEL. I'm such an idiot. I never got angry at the game, but I did get two time overs before going online and figuring out the barrel. I've heard people say they did it on their first try and I've heard people (and seen many videos) express their dislike of the barrel in great detail. I would just like to know why they thought to keep that in the game, is all.
But, see, the way it's set up, it's not really paradigm shifting. Yes, Knuckles is a big addition, but he also came at the very very tail end of all of this. Sure, WE know that Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles were two halves of the same game, but that doesn't matter to the outside world. Stop thinking like a Sonic fan for a moment. Sonic 2 to vanilla Sonic 3 had three major additions: The Instashield (worthless unless you spend time figuring out its nuance, but the game never asks you to do this and provides no context to learn) Elemental shields (actually somewhat poorly utilized; the fireshield is only useful in one instance) Giving the player control of Tails' flight ability (the most important change, but Tails is still just a supporting character to Sonic's spotlight) The spindash is crucial. It's something all Sonic games had for a good solid decade. I cannot imagine playing a 2D Sonic game without it. But the improvements Sonic 3 made largely did not stick. Bubble and Fire shields were excised, and outside of an awkward appearance in Sonic Advance, the instashield did not resurface until Sonic Generations. Tails' flight was more of a foregone conclusion sort of thing - you'd expect that with a little more time, it probably would've been a part of Sonic 2. So outside of the lightning shield, nearly everything vanilla Sonic 3 contributed to the franchise was almost immediately forgotten. Nor were they really missed, ultimately (within reason). You add S&K on to this and yes, the ability to play as Knuckles does change the game a considerable amount, but by this point I would argue that it did not matter. People who were getting sick of Sonic games were probably not terribly swayed by Knuckles - I've certainly heard my fair share of people on gaming podcasts like GiantBomb and Retronauts literally say that was exactly the case for them. I doubt they were the only ones. I know it sounds like I am attacking S3&K, but as I said, S3&K is my favorite of the franchise. I just like to try and consider outside perspectives - and these are ones I have heard with my own ears and can verify do exist for the reasons I am explaining. That's what this thread is about, right? Answering why more people belove Sonic 2 over games to come later?
I'm curious as to why you say this. To me Tails having flight was gimmicky at best, and I don't like to throw around the word gimmicky. It didn't really add anything to the game other than being able to skip over entire chunks of a zone or being able to reach a few certain areas that are difficult to impossible to reach with other characters, just to nod "Yes, we thought of you, Tails players!" I didn't see how this really added to the game, aside from a feeling of rebellion when you aren't even playing parts of the level. It was just slow and something that was easy to get over and say "Yeah, I'd rather just run through the area and play the damn game." I mean, yeah it was fun and the entire design of Tails had you asking "Why can't I fly as him?" all through Sonic 2, but I don't see how the change was important.
In my best Jemaine-from-Flight of the Conchords voice: "I think sometimes you hear what you want to hear". Offence has nothing to do with it, and I don't know where you got that idea from. My post was just a response to points in yours, illustrating my lack of understanding of what you've said. I see that you eventually decided actually to reply with more than one line, which is what I was looking for! I can't say I agree fully, but I have a much better understanding of your position and find good logic in some of it. And hey, you might have a point that I'm just "thinking like a Sonic fan" (oh god I hope not)
Regarding the barrel - I can't understand how people never ended up figuring it out and took years. Admittedly I did first play the game on Mega Collection but it was still my first time then and I didn't have any problems. I jumped a few times, saw it go up and down, stood on it and pressed some directions and it worked. It's hardly Zelda style puzzling but I suppose it would have helped had Sonic and Tails had some squatting animations or something...
Good for you and all that, and I think I figured it out quite quickly too :v:, but I'll bring up the usual objection that people have to that: aside from curling into a ball, the vertical directions usually have precisely no physical effect upon the character, so it's not totally unreasonable for players simply not to even consider using them for reasons of movement. I definitely won't say that it's something cryptic or difficult to think of in the course of a little experimentation, but I can't go fully to the other extreme and say it's obvious either. Honestly, maybe this balance of plausibility and implausibility makes it a genius puzzle! I like to think the creator lurks on forums just looking for people's tales of woe and chuckling to themself.
I think the CNZ barrel would've been a LOT easier had they given some kind of clue... as SpeedStarTMQ stated, an extra animation would've been nice. Just something subtle to tell you, HEY, this does something... keep trying to do this.
I always wondered why people liked this about Sonic CD. Sonic's movement is very unsuited to backtracking, especially in a speed platformer environment where you're timed. I can get a lot of the rest of Sonic CD, it has wonderful abstract design and bright colors everywhere, along with a great soundtrack, but the level design just feels... weak.
I almost feel as if the reason Sonic CD's level design is, at times, all over the shop, is due to the fact that the developers couldn't devote a lot of effort to just one layout per level. Rather, each level has Past, Present and Future iterations, so perhaps level layout efforts had to be stretched across those three versions, and thus why they had less time to fully flesh everything out.
Not everyone gives a damn about the time bonus. I only cared about my time in Time Attack mode, and even then not by much. I had more fun playing with Time Travel than I did trying to beat the clock. Also, I'd make the argument that another member did that made a lot of sense. Sonic isn't as much about speed as he is momentum manipulation, and you could do that plenty. Either way, I never found myself bored with Sonic CD, and I'm not sure I agree with the complaints about the level design.
Just a couple of Up/Down arrows would have worked quite nicely. =| I remember being able to get past that barrel without knowing the "secret", most times near the time limit... But it might be possible that I just made it because I inadvertently pressed Up or Down when I was getting tired of jumping. Has anybody ever tried to demonstrate that it's indeed doable just by pressing the Jump button? I've seen Tool Assisted Speedruns do crazier stuff, so perhaps somebody could give it a try.
At least one of the barrels works by jumping as I've done it before myself with Tails, but there's a few isn't there?
My problem with the barrel was that when you jump on it it moved, and you would think that if you jump properly you'd be able to get through the gap. Now, if it didn't move at all when you jump then that'd make it much more clearer to see when you accidentally press UP or hold DOWN. Why they left it in? Probably because the whole staff already knew the "secret" and once you know it it doesn't seem that much of a secret.
I never knew the up and down trick, I always persevered until I timed my jumps correctly to get the right momentum to get in under it. It was much easier if you had the bubble shield.
First time I ever beat the barrel was with my dad controlling Tails by timing our jumps. Man, that was hard. Again, near the time limit once we got through and got time over before the end of the act. The second time I worked out that pressing down when I landed had a greater effect, then my dad figured pressing up/down was the way to do it.
I tl;dr'd the responses with the exception of the first page. I find it hilarious that the most slapped together maingame of the series has received the highest of praise. This is a shit game done well and it has never been repeated. The whole premise of the game and significant levels were left out.....but it goes to show that if you start out with something extremely badass in the first place, as long as you don't have an enourmous amount of fuck ups (that anyone can notice), it'll still be alright. Sonic 3 fucked up in the wrong places.....it's a better game overall, but it's all about mistakes and timing. Sonic 4 came out too late. We had moved onto bigger and better things....it certainly didn't help that it had competition against all the great fan made games out there. This wasn't even a thought in their head in 1992.
On the topic of the barrel, there was one time where I played as Sonic and my friend played as Tails and I had him keep jumping on the barrel until it was up high enough for Sonic to fall into the gap. I spindashed into the gap, and vola finished! xD I didn't know about the up, down trick until I joined Retro. :v:
