Good to see that there's a spring by every tiny ledge to avoid all that tedious jumping that gets in the way in other platformers. Really they should just release the whole game as a series of YouTube videos, really grab that millennial market.
Wow. What is that? I mean, it would have been GREAT in 2009, but now....meh. That music....why can't they at least use the snare drum from Sonic 3 this time around? I feel like this is would the music would have been for Splash Hill had it been included within Sonic Lego Dimensions. It's not "good" but still beat those d y i n g c a t s many times over.
The upload calling the level Green Hill Zone should hopefully put an end to those ridiculous semantics arguments on whether Forces counts as a Green Hill iteration/rehash. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...you know the rest. This iteration of Green Hill looks more non-linear in structure in line with Generations, which is admittedly a plus. Unfortunately it still looks heavily linear in the actual design, there's only a handful of token slopes of what is otherwise a level compromised of flat geometry. The level design also puts a spotlight on precision platforming like Colors and Lost World did, if the several segments of Sonic hopping between platforms over bottomless pits or around spikes (and there are quite a lot of the latter) is anything to go by. Pretty much called this given the director in question. There's also a truckload of automation too, dash panels and the automatic/invisible yellow springs are really unnecessary (there's even a dash panel just at the exit of the tunnel, which is itself scripted!). And it seems the sand in the background is just for show--there's no sand gimmicks, nor does the sand have any effect on the actual level design--both of which would had definitely helped the level standout. The physics, at least when Sonic's jumping, look really, really dodgy. Sonic's aerial momentum seems really rigid and stiff, when he jumps directly on top of enemies, it's like the player doesn't have much aerial horizontal mobility. Yet when he hits enemies from the side, there's no rebound and he phases through them. It's like they tried to use Generations as a base and then retooled it to be more like Lost World (which had hardly any momentum in the air). And man, I'm really not digging that attempt at the "retro" music. Sounds like a few cat / duck synths away from being something you'd hear in Sonic 4. X( It graphically does looks more lively than what we saw in the ND footage, and it looks like they finally got a spindash that isn't underpowered like Sonic 4 or overpowered like Generations...that's all of the positives I got. Classic Sonic's gameplay in Forces otherwise looks like the designers more interested in how to fudge together 2D gameplay from Generations, Sonic 4, and Lost World; rather than actually being (more) faithful to the Genesis games than Generations. Granted, we do Mania for that I guess, but I was willing to cut Forces a little bit of slack if Sonic Team had proven my skepticism wrong and had actually gotten it right for once. C'est la vie.
Seriously? By now, the Nintendo still can't handle a couple of graphics??? Parts of the background+bg elements and a tree missing? I didn't realize the Switch was really the Wii-Three.
The Switch is a major step up from the Wii U but it's still just a little short of the PS4/Xbone in terms of power. Not by a whole lot, but, as that Forces comparison shows, the missing power does subtly show itself.
Must admit it looks much better than I expected. Still disappointed they didn't improve on generations leveldesign/engineer accuracy -wise. Leveldesign feels very blocky and uninspired with tonnes of enemies thrown at you to hide that fact. We'll see I guess.
Oh wow, that's a pretty big difference, I feel like too big of a difference for it to just be console differences. Could the Switch version have been using an earlier build of the game? At least looking at the comparison shots I feel better about the level's graphical design, it doesn't look nearly as dead as the Switch version we saw was.
I imagine the Switch footage could have been from an earlier build. Still, the Switch is far less powerful than the PS4 and Xbox One so I would expect some pretty big graphical differences between the versions. Especially if they want the Switch version to run at 60fps.
The Switch version doesn't look very good. Then again, neither does the collection of alternatives. Unfortunately this all looks rather disappointing.
They really upped the sample count on the grass, and it looks more like grass than Generations as a result. You can also see shadows being casted on the grass itself. In Generations I never really interpreted it as grass, just annoying low res fuzz that just has 3D planes with their top 2 vertices animated on a loop. You can also see more of this Lost World - Generations hybrid in the visuals, like how Lost World's leaves even show up in Green Hill. Looks like they're reusing textures as well. Normally using Green Hill again is my trigger, but I'm just glad they're not using "GreenHill.mp3" again.
Even the Switch is more powerful than the 360 and PS3, so I seriously doubt the graphical downgrades are purely the fault of the hardware. If the game really can't crank out some additional lighting/saturation and background elements, that's either the Direct showing off a significantly older build, or Sonic Team hasn't efficiently optimized the game to scale down to the Switch hardware. Either way, Sonic Team doesn't seem to have their act together. They took away the entirely wrong message from Generations as expected. The modern gameplay and third character (I'm convinced it's a custom player character at this point) had better really bring the heat. If they're as mediocre as Classic gameplay looks right now, this game's DOA.
To be fair: Unleashed and Generations struggled to run at even 30fps on Xbox 360 and PS3 a lot of the time, and ran at a resolution below 720p. I can see the game on Switch not being as graphically impressive as those two games on Xbox 360/PS3 if it runs at 720p and 60fps.
Well the stage certainly looks better than I thought it might. The drop dash is definitely a surprise addition, and I'm glad it has it's own music track (sounds Colors-y?). It looks expansive enough in terms of alternate routes, but I'm wondering how easy these will be actually reachable when the stage pushes you forward so hard. I really, seriously doubt that the direct footage looks worse because the switch version has so much removed detail. It says "we turned these effects off before we sent this footage in seven months ago" to me more than "we had to remove all this detail just for the switch", especially since the modern footage in the direct looks the same as at SXSW, and the game overall looks so similar to Generations that there's no way it should not be able to run smoothly on hardware more powerful than what Generations was built for.
That was probally the dullest thing I've seen in a while. Couldn't even finish the video it was that boring.
The Tumblr tags: http://sonicthehedgehog.tumblr.com/post/159981962458/as-our-teams-continue-development-of-sonic-forces So sounds like the Nintendo Direct footage looks so lacking in comparison cause of it being an earlier build rather than console version differences. Also more Sonic Forces stuff will be shown off over the next couple of months.
