Revisiting the whole "team" mechanic in such a way that it condenses several playable characters down to basic, but different, play styles sounds okay on paper, but I'd really rather they stayed away from mechanics that literally tied characters down to each other. It was awkward in Knuckles Chaotix, and it was annoying in Sonic Heroes. I would say less is more, and keep most of the characters to supporting roles with limited, if any, playability. The only time I remember another character besides Sonic that played pretty well and differently was Blaze the Cat, both in Sonic Rush and in Sonic '06. She was the exception to the rule. Hopefully this "new character" is another one.
How can people claim to want a Sonic Adventure 3 and yet not want it to have the defining feature of those games? I loved playing as the different characters. They just need to fine tune it. The sound the robots' lasers make needs to be made not obnoxious; the racing levels, go kart levels, and airplane levels all needed to be programmed better and to be made more fun; Sonic needs to have a Homing Attack that works like in Sonic Generations; fishing probably shouldn't be a focus of a character's stages (even if it's programmed better and made more fun); Knuckles' radar needs to work more like it does in SA1; and the abilities you collect need to be more useful. Otherwise, I like the variety of game-play that the Sonic Adventure games give you.
Well, the purple cat's a pretty big guy, so I don't imagine it'd be good for you to leave him out. I really didn't like the emerald hunting stages. They depend on the Master Emerald being shattered; I'd rather just have any character be able to find Chaos/Hyper Emeralds, like in the Genesis games. Playing as Gamma was fun, but playing as Tails in a mecha-plane thing was weird. Playing as Amy was eh. I'm reluctant to bring in characters from other Sonic spinoffs, like Sonic Rush, but the tradition of Adventure games always involved introducing a new character. Since I think everyone would agree that's probably not a good tradition to follow, maybe bringing back an old and mostly unused character would work better. How about Mighty the Armadillo or Ray the Squirrel? When's the last time they've seen any love? Maybe bringing them both back would be a good opportunity to callback some of the stages and designs in SegaSonic the Hedgehog Arcade.
I agree, the Chao Garden needs to make a glorious return. But that's not what we were talking about. :v: I half-agree with this. It'd be better for a Sonic Adventure 3 to look at the original Sonic Adventure's structure, rather than Sonic Adventure 2's. Most people didn't like having to continually switch gameplay styles within one run - it seems to be less of a problem when you play as a character and know what you're in for. This is also one of my criticisms of Unleashed and Generations (I greatly prefer the boost gameplay to the failed attempt at Classic Sonic and the failed attempt at a beat-'em-up), whereas Sonic '06 did this relatively well - there are a few times you play as other characters in each story, but you mostly stick to just one. Side levels like the original's not-OutRun and not-AfterBurner should absolutely be included, but as side levels, not mandatory for completing the game (but perhaps mandatory for 100%), like the Chao Garden. Again, I think Sonic '06 did this relatively well - you have to do a few town missions, but most of them are optional. That said, there are other ways to add variety that aren't just "shove a completely different game in there". There is no reason Tails has to be in a mech or racing Sonic, no reason Knuckles has to go emerald hunting, no reason Big has to go fishing. They can remain platformers in a similar vein to Sonic's gameplay but having their own challenges and quirks that each character's unique abilities allow them.
I really wanna see something like Twinkle Park again, nostalgic music and all. I love just hopping into the bumper cars. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfMn1VGO9t8 Mini-games like that could be lots of fun. Even better if they're themed after classic Sonic or SEGA games. Like, what if Sonic jumps into an Opa Opa ship or gets thrown into pinball board a la Spinball? Mite b cool.
Well, they already sort of did that in Generations with the Casino Night DLC. They also did that with Lost World, but no one cares about that game, lel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo9SNZnUnQs
There is that, but in comparison it looks and feels really noisy. I guess they were going for an authentic casino feel with that, what with the realistic springs and bumper sounds, and the background noise of people milling about.
Those defining characteristics are exactly why I don't want an Adventure 3. I hated most of the alternate playstyles outside of Adventure 1 Tails, which I found to be just as fun as the Sonic/Shadow stages at the time. They're not painfully slow like Amy's with a constant stalker that's negligible at best and annoying at worst nor do they involve wandering around a gigantic, open, and barren landscape with few real platforming challenges to find randomly placed treasures like with Knuckles/Rouge. Gamma/Adventure 2 Tails/Eggman (which I found tolerable) do focus have straightforward platforming, but they also largely focus on shooting down enemies. I don't even need to go into why I hate Big's stages and, while I haven't played '06 (and probably never will), Shadow has a big focus on game altering vehicles and combat while Silver's looks just as aggravatingly slow as Amy and, like with Shadow, also has a huge focus on killing enemies with health. Meanwhile, Adventure 1 Tails not only controls very similarly to Sonic, but most of his stages just forced the player to beat others in a race via using his ability to fly and taking paths exclusive exclusive to him, much like he did back in S3&K. Despite all that I hated about it, I will say that, before the nonsense in Eggmanland, I usually enjoyed the Werehog's mechanics when it focused on platforming rather than combat and I wouldn't mind the style returning, albeit with some reworking, if it focused on that exclusively, aside from maybe some puzzle elements (real ones, like the types you'd see in a puzzle platformer, not "Find the hidden key that's right around the corner!"). As for the Chao Garden, I liked it when I was a kid, before I realized that it was a grinding simulator with a cute disguise. If Chao become a gameplay element again, I'd rather they have an impact on the main game like Cheese did, possibly having how they behave be dependent on the character they're with like Cheese did depending on Cream's partner in Advance 3.
