Sonic Generations Megathread II

Claiming that how Past Sonic and Eggman were represented was in any way deliberately insulting is seriously over-reaching.

You don't try to convince people that the old way of doing things was somehow inferior when 50 percent of the game is devoted trying to emulate said old way of doing things.

 

I have to agree that Classic Sonic was the weak point of the game. Besides spin jumping and spin-dashing, he doesn't play anything like the old games. He feels heavy, and when any enemy is killed he does a jump at a preset height. There is no incentive to movie without a spin-dashing, as rolling from a run is pretty gimped and most levels don't have slopes that benefit a roll. One button spin-dashing contributes to it. I think the level designs were somewhat different than the older games. Many times to access the upper, quicker paths you have a one time make-or-don't-make-it chance to take it (usually because you fall too low to try again, can't backtrack to try again, or it involves jumping off a badnik you just killed on the flubbed jump).

Its not to say Classic Sonic was not fun, it was and I really enjoyed playing that half (and the game as a whole).

 

I voted because I'm in the "fuck it! its fun" group. I had fun with this game so the fuck what if its not 1:1 total perfection with the classic gameplay style.

 

Yeah, the game is fun, most I've enjoyed a Sonic game in years, when the alternative at SEGA seems to be Sonic 4, hell, Generations wins hands down multiple times over, just wish things like the Shields were placed in the actual levels instead of being power ups.

 

But...wasn't the game been nominated for a while now? because I remember reporting it at my site a few weeks ago...

 

Anyone here know what exactly caused that glitch to happen?

Oh dimps, never change.

 

Deliberately insulting, no. But deliberately silly, absolutely. It's so obvious I shouldn't even have said that. If it feels insulting, though, is a matter of perception. It would be awkward if they somehow made old Sonic look as developed as the new one (even though he was). That's the whole problem of inventing a connection that never existed and wasn't planned to exist whatsoever.

 

If anything modern Eggman was treated worse then classic Eggman. The way the game interprets it, Modern's basically cracked because Sonic's kicked his ass for so many years, classic's just like "wow... seriously wtf."

 

How is the Jump Dash/Homing Attack the "worst skill he'll ever have"? The only game it was truly detrimental in was Sonic 4 E1, and that was only from a game play standpoint. From both a story and game play perspective, that move is probably been his most important and useful skill (in 3D games only, of course)! Not sure exactly what you are getting at here.

 

I mean, all of the points that were almost valid complaints lost their validity thanks to how you worded your paragraph. We get it, you don't like it stylistically, you don't like Modern Sonic gameplay, Classic's physics are slightly off, forever tarnishing the whole experience, et al. You're trying to make your opinions objective. That's not how it works.

 

Reading some of the comments from fans here and in other places, it seems some people will never be pleased. Yeah, that's an overused phrase, but it's the honest-to-God truth.

Half of this first party game (as in, not made by dimps) is classic Sonic style gameplay! What more do you people want?

SEGA -"Look guys, we've done our best to recreate the classic Genesis experience! Sonic is small and round again, it's a sidescroller with platforming and multiple pathways, old tunes are remade, we've got item boxes, badnicks, the works! All for you, the fans, because you asked for it and we feel you deserve it!"

Fanboy - "Bouncing on enemies sends you up at a fixed height. GARBAGE.

TRY AGAIN, SEGA.

RUIN FOREVER DON'T BUY."




This guy, in particular, is the kind of hopeless fanboy that gets under my skin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrCRQ8EH5KQ&feature=relmfu

 

Don't worry. As much as they complain, Sega does not listen to those raving mad lunatics. They understand that not everyone will ever be pleased even if they shoot out a Sonic game that was 1:1 with the Classic games, so instead just do the best they can. It may not be perfect, but Generations was a damn solid effort by Sega and deserves commendation. The game gets more praised than slammed, which after Sonic's last few years is a massive step up. It's going to be interesting to see where they go from here. I'd love to see Generations' engine used to bring to life all new stage concepts.

 

Here's how I see it...

SEGA seems to do a pretty good job at Sonic games now. If I recall things correctly (and am feeling a bit too lazy to stop everything and look it up at the moment), Sonic '06 was the lowest point in the series as a whole. That caused SEGA to have to try and figure out how to re-imagine 3D gameplay for Sonic, even if only to try and distance themselves from '06. The next games that came out were the Storybook Series for the Wii, with Secret Rings coming out first, and Black Knight following. I tend to think of this as SEGA experimenting with things. I believe making a game for the Wii is somewhat cheaper than the other major systems, so they were trying something new and using the cheapest means possible to get public opinion on it.

