Honestly it feels like Iizuka wanted to make Shadow the Hedgehog 2, management told him to do Generations 2 with Classic Sonic to appeal to the older fans and Forces was a compromise between the two.
This is such an insane, ridiculous statement that it made me laugh. Sorry to not answer to this before, I wasn't around here. Anyway, let's go. 1) It's obvious your concept of a fan game it's different of mine, and it's understandable since fan games are such a big list of examples to make an opinion from. Overall, your opinion about fan games seems to be way worse, as I would buy some of them ten times before buying a lot of the existing official games (and, sadly, I blindly bought official games that would fall in this cathegory). 2) Just to make it clear, I understand fan games in two levels: first, they are freeware games made for the love of the franchise with people sacrificing their free time to give something to the community, which is some kind of charity, as opposed to the business official games are, made for the love of the money; second, since people is free to make fan games anyway they want, there's no control on the content unless developers want to do it themselves, which occasioanlly leads to personal approaches and mash-ups that don't really fit a sonic game or show understanding of what people wants. 3) With this in mind, I see many official games as "high budget fan games" because, as some people say, Sonic Team doesn't "get it": they mix Sonic with a slow beat'em up, they change their game concept for almost every new title, they sometimes do acceptable enough games while some other times they do actual crap, and, of course, they don't get why Mania worked if the result of using it as their inspiration is what we're seeing in Forces "classic" playstyle and the general design of the whole game. By the way, Mania, as advertised, was made for fans by fans, so we also have the broad range of quality in official games that we can find in fan games, and a game we could call a fan game released as official that gives good reputation to fan game development. 4) While I used the term "fan game" to attack modern official games, the term itself isn't necessarily bad, it's just the official games should always rank better in quality and be closer to the original formula than they do, or, at the very least, be spin-off games with an alternate take on the same concept that still fits and retains some degree of quality. That hasn't happened that many times since 3D gameplay became a thing. I'm not sure if I explained it well enough, but, as you can see, mine is a more complex point of view than just "fan games are bad, let's use them to attack Forces", and I gave you my arguments this time.
Actually it is. Not all of the assets are touched up, and Stealth said the game was officially made in just one year of development. If you check the game's credits, the game's development team had less than twenty people on it; and Iizuka himself said most of the game's production was handled by just five core staff members, with more people brought in later to speed production along (revealed around the time Mania was delayed past its Spring release period). The Mania team didn't had a plethora of resources to work with. (And while there's no concrete evidence about it, it's possible the Mania's production was locked into a deadline / fast-tracked to coincide with the 25th anniversary and/or release of Sonic Team's Forces, given the large amount of material on the cutting room floor and how Mania is supposed to tie into Forces.) Mania doesn't get (a lot of) flak for recycled assets because the game from the beginning was billed to have returning levels as well as new levels. Forces didn't have any indication about it having returning levels up until Green Hill was revealed in April--nine months after its reveal. I don't know where you're getting the idea that Forces isn't reusing assets. Just because the assets look "slightly" different doesn't mean they are entirely new, far from it. The background sand and the flat geometry was literally the only thing separating Forces' Green Hill from the one in Generations. Classic Sonic's goalpost is the same animation from Generations too. The Chemical Plant looks like it has original assets added to it, but it still has some visible assets from Generations' Chemical Plant, like the yellow platforms and some of the background objects like the water tower. And all of the above doesn't even get into the Shadow DLC Green Hill level, which showcased a bunch of recycled material, like Colors' stock black boxes and Generations' Radical Highway/Speed Highway red-white striped platforms used throughout the entire level. It's definitely having reused material, just like Mania is.
