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The Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Megathread

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Scarred Sun, Apr 7, 2010.

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  1. For god's sake.
    There is no such thing as a "true" sequel.
    Sonic 4 is the sequel no matter how many ways you cut it.
    Just because it didn't have what you expected from it, does not mean that it is not a "true" sequel.
    It is clearly its own game. 16 years have passed, so changes were bound to happen, espcially given the fact that Sonic Team has cycled through more staff than a fucking McDonalds.
    You can't keep saying "Oh but it doesn't have this, and it should have had that", that will only frustrate you.
    Sure physics problems are worth the complaints, because they affect the games core mechanics and principle.
    However, shit like Character Design and level progression are seriously not worth the drama.
    Whether or not the levels are played through like a playlist, does not affect the way the game plays or feels, so just move on.

    This game is not Sonic 3 and Knuckles: 2, nor should it be.
    You had expectations, those expectations were wrong.
    Again, physics and level design complaints are valid, and are being addressed, but everything else?
    Just move on. You'll feel a lot better if you do.
     
  2. SA2

    SA2

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    There's something I've been wondering about this, forgive me if it's been covered already, I don't pay attention to Sonic 4 much.

    But you can get all 7 emeralds in the first episode, right? Do you have to get them again in episode 2, 3.. etc? Or do the 7 you get in the first carry on into the others..? I dunno.
     
  3. dsrb

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    Nothing has been said on that. A few people have supposed that there may be something akin to the Hyper Emeralds from S3&K, but as much as that could be cool if written in properly (let's see a full Hidden Palace Zone with a mixture of art from that game and S2 :O), it's probably more likely that they'll find a way to have the Emeralds stolen or lost, and make you simply collect them all again—hopefully in a different type of Special Stage; I quite like the original game's ones, but the new implementation doesn't look too great on my limited viewing.
     
  4. SteelBrush

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    This is exactly why I will never view it as the true S4. Not a single member of the original team is working on it. The design and whole philosophy of the classics has been butchered by Iizuka. Sega itself has changed. The only reason this game is called Sonic 4 is so it will sell. Perhaps you had to have grown up beside the classics and be a child of the 90s to fully understand why this just doesn't feel like a true Sonic 4.

    I expect I will enjoy the game, I'm not saying it's bad, I'm saying it's not Sonic 4 as I imagined it.
     
  5. I wasn't technically a child of the 90's, being born in '94, but my first ever video game was Sonic 2, which I got in '97. I know how you feel. Honestly, I don't think Izuka has done much at all with S4, putting more effort into is pride and joy; Sonic Colours.

    This is the Sonic 4. Its different to the classics, and I'm happy that it isn't trying too hard to be exactly like them.
    You just have to move on and accept this, and you'll feel better about it.
    The only problem is that its currently sub-par, but I'm pretty sure it will get better with time.

    NOTE: I am not saying you have to accept flaws, I am saying you have to accept that S4 is an altogether different beast to the Classics. At this stage, it is merely a homage to the classics, and will eventually grow into its own game.
     
  6. glem3

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    Huh? Not a single member of the original team is working on it? Didn't ruby say some of the original team was working on it? And pointed out one specifically?
     
  7. Tweaker

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    This attitude irritates me. The best rationale you can muster for liking this game and accepting it as a sequel is to just ignore all of the things we individually wanted in a sequel to the original classic games and settle for what we have. If that works for you, that's great, but I've felt like I've been "settling" for years with these goddamned games and I'm sick of it. There are several things I can adjust to and be okay with, but getting a game like this and being expected to see it as something that lives up to, in my eyes, three of the best video games ever released? I'm sorry, but fuck your shit. I won't be having that.

    No, I will not "move on." No, I will not "feel better" for it. You can settle for this mediocre bullshit if you want, but I'm done settling. This shit is unacceptable. And I'm tired of people like you basically saying "the game sucks, but it's the best we're gonna get so you may as well take it!" because that's part of the fucking problem. If they can't live up to the classics, they shouldn't fucking try by naming this game Sonic 4. That was just stupid.

