I really hate to think this is the game we've been waiting over 5 years for. Just seems like such a lack of effort in that amount of time. Maybe there's something we haven't seen yet that makes it better, I dunno. I mean it's not like it's gonna be a piece of shit, but come on Sega, I thought you guys would have understood by now.
Quote from YouTube Video description by Sega: I get that they couldn't have every stage be a fiery inferno like the Modern Sonic town stage, because that would get repetitive fast. But surely they could do more than just swap out the water with sand. At the very least, that sand should be blowing into the main area and impacting the landscape. And as Sonic progresses through the stage, some of the lush green plants should have withered due to the lack of water. Taking it further, Eggman's bots could be mowing the grass, putting up scaffolding to build the next factory and carving their master's face into the totem poles. That Wood Chopper bot from Mushroom Hill should be removing the palm trees. It would be awesome to start in regular GHZ but then, as Sonic progresses through the stage, it ends up looking very different because of all the construction work (a bit like a tamer Planet Wisp or the bad future of Palm Tree panic). If the player takes out all the bots, then their construction is interrupted, so the final part of the stage isn't too radically changed (although of course all their machinery is left behind so it still looks somewhat different). Otherwise, if the bots are undefeated then by the time Sonic reaches the end, a new factory is erected in the background, changing the atmosphere of the stage. There's so much they could do with the concept. Just swapping out the water with sand is lazy.
This actually completely sums up what Sonic Fan Remix did, each act essentially started to show Eggman's forces slowly overtake the entire zone with signs and spotlights in the background. Frankly, I would've liked it if the zone had a few nods to Oil Ocean or something, have hugely polluted water instead of sand filling up the place, hell, make it Green Hill Bad Future for all I care, but the decision to just make Sandy Hill zone just felt like a decision to save development time at the cost of an uninteresting level.
It seems that the one thing I look forward to, good level layout and design, is again sorely lacking in this game, judging by this latest video. I know that springs in the floor have been used before (Sonic 2, and Sonic 3 & Knuckles, were guilty of this in a few places) but here they seem forced and as a way of taking control from the player further than before. I mean, in some places, they actually look like they were required so run into and trigger in order to progress, and this happened way too often in such a short video. The player hits these sort of springs 8 times in the space of a 1:40-ish video. I mean, what is that? Plus, this layout seems to contain the same amount of copy/pasted material from the original Green Hill Zone Act 1 that Generations did, and I don't know how I feel abut that. There's a number of strange design choices that I need to list: A purple rock before a bridge. Why break the flow/momentum like that? A lack of how loop-de-loops work in a 3D space. I see this a lot in ROM hacks, but it looks horrible here. Just look at how the original Green Hill Zone conveyed a loop as a 3D object with 2 paths, and then look at the attempt here. They're miles apart. Boosters before and even in loops and tunnels. If they worked correctly, with momentum, you wouldn't even need them there. It just looks bad. There's also a severe decrease in speed/momentum when Sonic comes out of a loop for a short time, only to be rolled back into the next one. Problem is, the speed drop in that short, flat space between the 2 is so jarring. The collapsing bridge at the end with all the choppers just looks bad. It doesn't look like a very suspenseful section (more of a hold right to win), and in fact looks more like someone's first attempt at level design. Someone mentioned a Mario Maker level feel before, and I agree with them. A lot of grass strips inside the ground. It looks like they were dumped on top of each other, like Lego. I know this is still a work in progress, but that's not how grass works, and I severely hope that it's something that'll get fixed in the future. The music just feels out of place to me. It's not a bad tune, but it's starting to reek of Sonic 4, with the overuse of those drums and the forced retro sound, when it isn't needed. I'm not much of a music person, so it's hard to explain. The one thing I liked was the return of the spingboard (from Chemical Plant/Aquatic Ruin). It's actually used as a way of maintaining momentum while bouncing through the air. I also really like the grass. It looks like it's flowing in the wind properly now, which is a nice touch. I dunno. I'm just not that interested in this. It doesn't do anything for me, and certainly doesn't increase my enthusiasm for Sonic Forces. I really do think that this could have been something more, but again, I just feel a bit... meh? That's the problem. I'm not disappointed, or happy to see this, it's a just a 'Huh, OK' sort of response, which I haven't had from a Sonic game in some time. Take that as you will.
