I can totally see there was a 10 minutes time over in the beginning, which justifies the programming of the message and the red glow on the timer, but then the "HURR DURR LET'S MAKE IT VERY EASY SO EVERYBODY CAN PLAY IT HURR DURR" thing came, and instead of eliminating it, they just increased it to 60 minutes :P Everything about this game is just plain ridiculous.
I was weak and ended up buying Sonic Forces from the Steam sale. I have... thoughts. The good: Spoiler Good: Aesthetics Hedgehog Engine 2 is amazing in brightly lit areas like Metropolis or Green Hill. The visual design of Metropolis in general is great. Not sure why it's called that though. The Avatar's music reminds me of Sonic Adventure 2 in some great ways. Modern Sonic's music can kinda blend together, but it's still alright. The remixes from Episode Shadow are pretty cool too. Infinite's theme STARDUST SPEEDWAY BAD FUTURE US (what a mouthful) Good: Narrative The Avatar. In general. One of the series' best ideas. I hope they find an excuse to flesh out the idea in a future title. The double boost sections have great affective involvement Stage 16's theming is really cool. Oh thank God, Sonic actually cares about something again. I'm glad you can turn the in-game radio off. Good: Gameplay/Systems The short levels make it more convenient to replay to grab items or complete missions. The scoring system is more complex than Sonic Generations but more forgiving than Sonic Unleashed. It's a good compromise (and vaguely similar to Sonic Mania). The levels are well-paced, both in terms of level order and in the levels themselves. The wispon weapons are great for making you feel powerful. They found a way to have the wisp powers not clash with the main gameplay. Yay. The Rental Avatar is a nice way to allow players to use more than one wispon at a time. Of course, all of them use the drill, but I'm not sure how much that's the game's fault. Stage 3 is pretty good. Lots of routes and different ways to reach them. Stage 24 is really open and easily the most replayable. The wispons really shine here as well. If it wasn't for all the empty space, grind rails, and dash hoops, it would be up there with Seaside Hill Modern. The bad: Spoiler Bad: Aesthetics The character animation. Why are such expressive character designs moving in such a stiff way. On top of that, where is Modern Sonic's idle animation? Hedgehog Engine 2 does not look great in dark or flatly lit areas. The visual effect on the side of the screen when Sonic boosts looks terrible compared to what came before, and it makes it hard to see. Why is Casino Forest so dark? There are lights everywhere! In Casino Forest and Death Egg, I'm surprised they didn't place lights to draw attention to objects like springs or item boxes. Classic Sonic's music. Stop forcing Mega Drive/Genesis synth on him! Couldn't we have gotten Johnny Gioeli to sing Fist Bump? We barely get to hear Infinite's theme in the game itself ( ? ^ ? ) Bad: Narrative The story's pacing is wonky as hell. Some levels are really pointless. Our actions in the levels don't really match how much the cast praises us. The plot doesn't even come close to reaching its full potential. Sonic and the Avatar get their time with Infinite, but Classic Sonic is the one who already knows about the Phantom Ruby. Why doesn't he fight Infinite? Outside of Stage 16, the Phantom Ruby's power never seems that interesting. Eggman conquered the world, and we see basically none of the consequences. There was a mystery element with Shadow being a villain. Wasted. Oh boy! It's Chaos! Can't wait t- oh he's gone. NULL SPACE. Guess not even nothing can stop friendship. Why does Infinite go from a gruff mercenary to some posh villain? Also, that backstory... Some of the lines are really out-of-place. “80% of our force has been wiped out”? “Sonic has been tortured for months”? Unsure if this is the writer's fault or the localization. I get the impression that the Phantom Ruby (and Infinite to some extent) was supposed to be an Eggman invention, but the tie-in with Sonic Mania makes things confusing. The SOS missions where your Avatar is replaced with someone else's harms the sense of a friendship building between your Avatar and Sonic in the tag-team levels. Bad: Gameplay/Systems The levels are too short. They don't need to be Sonic Heroes-esque 7 minute long marathons, but at least 2-3 minutes. The bosses are basically training for the final boss, which would be fine if they weren't bad at it (especially Zavok). Missions are a restrictive way to unlock cosmetics. They should have been bought with rings. Then, instead of getting cosmetics you may never use as rewards, you can just buy what you want your avatar