    Iizuka's work in Sonic 3 & Knuckles comprised of doing things which Yasuhara would subsequently clean up and refine into what would become the game's final product. Yasuhara was honestly the meat and potatoes of classic Sonic, and his departure pretty much crippled the design of the games for life. Why they thought they could attempt something like Sonic 4 without him is completely beyond me.
     
  8. dsrb

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    Takashi Iizuka was senior game (and level?) designer for S3&K, and is doing level design for this. I think that's about it. It depends on what you mean by "the original team". Certainly in terms of the first game, none of Naka, Ohshima, Nakamura, etc. are involved.

    Edit: Tweaker (who of course knows more about it) beat me, and pointed out what I suspected: that Iizuka probably wasn't the brains behind that game.
     
  9. SteelBrush

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    Oh god, I hope to fuck Iizuka isn't the level designer for S4, it does explain all the autoplay bullshit though. How this man ever got to be the head of Sonic Team I just don't know, it must be gross managerial incompetence. I said this before but ...

    He is a failure as a director and team leader.

    Sonic 3D: Game concept designer.
    I love S3D but was flicky finding really appropriate for a Sonic game?

    Sonic Jam: Director.
    Probably the best of many compilations.

    Sonic R. Director.
    Again another game I love but it has major problems. The most enjoyable part if this game is it's stage design, it mutiple paths are proof that traditional Sonic level design can work in 3D, this is due to the genius of Yasuhara.

    Nights. Director.
    A brilliant game that defined the Saturn era. Iizuka was heavily involved, as was Oshima, the character designer.

    Sonic Adventure. Director.
    Here is where the problems really start. The RPG elements are a very bad idea, adventure fields and a intensive story were just a wrong design choice that didn't really add anything to the Sonic experience. It's also the start if his one route levels. The game was also extremely rushed and full of bugs. What was established in this game still plagues the Sonic series today.

    Sonic Adventure 2. Director.
    At least it felt like a finished project. Again it's full of questionable design choices.

    Sonic Heroes.
    Back to surreality, shame about everything else. The level design is just horrid, death pits every where, autoplay, no alternate routes.

    Shadow the Hedgehog.
    Iizuka wanted Shadow to have his own game. This game has some of the worst stage design I have ever experienced in a Sonic game. The whole "choose your own path" idea was far to ambitious for the time frame for development, bad direction. It just resulted in a poor game that looked like shit and played like it too.

    Nights Journey of Dreams.
    Well we all know what a fuck up that was. With out the original teams members this game was full of the usual bad design choices, and poor level layout.

    Sonic 4.
    Just another bad idea. Choosing Senoue as a compose backfired aswell.

    I've missed a
     
  10. Spanner

    Spanner

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    Nope, it's Dimps' level designers who are doing it, with Iizuka telling them to go for a Sonic 2-like design rather than S3K's or something else. Obviously they went with a Sonic Advance-style considering what they have in the levels.

    The game is pretty much 98% worked on by Dimps. Senoue and Iizuka seem to be the only Sonic Team guys working on Sonic 4.
     
  11. Frozen Nitrogen

    Frozen Nitrogen

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    But yeah, Sega seems to be undergoing a serious case of wanting to have their cake and eat it here. They want us to believe that this is truly Sonic 4 as you imagined it, garnering kudos and sales and the attention of talking heads everywhere, while at the same time they seem unwilling to actually make the game in any way like it was imagined. This mandatory flow-breaker level select is just one more example of the subtle (or not so subtle) breaks from S1-K continuity that seem almost designed to plunge a knife into what should have been a cozy, familiar feeling of nostalgia, and twist.

    As Phos said a while back, this is like a Matryoshka doll of design badness.

    (Incidentally, I'd love the auto-level-select as an optional mode after you've beaten Mad Gear properly. Like the system in Heroes, where you can use the stage selector to quick-access levels you need the Chaos Emeralds from. But implementing it before that is not the way nature intended. :colbert: )
     
  12. glem3

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    That's not what the credits said.

    The credits of sonic 4 said the "lead designer" was the guy who was the level designer for sonic advance 1 and sonic advance 3. The lead programmer worked on Sonic Advance 1. Nobody in the credits worked on Sonic Advance 2 or Sonic Rush.

