Best format for a 3D Sonic game?

well, I for one played the heck out of SA2. and SA2B. (yes, I own both) but as for game-play, I like the feel of SA1 and the story of SA2, but heroes was a bit of a fail on both accounts. I don't think I need to go in-depth here, seeing as there are others that I agree with.

I just wish they would bring back some sort of serious story with out doing some sort of convoluted shit like sonic 06... the game play on that was at least ok where there weren't glitches or insane loading times. but man that story.... wow.
but to quote a movie... "That's all I have to say 'bout that."

 

I'm torn, but leaning towards the Colours/Unleashed style of 3D play.

That said, I like the feel of the Adventure series a lot. The controls are designed so that you can take it slow and just wander around at any old pace but when you really need to shift, they give you that ability. Colours and Unleashed seem to feel like they're designed totally for speed all of the time. Don't get me wrong, that has an appeal to it (as I voted for it) but it'd be nice to see a Sonic Adventure-style 3D game done well again.

 

Seconding this, minus the "2D works better" bit. I think the Unleashed formula was flawless before tainted by the blocky and uninspired level design of Colors. I like it not because of the 2D, but because of its innovative design and the immersive feeling that I think the previous games were just a few hairs short on. Unleashed is the first game that requires the player to use more than one or two buttons frequently and not just for minimal tasks such as moving the camera around. All six of Sonic's new moves contribute to the player's ability to maintain speed instead of weird stuff like the Light Attack that forces you to come to a sudden stop. As a result, the game flows a lot better.

For me it has more depth than SA1 or SA2 in that you feel like you're actually accomplishing something by using each specific technique at the right time instead of just the usual basic platforming and using Magic Hands when you feel like attempting to find some practical use for them. The racing-style gameplay adds a lot to the overall experience and Sonic's new abilities allow you to really take control of him at even the highest speeds. The 2D sections definitely contribute as well, but only when done properly (I.e. you can't actually tell it's 2D because the pacing doesn't suddenly change out of no where).

Runner-up would probably be Sonic Heroes, because as controversial as it is, I actually think the teamwork system worked very well, and, again, gave the player a lot more abilities other than just jumping and spindashing. This also helped the level design in turn and created more interesting opportunities for alternate routes. I'd say it's a considerable step above Sonic and Shadow's levels in SA1 and SA2. As for the rolling/spindash, I don't see why it's so important to see a ball animation for something that's essentially the same as sliding and boosting. You don't even really have to charge it up in Sonic Adventure, just spam the attack button and you're off.

I'm not sure I would go that far. Those kinds of threads usually lack any kind of focus and usually start out with some wall of text full of information that people have already stated a million times before. So far we haven't seen any of that yet.

EDIT: Arg, apparently I misread. I didn't realize you were only talking about certain situations where 2D is better. In that case I agree.

 

I have the spin dash AND the slide because when he rolls into a ball he isn't the same width as he is when sliding. Ergo, you could have multiple paths, some which require sliding under things, others which can also be rolled under or even over.

 

Eh, while I enjoyed Colors a lot, something more akin to SA2's varied styles seems to be better suited in my opinion.

 

In the Wii version he can't. He moves in a more 'Sonic R-y' sort of way. The reason for this is because the Wii version was made from the ground up seperately from the other Xbox/PS3 versions. He takes ages to turn around too.

If you look at the Xbox version on Youtube, it's basically the prequel to Sonic Colors, at least physics and game engine wise.

I like the art in Sonic Uleashed, but it doesn't feel like a Sonic game. I'm glad they fixed that with Sonic Colours. None of this 'realism' stuff. Sonic also seems different in a light shade of blue. He should stick to being a darker colour like in the other games, though I'm fully aware his blue colour is never the same in any game, ever. Actually, it might be in Sonic 1/CD and Sonic Adventure/2. And it definitely is in the Advance games.

