I liked Sonic Heroes, at least more so than Unleashed because I paid only 10% of what I did for Unleashed on it, but god that game needed one hell of a tuneup. I mean, it was definitely more stable on the PC than SADX was, but too many of the setpiece transitions were glitchy. In retrospect, given my qualms about the way in which Unleashed controlled (and hearing people want to give Sonic something akin to a gearshift), the team mechanic was brilliant. Although I didn't find the chatter so bothersome, Charmy excepted, it did tend to insult my intelligence by informing me of things that were obvious from playing -- or that, such as in the case of the bobsled, were misleading or wrong. Things I liked about it: *Presentation (graphics, music, etc.) Definitely one of the better parts of the game -- but the start of a trend of copying the checkerboard pattern texture from GHZ in retrospective/nostalgia games (Brawl, Tennis and All-Stars Racing, and now two levels in Generations) *Slower setpieces that took part in larger hub-like areas, even if they generally took the form of enemy-killing and switch challenges. Generally these actually took some planning *Generally at least half of each level was fresh and interesting; most were better than that. *Team Rose's gameplay tended to be of a good length in particular, and wasn't overly frustrating. *Engine was more solid than SADX's was generally. *Skillful team switching is actually quite satisfying; being able to seamlessly go from, say, a platform challenge right to a set of enemies is always nice. *Decent 2-P mode, though not spectacular. *Controls were generally tight and responsive, and worked well with the camera. *Super hard mode is generally fun, and ditching the ranking system is nice. Wish it had fewer homing-attack-over-the-pit and light-dash-over-the-pit segments (which the first level starts with, mind you). Things I didn't like about it: *"Puzzles" integrated into the level design weren't very interesting; the first train sections in Bullet Station was entirely superceded by the second, as there wasn't anything in it you didn't know how to do. *Team Chaotix, especially their extra missions. Everything I hated about Super Mario 64's gameplay (minus the fact that a guy who could jump like 6 times his height couldn't do an about-face), basically. *Glitchy rail-jumping (this is one thing I thought Unleashed actually improved on, but, that said, I never really felt the rails added anything to most of the levels in that one). *Heavy Egg Hammer. Fuck this guy. *Setpieces not playing nice with each other; one of the corkscrew loops in Power Plant doesn't always push you onto the spring at the end properly, for example. Biggest killer in the game at times. *Team Rose has a forced tutorial that isn't very useful. *Special stages' controls. Awful, absolutely awful. *Team battles. A very minor complaint given that they're so simple and short generally. *Propellor-based setpieces. Slow and not requiring much input from the player. Another minor complaint. *Bosses, especially the last one, tended to be a bit on the buggier side. Obviously hardly perfect, but a nice time-waster at $2.50.
The way they used the engine was kinda bleh, but ultimately it was up to Sonic Team's design as to whether the game was good or not. As usual it wasn't. Just try playing it now if you haven't in a long time. Annoyingly overappearing voice clips, characters that look like they're made of legos, the whole team switching thing... I've seen this sort of thing before, these 'theories', that if only SEGA had done something mildly different, it'd be better. Maybe so. But then it wouldn't have been 'Sonic Heroes', because in the end that's what they decided to put out there and sell. Any other version would not be that game and have its own different legacy. It ties into something I learned from my informatics class. If you take out the engine, you do not get "Sonic Heroes - Engine Problems + Good Engine = Good", you get something entirely new. It changes everything, not just that component. So it's fairly useless to speculate "Oh, if only they used another proprietary engine." If they did use one, that wouldn't prevent it from coming out bad in an entirely different way... and obviously we can't find out what they would have done so... it's fairly pointless. tl:dr version: There is no quick fix to a flawed game. Taking out one piece would change all the other ones, even if we could hypothetically watch the results of such a change.
I wouldn't think having to port the game to the PS2 harmed it in any way other than issues specific to that version and (like most multiplatform releases in that era, annoyingly) ensuring that the multiplayer mode wouldn't allow for more than 2 controllers. Regardless of whether any of this is true, the fact that Shadow still had the exact same slippy slidey control scheme Heroes did tells me my main problem with the game wasn't going to get fixed anyway.
I figure that Sonic Heroes would have had a bit better physics and control, but I bet the models and gameplay would have been relatively the same. Still, I am curious how it would have been without it.
Wasn't the PS2 just a downgraded port, anyway? In that case, Sonic Heroes without Sony would have been exactly the same, minus the PS2 version.
I don't think Sonic Heroes was "ported" to any console. Renderware (I assume) has the ability to build an Xbox, GameCube and PlayStation 2 version of the game all at once. It's not a case of "GameCube to PS2" or whatever, it's "source code to consoles". They were likely built in parallel to be released on the same date in Japan. You'd have various fancy bits of code to swap triangle buttons for Y or whatever and differences in visuals will be down to the specific ways Renderware optimises things. The exception is the later PC version. But again, likely not a "port", just a different type of build, maybe with a cleanup or two. I don't claim to be an expert but very little is "ported" these days.
about the supposed claim that Sony would black ball sega and capcom from making PS2 games ever again if they didn't port their games over to the PS2... isn't that illegal? Wasn't that the entire backbone of the old lawsuits against Nintendo from the NES days where, if you developed for a rival console, you were never allowed to develop for the NES again? I'm going to need a source on this info before I even begin to believe it.
Nintendo of America had a pre-1993 policy where publishers could not publish the same game for rival consoles until two years had passed. They would also decide how many game cartridges would be produced, and they would only allow a publisher to create up to five games a year. All to stop the North American video game crash from reoccuring. Failure to comply would just mean your game wasn't manufactured, because Nintendo had control over cartridge production. The only way to get around that would be to reverse engineer the console, and if you did that, Nintendo would take you to court. There was never a case where Sony demanded games be ported to the PlayStation 2. Loads of Sega games skipped the console despite landing on the Xbox or GameCube. Sonic Team's own Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg was a GameCube exclusive for a few years.
In the sense of auto-switching gates (which I agree, weren't good), or in the sense that many of the gimmicks only had one solution?
Both. I didn't like any part where you had to switch characters. They should have designed the game where I didn't have to ever switch characters.
