Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out on the 12th

Folks are saying they should've changed up Sonic's controls in his segment of the game, but wouldn't that break the game or cause serious problems?
Some sections of gens are specifically designed to be on rails with those controls.
I keep thinking of that long stretch of a narrow hallway in green hill, or the truck chase scene.

 

No, not really.

Since it is so on rails, a change of controls wouldn't really fix anything other than giving you a bit more precision in places where the game doesn't try to course correct you.

 

Continuing from that line of though, Shadow Gens really showcases how insanely linear and on-rails the 3D Modern sections of Sonic Gens are. So many sections where you are effectively boosting down a hallway barely wider than like 2 Sonics at best. Even Shadow's linear parts have more breathing room and it's much more willing to let alternate routes diverge dramatically from the path and then meet up later.

 

That's why the more I play around with time trials the more I'm convinced it's the best boost game or at least has the best set of levels. There's always somewhere you can optimize your play which just isn't true in Unleashed and Gens. There are a lot of long stretches of those levels that will play out the same no matter what you do outside of glitches, and I didn't realize how much of a drag that made them to replay.

I think even more than pitch perfect physics, 3D Sonic needed more meaningingful decisions to make at every stage of play, and this game is a positive step toward that.

 

The fact that it has entirely 3D levels already gives it major props, but even outside of that, Shadow Gens gave me a lot of "ooh, what if I take this path?" moments when playing through it that I rarely feel in most boost games. Even Unleashed and OG Gens still mostly restrict their alternate paths to quick shortcuts. I ended every level thinking "I wanna do that again and see what other stuff I can find" which is just not a sensation the boost games normally give me.

 

I wonder if they could’ve made the controls a bit looser when not boosting? Sonic has a heaviness to him that’s jarring after playing Shadow.

 

I don't think I agree in liking ShGens's levels more than Unleashed's or Gens's. The amount of alternate routes and the greater emphasis on 3D movement is really good, and of course it controls much better overall, but I think the challenge in withholding that super high speed is a lot more satisfying in Unleashed/Gens than ShGens. The quick step actually has purpose in those games, and the reaction times demand a lot of practice from a non-seasoned player. Plus, having a drift that you can use to carve corners is much more fun than the game doing the turn for you..

More than any of that though, I think how intricately designed both the level geometry and camera work is in Unleashed/Gens is what still makes me see them as superior. Call that an "aesthetic" thing if you wish but i think that presentation is important in a fairly binary style like the boost gameplay.

Don't get me wrong, The cutscenes mid-level and the trippy effects in ShGens are also amazing, but nothing beats the sense of scale and immersion Unleashed/Gens best levels offer. If the next game gets on their level I'll say we've fully outclassed them, but I'm still standing my ground for now.

 

I thought it was strange that Chaos Island was a throwback to Frontiers when it just came out 2 years ago.
Then I realized that Planet Wisp was in the original Gens when Colors was not even a year old

 

Chaos Island 1 is so cool. It looks pretty linear but there's so many tiny variations you can do. This is the fastest I've seen so far but it's a culmination of all the tricks I've seen people use in various runs. Every new video is always some cool new "oh man, I gotta try that trick".

​

 

Playing it with Flame Core - The Volcano might be the highlight of the entire game.

 

They even made somehow the island looks better...

 

I like the cinematic moment in Chaos Island where the volcano erupts, too.

 

It looks "better" because they can set up the most optimal lighting and cater each and every section to it, as well as they're just modeling all the terrain themselves instead of using elevation maps like Frontiers uses (like A LOT of other games once you notice it you can never unsee it lol), which only really allows for mountain terrain if you don't set it up for more. I'd kinda hope they try to move away from it and figure out a solution for the lighting for whatever the Open Zones in Frontiers 2 look like. For this game they had the built in excuse of "It's White Space, lighting is whatever the fuck we want", but for "Real" environments...

 

Yeah, it felt like a teaser (at least I hope so) how open-zone would kinda look for next big mainline game.

 

The 2D style sections in the Shadows section of the game are IMO the best Sonic Team ever designed.
I can't believe how good this game really is or how good it looks too.

Sonic Team (and well SEGA in general) are on top form of late.

 

yeah I thought this was the worst level in the game on my first run but it turned into the most fun stage to S rank easily imo

 

I imagine some mods might remove the white outline lighting (rim lighting) or make it optional? It does seem to be more of an accesssibility kind of thing, which can sometimes be good.

 

Already a thing:


There's also an option to replace Shadow's default boost animation with one where he actually skates.

Ngl, this bothered me as far back as Sonic Generations when we saw Shadow boosting during the rival fight. Shadow looks so cool when he's skating. It's a unique animation that plays into his design. But the way that he simply flies with his hover skates when boosting is so boring, not to mention similar to other animations that other character do regularly, particularly Metal Sonic. And it takes something away from his rivalry with Sonic himself if he no longer runs at all. Whoever animated and storyboarded this cutscene probably thought so too, because Shadow skates whilst boosting. It looks far better to see him butting heads with Sonic that way.

 

Hm I can see how he kind of blends into the background, but the rim lighting is a rather ugly solution.
I agree the skating is the coolest thing …

 

I'd probably be okay with that skating mod if it bothered to change the skating animation, its looked so bad for 20+ years at this point. The SA2 animation was pretty good, why the fuck did they downgrade so hard?