 

Hmm. All six of Sonic's new moves? Lemme see, there's the Boost, the Slide, the Stomp, the Homing Attack, the Quick-step, and the Drift. Thinking about it from just those moves, I see what you're saying. The Quick-stepping adds new reflex-based opportunities for skillful gameplay during high-speed sections, so that I have no problem with. It's prone poor or shallow game design, but not as much as Boosting. The Stomping I find satisfying, but along with the Homing Attack, it's just as choppy as the Light Speed dash in that it requires, nay, forces you to stop dead in your tracks, so I don't know why you're knocking that move. But hey, I guess that's what the Boost is for: a spammable bandaid for lack of flow. I agree with much of your antecedent statements, but not with your conclusion.

Saying Unleashed has good flow sounds just as ridiculous to me as saying that Sonic Adventure 1 or 2 have good flow; they're both choppy games when taken as a whole, between all the alternate modes of gameplay, optional or mandatory, that constitute them. Unless you're just referring to the speed sections, in which case, yeah. I guess they do have better flow, but they're so linear and running at a constant speed that the experience becomes a boring, trivial matter of memorizing reflex-action events for a few minutes—provided you don't die a lot—and backtracking or exploration are not options. The only thing you can do during stages is not-die by collecting rings and jumping at the right time, and maybe collecting a tape, at the end of which you'll be given some overbearing grade on your performance and a few points to pool into your Magic attribu—wait, is this a Sonic game or a fucking RPG?

They are fun for a while and certainly more spectacular than anything on the Dreamcast, but if anything, I'd say the levels lack immersion due to brevity and an overdose on speed. Their hearts are in the right place by pushing speed to the limit, but I think too much was sacrificed for having an instant 300mph button a la Rush. I'd much rather have more freedom to both control Sonic in a 3D world and determine what kind of speed I want him to go, with the game rewarding me with exhilarating speed boosts based on my choices and performances in the given levels. I'd like to experience and engage in speed that feels good and is scalable without being forced to run in a finite race track ending with a bumper or a grind rail. The speed that I see in Unleashed and Colors is simply too limited and too narrow. That said, I enjoyed Colors for its fun 2D action, and I'll probably enjoy the better parts of Unleashed HD's day stages once I get around getting an HD console. I'm particularly looking forward to Cool Edge, Skyscraper Scamper, and Eggmanland, which does seem to have a lot more in the way of choosing where you want to go and bombarding you with a lot of visuals—kinda like the Genesis Sonics and Scrap Brain, really. Oh, and Dragon Road looks pretty fun too.

I'm all for giving Sonic and the players more moves they can do, and the team system was an interesting way to go about that, but in the midst of a design that tried to make a 3D game behave like a 2D Sonic game while having life-metered enemies, slippery controls, and mostly superficial branching pathways, I felt Sonic Heroes' team system was poorly implemented and put into a pretty cheap game. I didn't like it. If they put the team mechanic in better 3D environments where it could've been more useful, though, then I might agree with you. I'll bet it could even be better than the best parts of the Adventure games. As it stands, though, I think Sonic Heroes as a whole was a terrible idea. The team mechanic is salvageable, though.

 

That's the problem. In your attempt to try and offer more paths and freedom to the player, you would be doing the opposite, making actions like the slide an end in themselves rather than what feels to be building off of the core gameplay. If you compartmentalize the core gameplay and ideas that make Sonic play how he does to that extent, it's almost guaranteed to be boring. Why? Because you probably wouldn't let the player be doing things their way. Sure they can choose, but they want to choose on their terms, not the terms you've laid out in front of them. That's why the classic games have so much replay value, even the first Sonic game. There weren't as many moves, but it was pretty much entirely up to you to exploit the (here comes the tired old word) physics and are making the act layout like a playground rather than a building which forces you to go up dogleg staircases and elevators and slim hallways.

When it comes to Sonic, 2D or 3D, you don't need paths as often as you need tiers. I'm almost 100% positive that open 3D environments will not work for Sonic's core gameplay, as it would be too easy to go blazing around, too easy to react to hazards, and too easy to bypass many obstacles and reach the finish - no challenge. The idea of doing things your way is satisfying when you consider that in order to feel accomplished for doing so, there has to be restrictions posed. You're kind of circumventing them by doing the advanced tricks you do. I don't think 3D environments would offer the restrictions Sonic needs, and Sonic Adventure was a good example of that. Spindash, jump, and look at yourself go!

