Sonic Superstars: A New 2D Sonic Game (Fall 2023)

I'm proud to say I've gone the next level. Finished Sky Temple with Trip and then refused to play any more. Not doing it!

 

Does anyone have a guess as to why Amy’s spinball form is the same size as everyone else’s in Superstars, despite her spinball form being smaller than everyone else’s in Origins?

 

I would say that it was for parity between the cast in their basic moveset, but Trip already trumps that. I guess it was just an oversight?

 

I have the Switch version and haven't noticed any major frame rate problems. A couple dips here and there (mainly in the later special stages and a few bosses) but I'd say like 99% of the time it's a stable 60 FPS.

 

This game as Wonder compliment each other quite well. Wonder bursts at the seams with new ideas and visual/audio motifs, while Superstars mostly plays it safe in all regards. My fiance and I were playing Wonder last night, loving it, but a bit surprised at how wild it seemed compared to like every other Mario game. Superstars feels pretty cozy in juxtaposition.

 

Word for word this, down to playing superstars with the missus last night. I’m spoiled!

Just started trips story after having an adrenaline fuelled battle against the main story’s final boss. I threw myself off the edge on two or three occasions paying too much attention to incoming orbs! And Thank god for the clones for those last hits! Get enough hits in first and they bring down any boss during the tougher phase.

Egg fortress 2 was an interesting surprise, with rolling back time and the way act 1 was formed really made playing it backwards interesting at points.

(Wonder really is out there and I love it! For a Mario game it has become totally unpredictable about what you may encounter)

 

Which is an interesting inversion of the popular adage that Mario plays it safe while Sonic brings in the crazy, exciting new ideas. This hasn't been true for many years now, but Wonder and Superstars really make that clear.

 

It really needs to be studied how Knuckles has ended up the worst playable character in two games back to back, and both reasons are related to the glide. I think I've only used him for Act Knuckles and Frozen Base Act 1, and rage quit the latter after the glide kept getting me killed.

Started on Trip's story and I think this is where I'll stop. If Bridge Island is already this cheap I'm not looking forward to the later levels. That aside she's really fun to play, always wondered if they'd ever add the spikes wisp to a character's normal moveset, and I like the results.

 

November sales baby.
Budget production deserves a budget price.

 

Trip's story is Sonic Advance 4, as I truly imagined it.

 

I mean, maybe if it's under a tenner.

Is there something I'm not getting about the true final boss? I already spoke about how much of a joke it is apart from the black holes, and that's even more true now I know you can boost out of them. But now there's this homing shot attack and it's entirely unclear what you're mean to do here. The tracking on this attack is very, very accurate to the point it's almost impossible to avoid the entire attack, yet ramming into them doesn't seem to do anything except make the boss start that same attack all over again. Add in the fact that this is the only part of the fight where you can't find additional rings floating around and it's a complete wall. This game is so bafflingly awful at communicating what you're meant to do to succeed. In a way that I don't think Sonic has ever really been (except that one parry trial in Final Horizon).

EDIT: So I looked it up on YouTube and...it's basically a QTE...using the same button that has been your boost up until now. You know, the one that costs rings to used and should pretty much only be used to get out of blackholes?

I swear to god this game.

 

For real! As a Knuckles fan, I feel positively spurned. There are so many problems with him in Superstars.

1. His glide does not pick up speed. In all of the other Classic games, he can get insane speeds by maintaining a glide for a long time. But even on short flights, you would benefit from his aerial acceleration. Superstars makes gliding a slow affair.
2. Exiting a glide causes him to lose all momentum. Whilst this is true for all of the Classic games, you will especially notice it in Superstars because the increased weight limits your ability to re-gain any control whilst free-falling.
3. His wall-climb is slow and there's a very brief but noticeable pause between him latching on and actually being able to climb. Trips wall climbing on the other hand is faster, smoother and more versatile.
4. After landing from a glide, he's got to go through his entire "crouch and stand" animation before you regain control. You can't spindash, and it takes you a fraction of a second before you can event start to walk again. Mania had the same problem, and it's noticeably different behaviour to S3K.

I played most of the main story with Knuckles because he's always been my main, but I wish that I had picked Amy instead.

 

But Trip is very clearly an extra character who is basically a better version of everyone. She can climb better than Knuckles, she can fly as much as you want with her super form, her double jump can glue her to any surface (not only vertical walls) and save you from a situation, and anyone is better than Sonic anyway. I don't think she really "counts" for this, and parity does seem to be the focus (just like jump heights).

