Perhaps, but only in instances, not as a general rule. Something I wish more Sonic games experimented with was the use of speed to solve puzzles. Not mind-benders, per se, but I think occasional shifts in level design might be memorable where instead of A->B, momentum is used in a way that creates its own challenge. For instance, maybe an area of an act consists of nothing but a vertical wall run with no badniks or rings to refill your boost gauge, with perhaps an occasional platform or pole with which you can redirect your momentum in another direction; your ultimate goal is the top of the wall, but you don't have enough boost to get to the top in a straight shot. Presented with this, you have to move forward until you run out of momentum, at which point you either fall or have the presence of mind to switch directions to regain speed in a downward direction, hit a pole Sonic grabs onto and spins around, maintaining his newly-regained momentum and redirects it back upwards. Concepts like that work within established mechanics, can create unique gimmicks, but don't break the flow of the level since your objective is still to get somewhere as quickly as possible, but the mechanics can also occasionally be re-purposed.
My main issue with the boost game is Sonic Team's game design restricting the player of control all the time. Everything that the 3D boost games do, Rush does better. In any of Sonic Team's game since Unleashed, Sonic has extremely limited aerial movement - Sonic can't change direction whilst in the air and doesn't respond much to directional inputs. This was never the case in any of the older games or even Rush. There's also the issue of scripted ramps, slopes, springs, boosters dash ramps etc that remove control from the player. Again, there's no such problem in any of the 2D games. Even Generations Classic suffers the from the same lack of control because it's the way that Sonic Team design their games. The Boost games rely so much on the spectacle of throwing Sonic around at insane speeds and launching him into the air that very often there's very little for the player to actually do. And with the way that everything is scripted, there's no variation. When you launch off a ramp, either you you reach maximum height or you don't get any air at all. It's really jarring when it feels like Sonic was going too fast or too slow to reach the height that he does. It's bad with the Classic gameplay, and worse still with the Modern. If they want to recreate the fluidity of the Rush games for the Modern/Boost gameplay where physics actually matter (whilst making necessary improvements that go without saying...), the games would improve tenfold. I doubt Sonic Team's abilities in this area though. Scripting is has been their crutch since SA1.
Well yes, the boost formula isn't perfect, but I'd say out of all the ones they've done so far it's the one that has the most potential. That's why I'm glad they seem to be going back to it. They can reform it and make it better, same goes for Classic Sonic's gameplay. Better than throwing it out and starting over again.
When I was really little, before I knew anything of emulation, I used to imagine what Super Mario Bros. 3 would be like if Nintendo ever made a computer version. I came up with a control scheme: Mouse left/right - Walk (or run if you move the mouse faster) Click - Jump Double click - Fireball In my infinite wisdom as a three-year-old, this seemed like a perfectly good control scheme. As an adult, I now know this would work far better for Sonic than for Mario, with his more limited moveset, as well as that it still wouldn't be playable at all.
I assume you're not a fan of Sonic CD, with its vertical level design that emphasizes backtracking. :v: As for the Boost gameplay itself, I do like it, but I think it's fundamentally flawed. I love the idea of a constantly GOIN FASD Sanic speed game, but the control scheme is so unnecessarily convoluted (not difficult to grasp, just unnecessarily convoluted), and it too often for my tastes feels like a QTE rollercoaster suspended over a bottomless chasm. Recently picked up Race the Sun on Steam, and it more successfully gives me the sensation that the Boost games are trying to give me (high speed twitch based gameplay), with a control scheme about as minimalist as the Genesis Sonic games, and the challenge comes more from learning how to move than from pressing the right combination of buttons in the right sequence at the right times.
I'm not the biggest fan of the Boost gameplay myself to be honest. I'd rather much prefer Sonic's gameplay from the Adventures with a fine-tuned Parkour system from Lost World. That's not to say the Boost gameplay is bad but I just think it works best as a handheld game rather than a console game. I would like to think that it's pretty costly to make great looking levels AND to make them long enough when you're Boosting almost all the time. I guess you could say that Colors tries to fix this problem but making the Boost more limited but you rarely need to Boost in that game to begin with. I mean, Colors has more 2D levels than 3D and those 2D levels aren't really built with speed in mind and plays more like the most barebones 2D platformer you can get, it's like playing Sonic 1 but with almost every act being Marble Zone. But enough of me bashing Colors, I'm just not a big fan of that game even though I can agree that it's still a well-designed game. Whatever gameplay style 2017 is gonna be, I just hope that's well-made.
