Sonic Rumble, a "Fall Guys" inspired game coming this winter

If that were the case then Rumble would've released before 3, which is exactly the purpose Shadow Generations served.

 

idk, I think it makes sense releasing after, because the movie will give kids the urge to search everything about Sonic.

 

Search 2 months after the movie?

Would have made more sense for the game to already be out and then have a movie related event.

 

People who’ve been playing it are gonna be burned out by the time it’s released worldwide and any steam their marketing had has died out by now. I don’t expect this game to do well with how poorly timed these region releases have been done.

 

Yeah, remember this fucking thing? Me neither.

The global launch has been moved from a vague "Winter" (obviously, now that there's only a couple weeks of it left) to an equally-vague "Spring".

I honestly haven't even thought about this game since I played the initial beta way back, and even then I reserved any specific judgement because my phone refused to recognize my controller, and I refuse to let shit touch screen controls define an experience.

But regardless, once it's finally out on Steam I'll probably give it a proper try. At least we're coming in with everything they've apparently added since the soft launch. But damn, way to lead us on with such a wet fart to conclude it and no explanation for the delay. Talk about killing whatever momentum your live service multiplayer thing had.

 

I have to wonder why they did this. My thinking is that the soft launch was such a "wet fart" that they're taking some time to regroup so that they can hopefully not send this game out to die. Coverage and talk of Sonic Rumble has been basically non-existent, which is the probably the last thing you want for a F2P multiplayer mobile (& PC) game. SEGA's marketing has been quiet, and the pre-registration trailer on YouTube only has 274k views. Even the announcement trailer from 9 months ago has fewer than 1 million views. Nobody cares and SEGA has failed to make anyone care.

That's just my basically baseless guess.

 

Wasn't most of the talk for this during a time period where Movie 3 and Shadow Gens were kind of taking up the airwaves?

I feel like it didn't get any room to breathe. I guess they're hoping that release will be that time, but the prolonged beta test might've harmed it's ability to create buzz.

I haven't played the game myself. From what I've seen it looks fun enough. I think the main issue here is marketing, communication, and the timing of everything.

 

It's hard to say anything for sure when the soft launch never included some of the biggest popularity hotspots for the franchise. But if I had to say it struggled for some reason, I'd say it's because Speed Battle already exists. A Sonic-themed live-service multiplayer skinnerbox timesink isn't an inherently terrible idea (other than the inherently-evil business practices, obviously), but Speed Battle is already one of those. This has more varied stuff to do, sure, but what does that mean when Sonic's other VS lineup tend to be either dedicated console racing games or mobile "something to do with your hands when you're half-watching TV" games? Speed Battle has a vastly extended roster of the series to boot, and doesn't use this toyetic artstyle that is just...not that appealing to anyone who wants to think Sonic is cool. If you'd pumped this thing full of the level of fanservice that Speed Simulator has, then maybe we'd be singing a different tune for Sonic fans, but what's here now doesn't convince anyone glued to their phones to switch.

This is why bringing it to Steam is a great idea, and why they should put it on Switch, PS5 and Xbox as well. Those are different demographics, and while it annoyingly positions a game born on life support closer to the mainstream franchise, I do think it'll create a lot of players. Me, for one. No idea how the rest of this is going to go.

 

It’s so funny reading my previous comment. I completely forgot I even made it.
This game is gonna be DoA. They spent way too long having it released in other regions that people simply moved on. Not having a huge influx of players to keep people talking about it mixed with not being in some of Sonic’s most popular regions is such a questionable method of launching a Sonic game.
Can’t wait for it to be shut down less than a year after launch.

 

Very true. I don't think Speed Battle was ever expected to have the legs that it does. What started as a simple tie in to the 2017 main series game not unlike the ill-fated "Sonic Dash 2 Sonic Boom" a few years prior has gone on to be to one of pillars of the Sonic mobile franchise. At this point, Rumble is competing with its own audience as a mobile game.

 

Sorry for semi-offtopic but is Speed Battle the Sonic games with most playable characters (even not counting costumes)? Or does that Roblox game have more?
How does Rumble fair to these two?

 

An official release date of May 8th has been set, along with a new CG trailer. Honestly I really like the way Eggman's base looks in it it's so menacing and gives me almost SatAM vibes.

 

Sooooo I got early access to the steam version of game per the creator program.

May do a video on it (not sure), depending how I find the game.

But is there anything specific anyone wants to know?

Bare in mind my system is from 2019 so technical performance questions aren't gonna be the best to ask (unless there are some game specific howlers).

 

I forgot about this game oops

Im just curious on how much has been expanded upon since those betas, or if its the same stages as then, im only worried about it getting stale and samey too fast

granted im not very worried in general cause i dont really care :v

 

So I just played 4 games of the Steam Version... Initial thoughts are... it's... Well...

You can definitely tell it was made for mobile first and not PC/Console.

In terms of the gameplay, it's... Just ok. It's not awful or amazing, it's just... kinda ok. It might get more fun as I play more games and meet better opponents.

In terms of 'PC port' there is some stuff for PC users, you can adjust some very basic settings, Windowed mode is here as as some resolution options... But in terms of specific adjustments, you're locked to a general settings that says "Low, Medium, High" that affect various graphical settings that you can't control individually.

I'm pretty sure you can customise controls as I saw that prompt at the start, but I've not bothered.

There might be more but, well... I'll elaborate on this in a later post, it's a very Information overload type of game, you can be bombarded with gameplay/news/settings information and you're like "no".

The main issue is that... it just doesn't look that nice on PC. The menus are really sharp, but the moment you step into a screen made for the mobile platforms, or even gameplay, it has this weird 'cloudy haze' over everything, and looking at others footage, this isn't just limited to me.

I don't think anyone was expecting a technical marvel, but it's just "OK" with some accommodations for PC users.

Edit: So there might be some graphical improvements for PC after all. Just played one stage that looked really nice. For some reason a few of the stages are showing this weird cloudy haze on them.

 

https://xcancel.com/Sonic_Rumble/status/1917453885326688412


Most embarrassing release cycle for a Sonic product of all time

 

I'm all for delaying a game, especially a Sonic game, to make sure it cooks properly, but this thing has been soft launched for, what, over half a year now? Just let us playing the fucking game SEGA - it's a live service game, you're going to be updating it anyway!

 

I'm still working on my video of the PC version of this game but...

This game really doesn't fit a live service model at all... The core gameplay just becomes dull after a few days.

 

The game is going to be a completely different product when it eventually comes to PC. I'm just shocked at how mismanaged this game has been. Could have released it across all platforms and had a sizable fanbase coming back for updates like any other live service game. Instead the community has watched a microcosm of its mobile players try it out, and now months later have lost all interest.

I've been instead playing Faaast Penguin on my PS5 and Switch for my Fall Guys-like fix.

 

This is really strange.

I'm wondering what the holdup is... is the game glitchy? Are they still trying to increase server capacity? Do they have a major content drop planned for global release and it's not ready yet? Are they having issues with the PC Port?

And no matter what the case is... why did they decide to pull release only a week away from launch? Did they think they'd reach their milestones last week or two weeks ago? What could have transpired in that short amount of time to change their mind...

I'm hoping we get to learn the behind the scenes for this game at some point. I think something interesting must be going on at SEGA/Rovio.