Sonic Superstars: A New 2D Sonic Game (Fall 2023)

Ultimately it's good to see the general reception for this seems positive. All said and done it probably will end with a slightly higher avg score than Frontiers, if not by much.

7/10ish avg seems fine to me, especially when Mario Wonder likely is gonna skew high 8s-9/10 and will most certainly be the superior game.

 

Sonic Superstars and Mario Wonder are perfect representations of how each company treats its mascots.

Nintendo treats Mario Wonder as a big AAA project cause they know it's going to sell extremely well.

Sega treats Sonic Superstars as a low-budget project, handing it to one of the cheapest developers using the cheapest engines (at the time), but they're selling it for full price because Sonic Mania was more successful than they thought it would be.

You can even see it just by comparing the visuals and the music.

 

Shacknews gave it a 8/10

 

Yep. SEGA don't really need Superstars to be a success like Nintendo do with Mario, though. Mario games sell their consoles, Sonic is just another IP for SEGA

 

Oh come on! It'd take Superstar's slightly unpolished look over Wonder's flat sterilized "NSMB for the 326th time" look.

 

Yeah! Mario sucks! More like NintenDUMB. Who would want to play as an overweight plumber when you could be the world's coolest and fastest hedgehog instead? Sega is back on top, baby!

 

Not sure how much point is in pitting Mario & Sonic against each other. In my view, Sega was always playing catch up, for a brief period Sonic stole Mario's thunder in the 90's, but that's it.

It's all just assumption that Arzest was the cheapest and its all low budget. I mean it's Naota Oshima, and Nintendo contracted them for work in the past. I'm very sure that Mania was likely way more low budget. For all we know, Sega could have spend way more money on Superstars than Nintendo did on Wonder (at least everything outside of advertisement). It's how you use what you have

 

I don't really see the connection there. Wonder looks like NSMB because it's like, a flat 2.5D (im guessing) partly pre-rendered Mario game. Other than that I don't really see it, the parts that are similar to NSMB in any way are enhanced 10-fold, but maybe it's easy to forget that considering how long it's been. All the enemy models are new and have a different look to them, even the goombas have a bit of spunk. The lightning is extremely consistent compared to Superstars looking super inconsistent between stages and having wildly varying levels of detail. Wouldn't agree that Arzest is the cheapest developer or all that stuff, but there is absolutely no secret that one game looks better quality than the other. It's also just a matter of scope; Superstars is a budget title and they've treated it like a budget title.

 

Wonder looks soooooo much better than NSMB, it's not even a contest.




That's neither here nor there though. We don't need to turn this into a Sonic vs Mario thread LOL

 

Speaking as a person who puts every classic Sonic title (1-3K/CD) over every 2D Mario.. Wonder clears this game in every way imaginable. It's not even a contest or a worthy discussion lmao. But I also think bringing that up is pointless since at this point both franchises are in totally different leagues. Best to compare Superstars more to other 2D Sonics than anything else.

 

Very well, let's say I was skewing the numbers. I'll give a direct scoring for each review so far and tally it all up. Using only the reviews from MetaCritic and OpenCritic.

Metacritic - 75%:

9/10 (Sports Illustrated, The Games Machine, IGN Spain)

8.9/10 (Hobby Consoles)

8.8/10 (Digital Chumps)

8/10 (CGMagazine, PSX Brasil, VGC, GamesRadar+, TRG, Shacknews, Multiplayer.it, Everyeye.it, Worth Playing)

7.9/10 (SpazioGames)

7.5/10 (Press Start Australia, Playstation Universe)

7/10 (Gamereactor UK, IGN, TheGamer, Metro GameCentral)

6/10 (Vandal, God is a Geek, PushSquare, VG247)

5/10 (GamingBolt)

...

OpenCritic (76%) Exclusives:

9/10 (GamingTrend, Gaming Age)

8.5 (Level Up, Video Chums)

8.0 (Christian Buckley)

...

Total (29 Reviews):

9/10 (5x)
8.9 (1x)
8.8 (1x)
8/10 (10x)
7.9 (1x)
7.5 (2x)
7/10 (4x)
6/10 (4x)
5/10 (x1)

 

I've played a bit of Wonder.

It's an impressive project with a newly crafted art style and some fun gimmicks, I admit.

But it's... still just NSMB with a twist and a bit of extra polish. If it gets those low 90s scores, good for it. I expect it to do well.

I still hope Superstars does well too. It'll be whatever it is.

 

Most definitely. We don't often get new 2D Sonic games, so I'm happy to see them releasing an honest to god effort at a classic Sonic game. Hell, I'd be happy if they made a Rush spiritual successor or something too.

 

I agree with this entirely. Wonder is objectively better than Superstars, but Superstars still has it's own things going for it. Such as not having anywhere near the same playstyle as Wonder,
but it still really isn't a contest. If you're comparing Wonder and Superstars, might as well be comparing Sonic Frontiers and Breath of the Wild.

I also don't understand people who say Wonder is just another NSMB when it quite literally isn't.
I can see the plasticy-ness, but I can't see it being the same old same old with a new layer of wax.

 

That's why there's some rivalry going on again like in the 90s...
1. Nostalgia.
2. If Sonic Superstars doesn't sell well due to holiday saturation, there's always the chance that they don't make another followup using the new engine and the classic formula goes back in the SEGA vault forever.

Having said that, you can literally buy both games on the same system (and Sonic games are popular on the switch for sure), and I actually have a feeling Sonic Team doesn't even need this game to be full price long term to make back a profit. My gut instinct says they're just taking advantage of us early adopters at this price and fully expect it to sell faster at 30$ in a few months and will still make a profit over time.

 

I'm not saying this out of any competitiveness or bias but I really am genuinely starting to hate that art style the more I look at it. Imo it updated from being cheap plastic to now looking like a mobile game. Like why does Mario have a sharpie-drawn looking frown on his face in that gif.
I don't like either artstyle, imo just have it be fully handdrawn 2D like Rayman or fully 3D like Donkey Kong. The hybrid stuff will never look good to me.

 

Frontiers more enjoyable than BotW and traversing is so much better

having played a good bit of Wonder, it is a new NSMB

Not necessarily a bad thing too, cause it's better than any NSMB game by a lot, have way more care put into it, graphics and animation are more lively and full with personality, Wonder Floewr put a twist at every level etc

But at it's core it's still NSMB, and depending on what you dislike about that series, it's not like Wonder will magically change your mind about it and that style of games, it controls the same, the worlds themes and levels are kinda the same etc -so far, may change if i played more-

 

The point I think wasn't really "teehee Mario better than Sonic!!", it's just... those 2 games aren't even remotely comparable in terms of budget, scale, the size of the team working on them even if you're just going by the credits, advertising budget, the sheer amount of new original assets, etc. It's not even comparable, gone are the days of both SEGA and Nintendo putting everything they have into these flagship titles. Sonic doesn't always even get the time or budget of many other IPs, and that's not really speculation considering what we know about Sonic Frontiers' development and Iizuka's conversations with SEGA proper.

But I don't really have a stake in whether one is better than the other, I plan to buy both on Day 1 and probably won't put them down for at least a month. I'll have a controller in each hand playing both of them at the same time.

 

They're completely different genres. The only thing they have in common is theming and being open-world.

 

The games aren't even out and we're already arguing over which one is better.