Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

A change in Sonic Generations: unlockable track #40 (Right There, Ride On) has been replaced by Westopolis.

Seems to confirm there are some licensing issues with the Rush soundtrack. (I would guess Sega's license for the sample pack that Naganuma used expired.)

 

No way! "Right There, Ride On" is my go to track for Rooftop Run.

It fits so well:


That's it, game is dead to me.

 

...When has this ever been a thing?

Actually nvm, just remembered Unleashed had a good amount of cutscenes with actual action, can't really think of anything else beyond that though

 

Ok, I managed to get an S Rank on all the normal levels, bosses, and challenges. Including both with and without Doom Wing. And I gotta say. While Radical Highway Act 1 wasn't too bad, Act 2 was pure hell. If it wasn't for a speedrun video showing m 2 shortcuts I didn't even know about (Seriously, how many people actually figured out by themselves you can land on a higher building at the start of the stage and in the 2nd skydiving section there are rails below where the game expects you to land) I don't think I would've ever been able to do it. Really goes to show that these 2 stages were designed with Doom Wing in mind.

 

After reviewing the currently known samples for the track - a lot of which are by Zero-G - I've found that they're all royalty-free, as most if not all samplepacks should be. The only lingering two that could serve as problems are the infoless 'Ueberschall's Easy Listening' pack that'd be wiped off the face of the earth if it weren't for the Internet Archive, and the most probable answer being 'No Dice' by Badfinger, an album that falls under the Apple Corps label, as in The Beatles. Naganuma might be screwed here if the sample itself weren't easy piano notes that literally anyone in-house could replace.

Upon reflection, Sonic Team might not have saved their music files for Rush, which would certainly make this process way harder. ^^;;

 

Neither of those shortcuts have anything to do with the Doom Wing though?

The first shortcut I didn't find myself, but in hindsight it's presented to you pretty clearly because you see the Beetles a mile off. I just never considered that the skydiving sections would be could be slightly more intricate the the copy-paste job they've been using since they were introduced in Unleashed. And the second one I think I saw on my first run. I wasn't sure which was the standard route and which was the shortcut. The standard route is off to the side instead of being central, so at first I thought the rail underneath was the punishment for failing to land in the right spot.

Both acts of Radical Highway are really bloody good. I'm gonna sound like a broken rescued when I say that I hate how physics don't influence your speed at all and how the rails continue to be utter snore fests in modern games, but the layout of both levels is super fun regardless. The fact that each level manages to play very differently depending on whether or not you equip the wings only adds to the depth.

 

I still didn't play this game (some day I will, but sadly not soon), though I agree about it being a good thing that they are making the boost less and less powerful.

From what I'm reading, it seems like the game has the same positive traits of the cyberspace from Frontiers (the player has more freedom of movement, open to more creative approaches), but it controls well while cyberspace's controls and physics were a mess.

I was one of the few people who liked cyberspace right because of those traits, despite the controls being bad, so I'm happy that they managed to polish the gameplay and build some satisfying levels with it. I think I would enjoy this game a lot even if I'm not a big fan of modern gameplay.

I didn't know about it, it's so sad that they scrapped that idea, I really wanted the boost mode to be back and I hope some day it will, it's one of my favorite mechanics in the series.

They still made the boost ring-dependant: if you reach the max amount of rings you will get a buffed boost, like how in Advance 2 you got more acceleration by collecting rings. It's not the same thing but they cared about giving an impact on gameplay to rings in a similar way; it's the only game that did this as far as I know, after Advance 2 (and 3?) and excluding Forces Mobile which is another genre completely and anyway its gameplay is inconsistent due to its pay (or lose your real life grinding 24/7) to win mechanics.

Hard agree here. I've always been a fan of Advance 2's gameplay, but recently I've been messing with Sonic 3 A.I.R. mods, doing my own version of an existing "boost mode" mod and experimenting with it: I'm even more convinced that Boost Mode is a great mechanic. It feels soo good when you jump over spikes and dodge enemies without breaking the flow, then you are rewarded with the afterimage effect... it's just like if the game is telling that you were so good and rewards you a bit more speed that you can use to do an higher or longer jump out of an angled surface, as well as with a satisfying visual effect/feedback.

