Utopia is a decently fun demo on it's own but I'd rather just play Sonic GT, that game uses similar concepts while being a much more fleshed out and fully realized game. Also yeah as @Technically Inept said, Spark 3 stomps. That game is awesome.
As someone who grew up with the 3ds version, I think people end up writing it off entirely even though I KNOW a lot of people might find it a lot more mechanically enjoyable than the version you can get on a PC. Sonic moves really snappy and there's a lot more factors to be accounted for and engaged with than you'd expect and even though that's sometimes a problem (Frozen Factory's snowball section) it gets really fun finding all the ways you can recover from your mistakes through combining all your moves, like using a double jump to get just a little bit closer to the nearest climbable wall on a block, then getting just on the bottom and using a wall spindash and realizing you still won't make it and flipping to the next wall to launch off the side of the block back onto the other side of the block and being able to both climb more and use another wall spindash before you're up to the top. and all of that can happen in like 5 seconds. I'd compare it to getting back to a stage in Smash Bros. As long as you understand the mechanics, you won't be unfairly punished unless you REALLY fuck things up. Plus all the shortcuts you can take with even basic stuff - it's very Sonic Adventure. Here's an example of someone who got ahead in a multiplayer race because of one of the more simple ones. I'll concede on the part of the special stages, if only because of the gyro controls, but I do think they could still work on their own if given a decent control scheme. I don't feel like I have whatever issue with Lost World 3ds' level length other people somehow get. I mean, they only get shorter the more you learn them - which I think is the better part of any Sonic level design. I've seen screenshots of tests of the 3ds > PC, concept before, but mechanically, PC seems far off from matching up with 3ds' movement. Like I can't imagine that version allowing for movement like this. Also unfortunately Lost World 3ds ditches the Casino theme part of Frozen Factory and gives it almost completely to Sky Road, probably to differentiate the two, so you get to hear that version of Frozen Factory for most of Sky Road, but only one theme the music, and weirdly enough they don't match a lot of the other aspects of the level so there's a little less variety. They don't even have the night version so you only get to see the lights in the (bitcrunched) cutsenes. Also none of the Hidden Worlds or DLC, even though the 3ds supported it. at least you get Hard Modes for each stage and a remixed version of one stage in each world for getting all Red Star Rings in each world. But it still stings a little.
I ain't reading the rest of your post after watching that clip. Stop talking. When are we playing? What do I need?
I don't remember if i said this already or not. But I was recently reminded of it: I don't want Sonic, in lore, to be that fast. Speed of sound is enough. Like you have people saying they want him to be Flash levels of speed, going several times faster than light, and all that. "Multiversal," and stuff. I don't really agree. That would ruin tension of so many scenes because it would make Sonic so stupid overpowered that there would be very few physical threats or other threats he couldn't handle. And/or it creates so many inconsistencies like, 'Well, why didn't he just ____ here or there?"Actually, the above does cover SOME of my gripes with early Archie. But above all... Sonic doesn't need to be Flash levels of speed to be cool. He just doesn't. And trying to make him that fast honestly makes him feel LESS appealing because it just seems like he's trying to do Flash's thing. No, Sonic's most admirable physical ability isn't really his speed, or at least not purely that. It's his agility, maneuverability, finesse, grace, and style. His high speed parkour like what he does in this intro is always going to visually look 300% more interesting than just running or doing other things on fast forward. This is the thing that should actually distinguish Sonic from Flash. Where his "cool factor" should come from. It's something I was scared that the Sonic movies were going to neglect entirely, which they thankfully didn't. But while they didn't neglect this entirely, they did lean a little too hard into trying to make Sonic the Flash in my opinion with the electricity and time stopping stuff which, among other things, ironically makes Sonic less cool and takes away from his identity.
I never knew Lost World 3DS had online multiplayer, that looks really fun! I kinda wanna try it now, although I'm not sure who would even be interested in playing that with me lmao
The Generations and Lost World 3DS online multiplayer modes were awesome. Wish the console versions had something like it.
