Sonic X Shadow Generations announced, releases Autumn 2024

Begrudgingly I have to agree with this, if only because I used to be very, very good at speedrunning SA2 grind stages, only to come back years later and find the controls awkward as hell and have a hard time replicating my old runs (unlike the classic games, where my reaction times and skills as an adult have actually improved quite a bit), which makes me sad because I still strongly like the core engine and design of the game. I'm not sure if input lag could be a factor, but either way.

Balancing on rails was always ridiculous and unnecessary, though I'm not sure if I'm a fan of how scripted later iterations of the mechanic became either. It's tough.

 

Final Rush/Chase is pretty much emblematic of how janky SA2's movement/controls are. The amount of times the game shit the bed trying to perform the most basic actions is absurd. Honestly they should take a page out of Crash 4's book and have leaning be used to avoid obstacles rather than dictating the characters' speed and ability to stay on rails. The problem with rails since they became more automated has always been that they don't provide much engagement other than sometimes jumping and switch and specific times.

Despite all that, I'm still going to bat for Rail Canyon/Bullet Station as the stage to represent Heroes.

 

That might be in part because it's a bit bugged? I heard something about the grinding controls' sensitivity broke in later ports, though take that with a pinch of salt. I do remember being better at grinding back in the day as well so it'd explain a few things.

 

I think my thing with SA2/Heroes grinding is that it's a risk/reward mechanic in a Sonic game, which traditionally only 'risks' you going so fast you can't react to stuff. It feels great to balance for maximum speed, not so good to lose speed or fall off. It would be no problem if the only risk for tilting the wrong way was not getting a speed boost, instead of actually being slowed down.

Post-Heroes, it's all pretty automatic. Shadow and 06 have a "mash the button to go fast" thing going on, which I swear is from devs misreading the Heroes speedup system the same way many players did, and it kinda sucks. The only benefit those games have over the modern ones is Shadow being able to delineate between a clear rail switch animation and jumping off the rail for something else. I do think the limits on that hurt the boost games.

Like with a lot of things in those games, the auto rails are more reliable, but not that engaging. It's essentially quickstep sections with a constant speed.

 

I like SA2's grinding because I like when go down hill is go fast

 

I prefer SA2's grinding because it's at least a distinct mechanic. I like having to do a little more than just hold the go button to go and I like that they're used in other situations besides the three lane hallways that Unleashed and Generations are chock full of anyway.

 

There's something about grinding sections in boost games that always felt a bit redundant to me. These subway surfers sections where you're switching between left, middle and right rails are functionally no different from the rest of the game. It just presents the illusion of feeling different.

I don't think SA2's grinding is perfect by any modern standard and the game could've done a better job at teaching you how to balance, but it feels like it had way more weight to it and rewarded skillful play. Launching yourself off a rail at just the right moment in SA2 feels so satisfying and the game fully encouraged mastery of its mechanics.

 

SA2's rail system would fling you into a pit for looking at a rail wrong. It was the same year as Pro Skater 3. No excuse.

The thing is, their solution to fixing this was to make rails braindead. When in reality the solution is to...take the pits away and add a balance bar.

 

Rail grinding in SA2 is a movement option first rather than a level segment. In city escape for example you can grind on railings in the environment completely optionally. The rail focused levels then build upon these mechanics and testing your proficiency with them Final rush is actually my favorite SA2 level because I find that the crouching/not crouching trade off sorta similar to how rolling is in the classics. I think the fear of falling off at any moment just adds to my enjoyment of the stage, it is the last hero level after all, it should be tense. That feeling would be completely absent with the modern grinding.

 

My thoughts while watching the trailer:

Why the hell are they remastering an anniversary game?

I guess since the classics got re-released in Origins I guess it a natural (and abridged) version on catching up younger gamers.

Now I see why Shadow was so involved in Prime’s story.

Black Arms and Wisps don’t seem to be too different from each other.

Shadow is part Wisp confirmed.

Was another Time Eater born?

Fuck, I need to get a real console.

 

So basically Frontiers?

 

as crazy as it sounds, the fear of falling into a bottemless chasm is part of the excitement for me lol. It's the closest you can ever get to feeling like a daredevil in a Sonic game.

 

SA2 was the best system and anything afterwards has been a dull implementation only used to lazily pad the game where there's zero significant interaction outside of boring Ratchet and Clank ledge swapping. The closest the games ever got to making it interesting again were in the locked 2D sections where you could get more distance if you timed your jump on a slope.

15:14 for the explanation of the system
18:12 for the problem with the ports

 

This simply isn't true. You're allowed to dislike how janky jumping between parallel rails feels in SA2; it's certainly not great. But SA2 never throws you off of a rail. Slows you to a halt if you push in the opposite direction the rail is leaning, sure, but you stay gripped to it. Maybe we're getting memories of unreliable rail-jumps mixed up with the actual grinding mechanics? it's not like THPS was ever great at letting you jump between rails, either, that was always a crapshoot.

The Tony Hawk games by comparison are far less forgiving, anyway; that balance bar you suggest would just toss you to your death if you didn't play by it's super finicky rules. That's fair for a game where riding the board and piling on trick combos is the core challenge, but that'd just make what you claim tedious in a platformer even moreso.

If we want to look at a contemporary game that handled rail control better, it's best to look at Sega's own JSRF. They're a bit more automated than I'd like them to be in Sonic, but infinitely more controllable and interactive than they are in titles post-SA2.

 

I'm not sure I agree. I love both Jet Set Radio games, but the only mechanical difference between them and the boost games is how you accelerate. I think Future pushes you forward automatically (which the original doesn't, one of the reasons it doesn't flow as well), but the way you build up speed is by rhythmically doing trick moves, which I guess is sort of a refinement of the "just mash X" from Shadow and 06. Their differences are all in the sandbox level design letting you use individual rails in different ways depending on what you're going for.

My idea is adjacent to this, since Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is basically just another JSR, and it has you gain speed from hitting turns and holding a direction like in SA2, but it doesn't cut your speed if you miss. I think this would be the perfect balance for Sonic.

 

All this talk of rails reminded me that since Shadow's campaign is built off Frontiers, we'll have rail launching again. Absolutely love rail launching. As for where I stand on this topic, while I don't enjoy having to actually balance on the rail necessarily (At least not the way SA2 does it), I do like the crouching system, timing your crouch with the angle of the rail to go even faster is loads of fun.

 

Why are we talking about different levels being included? How many stages will the Shadow campaign even have? Looks like 2.

 

Looks like Nintendo finally got around to uploading the trailer