I like how the game literally stops for a few seconds so you can mash a button. Reminds me of how you couldn't play Sonic 4: Episode II for more than five seconds without having to wait for the game to do an animation to show you using a tag team move. I also like how you go through a copy/pasted section of the level like six times. Very Heroes-esque.
Seeing new gameplay is always a bummer cause I keep wanting this game to be good but the level design looks terribly uninspired. It always looks like something designed by someone who doesn't really get what made the modern Sonic levels in Generations and Unleashed so much fun.
Sigh...... disappointed again... This may end up being the second Sonic game I ever skipped buying ( following Sonic Boom)
I wonder how much of this is due to the director, Morio Kishimoto, if Colours and Lost World was anything to go by. It does feel like a regression from Generations and I'm really hoping these levels are just early in the game. In other news, someone at Gamescom posted this manual for Forces and I think it pretty much explains why Sonic can't pick up rings after getting hit: "HEDGEHOG - Collects rings when getting damaged" They wanted it to be an extra ability for the avatar OC. Not really sure if I agree with this decision, but oh well :/
At this rate, they should just delay the game to clean it up and make it better considering how dissapointed everyone's feeling.
Well it doesn't look like there's anything to fix really (except maybe the switch version). It appears to be doing everything it set out to do. It all just depends on whether you're interested in what they're selling. A delay won't result in them scraping/rebuilding entire levels or changing the core design of the game. It'd result in some bug fixes, tweaks, and maybe some object layout changes. But no a delay would not likely magically fix the game. Look at Sonic Boom Fire & Ice. Idk what it was going to be like before but it was delayed a whole year. They fixed some annoyances I'm sure, but it just made what would likely have been a bad time an ok time.
For a second there I thought your username was "Sonic Forces". Oh wait, it is. Spoiler Okay though seriously, I'd like someone to point out what part of that portion from the video looks fun. I don't see a single element of engaging fast paced gameplay needing consistent attention. Sonic moves fast sure, but the player's hands wont be. You could play this game while braindead. Seriously, echoing my question from before. WHY are there enemies on that long ass boring straight path. What's the damn point? Literally just an "oo-explosions and effects" moment... but it lasts the entire level.
The only thing that remotely looked fun or challenging in that whole video was the free fall segment while trying to avoid lasers. Which has been around since Sonic Unleashed (2008). The very beginning of the stage looked like it had different pathways with an upper and lower path but for the most part leads to the QTE section. It feels so constrained and limiting having level design being completely straight. Next, The quick-time button-mash segment is absolutely pointless. Being granted temporary unlimited boost in a straight line with no obstacles isn't fun. Also, if the main theme fan-fare plays every time this happens, it's going to drive me nuts. At first when both the Custom Hero and Modern Sonic enter the base, I thought the stage would become more broader and open, but nope, it's super linear with what appears to be light-dash ring segments and grapple-hooks points floating around. The main path is super linear with many "defeat all the enemies to proceed" segments which put a complete stop to the player to perform a tedious and repetitive task that feels more like a chore than actual fun. The Custom Hero's flamethrower is completely overpowered and makes me question of why even bothering putting all these robots to fight me if they provide no challenge? Time-wasters is what they are. Sonic may be playable but it sure doesn't play like a Modern Sonic level. There is no emphasis on platforming in this stage whatsoever. Every level shown so far from this game has been disappointing to look at. None of the level designs from this game are even on par with Generations nor Unleashed. EDIT: I don't know if it's Ilzuka or not approving the game to be shown in this state but this is bad. I honestly want this game to be delayed. I don't care if it takes another year or more of development. They need to re-evaluate on what they are doing wrong with this game. I rather have a good game released late than a bad game released early.
I typed up like three replies (aka rants) to this thread to say how disappointing that tag team stage was, but I really don't need to go into it. Fairly sure everybody can see how average this is. Honestly, when it started I thought it looked good- the huge pyramid, the dusty Green Hill, Robotnik's forces clearly working on building a base... One long corridor and a double boost later, it just looks horrendous. They really are just building on all the worst parts of the boost gameplay. It's not even an excuse that these are clearly early levels - Windmill Isle, Tropical Resort and Green Hill were all more open, innovative, engaging and most importantly, appealing than anything we have seen of Forces so far. It's like we've been getting baby steps forward and now one colossal step back. Forces' first impressions are doing nothing to make me like it. I do hope this changes, but it is not looking positive.
I think it's the general ability to the hedgehog class, which Classic and Modern are also part of. Nah Andrew, this is better than Lost World by a mile! If you didn't skip that one, this one is passable.
I'm curious. What's the general opinion of this game outside of here? Classic fans obviously would never be satisfied with this, and now that we have Mania we don't have to be. But are there people excited for this game? They gotta exist right? It does still look more fun than Lost World, and I even kinda enjoyed that.
I know there are atleast a couple people on these forums who have posted in here who haven't posted once in the Mania thread. They are here.
New video of the Tag-Team stage posted by Official Sonic Youtube. The video gets cut off right before the QTE segment.
