Rayman Origins is just gorgeous and I'd be happy if they could do that with a Sonic game. The animations are super smooth, the art is great and all the effects are beautiful. I did love Generations, though. I'd be happy if they kept that style up.
Regardless of the quality of Sonic 4 Episode 2, I'd love for that visual style to be the basis of future 2D Sonic games. Say what you want about it not fixing enough about Episode 1 but goddamn it looks pretty. Besides, it's clear looking at the progression of the games that Sega was headed in that direction to begin with instead of sticking with pure 2D sprites.
I agree, I was comparing two different things. But in today's gaming world, people automatically look at visual styles of games and also think about how the game controlled as well. Look at a snapshot of Sonic '06, what do you think about first, the graphics/visuals, or the crap controls and glitches? I'm sure almost everyone would first think about the horrible gameplay and horrible physics (Or lack of, for that matter). As for the visuals of episode 2, they're gorgeous, but not what I personally wanted as a sequel to Sonic 3 and Knuckles. But enough about episode two for me. I'll take the rest of my opinions to the episode 2 topics.
Aside from them clinging to Sonic Adventure's character designs, I thought Episode 2 looked beautiful. Don't know what others are on about.
Sorta off-topic, but just once I wish they'd experiment with visual style some. They're capable of virtually anything now, but they choose to stick with what works. The sad thing is that all the games are starting to blend together. Spoiler Same goes for Mario.
Sonic 4 Episode 2 is supposed to be better, but it's still embarrassing. You want something so awesome that the fans beg you to reuse it in the next game, like Sonic Unleashed's stuff was used in Generations. You want something a kid will grow up playing that becomes part of their childhood. Yeah, first take the animation in a Wario Land/Rayman Origins/Sonic 2 HD Direction. Make Sonic look like Sonic 3 with green eyes and maybe the shoe buckle. Making the colors vibrant is more importaint then realism. Make it so when you start walking, make Sonic seem like he's trying to go fast... not going on a leisurely stroll. Second, take the physics of Sonic 3... or maybe from the Sonic CD remake, and improve them. ADD DEBUG MODE. If you add a homing attack, make it speed you up if you hold forward while doing it, but when you hold nothing, it makes you stop dead like in generations. Maybe have a boost if you make it awesome enough. When you hit a boss, make the HUD Flash like it used to. The way they make the music is ALL wrong! Some of it is catchy (Metal Sonic's song rocks!), but they're taking the wrong approach. The musician for Sonic 1 and 2 tried to make the Genesis music like a movie—something beyond the video game—and people loved it. When they went to CDs (like Sonic CD and Sonic Adventure), the musicians pushed the limits and made every song with realistic instruments and lyrics. They soon got jaded and only used lyrics for the games main theme. Instead of Sonic 4 using Genesis hardware to make movie music, they're using movie software to imitate the Genesis in a videogame style. How backwards is that?... Sonic 4 Episode 2 kind of cheated to make the sound sonic-like. They took 2 or 3 previous songs and pushed them into one song. Sonic 4 Episode 1 may have gotten rid of Tails and Knuckles, but wasn't the whole point to get rid of all the countless Sonic side characters? Not quite... Sonic 06 had alot of playable characters, but their gameplay differed from what the fans wanted. So Sega pushed the characters to the sidelines, but they should have only pushed aside the character's gameplay. Tails in Sonic 2 handles like Sonic, but in Sonic 06, his gameplay was radicly different. It's good that Tails came back for Episode 2, but the levels are designed so you barely need Sonic. Just use Tails and do that double spin dash when you need to. The level design needs to be good and there needs to be different enemies. Each Sonic game had enemies that worked differently. Motobug is easy, but you have to hit Caterkiller in the head. There's that one thing in Spring Yard Zone that's like Motobug but has spikes on his back. That praying mantis thing in Sonic 2 is a pain in the neck, but I don't think Sonic 4 has alot of new enemies except those polar bears in White Park Zone. The team fly thing is messed up. When tails hits a spring or just barely makes it to the edge of a platform, he will undo the move and abandon Sonic who will sometimes fall to his cheap death. I didn't play the real game, but I've seen so many people on YouTube die because of this. I downloaded the Demo and it stinks. The game might be good, but the Demo stinks... Let me explain. Start out in White park Zone. Kinda odd but ok. You explore the level, it's pretty cool, but then the game stops and it asks you to buy the game or go back to the menu... If you let the timer hit 2 minutes, the game stops... ... ... ...yeah. So it's cool playing the level, but there's no water to try out the new scuba move. Turns out you can troll most of the level in the double spin dash. Just press the square button then you can hold the controller with one hand. So I got good at the level and tried to beet it before 2 minutes. Every time I get close, it resets again, and sometimes I was at like 1 min 53 sec or 1 min 45 sec. The demo tries to keep you from beating the level... At least Episode 1 let you beat the stage, jump in the huge ring and pretend to go to the special stage. The sad thing about Episode 1 is people seemed to like it at first, but then they really started to hate it. It must not have a lot of replay value. Hope 2 player mode gives Episode 2 enough replay value. I've noticed that Super Sonic doesn't mix well with the rest of the recent sonic games. I've seen videos of Sonic Colors. It was cool how time stopped for a second while activating whisps and it was awesome going super sonic, but they had to get rid of all the whisps to do it. It was cool in Colors, but when they do that stuff in Generations, it's not good. I hate how when in mid transformation you can get hit, lose your rings, and have your transformation canceled. In Sonic 2, you become invincible the millisecond sonic starts his transformation. The generation whisps take you out of super sonic, modern sonic doesn't get the option of going super on the skateboard, classic super sonic has no affect when he hits a skateboard item box, and the Sonic 4 tag actions take you out of super sonic too. It might be nice to have an option to turn super sonic off, like when you get stuck in that troll spike pit in the mystic cave zone. You could do it in Sonic 3 & Knuckles with the bonus stages. Maybe if you could revert to normal if you crouch and hold the transform button. I dunno. It was cool to play as metal sonic in episode metal, but it seemed alot cooler than it was. Well, I saw videos but never played it. It would be sweet to play metal sonic in episode 2 and use the purple thing for flight and to replace the double spin dash. Just keep all the animations smooth except turning around. If they make that too smooth, it'll ruin anything like a fire shield or homing attack. Also, it would be cool to see all of Sonic 4 all on one disk. The trick to Sonic is he doesn't need to be fast... he just needs to FEEL fast! Like in 06 when you use that purple gem that makes you small. You're just as fast as before, but it feels a lot quicker. Sonic 2 feels faster than Sonic 2 HD because Sonic could normally go 3 screens a second or so. When they made the screen bigger, he was able to go maybe a screen and a half a second. So, those are about all my thoughts on Sonic 4. What do you think?