I've played both games in order (I'm actually playing Black Knight right now). Secret Rings came out first, and their first thought seemed to be to combine aspects of 3D platforming with a racing game like Mario Kart, resulting in the odd controls for the game. Personally, the controls were the worst part, in my opinion. Black Knight came out, and things came just a little bit closer to the current games. The big problems that were brought up were the sword control itself, and the fact that the levels seem to play themselves for the most part, with the player only allowed to drift left or right on a linear course. I just finished the King Arthur battle today, and brought up the credits for the first time. I felt that the boss battle itself had, so far, been the best part of the entire game. It wasn't amazing, but it was much more entertaining than the normal levels or the knight duels. (If anybody can tell me what strategy is supposed to come into play other than block, counterattack, and pray the enemy doesn't decide to screw you over, I'd appreciate it. Even more if you can explain how to get the damned sword-locking thing to work in my favor, but that's beside the point.)

After removing the sword (naturally), and giving the player more freedom of control, we ended up with Unleashed. People complained about the Werehog segments and praised the daytime stages, so they released Colors next. This did better, and now the biggest complaints were the linear and rather empty level design. Fixing the level design brought us to the Modern half of Generations.

(Mid-rant break: I know this is probably the most redundant place to write this, seeing as just about everybody on this site knows far more about the series than I do. This is mainly to help keep my train of thought in order)

As for the Classic half of the game, when was the last time that Sonic Team themselves did a 2-D Sonic game, without outsourcing things to other companies like DIMPS? If I'm not forgetting anything, it's been quite a long while. Suddenly, they had to come up with a full assortment of full-length 2-D levels, with their only recent practice having been the short sections of Unleashed, and the majority of Colors. (I will laugh if it turns out Colors turned out the way it did for practice in anticipation for Generations) Considering how long they've been out of practice, I'm pretty impressed with the level design for the Classic stages.

Now for the point to my entire rant. I believe in not criticizing someone unless you personally can do a better job. Yes, we have Andrew75's Green Hill remake, and the accurate physics that came with it. (I'm not entirely sure, I'm going off what I've heard. My computer can't run it) Still, how long have we had Sonic GDK to play with? I'm fairly certain it's been out much longer than the space of time between any two games. I'm pretty sure that when you consider the amount of time we've had to come up with accurate 2.5-D physics compared to Sonic Team, it's a bit easier to give them a break for the not-quite-Classic physics they came up with. Now, if we were complaining about the level design itself, then yeah, we can tear them to bits. I've seen some amazing fan-game level design that I would love to see implemented in the Generations engine. The level design itself is something anybody can come up with, it all comes down to if other people would enjoy it. The physics, on the other hand, are on "complain if you can do better" standpoint.

The game itself is a lot of fun. My computer played through each level at about 4 or 5 frames per second. It literally looked like somebody running a slideshow, just somewhat quickly. (for a slideshow) Absolutely nothing even resembled animation at any point. I honestly got to hear the entire City Escape song, up to the looping point, before even finishing the intro skateboarding segment. I still played the entire game to completion, in about two play-sessions. Once I get a better computer, I'm going to re-install it and play it again, probably all in one single play-session. After that, I'm going to find every decent mod I can find, and play the hell out of all of those. After THAT, I'm going to take advantage of the better computer, and start building my own mod. (or use a separate engine so I have a bit more control over what I can do, I haven't decided yet. I want to do custom levels based around Black Knight. Not straight ports, and certainly not with the sword controls, but new and original levels. Possibly story and bosses too, I haven't decided yet.)

Anyways, I think that given what Sonic Team has to work with, we've got a pretty damn good game. (Plus, if you remember my comment earlier about the Storybook Series being used for cheap experimentation, I'm fairly certain remembering something about them still having a third game to go. Keep that in mind. Maybe they'll experiment with physics or something?)

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EDIT: Wow, I swear, I did not intend to write such a long wall of text. I'm actually rather amazed, myself, after seeing it go from the "Fast Reply" window to the actual topic.

 

Although I don't like his attitude about some things, he made some pretty damn valid points in that video. One thing in particular that I agree with him on (and many others) is the rolling. While better than Sonic 4, it's still pretty laughable, IMO. Is it really that hard to make him accelerate downhill*? It doesn't even have to be perfect, I just believe that it should work significantly better than it does. I also miss the enemy/monitor bouncing. The springs don't bother me as much as they did when I first played the demo (both in terms of collision and movement issues), though.

By no means does it make it any less playable though. This game is undoubtedly awesome... although for me, it gets boring rather quickly, and I have more fun playing modern Sonic than I do classic. :v:

* + - the answer is no  

 

But Black Knight came out a few months after Unleashed, as they were pretty much being developed at the same time, which brings me to my next point:

The Wii games are done by a different team than the HD games like Unleashed and Generations. The Wii version of Unleashed was done by the Wii team, though, with daytime level design being supplied by Dimps.

Does anyone else think that if Unleashed's DLC sold better, we'd be getting DLC for this game?

 

That's a very good point. I agree. I've never played any of the DLC, but from what I've heard, besides the better GIA, everything else was just hard mode or a new course with laps. Those, while very creative, were downright difficult and took WAY too much memorization to beat. Not my cup of tea.

 

That's not entirely true. There were hard mode stages, lap stages but most were just new mini-stages. They were fun enough once or twice, but nothing to really go back to. The Werehog did have proper new acts, but of course, that's the Werehog.