New Sonic Forces interview at Game Informer with Shun Nakamura: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2017/10/05/sonic-forces-producer-discusses-changes-to-ring-system-and-darker-world.aspx The biggest revelation is a new ring system where you can't actually recollect rings once you drop them. I wish I was making that up. Christ the more I see and read about Forces the more of a clusterfuck it seems to be. Shun seems absolutely clueless for the entire interview by the way. It reads like "We haven't got a fucking clue about what we're doing whatsoever. Look forward to Sonic Forces!". Here's the disastrous new ring system quotation: Only other notable thing I noticed in the interview was the game's length. Similar to Generations apparently. Sonic Team what are you doing.
So, they removed the ability to gain rings again because they felt it was something reserved only for classics despite it being a staple? Also mentioning that Mania devs being faithful to the original in basic gameplay is only a "different aesthetic" compared to their vision. Pray tell, how is this expanding? And when people at E3 prefer the basic staple back, they still felt it was necessary keeping as a "great experience" until they had to stop and think about it really whether it was a good or not? Did I read that correctly?
The game is a month from launch, and this is the kind of answer we're getting from the game's producer? Jesus christ. So basically, what we have so far is: >Sonic '06 producer >Mephiles 2.0 >I AM THE SHARPEST OF EDGES >Bad level design >Short levels >Generic burning city >Green Hill again >Chemical Plant again >Casino Street lol >Shit physics >No gameplay improvements >ZAVOC of all characters >Length of Colours/Generations >Hooters lol >Donut steel >Awful Switch port >Denuvo Am I missing anything?
I mean, seeing as how the game has no lives it seems like an ok balance of difficulty. You can't save yourself constantly but you'll never game over. Also Unleashed did this too, only difference there was that I think you lose all your rings when hit in this game where as Unleashed you only lost some of them. Still find it so weird that they haven't solidified Modern gameplay basics yet. Some games he has a double jump and some he doesn't. Some he has a drift and some he doesn't. Some he loses all his rings and some he doesn't. And there's no real reason why that is. It wouldn't be so strange if they didn't go back and forth on these ideas every single time.
Meh music, inability to recollect rings, RE-recycled stages. You all are right, this IS just one giant fan game. This is the ultimate troll.
My only experience with a Hooters was when I failed to work up the courage to eat at one when I was 17 and visiting America. I'm sure that sounds absolutely absurd to you burgerland natives, but when the only thing you know about Hooters is "boobs"... It's just such a bizarre and hilarious promotion. What I really want to know is who actually paid who? I don't know which one would make less sense.
Let me make it easier for you. They're not a strip club, just a place with rather skimpy uniforms. And they have the best damn hot wings. They do not, however, have chili dogs, which I feel are necessary for this promo to make sense.
It's called Hooters because their mascot is an owl. The waitresses all having big boobs is just a coincidence, you see. Easy mistake to make, though. Did we ever figure out exactly what that promotion was? Nothing I saw had any details other than that the two franchises were collaborating.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Sonic Team just ate there and couldn't pay the bill, so they had to arrange this awkward promotion to compensate. Either that or it's a DLC outfit for Rouge. Maybe that's why we haven't seen her yet (I think).
I really don't understand why they're talking away the ability to recollect rings. Do they even serve as health in this game? I thought the way Unleashed handled ring loss was okay, but this just confuses me.
Judging from the footage, you can still get hit once, but that's it. It's pretty dumb, but considering rings are everywhere anyway... Yeah, what was this supposed to accomplish again?
Place me firmly in the camp of people that don't understand the new ring system nor why they felt the need to change it. Look at the Casino Forest footage. Rings are everywhere. So we're only allowed to collect them upon initially starting the stage and then they become redundant once getting hit once? So the game is basically exactly like Mario except even harder because at least Mario can re-collect the mushroom power-ups later in the stage. There's just no sense or logic behind it. If this game is primarily targeted at kids it's just going to confuse them and make the game's difficulty too high. Sonic collecting rings as a health system is like Sonic 101. Fundamental to a Sonic game's design. It'd be like if they limited how many times you can fucking jump. This is either as XCubed said the ultimate troll or Sonic Team don't know what the fuck they're doing any more. Guessing it's probably the latter.
