I'm curious to see this forum's take on them. I'm personally on the fence about them, stuff like SA1 and 06's hub worlds are confusing to navigate and just an annoying pacebreaker, but I really like the concise hub worlds of unleashed.
It depends what type of game they’re in. I love (competently designed) hub worlds but they have to mesh well with the gameplay. They need a function.
I think I'm fine with a mix of Sonic Adventure and Sonic Unleashed ones. I don't know, I think it would give the game a good immersion.
Eh. The hubs in SA1 were a bit confusing at first, but I loved Mystic Ruins with its exploration and gorgeous environments for its time. When SA2 forgoed them I really missed having a place to chill around between levels. So I say yes, they should have hub worlds.
Give me a snappy level select/time attack menu first and foremost plz. Though, fooling around in a non-level area with Sonic's abilities can be fun every once in a while. Chaotix's World Entrance is very strange. It feels way longer to get through in the moment than it probably is. I'd probably be more OK with Station Square/Mystic Ruins/EggCarrier if there weren't room transitions every five feet. The locations themselves are distinct and nice looking in their low-poly glory. Advance 3's Sonic Factory/Zone Maps can be a little hard to navigate with the limited view but are otherwise fine. Absolutely adore the music in a few of them. [][][][] Soleanna's Castle Town/New City/Forest are very bland and boring. (Haven't played Unleashed-HD in a very long time) White Space sure is a straight line. Wouldn't mind a tad more platforming like the ending bit where you dunk the Emeralds into the gear platforms.
I love the hub worlds in Unleashed. Easy to navigate, filled with goodies, missions and people to talk to; and the 'entrance stages' are little playgrounds. The music and little things like trying the food also does a great job of reeling you into the stages in a more intimate or immersive way than the action stages allow. I just wish they didn't force you to back-track around to Prof Pickle's place to progress your quest, OR sometimes block off levels with the medal system, but those are pacing issues more than anything about the hubs themselves.
If they're done right, hub worlds can add a lot to the game. I think Unleashed handled them well. The variety of things to do and people to talk to made hanging out in between levels really fun, although I would've liked bigger hubs so I could explore a bit more. Mazuri and Empire in particular were pretty bland on that front.
I'm pretty sure making Empire City any bigger would've caused the entire console to explode (specifically PS3).
I think the only thing that made me liked the Adventure fields over the Unleashed hubs is that Station Square, Mystic Ruins and Egg Carrier actually felt like places that could exist and be lived in Sonic's world, plus actually integrated into the story. As in Tails workshop being outside the city so he could do his experiments/building there with a runway, but close to the train so he could visit Station Square. Or Amy living in the city, and having a wacky theme park, casino and freeway system. As you uncover more of the story you also uncover more about the Mystic Ruins etc etc. Since you actually spend so much time in Station Square you feel the stakes when Perfect Chaos demolishes. You can tell Sonic Team's trip to Central and South America actually helped. Unleashed just doesn't have that. Yeah, the art direction is great along with the music, but it's more like you're seeing a country's location based on a Google search then actual liveable places. So I don't mind hub worlds, but I do wish future ones would take more cues from Adventure than Unleashed.
I've got to disagree on that one. While hub worlds like mazuri and empire city i agree to some extent, locations like shamar, apotos and especially spagonia feel like places i could actually visit and live in. They just feel alive to me, I really don't understand what you mean.
I'dislike a lot of the changes SA2 made but I think that removing the hub worlds was a huge benefit to the pacing of both gameplay and story. I'm not a fan of hub worlds in general and I'm not sure what they really would add to this series. The charm has always worn off quickly for me and what I'm left with is just filler and backtracking in between levels.
What I mean is that you actually get to spend time in the Adventure locations and they mattered to the story more since they're more integrated into it. For example, Eggman wants Station Square gone to build Eggmanland, Mystic Ruins ties to the mystery of Chaos and the Echidnas, the Egg Carrier is where the first big climax happens in each characters' arcs. And while they have generic imagery to them, for example say Station Square=New York/Tokyo/SF/Mexico or Mystic Ruins=Mayan/Aztec ruins, Sonic Team at the time managed them to feel like actual places in Sonic's world. While to me those locations you mentioned is just Sonic getting to visit generic European City (Spagonia), generic Greek city (Apotos), and generic place in the Middle East. Other than Spagonia (debatably) you don't really get to spend more time in each location because of the bigger scope, which hurts the importance of the location to the game's narrative. You can change Spagonia for a city inspired by Moscow and it wouldn't alter the game, but you can't change Mystic Ruins to something else other than ancient ruins without extremely changing what Sonic Adventure is about. Of course you feel like you can visit them or live in it because they're heavily inspired by the real world locations, but they're just missing that extra step to make them feel alive in the Sonic universe. Feel like only Eggmanland achieved that, but that's not hard considering it's the most Sonic inspired location.
For the most part, I'm a sucker for hub worlds. Ever been, and probably ever will be. JAM's Sonic World and SA1's adventure fields, even nowadays, feel mystical to me. Nostalgia may be feeding that feel xD The Sonic World with their original BGMs and those houses filled with franchise goodies... The adventure fields felt liberating, relaxing, and the skyboxes felt so real at the time I kinda mixed them with real skies xD Unleashed's town stages felt more full and lively than SA1's adventure fields, but the cartoony approach to the game didn't stick with me. ST dropped it on SA2, and I missed it a lot, at the time. But I also enjoy world maps, so I quickly got to enjoy it. So yeah, I'd like for 3D Sonic games to have hub worlds, as long as they have stuff that entice players to explore, enjoy and relax a bit. Sonic Origins's 3D islands with depictions of each stage's location is also a good way to play around, but it's a lesser good to me.
I didn't like SA1's adventure field when I was a kid because the game doesn't do a very good job of telling you where to go, and much preferred SA2's method of just giving you a backstory dialog when you started it up again. That being said. I really appreciate the hub world in SA1 now as an adult. I like the immersion into Sonic's world. I would like to have something like that again in a Sonic game as long as the game gives you proper direction for where to go for the next level. It should be a hub world, not an RPG where you just wander aimlessly until the right NPC tells you the information you need.
Depends on the game and it's formula. Adventure Hubs were fun. Sonic 06 were not. Sonic Unleashed were fun. Sonic Generations were... Kinda meh.
I dislike the execution of hub worlds as opposed to the concept. The idea of traversing a huge world is a very cool concept for a Sonic game, given how fast he is. But most hub worlds are kind of...boring? They don't serve much purpose besides just being a stop gap between levels and don't offer much else. Sonic Team have never really thought out the concept very well. Its the most dime a dozen hub world you can get, as opposed to something unique to Sonic and that's the biggest problem with them imo.
