Tails had great character development in Adventure 1 and 2. His character hasn't grown at all since then and now they're making him just embarrassing. I didn't think it could get worse than "True date", but here we are.
Is PC version going to have DRM-Whore Denuvo? By the way - Why with every part of this semi-series (I personally consider that as another part of ASR/ASRT, no matter what PR stuff is saying) vehicles of various characters are less and less characteristic? Looking on the gameplay I see that most of vehicles are just some generic "racing cars" appareance. I really liked the fact that in first game vehicles were so different (Tails in Tornado, Big on silly scooter etc). Was there some recent outburst of popularity of racing cars I'm not aware?
A couple of Japanese articles: http://dengekionline.com/elem/000/001/743/1743722/ https://www.4gamer.net/games/421/G042175/20180613135/ Some potentially interesting bits (machine translated, so be wary):
Wow. Either this is some Impostor Tails as part of a storyline, or something's gone a bit wrong. I'm not even normally that bothered by characters acting out of sorts, but this is almost tipping into Tails going full DmC: Devil May Cry "I'm your prom date you ugly sack of shit" tier. (actually, I'm suddenly into the idea of edgelord Tails, throwing the F-bomb around..)
Dialogue like that can only mean Ken & Warren are back. Why does Sonic Team keep on using them? I know Sonic Team weren't the best at story writing, but their efforts were better than these two. I suppose to be fair, Ken & Warre's overall writing isn't that bad, they just don't seem to get the characters. All their dialogue seems very generic.
Based on the gameplay I've seen so far, the most conclusive thing I can say about it is...it's a game that exists. It's not really interesting at all IMO. It's ASR, but with the general Sega focus surgically removed and replaced with more Sonic trappings and some attempt at making it a teamwork-based racer that I think doesn't really make up for the changes they've done with the way they're handling it. TSR as a whole to me also feels more like Sumo working under another group's design brief (either Sonic Team themselves or some other executive Sega group), rather than something like Mania or the ASR games where the developers has the lion's share of creative control over the project's direction. Sumo may have done generally solid games and I doubt this will be outright bad, and of course, there is still probably a lot more of the game they have yet to show (though with the way Sega's PR/marketing team runs these days, I do have doubts about that). But as of now, I'm expecting this to review fairly average (low to high 70s), and --contrary to what seems to be popular belief-- I don't think doubling down on sonic is going to net it more sales (see how sonic game sales have historically declined as of late). Actually never thought of that, but yeah; wouldn't be surprised if that's the Pontac/Graff duo's work with those lines. "True dat."
Tails has really suffered under their regime. They just treat him as some sort of sassy internet nerd who tries to be edgy with outdated lingo. It wasn't so bad in Colors and Lost World, but Forces was jarring and this new racing game seems to be worse.
If Pontaff are on board, suddenly the thought of going full Weebery and importing the eventual Japan release doesn't sound so bad... if just to get a bit further away from 'Sonic: Adult Swim Edition' :v:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woEiPxRhu8E New footage shown off at E3 Yesterday. Gameplay starts at 8:30. I gotta say, I really don't like the racer quips. Not only is it distracting, but some really don't match the character who is saying them.
Sonic games have been pretty good as of late adding character shut up options. I'm hoping this game is one of them as the dialogue is kinda garbage and really doesn't add anything to the game. But I think the game looks kinda fun. I look forward to seeing more.
Definitely needs that character shut up option. I've only seen a few previews and I've already heard a bunch of them repeat. "Back in business, thanks!" "That blur is me!" :v: (That's not even getting into the more obnoxious stuff.) I don't know if any of this was explained in the commentary: The video shows off how the ranking system works - it builds up a bar based on points gathered from each team member's placements. You get a score from how you play in the race but it doesn't look like that's factored in. Counting the points doesn't look too bad and I can see what they mean about team ranking, but again doing it that way looks like it could frustrate a few people with how much potential teammates have to screw you over: 11 minutes in a blue Eggpawn gets first place but its team still lost overall because its teammates came 8th and 11th, while Sonic's team came 2nd, 4th and 6th. At around 24 minutes in Shadow's team wins but the orange Eggpawn team came very close to beating them (by 4pts, which looking at the last few seconds of the race changed right at the end) - if those Egg pawns came a few spots higher it would've beaten Shadow's team despite two of its members taking spots in the top 3 just because Omega sucked. Same race: Two of the blue eggpawn team placed higher than two of the orange eggpawn team members but lost out (by 4pts) because the 3rd blue pawn was bad and the 3rd orange pawn was good. If you're going to be matching up with random people online with this game mode it better have an active ban system or something if all it takes to spoil the fun is someone dicking around AFK.
UI needs some work - there's way too much going on there. "Eggpawn Orange" and "Eggpawn Blue" are their own teams, so they're probably not playable. I'm kinda disappointed by that, but at the same time it's an extra slot for Team Eggman (assuming that's a thing).
I'm assuming that many Eggpawns means they're placeholders for characters they don't want to reveal yet. And knowing Sega, they'll still all get leaked before release.
My fear is that the team aspect takes the kart racer out of the fun party vibe into a super competitive one which will make playing with a group of friends pretty much mandatory if you want to perform. 1 v all pits everyone against one another, but a team has to both fight other teams and support one another. A shitty player or dumb AI can really ruin your day despite you doing nothing wrong. It's an interesting gimmick for a kart racing, sure, but at this point this looks like it should have been a separate multiplayer mode and not the entire focus of the game.
I think the team mechanic solves a major problem with kart racers. Generally speaking, the biggest threats to your performance are the player in front of you and the player behind you. In a 12-player race, everyone from 2nd to 11th has two major threats. 12th place only has one threat, and this helps them stay in the race. However, 1st place also only has one threat, and given that the person in second is twice as likely to be hit by someone, that threat becomes smaller and smaller as their advantage increases and increases. Furthermore, 1st place no longer needs to attack anyone and can keep weapons for defence. And then, once the top two players cannot reach each other with items, the player in 1st has no danger of being hurt by items and with decent speed tech cannot be caught; the process then repeats with the player in second. Keeping the player in first with the rest of the pack usually requires OP unavoidable items (the dreaded blue shell). But this can make the result of a race feel much more luck-based than anything else (it all depends on how many blue shells appear to lower players in the item roulette). The team mechanic is an alternative solution to this problem - instead of one player pushing ahead and hogging defensive weapons, the player gives up their defence to push their teammates ahead. The player in second can prevent the first from gaining too much of a lead by requesting items to help out, or alternatively can catch up as a team using slipstreaming; and even if they don't catch up, they can secure the win by hindering the performance of the other players in the team. Of course, it doesn't solve the problem completely because when the whole team gets in the lead everyone else is fucked, but it's a start.
