Sonic Forces Thread

This is a good topic. Not quite as good as the Sonic 4 one, mind.

 

FTFY

 

You have to play it to get the good ending; there's also the Sky Chase bullshit in Sonic 2 (which is required to beat the game).

As for Wisps, how is that a second gameplay style? Those are powerups. Sonic Colours has one gameplay style.

 

Because they don't augment Sonic's existing gameplay. They replace it.
Elemental shields for example, retain all of Sonic's controls and movement, but give him an extra means to move. Wisps completely replace his control and movement scheme with something much simpler. They interrupt the core gameplay with what are basically minigames.

 

Wisps are not powerups. Powerups are items that make the game either easier or faster (i.e. leaf, mushroom, or fireflower in Mario). The wisps are necessary to play most if not all parts of the Sonic Colors they are in. They aren't optional powerups, they are part of the necessary gameplay.

 

Gotta agree with Lange on this one. The Wisp power-ups are so different from Sonic's normal playing style that each could serve as the basis of a completely different game. For example, here is a really rad looking game that basically looks like if the Drill Wisp was expanded upon.

Not that that makes Sonic Colours bad, but it's not like it just has one gameplay style. It's more like it has one core gameplay style with a variety of mini gameplay styles.

 

Seeing how things have gone in a post Sonic 06 and Sonic 4 world, I think we'll survive.

Spoiler

Sonic Mania will save the franchise.

 

Transformation of moves =/= extension of ones moves

Both are named power ups but behave very differently.

 

I'm disappointed in Forces and I really wanted a Generations 2, that is, a game that was basically Generations but with original levels.

Classic Sonic looks like a massive downgrade from Generations. Too hard to say with Modern Sonic; we haven't seen enough.

 

I don't think anything will reach the heights of the Sonic 4 topic TBH. Maybe if Sega announced the mythical Adventure 3, I guess. :v

And the core gameplay style doesn't really get that much focus as it is. The focus is way more on using the Wisps/mini gameplay styles than it is being a pared-down boost game.

That said, I agree it didn't make Colors bad. To my recollection they were for the most part were used for alternate routes / score bonuses / Red Rings. I don't really recall them being demanded to progress through the actual levels/game. That said, it's been years since I last played Colors, I dunno,

Lost World though is another story and it's why I'm not really enthusiastic about them returning for Forces (especially with both games sharing the same director).

 

That's fair enough. I'd still argue that they're powerups, but at least a few of them (drill, spike, and hover stand out) do change the gameplay style for a while.

There are a couple of parts where the Wisps are required on a normal playthrough.

Of course, once you've unlocked Super Sonic you can switch that mode on and play through all the stages without Wisps, with a couple of minor changes where the Wisps were previously necessary. They should've had those changes in place anyway, though.

 

Well some of those changes are just like "Spring past the entire stage since you need wisps here." Then again Super Sonic was handled pretty poorly in that game. It'd of been great, but for some reason Super couldn't double jump (made the water levels hell) and he couldn't use Wisps for some odd reason, which was a huge point of the game.

Ah Super Sonic. Lovely reintroduction, yet they screw up each time in some way. In Colors, Super was gimped. In Generations Super had that flying boost that drained rings (thank you modders for disabling those flight paths and fixing the ring drain, yikes), and in Lost World Super had bugged animations and double mouth, and save for Colors those things were fixed by modders in like .2 seconds.

 

Probably because the boost is basically invincibility while running and rings are everywhere, so adding a specific boost item rather than infinite ring charge makes it so you either have to preserve your boost or really know what you're doing.

 

See, this is where you gotta throw in the towel folks. These people don't want to have a real conversation about the franchise, they just want to throw insults and stretch for any method they can to invalidate others opinions.

News flash Timmit, you don't have to be a sales analyst to see the multitude of ways Sega has been mismanaging the brand. Why don't you try actually addressing the various suggestions I made and refuting those with a well thought out argument instead instead.

 

Okay come on now that wasn't even an insult. He's making a point that the variables involved with the sales of Sonic games go beyond the scope of gameplay features and way beyond the layman experience. He's also trying to make sure there isn't too much conflation with game design and sales talk because it's a venn diagram of very different topics with a complicated overlap. It's also not wise to use sales as a raw point about the quality of game design unless it can be backed up by argument very well.

 

I felt the insinuation was that unless I'm a sales analyst I have no business discussing the decisions Sega has made which hinder it's sales. I feel my "opinions" are common sense enough that critical thinking is an asset, but special education isn't warranted. Such as, $60 for a 2 hour game is unwise. Defining a play-style as the primary character mechanic (boost), which relies on gimmicks to pad the game. The muddling of the brand and Sonic's identity. These were three low hanging fruit for Timmit to directly respond to, as opposed to my educational/employment background. Everyone who abandoned the series over the last decade didn't need to be sales analysts to take their dollars somewhere else for various reasons. I'm trying to identify what the most obvious of those reasons are so that ideally they can be corrected. What are Timmy's credentials to refute my assertions? How valid are they?

BUT ON SECOND THOUGHT, I don't CARE ANYMORE. NO NEED TO RESPOND TO THIS. It's clear that by the time someone responds the previous stuff you say has already been forgotten, and this has just become a perpetual circle.

 

^

Like if what you described is what you want 3D Sonic to be, that's fine. I don't want to argue with you about if your opinions about game design are right or not. It's just a whole other discussion if it's going to be "this is what Sonic needs to be for it to sell well". I'm certainly not knowledgeable about sales stuff enough to have a discussion about that, and frankly I have my doubts anyone else in this discussion is either. I mean, do you know how the last couple of Michael Bay's Transformers movies managed to make 1.1 billion each? Cause I certainly don't.