I don't feel the music sounds chiptune at all ( except the Sonic 1 Snare, who is overly used here. It's like someone is tapping with a shoesole at a table trying to kill some bugs or something). Main melody sounds too sharp and screeching, but not like a chiptune screech, something else. It also too "J-pop" sounding, with a bit of melancholic-hope-ish sound around 0:35 and 0:45, something Ohtani uses quite often ( it was very common at Sonic Runners OST). This doens't fit green hill zone at all. I don't think we need another remix of the classic tune, but something that is more fitting would be good. Something like what was done with lego dimensions, original sounding but that fitted the levels and felt good on them.
Earlier I was thinking that this Green Hill reveal should've been done like how they did the Generations level trailers. The little Green Hill full gameplay reveal should've come out till E3 and have it more polished. This way they could've saved themselves the trouble of having to remind people things were still in production till then. Now I feel fans are getting more worried going into E3 than being excited. I did a little quick test on how one would look like: https://youtu.be/JZmbjQ5-cak Obviously the people at Sega can do a better job than me but I feel like it's something to consider.
Thank you, I don't think I could have put it better myself. At least they're not killing cats this time. =P
They sure do love that Sonic 1 snare. Also, is it just me or do the badnik models in this game seem to be designed in a similar style to Mecha Sonic from Sonic & Knuckles? I don't know what it is exactly that makes me think that they're similar, maybe the coloring or the exoskeleton with a shell look they have, or the eyes. But I just feel like with what has been shown Mecha Sonic would fit in well.
The supposed bullshots look gorgeous. The level of detail is absolutely on-point, and the soft blue lighting looks particularly lovely. To me as a seasoned fan, it does look like a visual improvement over Generations' GHZ and I can tell them apart easily. Plus, there's much less clutter and Sonic and the camera are fixed on a purely 2D plane, so it's much easier to recognise the foreground from the background. I'm not sure that more casual onlookers would notice the visual difference though - once again, this game looks so similar to Generations that it's almost hard to tell that they're not the same game. And I don't like the sand. It's poorly lit, so just looks like a relatively flat and static plane. It's easy to miss entirely. What's the point? It's also related entirely to the background. If SEGA had to insist on bringing Green Hill Zone back, they should have tried a bit harder to show that it's in a sorry state due to Eggman's interference. Cause at the moment, the only thing that's in a sorry state is SEGA's creative skills. Green Hill shouldn't be lush, vibrant and lively like this. The plant life ought to be suffering, the sky should be clouded over or filled with pollution and the overall colour scheme ought to give the impression of decay. At the moment, it is literally just Green Hill but with sand off in the distance. It's a lazy attempt really. Why doesn't the actual level layout incorporate some of the elements of ruin? Whilst we're on the subject of level design... fuck NO. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3TMwTohAbs Boosters and springs galore. They don't serve any purpose beyond playing the game for you. And because they're still so shoddily programmed, they completely destroy any sense of flow and momentum. Every time he hits a booster or a spring, his speed to reset. There's even more evidence of invisible automation when he comes to the S-tunnels and the ramp that launches him into the air to grab some rings. Slopes and loops don't do anything, whilst the platforming is blocky. Even hitting enemies seems to be pretty broken - Sonic can come to a stop unnaturally. The physics are bad. Why is that rock even there? The level is perfectly flat at that point. It's not even a clever obstacle that brings inexperienced players to a stop before they run into danger or miss a jump. It's just pointless. The game has no flow, which is quite mind-boggling considering how much it wants to play itself. If you compare the level design to Sonic 1... In Forces, Sonic comes hurtling off the ledge on the left courtesy of a booster and misses the swinging platform, but that doesn't matter because he hits the invisible spring that puts him back on the path anyway. He may also be approaching from a lower path, and the swing is still useless because the spring is so much easier and faster. The reward of grabbing a handful of rings for taking the swing doesn't pay off. In S1 however, it's a different story. There's a rock that stops Sonic from falling down to the lower route by mistake, but more experienced players might think to jump over it and land on the swing. The swing also serves as the main way of staying on the upper path. If Sonic falls, the player can either take him on a new lower path or make some clever use of the physics to scale the ramp and return to the upper route. There's no hidden spring doing the work for you. In fact, the only hidden item in the scene is a shield that you can miss if you rush through. Whilst all of these were issues in Generations, I could turn a blind eye to them back then. The game was an overall improvement over Sonic 4's attempt at Classic gameplay, and at least showed some effort. That's no longer the case with Forces now that it can be compared to Mania and shows no signs of improvement over the past 6 years. SEGA seems to be so arrogant/ignorant/inept/unconfident that they don't want to address any concerns. Arrogant because Generations got praised and therefore doesn't need fixing, ignorant because they don't understand the Classic Sonic formula that they're trying to emulate, inept because they literally lack the skills to make it better or unconfident because Generations was a fluke and they're worried that attempting to fix anything will result in a worse product. Take your pick - I personally think it's a combination of all four. They have no idea what they're actually doing. Try harder, SEGA.
