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

I don't care about the presence of a lot of paths, but I was surprised because the stage seemed to flow fairly well despite its length. Then I noticed the player didn't have to use the homing attack much... not that I noticed. Sure enough, Final Chase isn't the heaviest stage in terms of how much homing attack dictates your pace, but still. Maybe it has something to do with that.

 

Yes honestly, this is what I was expecting Cyberspace to be.

 

Tekken 6 is currently one of the top 10 bestselling games of this year, and it has a demo.

 

they finally fixed his stupid mouth.

 

I didn't say "every game with a demo sells worse than every game without a demo".

 

I'm aware. I would settle for a demo that was only the Sonic Generations portion. I just wanna play stuff on my PS5 right now lol.

 

The level design on the Shadow footage so far definitely seems a bit Forces/Cyberspace-y, though if the levels are longer with decent alternate paths then that'll at least be something, and the presentation looks interesting. I'm not sure how many've made the comparison but I actually get Sonic Forces Overclocked vibes. EDIT: Oh, right, and Shadow having powers to play with again is pretty cool.

...funnily enough, I've actually got a nitpick regarding the Green Hill footage. Why doesn't Sonic look back at the giant Chopper anymore? It's minor, but losing a nice little touch like that is a bit of a bummer that leaves me wondering what else they might overlook.

 

First of all, it is true. Look up old Nintendo Direct presentations and you'll see they describe both adventures as one game, with BF being an addition and not its own thing.

Second, this argument over what counts as a separate game is completely irrelevant to my main point, the point I made in my original post, which I will restate:

If Shadow Gens was the next big Sonic game, if it were a full-priced, new, separate product with a new story, soundtrack, locales, etc, and with a comparable amount of content to, say, Frontiers, or even Gens, then I could more readily accept the level design not being up to snuff with Gens quality because other parts might make up for it. But when you attach it as a small sidestory to Gens, a game that's only as good as it is because its level design is wonderful, the level design of Shadow Gens is suddenly held to much higher standards. And despite the ability to slow time, the cutscene transitions, and the sheer length of them, I still just don't think it meets those standards. I went back and compared playthroughs of Sky Sanctuary, Crisis City, and Rooftop Run to the footage we just saw, and it's shocking how much less empty they all are. Them being on the same game card openly invites these comparisons more than they would if Shadow Gens was a truly separate product.

 

I think there are rational explanations for all these complaints so far. I think the level looks straightforward and maybe a little sparse because it’s likely the first level. Granted, we thought that about Sunset Heights and were played, but I’d like to believe SEGA has learned from that.

I also think that the concerns over organic and nuanced terrain are really difficult to judge with this level in particular, because Final Chase, which it’s most prominently based on, was also very flat and didn’t have proper slopes.

To me, the level design we’ve seen so far looks about on par with Generations GHZ2, which I think is reasonable if it is a first level. GHZ2 is does have more paths, but only in the 2D sections, which I think form the majority of the level, whereas the 3D segments are very linear. Meanwhile, this level is completely 3D and has less paths than GHZ2’s 2D segments, but certainly more than its 3D segments.

This isn’t to say that there’s no possibility that these concerns will hold true in the full game, but I really don’t think we can get that picture from just what seems to be the first level.

Anyway, the more gameplay I see, the better the movement looks to be, to the point where the handling might actually be better than Frontiers (though I’d need to play it myself to really solidify an opinion). I really hope I’m right here and that Sonic Team is trending towards smooth and free movement with responsive handling, rather than the much stiffer movement that existed between Unleashed to Forces. I want these games to get to a point where crutches like the quick step and drift can be removed because basic movement is good enough that they’re not needed anymore.

I also think Biolizard looks to be the most creative boss fight this series has seen in a while. Obviously it’s drawing from prior source material, but so many of the prior boost bosses felt like they were largely platform or navigation challenges of avoid things for a chance to hit the boss, whereas here the boss is actually attacking and moving about in space in ways that need to be reacted to. Even looks like the ranking system might have some teeth to it, since Fadel performed rarely decently in his gameplay and was still 38 seconds off an S rank.