 

It's been interesting seeing opinions so divided on this title when I thought the reception would be universally positive around this section of the internet. I might hold off for a bit then? I was initially excited with Oshima being involved in development again and a lot of the concepts seemed like interesting ways to flesh out the traditional 2D Sonic experience. The worst I was expecting was a 'meh' OST, but I keep hearing the opinion that the game nose-dives in quality around the midway point and the bosses simply drag on for way too long to be any fun.

The boss point surprises me since while I really enjoy Mania, I thought some of the bosses in the lineup were some of the messiest in a 2D Sonic title (Advance 2 taking the throne). They ranged from having really clever gimmicks that lead to fun short fights, to just having attacks that felt very cumbersome to dodge and figure out (Flying Battery Act 2 and Press Garden Act 1). It kinda seems like the bosses in Superstars fall into the latter category and are lengthy even if the player knows exactly what they need to do.

The PC version having the messy Epic Games account intergration (even if it's just for Battle Mode) is also unfortunate, but I'm not too upset about the Denuvo integration. If Mania is any indication, they might remove it later down the line after the sales have died down.

Trip being playable is also pretty cool, but I was really holding out hope that + - Fang would be playable   . Kinda wondering if this will get a 'Mania Plus' or 'Origins Plus' treatment since that's been the case for these Classic Sonic titles, but + - Trip's campaign almost sounds like Superstars's answer to Mania's Encore Mode   .

Edited because I used the wrong spoiler tags. Sorry about that.

 

It's Sonic. This fanbase is notoriously fractured. There's never going to be universal agreement about anything.

 

Well yeah, but I meant here I was expecting glowing praise across the board, not that one of the end game encounters was so frustrating that people just started giving up or it bogged down the experience heavily.

 

What do you mean about Advance 2? I can understand not being fond of the running concept, but the fights themselves are well designed and you can be hyper aggressive with them just like the old games. They keep you engaged the entire time, they have clear and telegraphed attack patterns, and outside of one move from one boss, they're pretty fair.

 

Oh I have a minor complaint that I can't nevertheless ignore: the rotating ball gimmick in Press Factory doesn't control like the ones in S3&K's bonus stage or Mania's Titnaic Monarch. Nothing really wrong with it, and I don't know what's different, but my muscle memory suffered a lot as a result.

 

Yeah, I'm not huge on the running concept honestly. While I adore Advance 2's gameplay design and it's sense of speed (which I'd consider superior to the Rush titles in a couple of ways), that sense of speed sort of feels like it disappears in the bosses. I dunno how to describe it without sounding weird.

It kinda feels like you're constantly having to push against an invisible wall since you have to build up speed to have a chance to hit the boss. Failure to dodge an attack pushes you all the way back to the side of the screen and you have to build up speed to get another chance to hit the boss, and this can take around 3 seconds or so. That's not terrible on paper or when explaining it out loud, but if a player is struggling with figuring out a telegraph or keeps getting blindsided by a hitbox (I remember the bombs debris in Aero Egg's fight being a bit nasty), they'll keep getting pushed back to the left of the screen and keep having their progress reset. It's incredibly frustrating to newcomers (stupid baby Cornholio at the age of like 12) and also feels unfair when the bosses can basically hit your character whenever.

It's made weirder by XX just...breaking tradition from this formula with Super Eggrobo Z. The player is still probably in the mindset of running to beat the boss due to the boss rush right before it, and the spike ceiling/laser attack combo is nasty. I found the best strategy to safely deal with the boss for most of the characters is to use the spindash, but I never used the spindash at all in my playthrough of Advance 2 and kinda forgot about it. I feel like the Rush games had a much better idea and saved the non-stationary idea for the Super fights.

And yeah some of this is probably just rage from how much I despise the insta-kill Egg Saucer hand slap attack and how many times I had to replay Sky Canyon as a kid with Sonic. Even if you're playing cautiously the risk of dying is huge and it feels like a game of patience. I feel like the hyperaggressive strategies are hard to spot as a result because that risk of restarting the entire Zone is huge if you dislike the game's bosses.

Superstars seems to lack the telegraphing in certain areas (or the telegraphing is so quick that once it clicks you're kinda screwed), but it seems like you have a little more room to breathe with a couple since most are stationary? Not the biggest offenders that I'm hearing horror stories about though.