Anecdotal, but my teenage nephew (he's around 14) was super excited about Forces but didn't give a fuck about Mania when both games were announced. I think Forces will do as well as Generations, maybe slightly better - but I think Mania will surprise the hell out of them, smashing their expectations, getting rave reviews and essentially becoming a critical darling - because from the previews it pretty much already is one. Just want Mania to sell well enough to secure a Mania 2 - though I think that's extremely probable. It still has more positive coverage than Forces overall and will likely destroy Forces in reviews. In defence of Forces however, the previews are only really previewing barely any of the game - the final product could still be decent.
I'd blame the franchise's increasing loss of relevance on Sega more than Sonic Team themselves. It's part of Sega's not-giving-a-fuck mentality in the last couple of years, going from relevant Third party publisher in the late 2000s to a mostly download-/Japan-only software company, barely releasing any console games at all in the west, with the exception of titles like Puyo Puyo Tetris (gotta cash in on that Switch success amiright?) and - of course - Sonic. Sonic 06 had tons of marketing behind it, including a partnership deal with Microsoft themselves to advertise the game in MS Messenger etc. There were a Sonic Unleashed SMART car, an animated short film, a manga and a mobile phone adaptation to advertise that game. The 20th anniversary was big deal, with all the (PR) stuff they did for Generations. Even Rise of Lyric was prominently featured in a Nintendo Direct in 2013, and Sega of America planned a pretty big Sonic Boom marketing campaign (which was ultimately cancelled, because Sonic Boom). The marketing for Mania and Forces is mostly limited to Twitter posts and Youtube videos, basically the cheapest way to market games these days.
Critically Mania will slaughter Forces. This won't be a contest. Forces has all the shit non-Sonic diehards hate about the Sonic franchise dialed up to 11 to the point of self parody. New more serious story? Large cast? A brand new Darkness Mcpointyedge villain? Nonstop character chatter? An original goddamn character you can create and play as? It's the perfect storm of things one section of the Sonic fandom likes and the worst fears of those on the outside and the rest on the inside. Most of this is superficial, but we humans are a superficial bunch. To muddy matters more the gameplay taken at mechanical value looks like it regresses from boost games before it while adding nothing substantial to the mix. There's no visible improvement to level design and stage layout for Modern Sonic. There are only small tweaks to the formula that looks to shuffle it forward and backward at the same time. Classic Sonic is still the same smoke and mirrors as seen in Generations only now the music is terrible and Mania has upstaged the entire concept of having Classic Sonic around. We finally have the first character in years that's isn't Sonic and is also playable in 3D, but the Avatar looks to haphazardly reuse Sonic's stages only with wonky weaponry and an automated grapple. Modern Sonic's level design even looks to suffer from it. As a broad observation, all the levels so far look to be extremely tiny in comparison to the titles before it and rely even more heavily on 2D portions. All the "hype" is with the story and custom character, since nothing interesting is happening with the gameplay. Unless Forces is hiding a completely different game than what they have showcased so far, it's not going to be received well by critics both inside and outside the Sonic fandom. Mania has the hype train by the balls for all the right reasons. It knows what kind of game it wants to be and is nailing what it sets out to do. Ultimately it is even more niche than modern Sonic. Forces will sell gangbangers because Sonic fans though.
Yes. ALL THE LEVELS. (Actually, just the 1.5 levels I've seen so far but that doesnt matter right!?!)
We've seen Classic Green Hill, Avatar Green Hill, Modern Park Avenue and Avatar Park Avenue. That's four not counting boss battle. All of them are very short, majorly 2D and have huge amounts of automation. It really doesn't look good.
Well as I posted before Forces is getting slammed in the previews - whilst Mania's previews are glowing and overwhelmingly positive. I think Tiller's posts makes sense. He raises good points.
1. Avatar Park Avenue and the Green Hill stages are about as long as Generations' Classic GHZ or Classic/Modern Chemical Plant Zone. Have you even seen the gameplay videos from E3? 2. We've seen two thirds of what will very likely be the game's first two zones. ...previews that were probably written by the same sort of uninformed hacks who gave Sonic 4 Ep 1 those great review scores...
Largely agreed with this. While it is important to see more levels of the game, first impressions are also just as important. It doesn't take much to deduct which game showed far more gameplay footage and far more content to digest for their official unveiling. (And just to further drive the point home, you can also compare Forces' unveiling to those of Sonic Mania, Crash N-Sane Trilogy, Knack II, and even Unleashed and Colors.
The original quote was: What they've demoed and showed so far, which amounts to 3.5 stages and a boss, doesn't bode well for the whole game. They're extremely short affairs without much going on. Green Hill and Chemical Plant had diverging paths, had scarce unique level gimmicks, and were generally larger. They had a lot more going on despite being opening stages. At this point Generations was rocking City Escape hype showing off how clever they used the truck has a level hazard for classic Sonic. I get they don't want to show off everything, but what they've shown isn't that impressive. And while I was mostly venting my frustrations with the game as it stands mechanically, the TL;DR is that the gameplay isn't going to save the this from the critics given the story. Generations got a pass because it was mostly inoffensive nonsense. Forces is going to be too juicy of a morsel to not take a steaming dump on. The gameplay isn't going to make them think otherwise. I'm sure this will be some fan's favorite game ever though.