Honestly, I would be much more excited for this if classic Sonic wasn't there. I didn't really enjoy his levels in Sonic Generations. Maybe I'm just being nitpicky about it, but I really thought the classic levels were too different from actual classic Sonic gameplay, and because of that, I never really wanted to play the classic levels. I think having classic Sonic there takes away from the story as well because having him there takes the focus away from other characters. On the other hand, classic Sonic did something that looks like a boost, and boosting does work really well in 2D if it's done right. Just look at how great Sonic Rush was. Maybe they're mixing things up and giving him more of his own gameplay style instead of just trying to mimic old Sonic games. After all, they are making Sonic Mania at the same time. I'd be totally down for something new.
I wholeheartedly agree. Wouldn't it be cool if Classic Sonic's stages were Sonic Rush, with tricks and all that? That's a yes.
I wasn't crazy about the Rush games, but Blaze was a great new character. I would love to see more of her in 2D or 3D.
That reminds me. I really really hope that characters other than Sonic and Tails have a bigger impact on the story this time around. In Generations, all they'd do is have a conversation with you after you beat a zone, or they'd fight you in a rival battle. They showed up in the ending too, but they didn't really have an important role. This time, with the presentation in the trailer, I'd say we have a decent chance of getting a real story.
If it were just that, minus the terrible level design that Rush had, I'd be sold. One of the things about Rush that really irked me was how many pitfalls there were.
I've watched the trailer a few times and I'm just not seeing anything of interest personally. I'm looking forward to the game, I'd of liked a bit more information though. I understand that it is over a year until release but after seeing Mania it doesn't seem as good. I'll admit, that's my bias towards the older games. Maybe I just don't like game trailers that try to show nothing...
Considering the lack of playable characters in recent games (not counting Boom) - and if this is a kind of Sonic Generations 2 - I seriously doubt we'll have non-Sonic characters play much more of a role than previously (and even less so to be playable). The 'trailer' looks very Sonic-focussed, and I can't imagine they would cut the game up to have different playing styles [other than what we've already had recently], espeially considering we have Classic Sonic again.
If they did introduce new characters with different playstyles, then it might as well be another Adventure-style game. The one distinction would be if the new character played enough like Sonic to fit in, like Blaze did.
Yeah, I'm a bit surprised, that general concept from Sonic Heroes seems to be completely "forgotten" in terms of implementing other playable characters in games with Sonic*. It seems like a really good idea of compromise between consistent gameplay style and "multiple characters variety". So far in "opposite" model (multiple styles of gameplay with different characters) there was always an issue that some of these "gameplay styles" were underdeveloped (both in terms of idea and performance), so "Heroes model" seems to be far less risky and less troublesome (it requires doing consistent levels with parts requiring using skills characteristic for various members of the team) There is almost no difference between this and doing levels for single character with a couple of abilities. At this point someone could say that it's in fact cosmetic addition of characters, just some "fancy package" of additional skills - in fact I could agree with this statement... But I still feel that it's better idea than risky and troublesome "adventure model". *Of course I'm aware that in last years the whole idea of playing with different characters than Sonic was also in some way "abandoned".
After Mania's reveal it's hard for me to look at the Sonic 2017 trailer and not think the artstyle looks really dated already. Ironic really as Mania is based on 90's themes but still manages to look completely modern.
Well, for better or worse, Sonic has used pretty much the same model (and to a lesser extent design aesthetics) since 2008. So it makes sense that this looks dated as it kinda is. And a major difference is that this game seems to be going for more realistic look while Mania is doing a more stylistic approach. It's the same reason why Wind Waker aged so well while something like GTA IV looks kinda gross now. Although it's hard to get a real grasp of what the art style of a game is going to be based off 30 seconds of CG footage.
The trouble with this formula is that it can be far too easy, when designing levels for it, to make it into a gimmick that doesn't really add to the game. Just look at Sonic Heroes itself. Outside of combat (which was a whole other terrible bag of worms), the only reason not to use the speed character was for moments that specifically require another character. So you stop running forward, switch to Knuckles, do the triangle dive to hover up an air vent, switch back to Sonic, and then continue. It doesn't require any thought, it doesn't add any challenge. All it does is bring's the game's flow to a dead stop briefly. It amounts to the worst kind of filler. Don't get me wrong, a level designer doesn't NEED to fall into that trap. The first few levels of Sonic Heroes avoided this by enabling the player to make choices about which path to take based on which character they have active, rather than limiting the player to one path with character-specific obstacles. But if you're going to have character-specific routes anyway, wouldn't it make more sense to separate the characters entirely, both to add replay value and to make the routes more significant? It seems to me the ideal answer is to do it Sonic 3 & Knuckles style, offering multiple characters a la Sonic Adventure but keeping their core gameplay mostly the same, with variations in stats and moves. More importantly, though, the total number of playable characters should be limited to around 3 or 4*. When you've only got a few characters, you can devote more time into fleshing out each of their gameplay, especially when all three have significant commonalities. I don't see why this formula couldn't work in a 3D game; Tails and Amy followed it in Sonic Adventure and they were both a blast. If the level design had been more divergent based on their moves, and if we hadn't also had a bunch of off-style characters doing totally different things, this could have been amazing. * + - For an example of too many characters, look no further than Sonic Advance 3. Not only were there five base characters, which is already pushing it, but allowing arbitrary teams and giving each pair unique abilities effectively made the teams act as different characters, giving the game a roster of 20 (21 if you count Sonic + Eggman). The result of having so many pairs was that many of them were clearly not fleshed out very well.