to wear. Rings lack any purpose outside of preventing death. The fact that they considered removing the ring-scatter mechanic is telling, but I'm glad they patched it in. Casino Forest? Why is there a casino level? Rings are pointless! The “find the hidden soldier in the level” SOS missions are nice, but it would be nicer if the level ended when you found them. That or place the Egg Capsule at the end of the level. Classic Sonic's controls in general are bad, but the speed-cap is the worst thing. Modern Sonic/The Avatar's acceleration is awful. It's like he still has the run button from Sonic Lost World, only he has control of it instead of us. The jump. If you're going to make a jump, make it feel good. The double-boost sections have terrible ludic involvement. The grappling hook could have solved all of Sonic's 3D problems. Instead, it's a set-piece. Automation can work in small doses, but in this game it's more like you're watching Sonic run through the level rather than exploring it yourself. I get the idea they were going for of not requiring the player to “aim” Sonic, but levels could have been more forgiving/wider. Relatedly, the levels feel too “planned.” It's fine to playtest for where players jump to determine enemy placement, but what's the point of playing if the outcome is determined? Wisps aren't used to reach alternate routes; they are alternate routes. As satisfying as the weapons are to use, it would be nice to have actual fights with enemies rather than just destroying them completely. Maybe like mini-bosses. QTEs?! Really?! Mashing ones as well. Those can be a usability disaster. I'm sure most of this stuff has been said before. I get what Sonic Team was going for, and I feel like I enjoyed it more than most people. Any game that lets me play as my own characters is fun to me.
Is someone able to explain this to me? http://youtu.be/n2DsTBSHR10 If you take Sonic (or Shadow) to a wall in a 3D area and try to make him walk into it, this quite often happens. It's not everywhere, but it does happen in a lot of places and it's easily repeatable in those spots. You can see in this video that all I'm doing is holding right.
Has anyone ever replayed this game more than once? I can't find any reason to revisit the game, and I paid 40$ for it. The levels just aren't long or interesting enough.
It's fun to speedrun. I think I have 40+ hours in it, trying to beat my best times and trying out new wispons and avatar combinations. I kinda agree with Izuka here : it's fun to mindlessly boost trough the levels :v: (Maybe it's why I like this game better than generations, even though I know it's not better)
If you mean by this "come back to play it after seeing the ending", I did grind until I got the Platinum trophy on PS4. I had a much more positive experience with the game than 99% of the posters in this thread, I have to admit.
Yup I've played it a good number of times, although usually when drinking. It's actually kinda fun that way.
I've gone through it a few times, and had afternoons where I'd blast through the stages in order. It's one of those games that's good, dumb fun. I can tell a lot of work went into it, but somewhere along the way the gameplay took a massive hit. Kinda like Black Knight, but that game controlled like complete shit, whereas this one's faults lie more in the stage design, making it more enjoyable by default.
Like I said, I love the avatar system, so I've been going back and creating new avatars. Also, as much as I dislike the way the missions are used to get cosmetics, completing missions is one of my favorite things to do in Sonic games (Adventure 2, Rush Adventure, Generations HD/3D). Missions add a lot to the replayability of these games for me, and they can be useful for learning different or more efficient way to beat levels.
Pretty much along the lines of this. It's probably my least favorite of the boost games (although looking back idk about Colors these days, in some ways I think this game might be better), but it's not my least favorite 3D Sonic game. I like it more than Lost World, I like it more than 06, Heroes, and Shadow. It definitely is in the same area for me as Sonic R, a short flawed game with some interesting cheesy tracks (with the exception of Classic's music, ekk) that for some reason just works for me. I gotta say the Avatar system surprised me and I hope it comes back in some way, although hopefully with expanded customization. Like if they made a game that was just Tag Team stages with a Sonic Mania 12 stages with 2 acts approach I think I'd have a lot of fun with it. They just really have to up their game with the level design. Graphics team gets an A+ from me though, they did a great job.