Critics don't give profit to Sega, sold units do, and Forces will probably sell more copies than Mania. Of course it's gonna be, there are tons of 14 year old kids like 360's nephew whose first Sonic experience could have been Unleashed or Colours. Even if they revert the engine quality to its state during Colours, a ton of people liked that garbage, and they can make their own random characters with nifty gadgets this time. By the way, if I ever buy this game (I'll probably do when it's on sale on Steam with a 75% discount), I'm gonna make a blue hedhehog with green eyes as my custom character, because modern games are about Sonic experimenting new gameplay styles.
From the Sonic Forces Impressions thread on GAF linked a while back, someone posted this slide from the JP 25th anniversary event from last year: Apparently it says "Sonic Project 2017 begins development"? Can someone confirm with a proper translation? If this is true...it certainly explains almost everything we've seen from this game so far.
I'm genuinely curious about what Sonic Team could have been doing with the better part of four years if they weren't working on Forces. Please don't try to tell me that Runners was THAT labor-intensive.
Well, Forces is running on the new Hedgehog Engine 2 graphical engine that they developed in-house, for starters. With that said, it's not made from scratch--according to Iizuka, it's an updated version of the original with a new rendering engine added to it. There was also the post Endri made back in 2014 about Sonic Team working on new prototypes (with one unrelated to the gameplay from Lost World and Generations). Puyo Puyo Tetris also exists, though I doubt that was a game that required a lot of resources to get off the ground. Either the studio was split up again and another team is working on another Sonic project we don't know about, or the studio spent a lot of time trying to get some new prototypes or ideas off the ground, but got nowhere and decided to default to something they already had in the late development phases. Those are my personal guesses.
Not sure where people are getting the "development" part but the message (in my beginner skill level) says "Sonic 2017 project starts! If development was mentioned wouldn't it say "????2017??????????"? Anyways,to me it sounds like it's saying we can start the unveiling of project 2017 and not the development. Hopefully someone else can jump in and translate it better.
?? (shidou) is just "start", often associated with movement, similar to "get something going" or "initiate". The message doesn't explicitly mention development, it only says "Sonic 2017 Project start!", nothing more.
I found it amusing that people ever used the "It's too early to judge" line the moment we got our first good look at this game. I find it hard to believe that some are still trying to use it now. Come on, this is Sonic Team literally hitting their prime, at their stumbling-in-the-dark best. It's like we started to breathe a little lighter after a few barely-ok modern games and Sonic Team saw that, didn't like it, and are intentionally trying to outdo themselves while pretending it's not on purpose. We've got faux-classic gameplay, which was unbelievably poor in Generations already. We've got modern gameplay which hasn't ever been used to carry a full game because it genuinely can't carry a full game. And we've got deliberately unfocused gameplay, which doesn't even pretend to have an inspired hook; it's just generic platformer with completely stale moves and powers that no-one would think of buying on its own merits. Forget the weird-ass Infinity trailer, the #f***GreenHill meme, the completely misguided GHZ music, or the obvious panicked Generations copy and scramble for something that sells. Ignoring all that and looking purely at gameplay, we already know enough about how each of the 3 styles is going to play. Sonic Forces is going to be as dull as man boobs. THEN add on all the hilariously bad choices being made with it. I love how people genuinely can't tell if parts are self-parody or not. I could be 100% wrong and this game doesn't turn out to be a critical hot mess of facepalm, and I would still look less stupid than people who still currently think it's too early to judge.
Whilst I personally think Forces is playing it straight, just like Shadow the Hedgehog did, I do feel now more than ever, this does feel a bit like it's a bit of a joke, especially as Sonic Team have been aware of the reaction to previous attempts to edge the fuck up. Also I feel Sonic as a brand at the moment is full of mixed messages. The Social Media side of things is constantly playing the self-aware card, and we can see with the likes of Mania that the fanbase is slowly having a bigger influence on Sonic Team now more than ever. So when people see Infinite and his ow-the-edge theme, they're going to be thinking "Oh, this is the stuff that the Sonic Twitter and the Sonic Boom show poke fun at, this must be part of the joke, haha". And then they play the game. Oh...
*nods* It's just bonkers. I too think Forces is playing it straight. There isn't enough to suggest otherwise, while there is plenty to suggest that the designers have completely lost confidence. Literally every part of Forces that we've seen is a gimmick that looks reactive and looks desperate. Those words sound like I'm being emphatic, but that is really simply what it looks like, and that's the opposite look of a game that's riffing on self-awareness. Edit -- That is, if there are actual game designers even getting any say in this. The orders-from-above smell is really strong with this one.
I feel like it's almost a rebound reaction. Sonic Team have spent since Unleashed trying undo this negative image of Sonic being this 'too serious' and fanfic-like series from Shadow and 06. Now thanks to light-hearted games like Colors, Gens and Lost World as well as the Twitter, the general public is thinking better of it all. Sonic Team have put on a friendly mask that's slowly been straining under the pressure of wanting to do a proper hardcode anime-plot Sonic Adventure again*, and now the mask has come off and the EDGE is pouring out at an alarming rate. *Edit: i just re-read my post and realised I should have said 'urge to make a proper serious plot SA again' No doubt Mania coming out makes Iizuka/Sonic Team feel like they can get away with it more now, yet still they add Classic Sonic as a safety net so at least one third of the game won't be completely trashed in reviews in a worst-case scenario.