 

I want the Sonic Colours/Unleashed format to be mixed with Adventure. If the 3D sections played like Adventure, it would be the perfect 3D Sonic game.

 

Actually I meant the walljump, not the homing attack. :3c While the HA and walljump do slow you down a bit, they don't force you to a complete stop the way the light attack does. Though to be fair, the light attack is forgivable since SA1 and SA2 never granted you the kind of speed Unleashed does and it was mainly just used sparingly for small combat sections. I guess a better comparison would be something like the Magic Hands which seems to have no real rhyme or reason for being there other than just being more of a "novelty" upgrade.

Well sure, the game is by no means perfect, but I feel like if they carried the idea over for a sequel and refined things a little more, it could've been better than what we got afterward. The only part of this I don't get is how they tried to make a 3D game behave like a 2D game. Apart from the Special Stages and cartoony surreal theme of the game, I don't see where it tries to behave like a 2D game. For the most part I thought it's just Sonic's levels from the Adventure games with new moves.

I semi-agree with this. Not going to say much more on it to avoid "how to fix Sonic".

EDIT: On second thought, I think we're old enough to handle ourselves like mature and well-mannered fans. If things get out of hand, the bad posts can just be trashed.

Anyway, A lot of people seem to think Sonic should have roaming 3D like Banjo or Mario, but I'm a bit torn on this. It's not that it can't be done so much as I feel like it could only be done with a specific type of design that caters to Sonic's speedy gameplay. A good example of what I'm talking about is the level select hubs in Unleashed, particularly Holoska. Not where you talk to the people, but where you have your in-level controls.

(skip to 0:33)

If there was a free-roaming Sonic game that played similarly to this and somehow allowed high speeds with no actual definitive "end", I think it could work well. Suddenly race courses come to mind. Perhaps a much larger-scale Sonic R with Unleashed controls that played more like a main title (badniks, pits, etc.) with a proper story mode could be a way to introduce roaming 3D into the series. Ramps and half-loops could be used to get to higher areas of the levels so that it doesn't kill your speed. This way you could have exploring and speed and one wouldn't be sacrificed for the other.

 

A game made nearly 13 years ago when 3D platforming was still very much in the R&D phase is hardly a good example! SA1's spindash jumping allowed you to bypass such large swathes of the game because the developers hadn't foreseen that sort of behavior occurring. Keeping your variables in check is hardly impossible; they could've solved the problem by either suppressing the behavior altogether (ill-advised when that very same mechanic is, to me, an enormous part of what made SA1 such a blast to play) or polishing it up and deliberately tailoring the level design to take advantage of it.

I really don't understand where you got this idea that there are certain restrictions that can't be enacted in 3D, because there really isn't anything that's impossible in 3D if you can manage the variables. I'd chalk it up to a lack of vision on your part. Picture "gameplay" as a simulation of fluids, where viscosity roughly equates to complexity: The lower the surface tension, the harder it's going to be to manage. Water exhibits strange and seemingly random behavior on a micro level, but a fluid always conforms to the volume that contains it, and that makes it easy to predict the behavior of the whole, right? Scale the environment accordingly. Carve out a channel for the gameplay to flow through, build the banks high enough to keep it from spilling out. Too easy to go blazing around? Slow it the fuck down. Too easy to react to hazards? Make the hazards larger, place more of them, place them more intelligently. There's a solution to all of these problems.

Can you see what I see, though? Sonic is water. This is where we're always getting this "flow" bullshit from. Unleashed/Colors is cooking oil, '06 is a nauseous gas, SA2 is water in a clogged drain, SA1 is water in a kiddie pool during a splash fight, and the classic trilogy is just water trickling down an ant farm. What we need is a mountain stream. No, I'm not smoking anything!


EDIT: The more I read this, the hokier it sounds. Got so caught up in my epiphany that I went off on a tangent that isn't readily relevant. Does this make sense to anyone? Because this is totally how I visualize flow in games. It just makes too much sense. I won't be able to stop now. Is the world ready for this?

 

This, but most of all, I just want something that's tightly debugged. :v:

 

In my opinion the ultimate format for a 3D Sonic game would be Sonic Unleashed's Hub world with SA2's level design; I'm a huge fan of Hub worlds. In Unleashed 360 the Hub world was awesome, the loading times and stupid town missions of Sonic 06 didn't make a second appearance (as far as I realized from watching videos, I don't actually own a 360), and the Hub world is majorly bigger and more detailed than SA1's.

