I'm still extremely annoyed by how grind rails are visible at all times. 90% of the times you get on them off a spring. Why couldn't they make them appear when you actually are about to grind on them (hitting a spring being a trigger for that) and disappear when you're done with them. Maybe add a nice cyberspace-y effect. Seeing them in the distance is extremely jarring and makes beautiful vistas look "dirty".
And that lends itself to the common complaint about Modern Sonic, that it's automated. Sega has created this play-style that is committed to making Sonic all about speed, but the trade off is resource intensive, short gameplay, that is less accessible to a mainstream audience. This results in less sales and less resources to reinvest in subsequent titles. So to resolve this, they make the levels increasingly automated, which does make the games more accessible, but ultimately displeases everyone (except the very young). Classic Sonic, of course, had automated sections, but it's common opinion at this point that these automated sections served as: breathers between platforming, rewards, and moments of novel exhilaration for the time period. Whereas in games like Forces, it's merely to resolve the internal conflict of the play-style they have committed to, and a function of resource scarcity. Automation becomes a necessary solution to a fraught playstyle... So, yes, Sonic Forces is "accessible gameplay" but at what cost? It certainly isn't vying to dethrone Mario Odyssey... I reckon that Forces was especially automated because it was intended to bring a new cohort of 5-8 year old into the fray, and I think it was successful as I have never seen SO MUCH Sonic merchandise available and being worn (of course we can thank the movie for this also). If the next Sonic game removes the open world and replaces it with a hub-world or whathaveyou, we can still expect the zones to continue with the automated play-style. It is never going to change, Sonic will NEVER be a Mario or Zelda tier franchise unless Sega seeks a new format. So if you enjoy the way Modern Sonic plays, it makes no sense to continue asking for pie-in-the-sky quality and furnishings like Mario and Zelda have. If you want a format that less people can partake in, then you will get a similar budget. It's that simple. (this is not directed to anyone in particular)
The abundance of grind rails just flying randomly above the map bothers me a bit, but only from the perspective that I'd much rather see a more cohesive design. The rails just don't fit in. But from a gameplay design perspective, I want to know where the rails are and where they're going to take me before I'm committed to taking their path. Having the rails be invisible you're just about to use them would be incredibly annoying. And from an aesthetic point of view... Nah. I think it would look cheap. Even with some thematic fade in effects, it would just give the impression that it was compensating for poor draw distance or for other technical reasons. Rails and other platforms floating in the sky with no rhyme or reason is a game design issue as well as an aesthetic one.
bingo, I brought up before that I find the modern boost levels super draining, and I'm someone who actually plays video games pretty often. trying to imagine putting that in front of, say, my mom or something who played video games two decades ago and I can see her putting it down after the first stage. It's the purple goop combined with the desert, something that Spyro 1 did with Peace Keeper's World. Not really an aesthetic you see very often, but kind of surprised that no one else went with this idea.
Weren't most of the complaints about Classic games the same as the ones for thr Modern games? How Sonic is "too fast" and you "can't react". Sonic's never really been accessible franchise from the jump and forcing it to be one compromises its core design.
It's weirdly reversed from how it was in the 90s. When Sonic 1 came out, it had near-universal appeal to both gamers and non-gamers, children and adults, and it was very accessible by way of only using one button and being able to take a lot of damage. But now, critics have called it "unfair" and full of "trial and error". In general, critics and normies are much worse at playing video games than they used to be. But I don't think the solution is to compromise Sonic's design. The sliders in Frontiers's options are going to go a LONG way to mitigate complaints of boost sonic being "too fast"...hopefully.
I remember people saying that Sonic 1 was considered too easy back in the day. Makes me laugh when you consider its current reputation. People are too quick to call games unfair these days, that's for sure.
From the contemporary magazines I’ve read, the two main general complaints regarding the classics were: They’re too easy They’re too similar to one another
Some people say this today, especially when looking for things to critique in a retro-review, but back in the day you really didn't hear this too often. Yes, Sonic was "the fast game" so there were always going to be criticisms that it was "too fast", however, it was entirely playable by the majority of gamers at the time. Sonic actually was a threat to Mario at one time because he had mass-market appeal and playability, this was NOTHING like the state of Sonic today. I've played both, and I find Modern Sonic to be too fast. Even just anecdotally, my young niece can play Classic Sonic and 3D Mario just fine, but it's an absolute slog watching her play 3D Sonic. This is why Forces was scripted "way-way too much", to bring in another generation of Sonic fans. Whereas the current 3D Sonic fans simply prefer a game that is scripted "way too much". [edited typo]
Remember difficulty was kind of a feature in an era where games could be beaten from the beginning to the end in a couple hours, when renting games would allow a lot of people to beat the game without actually buying them. Also, due to overall limitations, difficulty came from having to guess a lot of things, especially for people who didn't bother reading manuals since tutorials weren't commonplace. Back to Frontiers, I'm betting there will be no new themes in cyberspace levels besides maybe at the end when the whole plot unfolds and you enter a level that actually looks like a cyberspace. I'm also thinking they're reusing old levels just to dress these levels so they're not samey like Eggman simulator in colours, and, let's face it, considering how boost levels work, recycling old maps won't be that different from making new ones: there's so much you can do with level layouts that last for such a short time without physics or blocky platforming entering the scene. I'm not excusing this, but, graphics aside, is it that different playing Unleashed Windmill Isle from Generations 3D Green Hill or Colours Tropical Resort? I think the biggest difference comes from the physics and mechanics, not from the level design itself. I'm talking about short levels; of course there's more variety when courses are longer and level gimmicks raise the difficulty. My point is the gameplay in Frontiers will dictate how reused layouts matter, and that it's better to get varied old skins than a single new skins for trainia cocoons cyberspace levels. tl;dr: All this recycled stuff may be a bad choice, but it's irrelevant for the most part anyways.
Do Link to the Past, Link's Awakening (and its remake), the Oracle games, and Link Between Worlds not count?
Well said, and I honestly think it goes hand-in-hand with what has been Iizuka's consistent vision for 3D Sonic going back at least as far as SA2. That's not me throwing shade, by the way, Generations might literally BE my favorite game ever made, and I think this speed-focused approach makes a lot of sense for 3D Sonic on paper. But Masahiro Sakurai has been doing an excellent series of game design tutorials on YouTube, and his most recent one reminded me of this: "As you increase 'game essence,' you reduce a game's broad appeal." And you make a great case for why its led to diminishing returns for Sonic: As the game becomes more complex, the audience becomes more niche, meaning there are fewer resources to go around, meaning the next game becomes more automated, meaning the hardcore audience is less satisfied. And that reminds me of another quote: This is from Ryan Bloom's 2005 "Dissecting a Hedgehog" article. We didn't even know about Shadow's game yet when this was published, and people were already seeing the line in the sand.
During my time with the demo, I always felt the need to boost, but not because Sonic felt slow or anything. The demo was fairly short, after all. I'd say it's about the same speed, but with much more control over his movement.
I think it's moreso the fact that the amount of people gaming and the amount of games the average person has access to have both grown considerably since the early 90s: most gamers aren't dedicated hobbyists/children with a small library they can dedicate tons of time to anymore, so the average skill ceiling has dropped.
https://www.t3.com/news/sonic-frontiers-preview-gamescom-2022 This article posted on the last page now redirects to a completely different article. Looks like we weren't supposed to see that.
But we do it anyway. https://web.archive.org/web/2022082...om/news/sonic-frontiers-preview-gamescom-2022
I forgot where I heard this, but I remember hearing in the past week that there's a media embargo of some kind until tomorrow. Sounds like they broke it?
