Completely missed it, but apparently the full tracklists are up for both the Sonic Forces OST and the vocal tracks OST.
... I dunno. Sonic Forces' music is too good for it to be compared to Sonic Episode 1 or 2. xD And while the levels are short and straightforward, the game at least has the sense to give a wide enough camera view so that you can properly spot enemies/hazards that are coming, and not feel like the game designer is throwing crap in your way because it hates you and wants you to die. Even the homing attack functioned properly and the reticle moved fast enough so if you needed to change targets you could do so easily. Little things like that, I appreciated. Most of Sonic Forces issues aren't from outright terrible, flawed design. The gameplay just feels like a shallow, and uninspired affair. While you're able to blast off and feel the speed of progressing through a level, normal play through of the game didn't keep my fingers or brain feeling active or awake like...Generations did. The forward momentum is there but none of the challenge. The designers only did the bare bones in terms of creating their levels here. The game isn't careening you to your death on the slightest tap of the control stick or punishing you for the slightest mistake...But that's because it's also extremely easy, straightforward and automated. One problem traded for another. And while I don't mind 2D sections in the 3D stages inherently, those 3D/2D shifts are there to at least offer a break from the fast paced high speed running and platforming in 3D you're usually doing. They're like a platforming breather to make you slow down, take the level in, maybe beat some badniks, collect some stuff, and once past that, off you go. There's absolutely no point if most of the 3D is short, linear, and then abruptly stopped with 2D that's easy and just. The pacing is off. I will say that speedrunning and trying to hunt all collectibles were challenging and fun but that shouldn't be the only way this game is a rewarding challenge. There are hints of a good game here and there, with hidden gems in the level set pieces but they either get cut short or just entirely wasted. Like, some really nagging questions I have are: Why does the Egg Gate Modern Sonic stage waste the final 3rd of it's awesome level scenery and setting on a mindless QTE? Why does the Mystic Jungle stage end right when the level starts to feel good and interesting, and with another damn QTE against a snake? Why not make it an actual boss? Why does Aqua Road exist? That whole level is a mistake. Why is most of the actual 3D gameplay of Chemical Plant for Modern Sonic rail grinding before going inside and almost entirely 2D facility? D-Did they forget that they rendered a mostly 3D Chemical Plant zone four years ago they could've at least drew inspiration from?? What was the purpose of sandworms from Lost World showing up in Green Hill Zone??? When I first played it I thought they were a hazard that you'd have to avoid as it chased you from the background or something but then it just goes off and does whatever...? Any particular reason why we never fought the new mass-produced versions of the Death Egg Robos? I mean it's not like they were the first hyped to hell and back enemies we saw from the first trailer or anything... And speaking of bosses... Chaos? Shadow? Why include them and never use them? I won't touch the Phantom Ruby illusions plot point (because it's ridiculous, Metal Sonic is literally right in Eggman's garage waiting to be booted up, so why make him an illusion? Why make Zavoc an illusion? It could be easily written that Infinite enslaved him via the Ruby and boom. Same for Chaos. Shadow at least would make sense for being a fake but why all of them??), but why even have these memorable bosses if the game's not gonna use them? Oh deceptive marketing, right... Why does the Avatar never have a boss fight against the Death Crab? Hell, why do they only fight Infinite one time alone? Classic Sonic's only exclusive boss fight in the entire game is against Eggman... So why the hell did Sonic Team feel it was necessary to make it a braindead callback to the first boss fight from Sonic 1 on the Genesis? Do they think we forgot it? Sonic Team's only done it like 3 different times. When I first witnessed that boss fight in the trailers and demos for the game, I honestly thought it was first in a line of other bosses in the game for Classic Sonic to fight, which would explain how easy mode it was since.. Hey, it's an introduction for any newbies coming in, of course it'll be easy! And then I saw it showed up like in the middle of the game as the sole boss fight experience for Classic Sonic. Wow. The stupid, piss easy beginning of Eggman's boss fight has an incredibly good and catchy music theme you will never ever hear play through in the game proper because of how ridiculously short and easy the first stage is. Why God why was most of Final Judgment's actual, engaging gameplay the first 20 seconds of the level while the rest was a rote, by the numbers 2D boss fight where you destroy the core, avoid laser and then Double Boost to escape? Especially with this coming after Mortar Canyon. The most inspired, and well done 3D Modern Sonic level in the game. A masterpiece of action, graphics, speed, exploration, and just. A true glimpse at what the game could've been if loved and actually given a fuck about. Levels like Mortar Canyon, Metropolis for the avatar and Modern Sonic, Sunset Heights/Park Avenue, and Spaceport are little glimpses of what the potential of the game could be. For Classic Sonic, the level designs for his stages are for the most part good. Ghost Town got me excited and hopeful (if I just ignored the strange, slugish controls) and Death Egg was a great reimagining of the Sonic and Knuckles level. However, these two levels are the only ones I feel rise to the level set by Generations. The others are just good but not phenomenal. Like, Iron Fortress was good for what it was; it felt like a level from a Sega Master System or Game Gear game. Focused platforming with even a sidescroll section thrown in. But they're just. Good. Green Hill Zone in Forces compared to Green Hill Zone in Generations says enough in terms of how much breath, life, and energy went into one and not the other. And finally, why the hell are the Chaos Emeralds and Super Sonic not in the main game/story proper? This baffles me the most, because their inclusion seems the most obvious yet strangely absent. There are 7 extra stages. You unlock extra stages by obtaining Red Rings. In Sonic Lost World, by obtaining red rings you got the Chaos Emeralds. Like, it's so painfully obvious they were originally intended to be included but then got scrapped. Was it because Sonic Team didn't know how to design a Super Sonic final boss fight with the inclusion of the avatar? Not enough time? Creative burnout? The game just. Feels so incomplete. Hollow, and painfully mediocre. ...Wow, this post ended up WAY longer than I intended. Whoops. ^^;;
Forces has now fallen out of the (top 20) Nintendo eShop Switch charts entirely. Only lasted there for three weeks. Good night, edgy prince, and may flights of longboy Infinites sweetly screech "I AM NOT WEAK! URRRRRRRRAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH" to thee to thy rest. (Meanwhile, Mania continues it's steady descent at #15, in what is now its sixteenth week on the eShop charts.)