About the level design, I truly love the level designs of the SA games and, not considering the massive amount of bugs, Sonic 2006. I really like the different design of levels, not-entirely-linear pathways and the decent amount of platforming. I also liked the concept of "Speed sections", unfortunately it wasn't executed as good as it sounded like.
Oh right, and I forgot to mention Colors in this post...I loved the 2D sections in this game, I hated the easy design of the 3D sections, and I hated the fact 85% of the game was in 2D. If the ratio was more balanced, the 3D sections were harder, and the amusement park was made of a Hub world and not menu-based, I could easily give this game 10/10. Maybe longer levels and less acts per world could make it even better too.

So to sum it up, the best format imo is Unleashed's hub world + 60% of SA2's level design merged with improved speed sections every now and then (even a free-of-platforming section that could be passed with boost could work, like some sections in Unleashed), and 40% of Colors' 2D level design.

I guess Unleashed's daytime downloadable levels are the closest to my desired level design.

 

This is my biggest gripe with Unleashed's 3d gameplay, and it's also possibly the only thing that keeps it from feeling exactly like sonic adventure, aside from the lack of a good spindash. In fact, in sonic adventure, you don't really have a turning radius at all, unless you make it yourself - you can instantly pick a new direction and sonic will immediately shift to it, unless it's a 180 degree turn.

 

If they replaced the boost button with a button that shifts between Gear 1: Adventure platforming speed with more liquid and responsive controls and Gear 2: a high-octane speed mode with Unleashed-style acceleration (and incorporates Sonic XG's mechanic where when you go fast enough you become invincible, except replace that with boost mode) you'd have the perfect formula for an Adventure/ Unleashed mix. So long, of course, as the levels themselves are dialed and polished.

 

A "run" button isn't needed, just lower the sensitivity on the damn analog sticks, in unleashed you have to very slightly push the stick in any direction to get Sonic to walk, that's not taking advantage of the precision analog sticks offer for movement, they need to at least give the analog stick a 60-70% for walking-jogging speeds and have the remaining 30% for actual running with the wider turn radius, hell, if you want to run as fast as you can on Unleashed without boosting most people will just jam the analog stick forward anyway, giving you at least 90% of the analog stick for walking-running.

 

I think he's basically saying that the amount of tilt on the analog stick should correlate with Sonic's speed and/or acceleration, like in Adventure. Slight Tilt=Walk, Full tilt=a jog that builds up to full speed if held down. In Unleashed, the analog stick was incredibly sensitive, making sonic go ridiculously fast at the slightest tilt.

 

I'd probably say Sonic Adventure, partly because it captured the best feel but partly cause now with alot more focus in the recent games it'd probably realize a good amount of unused potential in Sonic 06.

Now I absolutely hate Sonic 06, but to be honest I feel like when it came out it stood as a half-baked example of what a modern Sonic Adventure would be like if it wasn't marred by terrible execution all around. It completely lost at the starting gate of development, but I played through it and thought to myself at times that "implement a few of these ideas better and it'd actually be pretty interesting". And while yes, it's multi playstyles were flawed and broken, mostly annoying when you'd be interrupted mid-level by a sidecharacter, I feel like the idea that just 3 characters that aren't all that vastly different but given specific abilities to make them unique is the best way to do a multiple playstyle game. Kind of like Spider-Man: Shattered Dimension in a sense, where there's different gameplay focus on different characters but none of them feel any less dumbed down from the main lead and all play similar mostly.

And I have to admit, some of the general design went into the game was pretty slick, particularly Kingdom Valley. It would be interesting to see what would happen if they could apply that grand and massive feel to the creative, fun and colorful designs of Colors.

So yeah, mostly just Adventure, but personally I'd consider a Sonic Adventure style game with more control and variety, the progression of Adventure 2 (mostly in the sense of the lack of absolutely tedious sidequests), the creativity of Colors (maybe a bit of Heroes in there) and the multiple character concepts of 06 a great format for it.