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Sonic Forces Thread

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Blue Blood, Jul 23, 2016.

  1. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Yea, yikes.

    I don't see this game reviewing well. I mean unless literally everything else we haven't seen is absolutely flawless, 10/10 stuff, all the stuff we've seen so far would at least drag it down to an 8/10. And we all know that's not going to be the case.

    Hope you learn something from the Mania team after this Sonic Team. Might have to, or you might lose your jobs :v:
     
  2. RikohZX

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    I mean let's be blunt here; they've been doing this since the first gameplay reveal. Every bit of official gameplay revealed cuts off before they can show all of a level, which makes sense, but then E3 came and their official stream/showing of Modern Sunset Heights has them literally stop right before the end of the level. It took people's own recordings and journalist websites to show the whole of the stage, which has also happened with other stages like Avatar Green Hill and Classic Casino Forest. The only stage Sega's officially shown in its entirety is Classic Green Hill last I remember.


    They really don't want to officially show just how short the stages are, so we should feel grateful that numerous other sources outed this.
     
  3. Chaud

    Chaud

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    I know that Sega makes some stupid/strange decisions sometimes, but... Wow. This is so bad that it's funny. I really laughed out loud in GameXplain's video. :psyduck: :v:
     
  4. Laura

    Laura

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    I don't think this is going to get higher than a 5/10 if I'm being honest. Maybe even lower than that. I'm personally going for 4/10 from my impressions and I thought Generations was a 7/10 game.

    Generations didn't get glowing reviews, it averaged at 7/10, and Generations was far, far better than this.

    This just looks really shallow and simplistic. I mean, it does look graphically nicer than I was expecting, I'll give it that. And the mix of Green Hill and Desert Ruins does work better in motion than in images. But Modern's Green Hill still just looks like a less impressive version of Modern's Green Hill in Generations. It's just so incredibly weird, because it looks like a mod. And a really lazy mod with no effort put into level design. If Mania's a 'good fangame', than Forces is a bad mod of Generations :v:

    I really have no idea how this has happened, because it definitely looks worse than Generations and I'd personally say it looks less interesting than Lost World too. Whichever talent was in Sonic Team in 2010-2011 is presumably not with the company anymore, or aren't being used properly.

    I actually really hope this bombs badly. That SEGA wakes up and realise their biggest brand is being horribly managed by Sonic Team, especially after Mania did so well.
     
  5. Naean

    Naean

    Naean H.F. (Nez Man) Member
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    Fuck me stiff. No. This isn't even remotely defensible.

    If this is what SEGA/Sonic Team are calling "moving the franchise forward" then they must have a pretty fucking skewed dictionary that they're referencing, because this is about as backwards as it gets. The excessive usage of springs, launch ramps and speed boosters is bad enough on its own, but on top of that they're now wrestling even more control away from the player on the already very linear and generic paths?

    This is completely unacceptable compared to Sonic Generations. Even Green Hill Act 2 in that game, while also rather linear, was at least visually piss tonnes more impressive, and the terrain types/level areas were more varied and fleshed out.

    The one alternate path that I have seen in this demo for Modern Sonic's level is also chock full of automation. This game looks like loads of flash with little to no substance. Don't even get me started on the whole "we looked at Sonic Mania for inspiration" shtick that they've said as well. What a fucking joke that statement was!
     
  6. Liraxus

    Liraxus

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    I seriously can't fathom what went wrong here. What happened to the same team that worked on Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, and Sonic Generations? I mean, for Pete's sake, even the director is the same person who directed Sonic Colors!

    For an 'Amazing SEGA', this is just an absolute joke.
     
  7. Laura

    Laura

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    The director of Sonic Generations was Hiroshi Miyamoto who hasn't worked on any Sonic games aside from the Olympic games, because that's a great thing to do to the guy who's made the only universally well received Sonic-Team Sonic game (aside from Colours) in ages :v:
     
  8. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    To be fair, I think they mostly meant that they'd look at what Mania did well going forward :v: By the time Mania came out there was nothing left to do really, Forces was mostly complete. The only inspiration they took from Mania was likely the drop dash in order to tie that game shamefully into this one.

    But hey, we're bitter fucks about this stuff. What does the rest of the internet think of this?
     
  9. Frostav

    Frostav

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    Kids don't give a shit about the gameplay, they'll just buy this garbage anyway.

    Fuckin' hell. I'm a Sonic Grognard now. I don't get the kids man. I DON'T GET 'EM
     
  10. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    If that's the case why don't they just make more Mania esq games? They're cheaper to make and they make them look good and the kids don't care. Everyone wins. This is as useless as that Pentagon backed gas station in Afghanistan that cost like $67 Million to make.

    Like, just to be clear. When people asked for Generations 2, this is the exact opposite of what they wanted. I wanted the Generations format with new, not rehashed levels, with the same type of level design and love that was put into Generations. Instead they take the footnotes from all the recent Sonic games and shove them into this automated nightmare. Like what, did they look at Colors and think "hey you know what levels people loved? Those aimless switch puzzle levels yea lets make that a game."

    UGH. I hope that the pirates crack this game because I want to play this abortion but I don't want to pay for it.
     
  11. Linkabel

    Linkabel

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    I would say that the majority of the internet has a bad feeling about this, with a few still holding on to hope. The 1 minute limit is not doing Sega any favors. That just added more negativity to the pile.
     
  12. Naean

    Naean

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    I'm a firm believer that they could have quite easily incorporated some positive character control and level design changes into Sonic Forces by looking at Sonic Mania during development. At one point in time, for a significant amount of time, they were both in development.