So good news on Mania's meteoric sustained performance though bad news on Forces near bombing then. Unsurprised in all honesty. I think if hardcore Sonic fans like us who exist here are wilfully skipping your game (Forces that is) as I and others have done so you done fucked up. Mania's success is much-deserved. Forces however simply wasn't good enough. Hopefully this ensures a very bright future for Mania and a potential sequel and a serious re-think about 3D Sonic moving forward.
I'd like to see actual numbers before tossing that claim around. And I mean actual solid numbers. Not sales charts without any real indicators. The only thing I've found is the Japanese launch sales which weren't promising.
It was in the top sales on the Switch shop for a while at least, so while sales might be decreasing I don't think you can say it bombed in the west.
I see your point, as in it's nigh on impossible to ascertain whether it truly bombed without hard numbers, but the signs aren't promising. Underwhelming chart positions that have nothing on Mania and a disastrously bad launch on Steam of which we do have numbers, with Forces standing at an absolutely terrible 19K. Contrast that to Mania which reached 100K in three days. I concede that we don't have retail Xbox One, PS4 and Switch performance or even digital numbers just yet (so can't know for sure) but it's honestly not looking good thus far.
There are almost always more players on console/mobile than PC, so I'm willing to give Forces' success the benefit of a doubt until the numbers are in. If even Sonic '06 could be an (initial) commercial success, it's not hard to imagine Sonic's brand power/presence pushing a lot of sales, especially on the Switch. Kids and longtime fans outside the dedicated fandom happily buy the best and worst games of the series, regardless of what the press or other fans are saying about them. That said, Forces' sales being this low on PC is surprising to me, after Mania's overnight success on Steam; 3D Sonic games usually have a broader appeal than the 2D ones. It might be a stretch for me to assume the Denuvo PR disaster from Mania had something to do with it, but I can't be the only one who passed up Forces on PC because of it. 19k after nearly a month later is telling.
I know Generations did worse on PC than every other console, but that's all I got. It doesn't seem to be doing amazing in most regards, but saying it's "bombed" across the board or at all is ludicrous.
To be fair I said "near bombed" which is based on the very disappointing albeit limited data we have. Based on hard numbers it absolutely bombed at launch in Japan though I suppose that's to be expected given Sonic is not popular there and a vastly more popular phenomenon in the West. It also did bomb on Steam. 19K is quite honestly beyond terrible. Disastrous even. You both do raise good points however. It is very unlikely that it blanket bombed on all platforms, not with the immense pull Sonic still has particularly among children, to even hit more than a million sales in even his worst games. It'd be shocking if it bombed on every platform and this is therefore very improbable. Honestly it probably did modestly well though perhaps on the lower end, still disappointing Sega overall. This is all baseless speculation without more data however. All we know thus far is it failed disastrously on Steam and had a weak launch in Japan. We ultimately need to wait for more numbers.
Well yeah, definitely - even without numbers high chart placement for a given length of time is a promising and positive sign and an indicator it did well on Switch. Many publishers are finding success on Switch and it's the target demographic for Sonic, so hopefully the encouraging signs we've seen mean it has done well on that platform. It probably did do modestly well on PS4 and Xbox One particularly with the budget price point. NPD data that's forthcoming will tell us more as that'll tell us via each SKU where Forces charted in North America, which is one of Sonic's strongest markets along with Europe. Following that we'll have to wait for Sega themselves, though I'm half expecting "SONIC MANIA SOLD MILLIONS BROS" from them in the very near future given we know that it most probably did. We might get a note about Forces' performance or even numbers when the financial results roll in unless Sega announce something sooner.
