If you ask me Sonic has never looked better than in SADC. His darker blue fur and brighter skin really make his green eyes pop in a way they haven't since and his proportions are much more even compared to more modern looks and are seemingly borderline identical to his Genesis counterparts. Plus one small detail I love is how his mouth disappears in-game like the classics. SA2 and the Gamecube era games do this as well and I just hate that since 06 up til nowadays he always has this awkward wiggly mouth constantly hanging off his cheek. IMO he just looks so much more cool and determined without it. It oddly might be the thing that bothers me most about Sonic's modern design besides his overly big hands, overly long legs and ugly shade of blue fur. He's looked varying degrees of 'off' ever since Heroes but I don't think his OG Dreamcast look gets enough credit for nailing it. It's kind of weird Sega hasn't gone back to it in any way considering how hard they go about marketing Classic Sonic nowadays. I think they've had a perfect fusion on the backburner for 20+ years, but eh. SA2 Sonic gets bonus points for being the only Stretch Armstrong version of Sonic that doesn't have stupid-looking hands and shoes.
On strictly gameplay merits it gives you a modified boost Sonic and puts you in various open fields full of automated segments that are agony to deviate from with a draw distance so poor (yes I'm on PC it's bad everywhere) that you'll often struggle to find the solution to "how the hell do I get there?" The combat is a complete nothing burger, spam screen freeze to win. I don't know what you mean by rail launching. Don't even get me started on the story and characters, Ian "look a reference" Flynn really thinks showing his surface level knowledge off in passing dialogue is enough to get fans to like the story. I hate that he's right. I also hate his OCs and don't like the idea of Sticks in the main series but he just had to include them in throwaway lines. I hope that has a better payoff than what I'm expecting.
Haven't played Frontiers yet but immediately don't like how the game constantly rubs in your face that they indeed have lore consultants now (thank god!!!!) at the same time it rubs in your face that said lore spouting holograms aren't actually interactive in any capacity. I literally don't care that Tails said "Sonic help me" in a thoroughly mediocre game I never think about anyway. So funny to promise me that Tails is totally useful again but oh no I can't use him. Also Tails pretty much says "Sonic help me" when he dies in SA2 (which has muh confident version of Tails everyone brings up for this topic) but oh would you look at that he's playable! Tails' lame interpretation in Forces was generally overblown and subsequently overcorrected in Frontiers IMO. The real problem with Tails in Sonic Forces is that he wasn't actually in Sonic Forces, along with everyone else besides Sonic and OC just tagging along for the cutscenes/voice lines.
" I don't know what you mean by rail launching." It's where you jump right after boosting while on a rail to launch Sonic high in the air. As for the story I have no stance on it outside of finding the one scene with Sage sad music to be hilarious. Lore and story were never my thing in Sonic games so I wasn't paying much attention to it. They only bother me when they take themselves too seriously because aesthetics/music start to be made for that energy. And for Sticks and the IDW OC's, seeing where majority of Sonic's vast canon leftover cast are at, I doubt their "canonization" (whatever this means in Sonic anyway) is going to mean much in the end. Probably just means they will be in more spinoffs.
Related to that, not much happens in the game because not many people are active. Sonic's the one doing anything in what essentially is a wasteland, and the only person there only speaks to him menacingly and sends titans to do the work. Other characters like Tails tell us interesting things, but won't actually show us. Also, the game builds up so many threads and completely drops the ball on almost all of them (nothing felt fulfilling), and the one thread tied was Sage & Eggman's relationship and how Sage learns love, but that one had so little buildup that the game shows us scenes from 5 minute beforehand because they have nothing else.
Tail's side-story in Frontiers is the weakest of the three. It's entire purpose seems to be undoing that one scene on Forces where he was a coward. All his character development does in this game is get him back to where he was at the end of Adventure 1; confident in himself and ready to take on threats without Sonic's help. I find Tail's story lacking because it just exists to undo another story and doesn't actually take him any further than he was twenty years ago. When update three comes and Tails is playable, I really hope they will take his character beyond where it is.
I've just now been made aware of this update's existence and I am now VERY pessimistically curious how Sonic Team's going to handle bringing all three of those gameplay styles back after so long, in a free update, with a "whole new story" at the same time. My chips are leaning towards Sonic reskins with a different attack or something and godawful 'challenge maps' with grids of box walls everywhere like the gift of Shadow we got in Forces but I'd love to be wrong.