I have no idea what to think of this game anymore. When it was first announced last year I was thinking "Woo! New Modern Sonic game with original levels!", and that was quite honestly the high point for me. In fact, everything began to go downhill immediately when Classic Sonic was shown to be returning. As many people have said, it's completely redundant, especially with Mania being a thing which does Classic Sonic better than this game could ever hope to. Regardless, I remained hopeful that the game would be just as good as Generations, but then we saw the Classic Sonic gameplay in what is something like the sixth iteration of Green Hill by now and the second one this year, with an uninspired aesthetic, unfitting music and automation as a sorry excuse for level design after that followed the Avatar which, while interesting in concept, has been poorly executed so far, being a clunky stop-and-start affair which just doesn't feel like it belongs. And now here we are. Two or three months out from the game with little shown and general disappointment in reaction to what has been shown. Believe it or not, I don't want to hate this game. I loved Generations and it's one of my favourite games in the series for its tight level design and speed runner mentality in the Modern Sonic levels. After all the talk from SEGA about wanting to ensure quality games from now on, I thought it was finally safe to be optimistic about Sonic games again, and thanks to Mania I'm at least half right. The thing is this game is just so vapid, uninspired and otherwise all over the place. I mean, who is this game even supposed to be for? Classic Sonic is just a pale imitation of what he should be and Modern Sonic is far enough removed from what we saw in Generations that such fast-paced fun doesn't seem like a thing anymore. The thing is, I don't think Iizuka is the man some people say he is, a guy who wants to piss on everything we love about Sonic and someone who's seething with jealousy at the idea that Mania will likely outperform Forces in every area possible, but I find it hard to deny that he's more than content to ignore specific feedback in favour of continuing down whatever path he's on, fan reception be damned. While it pains me to say it, I don't think he should be involved in Sonic anymore, and certainly not with this much authority. We need someone in charge who at least has a consistent idea of how a Sonic game should play, rather than this mish-mash of past elements we're currently getting while the series takes a half step forwards and five steps back. I very much hope Sonic Mania heralds a Classic Sonic subseries at least, as I can't see Sonic lasting much longer as a gaming franchise if we're just going to keep getting baffling and shallow games like Forces.
Making the light-dash wisp-only is also another annoying decision taken from Colors and Lost World. ugh
This is really what's most disappointing about Forces to me. It looks like they're actually making it so Sonic actually lives in a world again rather than just a bunch of levels that have nothing to do with eachother. They set it up so you're actually going through locations that feel like they have a place in the world, and you can see in all gameplay videos released so far that all the levels are connected to eachother somehow. You can see Green Hill in the distance while in Park Avenue. And while in Green Hill you can see the stages slowly becoming more mechanical as you go through the game. With Classic Sonic's Green Hill act being more dry (literally) and lifeless than the original, the custom character's Green Hill act having more mechanical elements, and finally the tag team act resulting in you going into a mechanical pyramid base. They actually do a pretty good job building up the world in this game. But then the actual level design doesn't look fun to play in at all. And it just kinda all falls apart there.
This won't kill Sonic. If 06 didn't kill Sonic and Boom didn't kill Sonic this absolutely won't kill Sonic, especially since it seems like Mania energized a lot of former fans. At it's best this game looks like it'll be ok. At it's worst it looks like it'll be boring. All around though it's just an inoffensive romp. It'll come out, people will have a laugh about the OCs, and it'll be forgotten about until they announce a new Sonic game and then memories of it will come back. In between then though we'll all go about how wonderful Mania was :v:/> Honestly I'm mostly looking forward to this game for modding purposes, and would love to see some kind of Generations project to see how those levels work in a hopefully refined engine. But I do agree I think Iizuka needs to go away now. I also think that whoever is directing this game should not be allowed to direct any more Sonic games. Oh ya, I'm ok with the Light Dash being a wisp, it's better to keep Sonic's moveset simplified. I also like what they did with the Cube wisp in that video. Looks like a better implementation than Colors anyway (BLOCK PLATFORMING). I actually think this is their best implementation of wisps so far. They're fast, they give some replay value for allowing you to access different paths, and they're not even used by Sonic and instead passed to the side character. I'm ok with all of this.
Okay, so I know people are still debating whether or not the whole "Sonic Team A & Sonic Team B" is even a thing, but has anyone noticed just how stiff and lifeless the skydiving looks? So I wondered, has it always been like this? The answer is no: Pay attention to the way Sonic tilts as he falls. It just looks nicer. Then I went and compared it to the skydiving in Lost World, Colours and Unleashed. I've noticed that both Colours and Lost World have that sort of stiff looking skydive that Forces has, whereas Unleashed had the nicer skydive with more fluidity. I'm wondering, is it just that Sonic Team B games tend to have less polish to them than the A Team games? Unless this whole 'A Team/B Team' thing is just a crackpot theory in which case nevermind
You wanted US CD music in Mania? Too bad, you get it in Forces instead. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhwBpAQnYvs[/youtube] Remixed by Kenichi Tokoi.
