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

I got it! I live in Brazil so the promo wasn't available here, so thank you very much !

 

Decided to fire up Mania just out of boredom last night. Wild how much better that game looks, sounds, and feels than this, it's a genuine shame even if Superstars is, at best, "pretty good."

 

You know, *now that the dust has settled*, is it safe to say Superstars is in terms of quality on the level of something like Sonic Advance 1 (bosses aside)? That was my expectation from the outset so it sounds like I'd be satisfied, but the nightmare boss fight impressions I've gotten have kept me from picking it up yet.

 

As I've said previously, treat it as a successor to Sonic 4 Episode 2 rather than Mania. It's fun, more faithful than Episode 2, but can't quite hit the notes that the originals and Mania could. Definitely poorly timed and priced, but on sale it's a good time.

 

I mean that'll depend on what one thinks of Advance 1. If I put 1, 2, CD, 3K, and Mania in the highest tier, then I'd put Advance 1 up there too, while I'd put Advance 2 and Superstars below all of them. But my reasons are my own, and different people will have different rankings, and for different reasons.

 

I picked the game up full price right when it came out and had a lot of fun with it. I'd say it's slightly better than Advance, and I think Advance is a pretty good 2D Sonic game. Some of the bosses take longer than they should to beat but only a few gave me legitimate trouble, and after figuring their patterns out they're fairly easy, save for the final boss which forced me to look up how to beat it.

That said, I'd have a hard time recommending the game to others at its original price. There's not much more content than other games in the series such as 3K and Mania, and there's still some unpolished aspects to it. Knuckles' gliding speed cap really needs a patch.

I'd say its new price of $30 is about right. You could find it even cheaper considering how often Sega likes to put their games on sale.

 

Those are both fair takes, thanks! I guess should've clarified on Advance 1 though; I think it's pretty good, my favorite of the Advance games but it's not really up to par with 1-3K. Still it's a fun take on the formula so I like it.

 

Game is good. It's not special like Mania, sadly, but it is worthy to be considered amongst the classic lineage. It lacks polish and identity, sadly, and the bosses are kind of ass. It's a good game though and worth playing if you like the classics. I'd easily consider it better than any of the Advance games.

 

Comparing Advance 1 to Superstars is fair. They're both petty authentic to the Classic games in terms of how they play, which can't be said of Sonic 4, Generations or Forces. Superstars goes the extra mile of trying to build on the formula with co-op and Emerald Powers, but unfortunately both are undercooked ideas that were seemingly barely play tested.

What sets both Advance 1 and Superstars apart from the Classics is a distinct lack of quality control and polish. All of them have basically the same ingredients. But whereas 1, 2, 3K and Mania were cooked by Michelin Star chefs, Superstars and Advance 1 were made by microwave chefs at an overpriced chain restaurant.

And as for Jun Senoue specifically, he's a fantastic rock musician who very briefly played in a classical orchestra at the beginning of his career. He's not a classic musician though, and has repeatedly proven that he can't even identify the instruments they play.

 

What's your ideal Emerald Power's abilities?

 

This is hard to say, because it's the sort of thing that needs to be crafted through play testing. The Emerald Powers in Superstars mostly feel like afterthoughts, because they're ill-conceived and poorly balanced. So first breaking down what I think of the current ones...

• Avatar: A screen nuke that's useful for getting free hits on the the horrible boss fights and very little else. It's a one-trick pony. Also the avatars are way too similar in colour to the player characters, making it super easy to lose track of where you are.
• Bullet: Very similar to the red Wisp, but the way it's implemented feels weak and weightless. Useful for exploring in all directions. Probably the best power in the game since it's useful all the time and does more than grant you free hits, but it often feels like you're more vulnerable than you should be whilst using it.
• Vision: Allows you to see and interact with invisible objects. In theory, your sounds cool. In practice, it's only used when the game explicitly instructs you to do so and set all other times it's entirely worthless. Think of it like Mario's P-Switch, except you'll only get one attempt to hit activate any Switch in the level before you have to reactivate them all a checkpoint. This ability absolutely sucks.
• Ivy: Ascend rapidly on a vine, with a bit of lateral movement too. The vine disappears too quickly to be useful as a platform, and it's generally just less useful than bullet.
• Water: Climb waterfalls in one level and swim in one other level. This is painfully situational. It allows you to avoid being crushed too, which is a neat that barely scratches the surface of possibilities.
• Slow: Slowing down time is a fun idea, but can't find much use for it apart from instances like in the tutorial where obstacles move so quickly that you literally cannot get through. Normally I just end up waiting out the clock.
• Extra: Fucking worthless.

I honestly don't know what my ideal Emerald Powers would be. Like with the Wisps, I don't think that temporary abilities that basically function outside the regular game mechanics are a good fit for a platformer like Sonic. Bullet and the Red Wisp accentuate your existing abilities, which is why they're fun. And Slow could work because it gives you more control, but this is never actually realised within Superstars.

I'd rather see a Sonic game take just a couple of the powers and design levels around those powers or a character who has those abilities as part of their moveset. The Emerald Powers and Wisps just don't gel.

 

I think the Wisps at least worked because you had to obtain them from a capsule, so the devs could at least design around them.

 

Make them cost rings, perhaps? Having more than one is in need of a function now that lives are a thing of the past.

 

This only really played into the whole idea of using Wisps when and where you were told to use them. There was never any reason to use them otherwise, and half the time in Colours and Lost World you couldn't even activate the Wisps outside their designated areas.

 

I still stand by what I said sixty pages ago -- with the bonus that hey, yeah, we now know that Water prevents crushing. So that's nice. Whatever prevents lock-and-key design is good enough for me though.

Maybe take a page from roguelikes? Emerald powers as global abilities that can be turned on or off, preferably with a tradeoff. "Stages now have twice as many rings, but you can't get any back if you're hit". This kind of approach.

 

One of my most disliked game design tropes is what I'd call "arbitrary lock and key": when abilities only exist to let you get past arbitrary roadblocks and nothing else. The things the powerups let you get past only exist to justify the powerups existing in the first place and the powerups have zero depth outside of that.

The wisps are like, the perfect example of that kind of design. Literally just a "proceed to the next section" button with the same gameplay depth as opening a door.

 

I'm annoyed with ihop over their promo, since the whole thing was announced, I created multiple accounts trying to get the birthday coins (setting the birthday up to 10 and even 20 days after signup) and never got the birthday coins. I just want the Amy costume for my xbox copy. I'd just go to ihop, only there isn't any anywhere near where I am.

 

I finally made it through the Golden Capital Boss after dying countless times. Up until this point I’ve been playing the game with the D-Pad. I switch over to the analog stick and all of a sudden it’s a lot less challenging. Since this is a graphic intensive part, some of the controls and physics intermittently stop playing nice (PC Version). After that, the Cyber Station boss was a breeze!

TL;DR: I keep getting crushed at the end of Frozen Base Act Tails. Wtf is going on here??

 

Oh yeah, this part. I hate it. I have no idea what this is about. I've found that jumping in the middle of the descent prevents death, but not always and certainly not without spindashing beforehand.

 

I just read somewhere that the Water power prevents crushing. I’ll have to give it a try because this is more ridiculous than the last few bosses prior to this point.