People were so bored from Forces that we’ve been spending three years either trying to find discussion in it or pining for a new release to fill the hole it didn’t.
... My argument was that modern Sonic bosses don't completely change the gameplay, especially when you compare to classic Sonic bosses. When I said I was being sarcastic. Was this not clear? Am I genuinely missing a whole ton of classic Sonic bosses where you roll down hills to build speed and manoeuvre to maintain momentum?
The avatar alone makes it better. I think Forces was the first time I ever, like, actually tried to go back and S-rank as many stages as possible. Now in Generations I think I have all S-ranks, but only because getting them is so piss-easy I just got them from playing through the campaign and then replaying them a bit because they were fun. In Adventure 2, I tried to get a lot of the A-ranks, but a lot of the missions are just plain dull and the "mission template" they use sometimes result in completely unfitting tasks like getting 100 rings...in a mech stage that has like 110 total (and I think one of them has LESS THAN 100 RINGS so you have to no-hit the entire stage and retry just to even do the mission much less A-rank it). The reward you get for A-ranking the missions is...a level I unlocked with a mod anyway and one that isn't worth the immense effort. But Forces actually gives you something cool and fun for getting high ranks, and it requires actual effort and skill to get them! Wow! I could have unlocked all the avatar parts with cheat engine--hell I might because I'm mostly done with the game--but I legitimately enjoyed getting those S-ranks and seeing what new duds I got way more than I ever thought I would. Sonic Team actually figured out a really good method for incentivizing replaying and mastering the levels to a level I don't think they ever really did before. In basically every game prior ranks didn't actually do anything until you got ALL A/S on every single stage/mission and that kind of reward IMO just sucks in games. Forces' method of a tangible piecemeal rewards is much better in my opinion. The Chao garden could have done this too, but it incentivizes just rushing in a stage, grabbing 10 drives/animals, and then just exiting (and, really, thank god because if I had to actually complete the stage to use these things I would never have ever touched the gardens once), so it's different. In retrospect, it's actually so really weird that Sonic games have always incentivized replaying them to do better: that's just how people did things in the Genesis days, and then they introduced ranks in the 3D games, something few other 3D platformers really have outside of time trial medals or whatever (and those are optionally dealt with--you are given a rank whenever you beat a 3D Sonic stage no matter what); and yet, it wasn't really until Forces that they gave a real tangible reward for S-ranking a particular stage. If you don't care about the avatar then this is all moot. But for me, S-ranking a stage with the knowledge I might get some cool gear from it is so so much better than just A/S-ranking stages with nothing to show for it until I pass the magic number and the game gives me something. This is why I struggle with Forces: I shouldn't like this game as much as I do, and yet something deep inside me has a bizarre ashamed affection for it. I've made my opinions on the "Colors era" of Sonic before, but I'm gonna say something else here: my Sonic fandom basically stopped when Colors came out. I didn't have my parents buy it for me, and I just fell off of Sonic then. If Forces is the start of a new direction of the series...I may stick around. I'd certainly prefer this to what we've had before. But it probably won't, and just be a weird blip. I'm in if they bring the avatar back, though. I'll even suffer through another boost game with shoehorned Classic Sonic if they do, honestly. If it's, ya know, better than before, which is never a guaranteed with this devteam
They already did the avatar, so, through their logic, it either will never happen again, or will happen in an anniversary game, or it will happen about 20 years after Forces.
Here's a fun little detail I just noticed recently: In the team-up levels, Sonic's victory pose will change depending on your avatar's. If you breakdance, he will, too!
In that case, apologies for not picking up on the sarcasm. I hadn't read most of your previous posts so I didn't know you were being fecetious. I suppose what I meant to get across isn't that fighting the Sandopolis mummy is the same as running through Hydrocity Zone, because you're right that those are super different things. I think the "similarity" just lies in the fact that I still have full control of the character. In modern fights I often feel like the game is truly doing most of the work for me (to be fair, the stages sometimes feel like this too - but the automation isn't usually that bad). When I'm running through Starlight Carnival in Forces I have a degree of control over the character, and the game kind of tips you off when you're going into an automated segment anyways. But as soon as I hit the boss I don't even have to hold forward anymore; the game is doing that. That's what makes them feel different to me, although you are right in that they are generally the same jumping/boosting/quickstepping reaction tests you would find in the regular stages. By comparison, ex: Flying Battery's boss doesn't involve any platforming or momentum-building that you see in the regular stage. But what I meant to say is I still feel like I am interfacing DIRECTLY with the boss, and I am in control of the character (even if holding forward and jumping is sometimes all I have to do). Edit: Another thing too - while there isn't a lot of "rolling down hills" in Classic bosses, I think a lot of the slope / pinball oriented bosses did give you cool ways to use momentum to your advantage, and I'm fine with the platforming-oriented bosses. I truthfully don't like a lot of the bosses that are just locked to a small room and all they do is one simple attack pattern, but I still prefer these over auto-run modern bosses where a lot of the spectacle is lost. Especially when the spectacle of running through all of this cool scenery is sometimes what keeps me invested in the weaker stages. In classic though, I just like control.