I only ever tried once a super long time ago. by the time I actually had internet for myself, I don't think I tried. and I'm scared to now that my New 3ds is modded even though I own the game, and I don't know if I can do it without updating - it's a weird mess. Doesn't seem worth it. He's actually a pretty direct copy of Fox's version of Quicksilver from X-Men more than Flash. Quicksilver Meets Wolverine Scene | X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014) Movie Clip - YouTube Lives in a cave (of sorts), steals stuff he thinks is interesting, can go pretty much anywhere in the immediate area in a second, and, of course, has visually interesting time-slow scenes with licensed music over them. QuickSilver Kitchen Scene - X-Men: Days Of Future Past (2014) Movie Clip HD - YouTube Another comparison could be Dash from Incredibles, at least in terms of his ability (can run on water) and hyperactive personality. The electric chaos energy stuff that many people use to attribute as Flash inspiration just amounts to visual flair representation of his "power", so now it's not really even because of his speed in-universe. So ironically, Flash is the least important speedster they pulled from for inspiration.
It has been a very long time but I actually played that pretty regularly back in the day, if the servers are still up I'd gladly play some, you know how to reach me if you want to.
Obviously the movement isn't 1:1 and the stages would require some tweaks and scaling to work, but I don't think showing off some movement techs and saying the levels are fun when you try to speedrun them is a good counter to the argument that casual playthroughs aren't fun. I've seen wacky stuff done with the HD game's parkour, and that doesn't have to cheat by making Sonic automatically use different parkour stances depending on which wall he's touching (it is impossible to climb those walls from the side in normal gameplay). I mean, look at the stage design in the Sky Road level you posted, just cubes over a void. The length is bad enough, but one strength of the HD version is that you usually don't have to use many of the game's unique mechanics if you don't want to, be they wisps or parkour. This isn't true for the 3DS game, which routinely demands both from the player (and I don't think using exploits to skip it is a great excuse). Worse still is that the parkour, while faster and floatier than the HD version, requires you hit walls with a certain amount of speed, leading to a lot of do-or-die moments where you're either not carrying enough air momentum to make it across a parkour section or you're breaking the pace by having to charge up a spindash to do it. I feel like players should be guaranteed to not fall into a pit if they actually hit the platform they're aiming for. Yeah yeah, "momentum", but this should all be an ability that augments Sonic's ability to travel through stages quicker or more easily, not handcuffs the player is occasionally allowed to take off (very occasionally in the lategame).
the tests I've seen did scale items and item locations up, yes. It's not saying casual playthroughs aren't fun, it's saying you're going to suck when you play it at first, and you will only get better the more you play. My examples of skips and technical recoveries are just examples of things that make learning how the game works even more fun. We wouldn't get mad at Sonic Adventure for letting us spindash jump over litterally all of Red Mountain 1 or Sky Deck 3 instead of climbing on the monkeybars like we might do on our first playthrough, would we? We'd just get better in general until we learn we can spindash jump. I'm not sure what the criticism is here. Parkour is a core mechanic of the game, so why would you be allowed to just ignore it entirely, especially as a test of how far you've come? but then, if you don't have to interact with it, it should mean Sonic is better at moving with it than not? I feel like if you did that and the player KNOWS they can just take the easy path, then there's no stress, which means both paths aren't really rewarding to finally get past. + - which I just realized is basically the golden RC car you're given in spots you die often in, so yeah I guess if you hate the parkour platforming you can skip it and it'll give you an infinite hovercar or something. Like you can do that. But I feel like to give the game any weight in this instance, they're better off letting you know that there's certain death bellow.
