It still grinds my gears that Pontac and Graff knew basically nothing about the series before writing for it, and even worse, that they just looked up a few cutscenes to get a summary. These guys were responsible for writing the game meant to celebrate the entire damn franchise, for crying out loud.
Anyone know if there's a way to tweak the game to increase performance? I used the Steam guide on the Steam discussion forums that included using things like the Unleashed Renderer and Direct 3D tricks but they didn't have any meaningful impact on the frame rate whatsoever. Basically some levels run fluidly whilst others like Chemical Plant Zone (this zone in particular) have constant frame rate drops and stutter making the game unplayable. I have fairly low end hardware: AMD A6-4400M and a Radeon HD 7520G - hardware that was probably brilliant when I first bought this thing but is now really outdated. Lost World by comparison runs extremely well. Generations less so. So is there a way to improve performance or is my only option a hardware upgrade/new machine?
Yeah, it makes sense that Lost World runs well. Generations ran at an inconsistent 30fps on 360/PS3, where Lost World runs at 60fps on the similarly-powered Wii U hardware. My machine runs most of Generations perfectly, but it does stutter in certain sections of CPZ, so I'm not surprised you're having trouble. Any tweaks I've seen have been about making the game prettier, not increasing performance...
I find it so hard to like Generations because of how hollow it feels. There's so much you could do with that premise and Pontac and Graff just did bare-minimum shit. Sure, it's "chock-full of references," but they're floating in a void of nothingness. (I understand the irony of that statement.) :v:
Yeah, that's basically what irks me too. There's no subtlety involved in the writing, not even slightly. It's just an assortment of "Look, this is a thing that existed in a past Sonic game!" statements throughout. I really don't think they're very good writers, especially if they're given the reigns of such a big franchise and their research is nothing more than watching a couple cutscenes.
Didn't they also write Colors, though? I thought the writing in that was really strong, and always figured Generations' problem was more that development got rushed, and the story got hacked quite a lot. Which is fine, AFAIC. Better to get the game out in time for the anniversary and focus on polishing the gameplay and stage design than try to do everything and end up failing at every aspect. To elaborate on that, I remember competing with Ruby on the online leaderboards when the game first came out, and I told him he had an advantage over me since he'd had months to practice internally. He said that he actually wasn't familiar with a lot of the alternate routes and shortcuts, suggesting that, indeed, stage design was what they were polishing at the end of development.
Pontac and Graff are responsible for Colours, Generations, Lost World and Boom: Shattered Crystal (but not RoL). While Colours script was a refreshing breath of fresh air and had the characters interacting in ways beyond just forcing the story ahead, the story itself was very weak. There were plot holes, Tails was suddenly incapable of defending himself and there were plenty moments for interesting things to happen but nothing materialised. At least it was nice to see everyone's personality good a change)when they weren't cracking forced, bad jokes). Generations had virtually no story and even less script to speak of. It didn't work. I remember a number of reviewers pointing out the "inconsequential" story even. What little that happened didn't even make sense. It only got worse in Lost World when major plot points went totally unexplained and the characterisation of everyone really began to suffer. Speaking of characters, I wish we could see more than just Sonic, Tails, Eggman and his goons. I've a feeling that's more of a SEGA mandate than P&G though. There was an interview with Pontac somewhere saying that SEGA didn't want Orbot and Cubot to appear in one of the games, but Pontac insisted and SEGA relented die to their popularity. Personally, I preferred Orbot as SA-55 in Unleashed and would scrap Cubot. Just keep those two in Boom. In fact, keep P&G in Boom. They've given the main series a shot, and they aren't working for it. Shattered Crystal may have had a horrendous script, but at least it suited Boom.
I don't mind their scripts as I've never cared too much about the story (I mean personally my favorite story was Sonic 3 and Knuckles, but that was just because it flowed so well it felt like you were on an adventure that told itself simply by transversing the levels. No other Sonic game has done that IMO, nor am I expecting it too). However why they picked those guys and not Flynn is a mystery to me, as Flynn has done really well by the comic book and he seems willing to write a game. Might as well give him the chance as he now has 10 years experience of writing Sonic stories and holds the accomplishment of fixing the mess that was created from Penders and the first 160 issues of the comic (I mean, yes eventually he had to make the universe implode on itself, but he was doing a good job meshing Sega lore with the comic stuff up until that point). At least for me, I'd rather see a Pontac and Graff script than the shit we had in Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic 06. Idk I guess Heroes plot was ok until Metal Sonic turned into a dragon, and sans the Werehog Unleashed had a good story, but still. Hey at least they didn't come up with the Sonic Labyrinth "Robotnik stole Sonic's shoes in his sleep" bit. May we never forget the time Robotnik could have killed Sonic then and there, but instead stole his shoes.
Don't forget about that time in Boom where Eggman somehow sabotaged Sonic's shoes just so he could replace them with shoes that power his robots.
To be fair, the writers not having played the games before isn't really much of a problem as long as they do the research of the series' past, which they seemingly did. they could have written a good story even if they just looked up the cutscenes and such on Youtube. The problem is more that Pontac and Graff seemingly don't really care all that much about writing Sonic games, that or they're just plain bad at their jobs. With all the Sonic games they've worked on (Colours, Generations, Lost World and Shattered Crystal) I just get the feeling like they were written by saturday morning cartoon writers who dislike their jobs. It's all just one dimensional characters spouting either exposition or bad jokes, with sometimes them getting worried cause oh no something bad happened. You'd probably be risking your own life if you'd play a drinking game where you'd take a shot every time a joke goes on for five seconds too long in Colours. EDIT: Oh, and the Did You Know Gaming video made the mistake of trusting what Iizuka said in interviews. :v:
I hope it's okay if I bump this asking a question about the light dash in this game. It always seems to be picky with how it activates. Especially in Modern Chemical Plant when you take the shortcut at the beginning and you're falling. I still can never get that one consistently. Anyone have any tips? Also, how should I angle my air boost into the orange ring in the beginning on Modern Chemical Plant. I still don't really know how to do that shortcut perfectly.
I'm not sure if it's related but it usually fucks up for me if I've still got rings trailing me from the part just before the orange ring.
It looks like it got a price cut, though. Wasn't the game originally $30? I had to wait until the last Sonic Humble Bundle to pick the game up because of that. (And I think it came with the Casino Nights DLC, so I probably already have it?)
Base game plus 99p DLC lol Generations is cool and all, but the DLC was a huge joke. The Casino Night Bonus stage should have been part of the base game for how tiny it was. Charging anything extra for it or putting it as a pre-order bonus was a bit of a joke. Still wish they'd done what everyone wanted/expected and released some proper DLC acts.