    If what they meant to say was "we are going to look at what people liked about Sonic Mania, but only after Sonic Forces", then it was frankly a piss poor move on their part to even put out a more general statement in the first place stating that they would look at Sonic Mania for influences. They should have been more clear.

    Besides that specific point though, even without Sonic Mania being a thing, there is plenty of great stuff in Sonic Generations for them to expand upon, (such as that game's levels past Green Hill being much more open and having way more alternate paths) but no. Sonic Forces is more linear, less graphically pleasing, with even more hand-holding and automation, all stuck together with an overall package that doesn't know what the fuck it wants to be. Sonic Forces is quite literally the definition of "throwing everything haphazardly at the wall, and desperately hoping that something sticks" in video game form.

    It's quite depressing to see, honestly. My very negative feelings about this game now, compared to the cautious optimism that I had back during the initial teaser trailer, is such a stark and bitter contrast. This game doesn't feel like something "from the team that brought you Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations". It feels like Sonic Lost World, but dialled up to half past 12. There is no grounded theme or consistent tone soundtrack-wise, storyline-wise or aesthetically. It all looks awfully unappealing and an extremely confused mish-mash of clashing elements.

    :(
     
  13. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Some footage of a player's speedrun of an Avatar Stage, think this is the furthest anyone's been able to get. It (doesn't) help that the cutscene / QTE sequences and scripted pole-swinging sequences takes up a large chunk of the actual gameplay (the cutscene/QTE sequance itself at the end of the playthrough is literally 15 seconds).



    The avatar player with the Burst Wispon gets some really unnatural-looking pickup in speed. Janky movement seems to be a common trend across the Custom Hero Wispons.

    Also wanna talk about the two giant springs at the end of the rail sequence. In the above speedrun at 0:43, the player hops over to get to the next platform just in front of it.

    Do you know what happens if you do hit those springs? Check out 0:45 in this GameSpot preview.



    The player in the GameSpot preview here hits the spring, which triggers an scripted pole sequence...which drops the player down to the same platform below. This takes up roughly two seconds.

    Avoiding the spring entirely not only allows the player to get to the platform faster, but hitting the spring and activating the pole-swinging sequence doesn't even provide any gameplay risk / safety advantage: the platform only has a Wispon and a wall, so if the player hopped over the spring, they don't have to worry about running into an enemy or off the platform into a bottomless pit

    Hitting the spring + pole swinging sequence offers no meaningful gameplay advantage over just avoiding the spring altogether. It's virtually pointless.

    And I'm just singling out one instance of this...in a playstyle that has so far shown to be filled with these pole-swinging sequences. Can you imagine how significantly more involving / interactive and how leaner the Custom Hero gameplay could be if it had none of these sequences scattered throughout its levels to pad out the gameplay?

    This freaking game and its design choices, my god.
     
  14. Frostav

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    Duh. This has automation has always been in 3D Sonic games. Even as a kid I couldn't help but notice how much dash panels and springs in the Adventure era often broke up the pace and slowed things down!
     
  15. Naean

    Naean

    Naean H.F. (Nez Man) Member
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    Speaking of the gift (???) that keeps on giving, check out this gem:

    DarkspinesSonic managed to beat Classic Sonic's boss in the demo before the time ran out.

    What's even greater is the fact that at 0:25 on the video, Eggman is firing at Classic Sonic while he is in the same spot, and he doesn't take any damage.

     
  16. Tiller

    Tiller

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    So like the only thing I like about this is Sonic's new jump flinging animation when he's boosting and short hoping. He just kind of hurls himself in the air and its great.

    Everything else looks like the big crock of shit we were expecting. I have to laugh that they've taken it upon themselves to even disable boosting on most of the scripted parts. Unleashed and Gens did this sometimes too, but at least in Gens it was more common that you could hold it through the scripted sequence to keep it visually consistent at worst and actually did speed it up somewhat at best.
     
  17. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Not denying that, but I do think Forces is actively taking things up to eleven on just how automated and scripted its designers are gameplay.

    I am still waiting for a genuine argument as to why putting dash panels --an already automated level object-- before, after, and inside automated tunnels is a good example of game design (for crying out loud!).
     
  18. Frostav

    Frostav

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    Well if I may be a contrarian twat (:v:/>) that does actually happen in Mania, but it's way less egregious there. At least in Mania it's just pure physics (though Stardust Speedway has some utterly redundant booster placement).

    Automation isn't even that bad, Mania is chock-ful of it, but it's tasteful and interesting physics-based automation. I'm preaching to the choir here though.
     
  19. Naean

    Naean

    Naean H.F. (Nez Man) Member
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    I remember when I first watched that footage of Classic Sonic going through the tunnels in Green Hill Zone, with speed boosters before, inside, and after them.

    I sighed, and immediately afterwards said to myself "This is just like Splash Hill Zone all over again. Shit."

    Sonic Forces looks even worse though, in particular the way Classic Sonic travelled through the second set of tunnels looks quite "robotic" and artificial. :-/
     
  20. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Well, people like to point that out from time to time, but the difference is that in those levels boosters were the stage specific gimmick. Yes, Chemical Plant and Stardust Speedway (especially Stardust Speedway) had a lot of boosters, but that was a one zone thing. Here though, they're everywhere. And in Mania if you want to avoid them, at least 75% of the time you can. Here though? Nope. Avoid them and it'll just make the automation look that much more jarring at least half the time.

    It's a shame. I wanted this game to be good. But fuck I don't see how at this point.