And that's the weird thing about Forces. I'm glad you liked it, and you aren't the first person to show this sentiment. Glad it has some fans The avatar stages are the most innovative thing the game has, but they play more like a sped up and simplified ratchet and clank than a sonic game. (or rather, in my mind, they play like Shadow the Hedgehog done right - 15 years on and they still want to circle that drain ) If we were getting a decent core Sonic fix alongside them (2D or 3D I don't care) then it would be fine but, instead, it shows how fed up ST are with their own core formula. With unleashed at least the day stages were fantastic / innovative depending on your taste. The werehog had its fans and that's fine, but everyone could at least appreciate they were trying something special with the day stages. But with forces - either you think the avatar is cool or you don't. Sonic himself doesn't really factor into your appreciation for the game. And that is why we are still arguing about it 3 years later
I'd argue even Shadow does weapons better than forces. Yeah having infinite ammo weapons blasting enemies that all die in one hit might keep the pace better than Shadows comparatively slower combat, but at the point where I'm equipping burst and just holding the trigger to destroy everything while going forward through Forces shallow level design, it just feels like the Boost with an extra step to me. To shift the conversation slightly, the weapons are by far the best method of attack in the game (if we don't count boosting as an attack), since homing attacking is much slower (MUCH slower in the case of the Avatar's wire attack) and in a baffling design choice that shows how they just jury rigged the engine from Lost World to have boost mechanics: you can't homing attack anything that's off screen. It makes going backwards in 3D sections, for all of like the 2 times in the game you might want to, more difficult than it needs to be.
Lost World uses the havok engine. Lost World's engine is just Generation's engine jerry rigged to take the boost out.
Idk why they didn't use Generations as a base. They probably had to do so much reinventing and they did it worse.
Wowwww. If Forces was like this it'd of been fantastic. The level itself is barely recognizable from its original form. The train dodging is a cool idea. But it had multiple paths (you can even see an accessible 2d path in the background at one point), good uses for the Wispon for shortcuts, better story telling, actual platforming challenges. It makes me sad in a way. Fans dicking around with the game can make this, and actual Forces is what we got after 4 years of a team of professionals fucking around (I know, this game was mostly developed in a year or two, but they still spent 4 years wasting time with prototypes, the Hedgehog Engine 2 which admittedly is fine they just need better art direction, and of course in general bad ideas).
Was browsing the comments of this video (anyone who puts "I like Sonic 06" in the title has balls of steel and should be given a medal) and I saw a guy comparing Sonic to Star Wars, and it seems frighteningly accurate. Widely beloved original trilogy, followed by an era (Prequels/Dark Age) where they tried new, interesting things but mostly botched them in execution and became an industry laughing stock. Followed by another era (Disney/Colours) that overcorrects for the previous era, making products so blatantly bland, soulless and corporate (with some exceptions like Mania/Mandalorian) that all fans hate them except the new ones that grow up with them. Or as they put it: "You know, your defense of this game from a Gen Z perspective reminds me of my thoughts on the Prequels. Most of the people who dislike those movies grew up with the Original Trilogy. I was born in 1997 so I didn't possess that bias. Despite all the problems the Prequels had such as dialogue, cinematography, and acting delivery, I can't dislike them. They had ambition, they expanded the mythos, they introduced a lot of memorable characters, planets, ships, setpieces and species/droids. Aside from The Mandalorian and some video games, comics, and novels, the Disney era lacks heart because, like Sega, Lucasfilm is scared of its past and took the wrong lessons: No more politics! Only barely highlight to the Republic era! Moral complexity is for losers!" Although the pedantic grammar nutzi in me could have worded the "scared of their past" part to imply less connection to the classics because, in that regard, Sega aren't scared of their past at all. They're only scared of another certain moment of their past, a moment that Game Informer docked Sonic Generations score for in their review. (Even if he didn't mention 06 by name, it's abundantly clear what game he's talking about) If only he knew indeed. If only he (the reviewer) knew Forces was up next.