If I were to go an a wild speculative tangent, I'd say they'll likely be playable in the open worlds with designated character challenges. Sure it'd be easier to create block Cyberspace levels but the entire point of this game in the first place is it's open worlds, so it'd be a bit of a massive oversight to add new playable characters but restrict them to the game's side dish. Whether the implementation of these characters is gonna be good is something much more debatable, however. IMO they'll probably be heavily built off of Sonic for obvious reasons, just with all the Sonic-y moves stripped away in favor of their abilities from SA1/2. I doubt they'll be perfect implementations considering Sonic himself is already kinda jank, but they'll probably be serviceable and fun enough. I can't see them feeling outright shit but I can't see them being amazing. Somewhere in the middle. Who knows though, this is just me throwing shit at the wall that I think sounds plausible, so I could be completely wrong and they'll just be shitty
Probably the nerdiest thing I could say about how I think this looks and how I'd like Sonic to look in the future: I think Heroes, Secret Rings, Black Knight, Sumo's racing games, and the Wii/DS Olympic Games all had models trying to hone in on what was here, but main series Sonic Team made the Unleashed one and ignores everything else. Maybe it's just a personal nostalgia, but I really have grown to appreciate it as the evolution of the things I like about the SA1 model. Frontiers has gotten the closest to that specific shade of blue, and it's in my personal opinion the best materials I think Sonic has ever had, but the model itself, I've grown out of, + it's had too many weird compounded changes for my tastes. I also prefer the look of the Dreamcast Light Speed Shoes over the regular shoes. With all that in mind, my mockup of where to go with his design: Imagine the same level of detail and definition as the Frontiers model with the SA2 shoes had (forgive the rough approximation in my Light Speed Shoe design, it'd have additional treads and scratchy details with the superior GOLD OVALS), and this is my ideal Sonic look. And yes I do acknowledge this is so specific that Sonic Team could never make it.
I think Sonic's shoe should have a curved sole to it, but I've never liked the golden orb look, it makes the light speed shoes look like children's light-up sketchers or something. The movie shoes do a better job, all they need is for the soles to be red. That's actually what they should do though? I mean, maybe episode Shadow wasn't, but "Sonic but a little different" is exactly what you should want for other playable characters in the modern idiom. The entire reason we were stuck without them for so long was that the Adventure games and 06 took each character so far off-course from Sonic's base control and strength that critics lambbasted alternate playable characters as the thing what ruined Sonic, to the point where too many of them even appearing in a game is still somehow cause for criticism in modern games. The outcry from fans over lacking playable characters for the last decade and a half doesn't come because they should be any kind of departure from the norm, but because a character you play as is one you're more attached to, one that has more agency in that game's narrative, and it makes perfect sense for Sonic Team to not reinvent the wheel for each one, since Sonic is perfectly capable in Frontiers as-is. The problem will not be that each character is too similar to Sonic, but that whatever parts of the game are inevitably locked-off from them would probably take very little work to be modified for someone other than Sonic.
No, Sonic with a different attack isn't at all what I want out of other characters. Characters in SA1 were not at all too divergent from Sonic. Literally the whole idea is that they can get through each other's levels BECAUSE of their unique abilities. That was always just a journo truism based on an overblown negative reaction to Big's half hour fishing campaign and 06 also screwing it up like it screwed up literally everything else. Imagine saying "Sorry guys sonic can't run anymore because it didn't work in Sonic 06". Wouldn't that be dumb and conveniently a good excuse for underbudgeted game devs? If you ask me Sega should go all the way with the character differences. Have Tails play as differently as Amy does in Advance 1. Go crazy. Making them all play exactly like Sonic raises the question of why they're even there. There were more differences between Sonic, Tails and Knuckles in 3&k than just a different attack and I really don't think Sega needs to be listening to the fans who think that's where the series started falling off. This vocal section of Sonic fans who love constantly reminding Sega that they want everyone but Sonic to be superficial side dishes certainly doesn't give me good feelings for how the Advance crew are going to end up. Inb4 they're horribly implemented and both Sega and the fans use that as an excuse to never do multiple characters for another 17 years.