I love SA1, wasn't really a fan of SA2 for some reason. I like the way they designed the stages, although they had their flaws I felt they designed it specifically for Sonic's controls. That is the sole reason I go back to something like 06 or Adventure 1 before I go back to like Unleashed or Heroes. My point being if they can perfectly design stages for the boost formula that mixes speed along with a few thinking puzzles, just take my money. I don't want to judge mania before it comes out but that game also looks very well designed in terms of classic Sonic's controls.
The corridor-like layout of the boost levels is what bugs me the most. They're basically narrow hallways for Sonic to boost down with little-to-no elbow room (outside of a couple areas like that one plaza in Sky Sanctuary in Generations, but the controls are so slippery there you can't really look around it that well.) The Adventure titles didn't give you too much more space, but it was enough to feel less like a Crash Bandicoot title.
As far as gameplay is concerned, I honestly don't think much of Colours. It was the first 3D Sonic game where there wasn't at least one aspect of it that was near-universally panned. But it's dull. Very, very dull. I honestly can't get my head around why the game is still so revered, at least within the fanbase. The majority of the game is 2D sections made up of flat blocks with the wonky aerial movement I mentioned earlier, and when it does occasionally become 3D you'll be doing nothing but running forward in a straight line until the next 2D area. Most of the time, the Wisps were poorly utilised too. Either you use them in the specific spot that's design for them, or they're utterly useless. That's not how power-ups are supposed to work. Maybe I'm too hard on the Modern series? I just don't think that any of the games live up to potential that previous 3D games like SA1/2/06 showed, and are far too overrated.
I like Colors, even if it's pretty basic as a platformer I had a good time with it. It tried to hard to "slow" the game down so that the small bits of speed feel more entertaining, and the platforming is some of the most monotonous of any platformer. But I think the wisp make up for that. They give the player cute little means of bypassing the boring platforming, and making all of the dull segments more interesting. They even have a second incentive by allowing you to access new areas through their usage. They don't get in the players way, in fact you never even need to use them, but using them is pretty much the only way the game's actually going to be fun. They're not really powerups to me, more like short, inconsequential changes in gameplay. They trade the qte and mini games of the other boost games for something that at least requires some thought before using them. SA1, conceptually, would probably make for a better game, but Colors at least is well made and a larger majority of it is fun to play. I'd rather have a well made, average game, than an interesting, broken one. That's probably why it's gotten as much praise as it has.
OMG, thank you. I feel the exact same way. I don't think I've ever told anyone until now. I feel so liberated!
Fiddling around with the stomp attack does wonders during the platforming sections in Colours. I wonder if that's what Sonic does at the beginning of the teaser.. Blue Blood mentioned bad scripting: Without the scripting, it would have been much harder for us to run through loop de loops. This said, I wouldn't mind less scripting and more difficult obstacles if it's for the sake of having proper controls. Yes > but I kept bumping into walls. Something I don't have to deal so much with in Colours/Generations.
Splines help Sonic get around loops easily in 3D. I'll accept that. It could be done differently, but limiting Sonic to a set path through loops does help to prevent the 3D controls from becoming too cumbersome. But that's not what I mean about scripting. I mean stuff like this: http://youtu.be/aDFeZC4J838 That's an extreme example, but it's what happens on every single slope, ramp, loop, spring, dash pad and speed booster in ever game from Unleashed onwards, including Classic in Generations. Sonic is automatically accelerated to a set speed and reaches a set distance, even if it doesn't match the speed and angle he approached at. Here's Generations running the "no automation" mod: http://youtu.be/ULSwpyIyPs0 Notice much differently Sonic reacts to ramps compared to the vanilla game? It's fluid, particularly ad 00:43, where he's not automatically forced to land on the swinging platform.