This is funny, I had a discussion about this in the past and compared Advance 2's boost mode to Metroid's Speed Dash as well as the P run in Super Mario Bros 3, Sonic CD's time travel or figure 8 run animation, and it didn't end well.

After all,

(out of context quote only because I would use the same words), but a gameplay mechanic should also have an use other than just presenting speed for the sake of it; if a boost or boost mode will some day return, I hope it will have an actual function, like Metroid's Speed Dash, Sonic CD's time travel or Mario's P (there are countless other examples), rather than being just mere spectacle (hence why people are beginning to question the sense of still having the boost in modern games when you can run very fast even without it).

More speed or invincibility are fine rewards, but unless your game is about very precise speedruns where even a fraction of second gained can make the difference, I'm not sure if having a boost state would do something meaningful other than confusing the player by offering a different set of physics out of the blue.

----

In conclusion I agree with you, I just wish they will manage to transform that satisfying feel of boosting through the level into creative gameplay that's not just running straight and letting the game play itself, rather than scrapping the idea of a boost completely for being redundant.

 

So the movie DLC model got updated. Thoughts?

Old version for reference

 

Definitely looks a lot better than it did. The fur on the original model kind of looked like shit.

 

Wow. Subtle changes, huge improvement.

 

I really like the textwork they'd done for the Accolades Trailer, it's remarkably smooth! Something about simple graphics transitioning nicely with scenes makes me giddy.
As for the movie Shadow model, he feels so much fuller and polished compared to the last. Happy that Sonic Team has the time to improve things!

Do you think the "Movie Pack" will just be the level by itself with the model forced onto that stage, or that the movie model will be a skin you can use at any time? Plus, do you think there's more to the pack than that? Maybe they'll make us pay for a Super Form this time around? :P

 

I've been trying to find the exact source of where I heard this. Unfortunately it was via Twitter which means it'll be harder to find. I know for a fact a fan mentioned Advance 2 to Morio Kishimoto on twitter and he responded to them with enthusiasm.

It'll be interesting to see what they do next. I think they're really starting to understand the importance of good control and movement. The fact that Superstars had near perfect physics is still really cool. Feels like they've neglected this sort of thing for so long.

 

Oh come on, do these games have to explain everything? Big showing up in places with no context or explanation is fucking hilarious.

Lore/continuity nerds really need to be brought down a notch. They've had it way good ever since Tails' "I sucked in Forces amirite folks lol" -line in Frontiers.

 

They do that in this game for his SA2 cameos but at least it’s played off as humorous.
The explanation in Frontiers was needless and tacked on, were they concerned that some would think he’d be trapped in cyberspace for eternity?

 

Yeah, Ian pretty much said the same thing about the Big situation (well, not your second paragraph). It was definitely his original intention when writing the fishing hole dialogue. At least Big sorta does that in Shadow Generations, just ending up in white space for no discernible reason.

 

I like to think Big hangs out everywhere just like Sonic, but with his own adventure.

 

How can he be trapped if he's free to fish as much as he want? If he's there for eternity, that's not being trapped, that's fucking heaven

 

The original description referred to it as an "additional level and skin for Shadow" - if that phrasing is accurate, it suggests that Movie Shadow should be treated as a skin like the Terios one. If that's the case, based on what little we've seen I'd imagine it's forced on for the Movie stage ("I've... taken on a new form?"), but also selectable as a skin for use in the main game as well.

The real question is, if the skin is wearable during the main game, did they get Keanu Reeves to do re-records of all Shadow's dialogue for the main game too for when the skin is in-use? ...Who am I kidding, they definitely haven't, haha. XD

 

Between this and Sage's "The rails aren't real" -line, it seems that somebody at Sega wanted all remaining questions, no matter how trivial, answered in The Final Horizon. And given how the latter piece of dialogue was placed right next to a completely useless grind rail that was only there for Sage to explain, I'm willing to bet that this came from someone close to the game's development.

But if Sega was this adamant on tying all the loose ends, then our main takeaway should be that we're never seeing the Starfall Islands or Cyberspace again.

 

Seems like someone made a 60fps patch for the Switch version, which I will most likely be taking advantage of on my modded Switch