Doesn't ring true when every character had to have each level altered to support them. Tails breaks Sonic's stages so hard his gameplay had to be centered around speedrunning them, because a flight-based character in the lateral environment brought on by 3D level design is horribly unbalanced. Amy can't do most of the things Sonic can, and even if she tried it wouldn't be fun, because she's slow and clunky. Really cool how you can just transmute criticism of a dumb mechanic into "journo truism" and instantly dismiss the idea that anyone could possibly offer a valid argument against this. That's definitely how an adult argues. I suggest you pay even a little bit of attention to the discussions this fanbase has been having for the past 25 years about how to properly translate the classic games into 3D, because it was never to make all the characters have different level designs with different objectives and different mechanics. Imagine saying "Tails, Knuckles and Amy shouldn't be able to run or fight, they should have FPS, mahjong and warioware gameplay, or else they'll have no purpose!". Or better yet, don't imagine that, because it's a dumb strawman. Please rise above this bad rhetoric. Okay, I'll call that bluff. How do Sonic and Tails differ in Sonic 3, other than their air actions? How do Sonic, Tails and Knuckles differ in the Advance games? Or Cream? Or how about Sonic and Blaze in the Rush games? Clearly this must all be dogshit nobody plays, right? Otherwise there's a few giant glaring holes in your argument. Well good news! You just made those people up. They're not real. Except maybe the person who wants them to take giant stupid risks on mechanics that don't fit the gameplay style for no payoff. Hey, you know what makes a character way more likely to be badly implemented? Taking them so far off from conventional Sonic design that they miss the entire point of the genre. Next time you're playing a Sonic game and want to not be playing a Sonic game, why don't you just go play something else? Makes more sense to me than trying to force shit that doesn't belong into the series when it's still struggling to even work out the main mechanics.
Real funny to get all sanctimonious about strawmanning and arguing like adults while presuming that I think the other characters should "have different level designs with different objectives and different mechanics" just because that's what you feel like arguing against. There's certainly more differences between Sonic Tails and Knuckles in 3&k than just a different attack, not sure what to tell you there. They can go about levels in ways completely different from Sonic if you so choose so, in fact Knuckles even gets his own paths entirely. Is that an inappropriate diversion because Sonic can't do it? I don't think so. Of course I want all the characters to be able to get through the same levels, hence citing Amy in Advance 1 as my primary example of this done right. She alone proves it's more than possible and that Sonic Team themselves really haven't been particularly creative in their attempts (or more like their excuses to not even make attempts). And by the way I evoked that journalist "strawman" because Sega probably cares more about the IGN rating that immediately shows up in google search results than what you or I have to say in hyperspecific forum debates.
If that is not what "SA1 characters are not too different from Sonic and should actually be even more different" means then you're just bad at communicating your points, dude. Sorry you had to find out this way. Yeah, because of their slightly different movesets, which apparently is wrong to want. Also, not seeing you address the Advance or Rush games, still waiting to hear how Tails, Knuckles, Cream and Blaze are somehow mistakes. Hence me not bringing him up when asking about all the games you're ignoring that apparently make the grave mistake of each playable character being a variant of Sonic. Actually you mostly waffled on about how it's good that all the characters in SA1 are radically-different. More importantly, Amy in Advance 1 is a great example of a failed attempt. She's dogshit, not fun at all. If that's what you want from the series, I am totally justified in treating your opinions like sewage. Regardless, it still doesn't actually help the argument there's something wrong about the way Tails, Blaze, Shadow, Cream etc. were handled. Not sure what difference that's supposed to make. Mainstream game reviewers are often misguided and don't fully comprehend what makes parts of the series good or bad, but nothing you say is going to make them wrong for not enjoying the slow clunky characters of the series. The fact that you keep going out of your way to defend that slow clunkiness tells me that yes, you do indeed want characters to be different for the sake of difference, rather than being fun to play or something.
Yeah we're never gonna agree on anything ever. She's the absolute best part of the game. But anyway you guys are having a weird debate there. SA1's very approach is entirely different from S3&K. Put SA1's characters on Sonic stages and see what happens -- maybe then we'll see how different they are really. Also put S3&K's characters on completely different stages with different objectives -- then we'll see how different they can be. Doesn't seem like you can really compare.