Oh, that's easy. I remember that time. We were two games away from what was not only the worst, most visible Sonic game in the franchise, but also one of the worst known games of all time. The game after that was Unleashed, which wasn't enough to wash the taste of bad games and even worse fans from people's mouths, despite being a beautiful looking, fun game in hindsight. Everyone pointed to the Werehog, like a target painted on Sonic's back, and said, "Look! See! SEGA will never learn not to make garbage or shit up a decent game!" Oh, that reminds me. It was actually three games, because of Secret Rings, an even more offensive game. Then, right before Colors came it, we got Sonic 4, which started a completely unrelated but more spectacular shitstorm. Then finally came Colors, which defied all expectations by being surprisingly decent, in that there were no obvious flaws. No Werehogs, no ridiculous on-rails control scheme, no friends, no orchestral masterpieces on keyboards, nothing. Just Sonic, some anthropomorphized wisps, exciting music, and some nostalgic 2D sections. None of that stopped professional game journalists or fatasses from panning the game, but the majority saw it was a breath of fresh air. All that being said, I agree. That's why I only played Colors once--twice if you count the DS version--and I played the Adventure games at least twice, if not more. For all it's pizazz and trinkets, Colors is kind of a dull game. The only zones I really would feel like replaying are Planet Wisp and the final run. It relied on what worked, or what most people liked, in Unleashed and added some bells and whistles in the form of Wisps, all while giving themselves a break and having a stronger emphasis on 2.5D gameplay.
That was incredibly stupid of Sonicteam/Sega. I personally was hoping for a return to the Adventure style of games, but we're not going to get that. I just hope this game is less boost to win and more platform to win. Of course, this will require that Sonic doesn't handle like a car at slow speeds.
Colors was liked for a number of reasons. It had a great soundtrack, it looked good, it was aesthetically unique, it only involved playing as Sonic, and it took the gameplay aspects that people liked from Unleashed. Unfortunately it's also Marble Zone the Game with the block platforming. But at the time it was the first time in a long time that it felt like "Hey maybe you guys have something here. It's a not shit base, shocking." And while I'm not saying that Sonic Colors was a masterpiece of level design, I will ask, what made Sonic Adventure 2's level design so great? Sonic Adventure 2's "good" levels also boiled down to variants of "hold up," and then you're bogged down with 2 other unrelated gameplay styles and a plot so bad they probably ripped it off a fan fiction website. And what potential did Sonic 06 show? The boost formula doesn't need to have all the automation, it can be improved upon. But at least it's something. The Adventure formula, IMO, sucked. They were identity crisis platformer games that consisted of romps over bottomless pit abysses. If we had an Adventure game that had only Sonic levels that were all designed masterfully I might be singing it's praises, but from what we've received from the Adventure games I'm just not seeing it. Hell Generations takes on the Adventure levels were far more interesting IMO. More paths to take and more places to go. But hey, why not both? Why not have a game where Sonic can boost, but gets more speed by rolling down a hill (I don't get sliding, I'll never understand why they don't make him roll anymore). Remember Seaside Hill Generations? That was a pretty open level with lots of places to go. Have more of that. EDIT: I'm actually playing Sonic Adventure 1 right now, and I find it funny that this game controls great when you're going slow, but it is impossible to control when going really fast. Meanwhile the Boost games control kinda like garbage when you're going slow, but they control well when you're going fast. Now if only they could be combined (I think Lost World tried, but that game ended up doing neither right sooooo...)
A lot of the times the Adventure 2 levels were also "hold up", true. But it at least felt like you had control. Some of the later levels had a lot more than just hold up, like Crazy Gadget. And do the boost games really control well when you're going fast? I feel like you essentially have no control when you're going fast in those games. I wish we could go back to the Adventure style, but maybe have a "boost" powerup. Also, yes, no more sliding. Sonic rolls.
Haven't played neither Generations nor Colors in a while, but I can't say that the boost mode controls all too well. Jumps are difficult to time, and more than often I slam right into the corners corners. I really need to compare them directly some time. One thing I remember for sure though, is that I died many cheap platforming deaths in all of them^^"