Yeah, unfortunately it's the localization at it again. In fact, everything about the game's localization is basically SA2 with the English cleaned up. Plot details are muddied, lines and whole dialogues are rewritten, characters say a lot more cringe-worthy/tone-deaf stuff, etc. All for seemingly no reason. I mean, it may not actually be the case, but I can't help but wonder if all those changes were all an "I'm smarter than the Japanese writers" kind of mentality on Graff's part. Which is pretty stupid since most of his changes ended up making certain plot details more nonsensical than they were. Of course the "80% of the troops have been destroyed" is still the same in Japanese, but anyway. For example, here's a bunch of the more egregious dialogues I can think of, and their Japanese counterparts: Spoiler EN Knuckles: He's captured in the orbiting prison. My spy there says he's in a solitary confinement cell, and they've been torturing him for months. JP Knuckles: Sonic is captured in a space prison. According to the report, he's apparently been given hell there for who knows how many months... EN Rouge: Eggman's been keeping Sonic alive all this time. He's been waiting to show him his completed empire before banishing him. Knuckles: And torturing Sonic just to pass the time. That's low, even for Eggman. JP Rouge: It seems that Eggman has been planning to let Sonic see the completion of the Eggman Empire to make him lose hope and throw him out into space from the start. Knuckles: So, he's been tormenting Sonic to kill time until then. That bastard... (I'm sure you all can come up with softer equivalents to that) He won't get away with this! EN Vector: The Death Egg? Oh, man, that's not good. Knuckles: None of this is good, Vector. That's why it's called “war.” JP Vector: "The Death Egg," are you serious!? It can't be possible, can it!? Knuckles: Nothing is impossible, Vector. During a war, anything can happen. EN Tails: Okay... failed battle plans... old robot designs... wow, he's got like ten terabytes of selfies... so where does he keep the-- JP Tails: Failed world domination plans, old robot blueprints... whoa... how many terabytes of pictures of his own mustache are in here? Also I made a cutscene vid a couple months back. I'll probably make another video (or at least a Pastebin script) dedicated to all the radio chatter one of these days, because there's a LOT more examples than I can currently think of. Of course, slightly improved dialogue can't fix the overall narrative, but at least I cringe at what these characters say a lot less. Plus, it's got all the voice actors I know and have loved for decades. (RIP Eggman)
That dialogue isn't anywhere near as different as I was expecting from reading your post. Sonic has still be "tormented" by Eggman for X months, Knuckles is still spouting rubbish about war and Eggman has terabytes of photos of himself. There's really not a lot of change there at all. Translating "torment" to "torture" just makes me wonder what the difference is in Japanese. In English at least, the two words mean essentially the same thing with different levels of severity. What does Tails say in the Japanese closing cutscene when he says "true dat" in English? Cause that line is fucking horrible.
Man, it's baffling how graphically unimpressive this game is, even though it's significantly more demanding. Maxed out, 1080p Forces looks good, but pushes my 750Ti to its limits and drops some frames. Meanwhile Generations looks A LOT better at the same settings while using only about 60% of GPU power, leaving room for some FAT supersampling on top of that. Remember when Sonic games were some of the prettiest games around? I miss that.
The verb for "tormenting" can also mean "harassing" or "teasing," so make of that what you will. Either way, they're still not explicitly saying "tortured," so it counts as an improvement in my book. He says, "You're right!". It's in my cutscene video.
It kinda seems like the localization team was handed the Japanese script but were told by the higher-ups "make it a bit darker; our fans want a darker story-line." Still, I'm glad Eggman keeps pictures of himself in both versions. That sounds a lot like him.
From The Cutting Room Floor, looks like the game had a VR demo at a press event at one point? And I'm sure it's unintentional, but that design reminds me a lot of the Sega Saturn's "bootleg sampler" demo disc: Spoiler
Hum... by VR, they mean with the Oculus Rift and everything ? I wonder if this version played in first person, I've never heard of a third person VR game.
Personally, I thought that they named it after Phantom Ruby's "virtual reality." That's pretty damn stupid though, I admit.
These are some of my Avatars: Ghostly Puyo-Cat looks like Rouge Beat 'em up-rabbit doesn't know Kung-fu Mayor-bear has a secret... ...it's a girl!!!! Hawaiian hedgehog-lady has a fake sunburn