Long post incoming: I put 40 hours into this game with a friend. We got all but four achievements (the Episode Shadow ones, and the one where you need to save up 100,000 rings), so we completed all of the in-game challenges, and unlocked all Avatar parts (which means all of the speed runs, S Ranks, Extra Stages, Red Star Rings, etc). I'm sure I've commented on some of my thoughts in here already, so I'm probably repeating some shit I've already said, but here are my "final thoughts", after having really sunk my teeth into the game: • The platforming in general, across all three gameplay styles, was complete ass. Your speed on the ground, your speed in the air, and the height of your jumps all seem to vary wildly inconsistently. It's nothing you can't eventually acclimate to and overcome, but running and jumping in a platformer (ie the platforming) needs to feel consistent, and this game utterly fails at something that foundational. • Found every Classic Level to be complete ass, outside of the small moments where you could pull off some actual classic Sonic physics tricks. As assumed since the first trailer, there's literally no reason for him to be here. • Found every Boss Fight to be complete ass. At first I was miffed that Chaos and Shadow don't have boss fights. In hindsight, I'm glad they didn't bother. • The levels being short and mostly playing themselves means that the game adds up to a selection of really cheap, shallow, worthless stages. But it also means that the grind is sorta less tedious than it otherwise would be. Trying to get the best time on a level in a shitty platformer, or exploring a level in a shitty platformer for collectibles, is less shitty when the levels themselves are shorter and smaller. Less shit to wade through. So two negatives really do equal a positive. Sometimes. Sort of. • Mortar Canyon is by far the best level in general, and about the only truly worthwhile thing here; someone mods that into Generations, and this game's value in my eyes plummets from its already low position to just shy of absolute zero. • Metropolitan Highway was also nice. • Additional playable characters in the Boost levels are nice. Even if there's only one, and it's really just a re-skin; Tails was just a re-skin in Sonic 2, after all, and the very freedom to choose it instead of the default was a plus, if only a small one. • And as nice as re-skins are, at this point there's no excuse to not include more characters who actually alter the Boost gameplay slightly. Hell, there was no excuse after 2011. Generations's tinkering around with the idea of different loadouts for the Boost gameplay shows that it can vary reasonably gameplay-wise to facilitate multiple playable characters without stapling a completely different game onto its hip. Incidentally, this game's Air Boost feels exactly how I imagined a Boostified Glide for Knuckles. Different characters having different nuances to their boosts like that could go a long way. • The Double Boost is not only pointless, but it sounds like a 7 year old's cringey dream interaction with Sonic any time I try to describe it to someone: "You perform a Quick Time Event to ensure that Sonic and your self insert character high five, so that you can perform a Super Boost to finish the level, where the main theme, "Fist Bump", sang by post-grunge nu-metal band 'Hoobastank' vocalist Douglas Robb, kicks on while you boost." • Aqua Road is the comfiest level in the game, with no QTEs or 2D sections, and being part of the "Zone" with the best setting. • Avatar gameplay is actually less bland than I initially thought it would be, but was only really enjoyable when I was cheesing Imperial Tower with a Hover Wispon to get 999 rings (this is the only game where the ring counter could arguably warrant a fourth digit). Kinda reminded me of the Special Stages in 8 bit Sonic 1 in a strange way. I'd still much rather they went the route of the Avatar being a full Modern Sonic re-skin, with some slight racial variations on the gameplay. Specifically good ones, because most of the species traits were dumb and pointless. • Avatar really could have used a wider/different pool of races. Dog and Wolf? Really? • After Mortar Canyon, playing dress up with the Avatar is really the only remaining thing of value here. Unfortunately, to get the most out of it, you have to fucking grind for all of the parts. And grinding for outfits was a reasonably tolerable venture, but only because of good friends and plenty of mind altering substances. Any game that needs that kind of anesthetic to get the most out of one of the two enjoyable parts isn't recommendable. I think locking parts in a shop, rather than behind challenges, would have been a better idea. Especially in a game with this many fucking rings. At least then you could just replay what few good chunks there are, over and over, to collect 'em all. Instead, you have to repeatedly replay every chunk, in a game where an overwhelming majority of the chunks are trash. • There's no excuse for not allowing every part to be colored to the player's liking. Tony Hawk let players do it. XenoVerse let players do it. Hell, fucking Need for Speed lets players do it. • Soundtrack's okay, once you can actually hear it (turning off the radio is nice). But after you start hearing it, its charm quickly wears off. We had to listen to music from other Sonic games just to get through the grind. • The main theme plays way too fucking often. I don't care if each time it's a different part remixed in a different way. Plus, it sounds too much like a ballad about the romance between Sonic and the player's self-insert. • Dialog between characters is mostly dull. Hardly any distinct personality coming from anyone. Dialog and acting in general is mostly still Colors-cringe. • Story is dogshit. Shadow has essentially no role in a story that ostensibly would work best as his. Sonic has the chance for some development, but doesn't receive any. Tails had already received plenty prior, but has forgotten it. Eggman and Infinite have the tools and opportunity for the ultimate "fuck Sonic up" scheme, and they use the weakest versions of a small pool of prior villains to pull it off. If they're going to waste time and resources on a script, voice acting, and cutscenes, they should at least make it worthwhile. • The World Map does some lore-fucking, because of course nobody would do their homework (Green Hill is supposed to be on an island, not in the center of a large continent). If they want to waste time and resources on this kind of presentation, they should at least make it worthwhile.