Right. Good talk. I think Sonic Team should give different characters different mechanics if they're going to bring them back. Otherwise what's the point? Not trying to say 3&k is like Big the Cat fishing, just that alternative mechanics and even character-specific paths through levels were already precedents and SA1 and 2 just expanded the concepts in sometimes wonky directions. At the end of the day the only Big problem with Big the Cat fishing is that it wasn't optional. The dumb thing SA1 does that kinda forcibly makes it different from 3&k is that you have to beat Big the Cat fishing to see Super Sonic and the good ending when that should've always been possible just in Sonic's story.
I'm not one to dislike completely different gameplay styles in a single game. I just think characters, even if WILDLY different, under the same premise (go from A to B) is a fundamentally different approach from characters, even if EXTREMELY SIMILAR, pursuing different goals through different mechanics. Even some special stages in the classics tend to be praised or criticized for this. But I would say differences get highlighted when they're falling under the same premise. We can compare Sonic, Tails and Knuckles more strikingly since they go thrugh the same zones, and see more candidly what each can or can't do based on each other. It's why I like Amy in Advance, by the way, as I mentioned in some other thread not long ago. Anyway, different mechanics don't necessarily mean different gameplay genres, and different gameplay genres don't necessarily mean different mechanics. At the atomic and most mechanical possible level, first-person shooters and adventure games aren't too dissimilar anyway. You just have to point at the right place on a screen and click, then repeat this process enough times, after all. The reason why you'll do it makes the most difference. EDIT: lol at me writing "purchasing" because I unconsciously couldn't decide between "pursuing" or "chasing"
I mean, in the most extreme example of not giving characters different mechanics, having different skins can still be nice. Tails in Sonic 2 was effectively that, and I certainly never complained about it. I think there are two distinct things going on that tend to get conflated when talking about "different characters having different mechanics". 1. What abilities the additional characters have 2. What objectives the additional characters have Sonic at its most traditional is a platforming game about getting from point A to point B, to the end of an obstacle course. The player is equipped with a certain set of abilities to facilitate getting to the goal at the end of the stage. There are also non-platforming games that the player is able to engage with. Theoretically, there is no limit to the number of additional playable characters you could add to a game, with some or another variance to their moveset. Give different characters different jump heights, give different characters the ability to break certain objects, give different characters different abilities when they press the jump button a second time while airborne. Each change in a character's suite of abilities ought to allow the player to navigate the obstacle courses in different ways, thus adding mechanical variety while still retaining the same basic objective. Some could have an easier time going through stages, others could have a harder time, marrying character choice and difficulty choice in an organic way. If additional characters merely represented a change in what tools are at the player's disposal while navigating the platforming game, then there is no cause for complaint. Platforming games can be about getting from point A to point B while still having optional objectives for the player to complete on their way. The original 2D Sonic games did this by giving the player the option of exploring for Special Stage entrances to collect Chaos Emeralds, as well as time traveling and exploring for generators to make Good Futures. The issue I, and I suspect many others, have with how games like Sonic Adventure handled this isn't the existence of alternative objectives themselves. It isn't the presence of Master Emerald shard hunting, or fishing, that is the problem. The problem is that only Knuckles can Emerald hunt and Knuckles can only Emerald hunt; only Big can fish and Big can only fish. I would find it much more satisfying as a player if I could play Emerald Coast as any character with my goal being to get to the end of the stage, but if I wanted to I could pull over to fish for a minute, and/or try to find the Emerald Shards before reaching the goal. Let there be story-based consequences if I don't do this. Give Knuckles the bad ending if he doesn't collect all the shards, or give Big the bad ending if he doesn't find Froggy in every stage, the same way you get the bad ending in Sonic CD if you don't either collect all of the time stones or go back in time to make good futures in every stage.
I for one never liked how Sonic 2 Tails was (originally) just a Sonic skin but yeah it doesn't matter much because Sonic 2 is just a good game anyway lol. I think I agree with everything else you said. 3D Sonic in general has been incredibly hamstrung by creating all these neat gimmicks but then no interoperability between them. It's just that sadly SA1 is still just one of the most fun examples considering it at least gives you a good variety of only somewhat compartmentalized jank instead of just Sonic but oh he's a completely compartmentalized werewolf or oh he's got mario galaxy powers or oh he can slowly draw circles around guys. What does any of that has to do with going fast or momentum physics? Uhhh... It's a reason I really love Advance 1 and especially 3 with how willing it was to go kinda crazy with character abilities that still work great with base Sonic gameplay. Though fangames step all over any official game in this regard so I guess it's about time Sega at least tries to catch up.