I'm the one saying casual playthroughs aren't fun, because they aren't. It doesn't really matter whether playing it more makes you more skilled at it, because if the game isn't fun on the face of it, it won't matter. The stages being too long is only one part of this. Yeah, because those stages are fun (and not giant marathons, I might add) whether you're playing them quickly or not. The spindash is a core mechanic of Sonic 2, but there aren't a lot of bits that explicitly demand you use it, and especially not bits that will repeatedly kill you if you don't (and even if there were, they would be better than Lost World because it's a much simpler tool to understand). The parkour takes skill to maneuver and master on the face of it. Going fast takes effort, but the game should not force the player to expend that effort and kill them if they don't, that's what having lower paths is for. Also, going fast should be fun instead of annoying, which is still the main problem with LW3D. Making it so the player doesn't have to do anything at all is a band-aid on a bullet wound. The solution to bad level design is good level design.
No, they aren't. You guys appear to be arguing over 2 different things. And that is what is, or rather should be, Sonic's "necessary skills" On some level, every action game ever is going to require that you learn and master at least A LITTLE of the game's core mechanics, which I will call "necessary skills" from this point on, to progress. Even Sonic does. It ask you to learn how to platform, which means jumping at the right times and performing air control. if you can't do these things, you're never going to beat any traditional Sonic game. Things outside of that like the characters air abilities, slope jumping, badnik bouncing, spindashing, rolling, and all this other stuff is not necessary to beat the game. It's something that can be mastered to ENHANCE a playthrough, but it's not necessary. So they're not what we'd call "necessary skills." It appears to me you view requiring a player to learn and master unnecessary skills in order to progress through the game is unnecessarily punishing, and that the number of skills that should be necessary should be minimal. Sure. Whatever. I don't really think it is necessary to design with that mindset unless you're game is just really complex, which Sonic games aren't, but whatever. Designing with that mindset is part of what allows for what some call "depth" and "low-skill floors and high-skill ceilings." But what DOES constitutes one of Sonic's "unnecessary skills"? That is what appears to be the source or at least one of the sources of this disagreement. Seems to me you don't view the parkour as one of these necessary skills, but just something that should be another option for those good at it. Fair enough. But it doesn't seem the other person agrees with you, at least in Lost World where parkour is kind of the point of the game.
Whether it is or isn't "the point of the game" doesn't really matter to me, so much as one version of the game being a nightmare to play because of how it uses its mechanics and the other version being pretty inoffensive. Sonic is generally a pretty easy series and the challenge comes from perfecting your runs, having this do-or-die design in normal gameplay is exactly what people have always criticized DIMPS for in Advance 3, Rush and the like.
I have never played Rush and stuff, but my intuition tells me that that is probably an oversimplification of the issue. We're never going to agree that ''do or die'' design is bad in itself. In the case of these Sonic games, i imagine what's more likely the source of complaints is less that the punishment for failing to do what they ask is death, but moreso they don't give you enough time to realize what you're supposed to do before you die. In other words, a conveyance issue. Or maybe the source is a difficulty spike where they start asking you to make decisions like that quickly out of nowhere when they hadn't before that point. Like jumping over a goomba in a 2D Mario game when you're small is a do or die thing. Think people complain about that?
2D Mario games tend to telegraph things, and importantly, give the player options. Mario is limited to knowing basic things about platformers, you can't be certain at any point in Dead Line Zone whether running in one direction or another will reverse your gravity or send you off into a big fuckoff pit unless you already have a cursory knowledge of the stage layout. The best Sonic games get around this by really not having that many pits for Sonic to careen off into in the first place.
What you just described is just another example of lack of conveyance. Also, having less pits is only one solution to that problem. It's not the only possible one.
I'm not even trying to argue or anything, I'm just wondering what's really wanted here. Because to me it just sounds like a completely different game that's not this one, which doesn't let the player progress + - Gold RCs aside until they get past whatever problem parts they're finding difficult, which, to me, is just a basic method of game design. It's hard to distinguish the critique of "bad level design" from "I would prefer if they gave me the option of ignoring everything I don't like using", and I think that's important because I don't think the two are the same critique.