    The director, Toshiuku Nagahara, worked on Paper Mario TTYD.

    The game's art director worked on Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, NiGHTS into dreams, and Sonic and the Secret Rings. Plus Burning Rangers.

    As for the technical director, the only thing I could find he worked on was Sonic gems collection as the programmer. Actually, a ton of people who worked on gems collection worked on sonic 4. Mostly the artists.

    Then the credits listed a bunch of people from sonic team, most of them being from the storybook series, with some others being from unleashed. The game would probably be way better off without sonic team.
     
  13. I never said anywhere to "accept the problems".
    I said "accept the fact that it is different". There was no way was this game ever, going to be anything like the classics. I knew this from the beginning.
    Why anybody here would think otherwise is beyond me.

    You said it yourself, that half the "meat" of the team left long ago.
    Why would you expect a perfect recreation of the Mega Drive games? You'd just be setting yourselves up for dissappointment.

    In any case, we've been throwing our fits and complaining like there is no tomorow.
    So eventually the PR considered it wise to listen to us, so they could calm the shitstorm.
    I've been sending messages frequently to Ruby Eclipse outlining the problems that people here, and elsewhere have been throwing a fit about. I'm not sure all of its gonna be included, most of it probably won't, but I did what I could.

    Even after all of this, Sonic 4 is still going to be different from the classics. Just because its different, doesn't necessarily mean its gonna be bad.
    I'm seriously fed up about people still complaining about the goddamn character design.
    If the classics suddenly used modern design, its not going to change the fact that they were great games.
    Same with the complaints about the level progression method being "un-classic".
    If the classics had a "choose the level you play" scheme, it wouldn't have changed the fact that it was an excellently design game.
    Why can't people just accept that, and move on. It barely has any effect on how the game plays.
    In fact I'm not even sure its going to stay that way.

    By "flaws", I meant things like bad physics and level design. I never told to anybody to accept that. We are actively trying to get them to change that.

    Lets not forget, that this game isn't being made, because suddenly they want to make a sequel.
    This game is a reaction to all the bad publicity after Black Knight's horrible reception.
    The game is trying (and succeeding) to prove to gamers that Sonic games aren't all bad.
    If this franchise wasn't in dire straights after several mediocre games, I don't think we'd be in this situation, nor would we be talking about it.

    My final point:
    If you don't like what becomes of Sonic 4, don't buy it.
    Most people who've complained, will probably buy Episode 1, maybe even the whole game.
    If you don't support this game, for whatever reason....Don't buy it, not even Episode 1.
    I know there are people who won't buy any part of the game, but I'm pretty sure they're in the minority.

    Feel free to prove me wrong though.

    + - I'm gonna get a LOT of shit for this post..... :rolleyes:  
     
  14. Tweaker

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    Don't care, bro. May as well stop right where you are; you're not changing my views, and rightfully so.

    Incidentally, in my original post I had a line at the end saying "By the way, before you try to reply to with me with some gigantic wall of text I don't care about, don't waste your breath." I decided against it because I thought it might be too antagonistic. Guess I was wrong.
     
  15. I don't care if you don't care. Others will, I'm pretty sure many of them aren't going to like it.
    In any case, I wasn't trying to change your veiws, I was trying to make a different point.
     
  16. Tanks

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    I love how Scartillery is hovering over the thread, just praying someone quotes him in a post. Are you really that attention starved dude?
     
  17. glem3

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    Jesus Christ Scartillery, you act like sonic 4 is a completely different genre than sonic 3. It's different, sure, but it's like the difference between sonic 3 and sonic advance, not sonic 3 and a Zelda game or something. They're very, very similar.
     
  18. Namo

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    I love this post. It's brilliant, and with any luck should make a few token people shut the hell up.

    EDIT: Misunderstanding.
     
  19. See, I knew this would happen.

    I wasn't.
    I've been at the SSMB and various other sites for a good half-hour now.
     
  20. And that was Scartillery's 666th post. What does this mean?
     
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