Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

By the way, I haven't seen this brought up, but the yellow grass from the initial trailer is definitely an issue here

Not really sure how this happened. Especially since it seemingly only effects this specific area in act 2 just after the giant Chopper sequence. Weird stuff.

 

There is a Reddit thread where other people are having the same issue so it just isnt me. My problem is it says the code is already redeemed.

My theory is they issued the same code twice and someone else redeemed it before I could.

 

Oh, I didn't mean to imply it was just you. Just that it was weird that the Jam code was the problem. Mine didn't work at first, but I tried it a few more times and then it did.

 

I was planning on ordering a JP copy for Switch. Does anyone know how the skins are obtained there? Not with my Switch ATM so I can’t sign into the JP eShop and check.

 

Does anyone else find Sonic's 3D controls to be extremely slippery? Some of these levels are almost unplayable, I'm not sure how I played this when the game released.

I remember seeing so much hate about Frontier's offering so much control with how Sonic controls, but I felt that was one of the best parts of the game.

 

Hey folks! I want to ask a question about this game. I’m considering getting it for the Nintendo Switch so I’m wondering if there are any issues with it. I am referring to if there are any major bugs in it. I’m not trying to search it up on any other place in order to avoid spoilers.

Also more importantly for me, is the boost gameplay any different? I’m hoping it feels the same as the original release of Generations.

 

I'm not all the way through yet, but haven't encountered any issues in the stages/challenges I've played. I know other people have reported some issues with collision and scripted sections sometimes not working as intended, but I haven't encountered any of those personally, and I have no idea if any of those folks were playing the Switch version specifically.

To me, it feels pretty on par with my memories of the original, especially if you set the controls to the "Legacy" setting which mimics the original control scheme.

 

Just finished Sonic Generations on Switch. Aside from a weird camera bug in Sky Sanctuary Act 2 and the levels and lighting visibly popping in at the start of the stage, it still feels like the original but with a stable 30fps and fast loading times. Never ran into anything problematic

 

It's always been this way. He's a little tighter in boost state as long as you only use the analog stick in the left and right direction (don't hold up, let boost propel you).
But as soon as you slow down, he's awful to control. It's a blessing that Generations is mostly 2D with only a few real 3D segments.

The test I've done are on PC, but I'm sure it's the same in all versions. Like I said before, it's not so awful that the game is unplayable or new behavior introduced in this port. It just happens more often.

 

Man, the 2D acts in this game are like the best Sonic Rush-style levels I've ever experienced. They actually remind me of the 3DS version of Gens, with the slightly tilted camera, except the level design is way, way, waaaaay better. It's better than Rush, better than Rush Adventure, better than Colors, better than all the advance games. Shadow doesn't just do 3D boost great, it does 2D boost better than I've ever seen it. I also love that this style of Sonic games, which was a pretty big deal when the 3D games were awful, finally gets some real representation in the Big Brother Generations.

If Sega ever wanted some easy DLC, porting the 3DS levels over to Shadow Gen would be great.

 

I just said the same thing over on Stadium. The meat of the game is still within the 3D levels, but the 2D ones are actually really decent here. Shadow controls well in both 2D and 3D, for starters. And the 2D levels are more creative than whitebox asset spam nightmares. They do still feel a bit too slow and the lack of any slope physics and momentum really does give rise to that disappointing feeling that all movement is binary. But for what they are, they're really solid. The 2D levels and segments in other games, excluding Generations Classic, have been increasingly unwelcome over the years. This really bucks that trend in a good way.

 

Yeah these are honestly the best 2D parts in a 3D Sonic game in general, like you said they really have that Sonic Rush feel, and for the most part avoid the boxy design that basically every 3D Sonic game since Unleashed falls victim to while having some actual meat to them. Just great, fast paced gameplay with solid controls

 

the object placement in the 2D stages seems a lot more higher quality production than previous boost games 2D stages. Beginning all the way back with Unleashed, the 2D stages were made of repeating box objects in obvious chunks, they looked nothing like the miles of bespoke level geometry that the 3D levels had. In Shadow Gens, the 2D levels finally look like they have the same amount of visual polish as the 3D levels, they don't look like they're made of repeated boxes anymore. The camera is also way more dynamic, and pulls back for some pretty cool shots at times. It's a whole bunch of little things that add up to it feeling a lot more cohesive and well produced.

