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

I noticed that too. It appears that Xbox has a particular set of issues. For example, when I first got the game, there was a massive input lag while playing the game. That interestingly went away for me (before the update that you pointed out).

So, I'm assuming that there may be additional Xbox specific bugs that the update addresses, unless all systems got said update.

 

Which Xbox are you on? I didn’t notice any lag and I’m normally pretty sensitive to it.

 

Xbox Series S. It was the day that I tried playing it on release, and it was fixed pretty quickly (fortunately as the game was unbearable to play),

 

Just a heads up, the Metacritic score is down to 74 and back to Yellow.

 

For those who care about Metacritic scores and are disappointed it's in the yellow, the Xbox version is well in the green at 79/100

 

I experienced it on Series X myself. It was very noticeable, especially since I'd just played some Mania and Origins a few hours before Superstars dropped. I cranked the controller sensitivity setting up to 10 (not really sure what that does though) and that seemed to help, but not completely. I also wondered if it was the TV I was using, since I was away from home and using one I don't usually play on (and some TVs just have input lag no matter what setting you change, because I guess LG or whoever thinks neutering video games is a neat feature?), even though I don't remember it having latency issues in the past. I got back home and played again on my own TV after not touching it for a few days and yeah, it still felt off. But if they just released a patch that fixes that, I need to go check that out tonight. It wasn't the worst thing ever, and I was still able to 100% the story, but yeah now I really want to play with the input lag fixed.

 

The control sensitivity adjusts the dead zone of the sticks (which is nice to have considering my right stick drifts and would otherwise constantly display emerald powers).

 

Haha, and I guess that would be why trying to select the right Emerald Power in the heat of the moment has been an adventure all its own. Gonna dial that setting back a bit then.

 

Kinda sucks this game ended up having such a complicated approval online (Good with Reviews, Good with User Scores, but bad with Social Media Sites).

I hope the game just sells well, at least that'll mean the game was worth it.

 

My guess is the game will sell well at a lower price point, but won't do as well at full price, and Sega did at least anticipate that and was prepared to cut the price by November already.

But I think they should have held this off for a few more months to let it cook a bit more. I love classic Sonic, but even I was content with Origins and the Frontiers DLC as being titles for this year. A 2024 spring release would have been less crowded and competitive but could've sprinted sales on the title throughout the whole year.

Instead, Sonic products are actually competing not only with big titles like Wonder and Spidey 2, but now also with each other. The Frontiers DLC and a 30$ holiday sale would've carried it a bit further, and cutting Origins down to 30 and pushing it forward would've been a fantastic gift for the family crowd.

Instead, we have this weird situation where they've blown all their markets at once with nothing planned for next year, and are now almost over-saturated with less than perfect products. I think this will hurt Superstars sales needlessly. However, I still think it will do well enough to fund a sequel in 2-3 years.

 

Well I'm home, my XBOX is online, and I don't see any updates queued up, so I assume it downloaded the update automatically sometime overnight, but as far as I can tell I've still got input lag. Swapping back and forth between Mania and Superstars with Quick Resume and yep, still there. So maybe it didn't download the patch? Or maybe I'm just crazy and it's actually better than it was but still not quite right, and this is just how it's going to be? This is a pretty major downer. It's mean, do the devs not have access to retail units of all the platforms they're developing for so they can test this kinda stuff? For me this is as inexcusable as Sonic's jump height being lower than it should be in Colors Ultimate for Switch (which will never be fixed).

Edit: I dunno, maybe it's more in my head after all. When I'm playing and not really thinking about it, it more or less feels fine.

 

Every time I come into this topic there's a new post about Metacritic scores.

Lads, aggregate review scores might offer a better understanding of how the game is perceived than just going to one or two publications, but it's incredibly rough - it can only point out if a game is outstandlingy brilliant or shockingly bad. They even claim as such: 74 - "mixed" or "average" - which is it?

There's too much error to confidently say "this game is a 74" or "this game is a 79". The conclusion is "play it yourself and form your own opinion"... which seems good advice - some people on this board like the game, others aren't so keen.

 

Just unlocked a Metal NiGHTS skin for multiplayer. Kinda cool unlockables like this further cement how silly it is that none of it matters for single player!

 

I just want to say it took me 5 years to get burned out with Mania but only 9 days to get burned out with Superstars.

I like loading up Sonic games and play a random zone for fun then close the game. Normally I get burned out by the zones one by one, and one month I'll only be about to play 8 zones out of 10, the next month, 5 zones out of 10 without being bored, the next few months only 3 out of then, and so on until all zones in the game bore me.

Now I load up Superstars and every single zone makes me only remember the bad stuff, lol

 

Pfffft, look at this guy, talking about we’re not about to get a Sonic Riders sequel that takes the series back to the template of the first game while addressing its issues in the same year we also get another fully fledged Sonic RPG in the style of the Mario & Luigi series but with a customisable party and comic characters in Tangle and Whisper! What a chump!

 

I think they do have something planned for next year if you've seen that PowerPoint SEGA had talking about everything that they're doing next year and supposedly there's going to be a DLC for Sonic Superstars.

 

I’m getting seriously sick of all this DLC crap. I just want them to release a complete game in both content and polish rather than having this “sell the fixes to them later” attitude that seems to exist just because Mania Plus was well received, despite that being something (seemingly) made after the fact rather than being part of the plan the whole time. Superstars isn’t complete. Origins wasn’t (and perhaps still isn’t) complete. I can only give Frontiers a pass because its post launch content was free but it still isn’t ideal. I don’t mind DLC, it can be a great way to have more game to play, but SEGA’s recent history of employing it with Sonic is not something that excites me.

 

I don't know if that leak was ever confirmed as authentic. It was literally just dumped on 4chan and there was a lot of skepticism about it right away.

This is entirely because they rush games to targeted launch dates and seemingly cut the budgets accordingly, rather than follow Nintendo's model of releasing it when it's truly done. Heck, sometimes the big N even sits on the completed game for a few months and then release it at the right commercial window.

 

Every mario sports game in the last 7 years would like a word

 

I mean, yeah, that sucks, but that’s not the same as it would be happening to Odyssey or Wonder, for example. It’ll be a sad day if a mainline Mario platformer or Mario Kart comes out with DLC roadmap prior to launch.