God damn is the Mania CE for Switch just not up yet or is it already sold out?! Really wanted to change my preorder over.
For the record, just because I have criticism doesn't mean I'm one of those people. I appreciate everyone's hard work and we all know the final product is gonna be great but I just don't want to feel like I or anyone else, for that matter, is being tarred because said opinion differs slightly from everybody else's. Maybe it's just the way I read it, I don't know. If outside U.S gets a Switch C.E then I may consider making a SWITCH *shot* from my PS4 pre-order. To be honest, I'm still a little bit miffed that the U.S got a price reduction for the C.E on Black Friday and nobody else did.
Dunno if it's the port itself or the capture feed, but there are a lot of odd sound distortions throughout the video.
Wow, this is completely distorted from the original games. Tails didn't get immediately left behind, only to reappear every 5 seconds. Ruined.
Good catch there. I'm thrilled to see coop again. I would have loved this when I was a kid (and had a friend to play with me). Could anyone tell if there was a way for the second player to have Tails fly (almost warp) to Sonic if he got lost? It didn't seem like it, which is unfortunate. Tails got lost a couple of times there, but the second player did seem to be able to keep up maybe a little better than the originals. Edit: I also noticed some strange sound distortions. Whenever it happened, it kind of seemed like all the sounds and the music were affected. So I'm guessing and hoping that was just the video.
Playing co-op as a kid was frustrating, as the Tails player kept disappearing of the screen leaving them with nothing to do. Although Mania seems to offer a better experience, it doesn't seem to have fixed this (unless there is some ‘teleport’ button that we don't know about). I always thought that for the Tails player, the entire edge of the screen should act like a giant invisible star bumper, so when Tails crosses the edge boundary, he ricochets instantly back to Sonic and assumes Sonic's velocity. Given how awesome Taxman and Stealth are, I am sure they must have tried experimenting to improve co-op (and no doubt Sonic Team had hesitations about changing the experience from the originals). However, it would be great if some sort of improvement could be made (if not here, then in the sequel), as many kids adore Sonic, so being able to share their passion with another player would be awesome! Taxman and Stealth did an amazing job of expanding the 2-player competition mode in Sonic 2, so fingers cross Mania has a similar Vs mode.
Or perhaps the second player could trigger a momentary Chaotix rubberband whenever he gets off screen? That would make that mechanic useful for once. =P
Well, oddly enough I like how Sonic 4 Episode 2 handled it's co-op. Granted it required playing online but the screen followed Tails for whoever was playing as him. Ironically I bet this could have been done really well on the WiiU. 1 Player gets the TV and the other gets the Wii Tablet.
Regarding coop play, Sonic Advance 3 was the best for that (players can play and explore the zones separately and regroup at any time), followed by Sonic 4 : Episode 2 in which Tails actually serves a purpose both gameplay and storywise.
@DarkSonic In Sonic 4 EpII local co-op, the screen would zoom out to accommodate Tails, which was a good idea. If Tails continued to fall behind, he could be respawned next to Sonic. The only problem is that he would re-appear at walking speed, so if Sonic was running, Tails would fall behind again. I always thought the Wii U gamepad would be a good idea. But Lost World did this and it was jarring not to see both players on the main screen – It spoilt the fun of playing together. Split screen, like Flygon suggested, is a good idea too.
Since Taxman loves beta elements, I wonder if he will throw in some beta and prototype elements into Green Hill Zone
I hope there will be an online or spitscreen co-op options. Because seing the good ol' "give the second controller to your little sister" co-op has always been a let down. It is evident even in this video how antifun this type of co-op is.
Sonic doesn't lend itself to co-op. The games are just too fast to have two characters running around and flying through the air all on one screen. I always had a great time playing S2 and S3K co-op as a child, but it was never exactly easy. I don't know what you really expect or want from Mania though. You can't just slap random co-op into a Sonic game and expect it to work without the game being explicitly designed for it. You either go split screen to end up with Advance 3, which was just two players doing entirely their own thing in without the other persons involvement. Or you opt for S4E2 which was almost equally as useless where one person was playing a perpetual game of catch up. There might be some fun to have in split screen co-op, but I don't think it would really add much to the game. An expanded version of S2's multiplayer races though (as in the mobile remaster) would be a treat!
Yeah in a classic style Sonic game making co-op a focus doesn't work. It's best for it to be completely secondary to the single player experience. In other words it doesn't get in the way of it.