I also feel like the missions in the white zone are better designed than Frontiers. I personally especially like the ring challenges, because it makes all other rings in the zone disappear and puts little set courses of rings throughout the zone. It turns it into a sort of mini level with the rings dictating the level layout. They can get kind of tricky too. They are purposefully placed and gives the random level layouts in the white zone more rhyme and reason.

 

This is what I've been talking any when I say that Shadow Generations White Space is deliberately designed. It applies to the open zone and the 2D levels. Someone sat down and put real thought into the layouts of them. They considered all of the obstacles and basic terrain that Shadow has to deal with. This is the complete opposite to all of the open zones in Frontiers, which are just empty expanses of featureless terrain that don't mesh with Sonic's abilities at all. The White Space in Shadow Generations feels like a platformer, and the challenges within both it and the 2D levels all feel unique. Frontiers meanwhile comes across as a tech demo for a running sim and the layouts of all platforming sections and generic to the point of feeling like primitive procedural generation.

The decision to make Shadow's movement so slow was probably advantageous to the eventual design of the levels and his controls. There's no longer two extremes for the designers to consider at once. Running out of boost isn't some massive hindrance, and similarly boosting won't send Shadow running off so fast that he clears 200ft in the blink of an eye and the player can't react to obstacles fast enough. But some slopes that actually impact movement and those all important "momentum physics" are sorely missing. I feel like that should be the natural next step to adding speed without diminishing the involvement of anything else.

 

I feel like I haven't played a Sonic game that felt so cohesive and well put together since Sonic Adventure, the first. Beginning with Sonic Adventure 2, every Sonic game had parts where they were very obviously unpolished, like the overlapping english dialog in SA2. Just little faults or cracks or things that needed a few more weeks to get right. Some games had way more cracks than others, like Unleashed felt very highly produced compared to many of the other 3D sonic games. But even that had weird cracks in the polish, like the acts 3-5 being made of repeated objects. SA1 is the last time where I felt like I was playing a game that very much resembled what they had set out to make from the outset.

Shadow Gens is the first game where it doesn't feel like they needed any more time, like everything works exactly how they intended. That's not to say it's perfect, but it doesn't feel broken at any moment. There's nothing pressing that needs fixing. All you can ask for is more content, which is the best problem 3D sonic games have had in a long, long time.

 

If the next game features the roll from Frontiers (the one from the Drop Dash, not the spin-boost stuff) but polished up like ShGens did to every other mechanic, I think that's all I'd need.

Even if slopes don't affect the player character's upright/running movement much anymore, rolling covering that base would do it for me.

 

The Whitespace feels more like Bowsers Fury which is what a open world Sonic game should be like anyway lol.

 

I don't remember where it came from, either leaks or datamines, but I recall some word that the islands from frontiers were not originally designed to even have the platforming challenges and the game was supposed to be puzzle focused and even more blatantly BOTW inspired. I do know at least that folks found early versions of kronos and such and it completely lacked all of the platforming and just had the map puzzles in it, so I can only imagine the main reason the open zones there are so... slapdash for platforming design is because they must have been a response to playtesting or a last second change (probably cause that version of the game sucked)

I dont remember if it was here or somewhere else that I heard this but it makes me personally look at frontiers a bit more fondly, for the open zone at least cyberspace is still very eh and i dont think its very excusable. But, considering shadow generations is so much more deliberately designed and it works much *better*, i can only imagine frontiers 2 will at least somewhat implement more intentionality into the open zones, but probably just on a larger scale, probably more space between things than we see in shadow generations. I think white space has an unspoken benefit of being abstract so you can throw in a bunch of platforming elements into its construction and it wwont look out of place but i am imagining a more organic, natural looking island, even taking after sonic levels, being quite a bit more challenging to find a proper balance. My mind goes to Utopia, which i think is great and good fun but even then i think it could be way more.

 

It's what I feel like they've been building towards since Unleashed. When unleashed first dropped, people hate the little overworld stages that took you to the action zones, but I loved them. They were TIIIINY, like maybe 3 or so platforming challenges that took you to the act gates, but they were fun. Shadow Gen's white space feels like that expanded to a great degree. Obviously the influence from Frontiers is there, but the intent feels like Unleashed.

I would love an Adventure 3 using this formula, with multiple white zones as adventure fields. I really liked having a big zelda/mario64 like overworld in Sonic Adventure 1, having to hunt for the levels was fun. It made it feel more like an actual adventure game instead of just a series of levels.

 

I think the New Genesis mod is likely the way to go there, so I hope Kishimoto or whoever has seen that.