Overall, I’m feeling pretty optimistic that Shadow Generations could advance the Frontiers format away from the worst trappings of the prior boost games that it inherited, as well as the gratuitous RPG mechanics like levels and skill trees, not to mention its fairly shallow combat, towards something more tightly focused that doesn’t relegate traditional levels to an afterthought, while also shrinking the move pool in favour of quality attacks with clear purposes that operate around platformer movement instead of inputting button combinations for cutscene attacks.

 

Will I finally get to play the Casino Night DLC that I couldn't on my PS3?

 

It looks like Sonic Team has really put some work into the Shadow sections, really love the art style and direction to those levels and the boss battles look great too.
Winter is going to be great for 3D platforming, what with this and Astrobot.

Can't wait for both

 

One of the big questions for me is the controls. Frontiers had the worst controls in the series history so I'm pretty concerned. Won't be able to tell until I play it myself. I'm also not a huge fan of levels being interrupted by cutscene setpieces. Boost levels rely heavily on replay value and especially considering that Iizuka confirmed the game will be shorter than Generations.

But in terms of aesthetic and design this looks better than anything Sonic Team have done since Generations. The game actually looks good aesthetically. They are using a lot of block tiles but they actually look good and match the environment which is a first. There's also a lot of interesting colour variety throughout the level.

While the level design is mostly going forwards and taking a number of binary optional paths that is still a marked improvement over anything Sonic Team has done since Generations. I also like the incorporation of Shadow's chaos powers. Maybe that's not a gigantic win but I do appreciate that the game will fit nicely with the design sensibilities of Generations and won't be more similar to Forces or Cyberspace where you go forwards in one binary path.

Yes, in future games I don't want Sonic Team to rely on going forwards in a straight line on binary paths, using homing attacks and rails to make you go in different directions. The obligitary fall down sequences and avoid hazards. I want the next game to get rid of Boost. But as a set of glorified bonus levels for Generations I appreciate the effort to the established formula.

 

The real reason isn't that they fear spoilers that much, it's simply that making demos do in fact takes time from development, and in a time where games barely function as intended and crunch culture is prevalent, devs in general prefers to take all the time in their hand to focus on the game itself, only healthy developments usually get chances to make demos, like Capcom in general they make demos for basically all their releases, or Square Enix, both those companies have a culture of providing demos still

 

Here's a summary of what was said in the video for people who don’t want to watch it:

• The X in the title is not silent.
• Shadow is their second most popular character.
• Don’t expect the Shadow part to be as much volume as the main Sonic Generations, but it is a good, nice chunk.
• Shadow’s story takes place in between the events of Sonic’s story.
• They looked back at Shadow’s history and picked the stages that fans are most passionate about, as well as the most interesting stages.
• Shadow will have some 2D game play, but there is no Classic Shadow.
• You can play Shadow from the moment you buy the game (I.e., you don’t need to unlock it) and can switch between Sonic and Shadow’s story at will.
• After Sonic Colors Ultimate, they decided to remaster Generations as that had the most demand. Depending on what people like, they will consider it for the next remaster. The interviewer mentioned Unleashed. But the Sega rep noted down Heroes.
• When Iizuka was in the US, he wanted to create a character that Americans would love. Sonic is cool and positive. And they wanted to create a new character that would be cool in a different way. Dark heroes were popular at the time in the US, and that inspired Shadow.

 

The extended footage showing the entirety of the ark level looks considerably better. Honestly I still think that the level design looks pants, but as a whole level it's better than I initially thought.

 

Visually this game looks great and very polished. I love the after-image effect when using Chaos Control, it looks great.

Looking at footage from the Biolizard fight and it looks like they've finally fixed the mid-air turning which was my biggest complaint with Frontiers. Very impressed!

I wonder who's directing this game? The double jump makes me think Morio Kishimoto since all his games have that, but idk.

 

Uhh which part of the air turning are you talking about? Because Shadow clearly has to make a rotation to get facing the other way rather than just snapping to a direction. I guess I can't say for certain that that isn't just Fadel moving the stick a certain way, but it mostly just looks like a tighter circle than in Frontiers.

I thought we already knew Nakamura was directing? Either way, this being a smaller-scale project that clearly is just reusing Frontiers' framework shouldn't suggest much on its own.

 

https://imgur.com/7Py0pdA
At around the 2:20 mark. You might be right that this is probably just a tighter turning circle than Frontiers, but this type of mid-air turning definitely wasn't possible in that game.