I'm going to go with a lack of confidence with a bit of ineptitude. If they were confident Classic Sonic wouldn't be there at all, but Lost World didn't do so well and they're kind of scared right now, so they're going back to what worked in Generations and doing that again, level design and all. Some things show that they know what they're doing while some things don't. Thankfully though from what we've seen they keep changing things around in this level, as we've seen evidence of 3 different builds so far. It's still a work in progress so it's not too late, just get rid of some of the springs and boost pads. Also, remember the Generations footage we saw around the same point of development? Classic Sonic uncurled when going off ramps and it looked janky and strange. They also changed some of the object placement. And this time around they seem more attentive to listening to complaints from the PR team so maybe we'll see some of this changed.
During my time watching the footage I have been asking myself 'what if we could travel into the platforms/areas in the backdrop?' I love the amount of depth the backdrop has (even though the level trope is boring), so what would be really different, is to have some sections where the path twists 90 degrees so you could travel to these areas. The camera staying fixed 2D throughout this whole time. Think of it as an evolution of X-treme. Now that would be interesting. Real depth.
Well that's good to know because it certainly didn't sound like anything final. There's a lot of work that needs done. And really, there isn't much wrong with Ohtani's music, it's just this particular track fell flat on its arse. He should stick to what he was doing with his Classic Sonic songs for Generations. That being said he has said that not all the Classic Sonic music tracks are like what's in the video, so there's always hope that this is just a one-off shit song.
Basically, you're complaining about the kind of synthesizer used, as I said. I don't particularly believe anything about it not having the same vibe; that sounds more like evidence of nostalgia. Many of you can't even appreciate it being a new, unique song or the fact that they put effort into the look of the stage, the improved lighting, or the way that the scenery moves rather than being static. I want to point one thing out. After Sonic Lost World, fans were complaining about why they didn't just continue with Sonic Generations's gameplay style and argue that they had a good understanding about how to structure the levels. When they do decide to bring back the Classic and Modern gameplay while also showing a third gameplay style, now people want to criticize it for just "playing safe"? I also see complaining about purple rocks being placed in front of the bridge as if obstacles meant only to slow Sonic down never existed in the classic games or complain about holding right at the ending section of the level. It's apparent that no matter what Sonic Team does, a very noticeable amount of people in the fanbase will act only ungrateful because it isn't exactly what they wanted. The fanbase will show disrespect to the large amount of effort that they put, constantly nitpick over things, and write the game off as bad from only a few seconds of footage from an incomplete version. Standards are inconsistent even among the same people, there is no sense of personal responsibilty, which people try to rationalize as somehow being Sonic Team's fault, and people think that they're "owed" something,
So yeah, Classic Sonic just looks like Generations again, physics and everything. Hell Green Hill doesn't look all that different from Generations bar the lack of water in the stage. Which makes it look dull. I don't know why it has to be Green Hill again, I don't know why they don't do something different in there like throw in rain or different time of day. (Yes I remember Sunset Hill from Advance 3.) Other than just being there, the Sand does nothing. Why not have some Sandopolis style quicksand pits? Storyline BS speculation: I had a whole thing in the back of my mind that the sand in the background is supposed to be the Sands of Time and the new character is like someone coming to kick Sonic and Eggman in the balls for screwing around with the time stream so much. Maybe with the modern badniks now in the past Sonic era and the death egg robots in the modern Sonic era, along with Colours Power ups in what might be an Unleashed stage (thinking about it, Well probably not.) maybe the Eggmens are teaming up and sharing information?
What I can grasp is why the Sonic the Hedgehog channel and the SoE channel have different versions of the same video that sync up perfectly in gameplay but not in music. Surely there was some reason to retime the music between uploads, right?
The video was originally SFX-only, so they added the song in a video editor, but SoE screwed up on the loop, repeating the start of the song and in a higher volume, so SoA redid the editing and correctly looped the song and made the volume equal to the rest. That's also how I made the RIP. I lined up both songs and extracted the center channel (not exactly that, because I still have stereo information on the RIP, but almost).
All of the water being replaced with sand and the appearance of damaged flowers doesn't make Green Hill look different, but changing it to rain supposedly would?
Ambience would be key in that scenario, take a look at Sonic Fan Remix for an example. The sand hasn't really yet been shown to change the ambience, apart from tricking some people into thinking their textures may not be loading. :v: A yellowfied colour palette, quicksand pits and maybe even a sand-waterfall thing would all go a long way to changing the stage's ambience.