You know, while the Star Wars/Sonic comparison is a good one, one of my strongest points of contention with this whole "movement," when it comes to Sonic, is this idea that recent Sonic games are overly-soulless, corporate, or that they "don't try anymore." Or at least, that the problems plaguing the series now are really that different than the problems plaguing it 15-20 years ago. Put another way, I don't disagree that most mainline Sonic games of the past 10 years have been inconsistent titles with largely awful stories that failed to reach their potential. I just don't think the 2000s were any different, and the fact that Sonic fans were talking about the series the same way at the end of THAT decade as they were this one is strong evidence for it. Here's what someone who was eventually revealed to be working in the industry (this is the guy who knew about Unleashed over a year before it was announced) said about Sonic Team in early 2007: Nobody, but nobody, was giving Sonic Team any credit for being ambitious or designing games with passion back then. Quite the opposite, they were seen as under SO much corporate pressure to keep churning out yearly Sonic releases that Yuji Naka quit Sonic 06, the game that was supposed to FINALLY get things back on track, in the middle of development. That's the sort of context that's being ignored about this time period, and the common ground that's often overlooked. Of course, the things you grew up with will always seem more meaningful to you. I've often described the Dreamcast as the "last game console with a soul," but as I've gotten older, I've realized it's no coincidence that it was also the last one of my childhood. By the same token, Sonic Adventure had "soul" to me where SA2 didn't, Pokémon Red/Blue had "soul" to me whereas subsequent gens didn't, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers felt meaningful and epic where later seasons, for some reason, became silly kids' shows. And in the same way that Sonic 06 or the Prequel Trilogy have "soul" and meaning and importance to the people who grew up with it, so too will Lost World (lol except nobody had a Wii U) and Forces. The people who grew up loving something will always find more to appreciate about it than the rest of us. And whether it's Sonic 06 or Sonic Forces, I can appreciate what Sonic Team was going for with them, I can see the good ideas and good intentions peeking through, even if the execution left a lot to be desired. The frustrating thing is, one reason I felt compelled to dig deep on celebrating about the Adventure games AND convey the position fans of them must be in is specifically because I felt it was pretty unjust how they'd been treated. I remember getting dumped on for still enjoying SA and daring to praise aspects of 06 in the late 2000s, but I wasn't 10 years old. For years, I saw cases where young fans would come into Sonic fan spaces, state how much they liked the Adventure games, Heroes, Shadow, and 06, and get bullied out for having the wrong opinion. But you know what I saw a few weeks ago? A presumably young fan come into the community, say they were excited to finally play SA2 after hearing so much good about it, but they said it felt too old and they didn't "get it." Then they compared it unfavorably to newer 3D games they liked better, including Forces. And then, like clockwork, they got bullied for being a "zoomer" who was too young to know what they were talking about. Time makes boomers of us all.
The only 3D games Sonic Team has made that I feel like contained any form of soul were SA1, Unleashed, and to a lesser extent Generations. The rest... not so much.
I don't really like this line of thinking. I've read a lot of interviews with Sonic Team and I'm confident every 3D Sonic game had a ton of passion put into them. Like, Iizuka risked his health during Heroes' development by working day and night and taking on the responsibilities of other developers. Just so the game could be released. Also you missed Sonic Colors
I actually left out Colors intentionally. I like it, it's a pretty good game and I love the trope direction. But idk I don't get the same feeling from that game. It's weird. Maybe it's the somewhat excessive block platforming? Heroes I know they had a hard time due to going multiplatform, but it was still a pretty big step back from SA1 and 2.
Agreed. Nobody becomes a game developer because it's easy. You can't exist in this industry without a ridiculous amount of love for what you're doing. I think every Sonic game, regardless of how it came out, was the result of a dev team with good intentions, trying to make the very best game they could. Of course, we could argue that "made by passionate people trying their best" and "feels meaningful to me" are two different things. Defining a "soul," even when it comes to games, is going to be a highly-subjective thing.
Every 3D game? even Forces? I just don't see it. Edit: If that was Sonic Team back then, I can only imagine the Sonic Team of today being a quadrillion times worse. I wonder what that industry insider would have to say about present day Sonic Team? Here's my somewhat colorful imagining...
