Spoiler Thread - SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS (SPOILERS!... Obviously.)

Oh gahdamnnnnnn, these Supporting Me remixes, they fucking mixed metal with funk and I am LIVING!

 

As I thought about it more, I realized that the game that's most like this one is probably Sonic Lost World 3DS, which is a fucking brilliant game marred by unfortunate handling. I'm glad Yuka Kobayashi has been allowed to make a higher-profile game (even if Shadow Generations is arguably being sold as a spinoff/side game) because I *mostly* liked Unleashed Wii, I *really* liked Colors DS, and I get why people struggle to enjoy Lost World 3DS but when I was playing it I thought it was actually surprisingly close to series peak. Ironically I think that might be why *this* game doesn't feel as revelatory as it does for other people, because I've been playing the games in the series that are mostly built around a similar formula and have been enjoying them. I 100%ed Lost World 3DS a few years ago. Yes, S-ranking the entire hard mode, even.

This game has got me thinking that if you gave Lost World 3DS the control scheme of Frontiers that it would probably become a lot of people's favorite game in the series.

 

That's funny because I considered Frontiers to be pretty close to lost world 3ds with all the double jumping and boost that was pretty much a run button and everything.
Idk if different controls (scheme or otherwise) would really change people's opinions on it because it's just incredibly punishing and especially annoying to people with zero patience at all, and nobody's really incentivized to figure out all the skips and stuff you can do.

 

Idk if online racing is dead or not but I learned a LOT of tech and skips from other players back in the day. Could simply be a matter of this knowledge not being well preserved.

 

It's dead now because 3ds and Wii U multiplayer in general are dead.

 

Saw a neat headcannon as to why Doom kept bringing Shadow to Radical Highway.
As it goes the idea is that Doom wants Shadow to get into the vengeful mindset he was in in SA2, which is aided by Maria and Gerald being alive again, Doom wants to drag him back to that destructive night so he can give into the anger and become a part of the Black Arms hivemind.
It's at least a bit better than "lol Radical Highway = Shadow Green Hill" or being able to reuse Frontiers city assets or something.

 

Yeah, I read that 3 pages ago too

 

Am I the only idiot who kept thinking all the Radical Highway reality-warps were supposed to be Westopolis?

 

Nah that's completely valid, Westopolis is kinda just Generic City™️ and Radical Highway is really only known for roads and the Totally-Not-Golden Gate Bridge.

 

The music is the giveaway, but I agree. If you don't notice the music and the specific textures of the roads, the Doom Zones don't lean much into the specific iconography of Radical Highway.

They hold off on the orange blimps, the split loops, the toll gates, and grinding on the Golden Gate Bridge until the end to say "Yes. THIS is Radical Highway".

Kinda disappointed they left out the Fighter Jets bombing the roads, though. That was always fun in SA2.

 

I really love how much Chaos Control contributes to level design in this game:

This particular section of Sunset Heights is so good.

 

Chaos Control is such a cool mechanic. I hope they don't fix the stacking glitch either.

 

If we dont get another game with shadow having his own campaign/part of the game then i hope future games give us more episode shadows just to get more chance to use his unique abilities in the level design. Genuinely havent had this much fun in a boost game in a while, more mechanics does wonders for this gameplay style

 

Yea, the additional mechanics added a ton to the gameplay flow, and they weren’t hamfisted or momentum halting like the Wisps.

 

If there were less wisps, each one pretty much could've been implemented like Shadow's abilities...

Or just have a designated one for each world.

 

Even if they dont bring back specific doom abilities by name, the best ones (doom spear and blast) can easily be brought back as just standard abilities (Chaos launch or or kick for blast idk but its just a launcher so yknow) Would be so easy to keep around, especially since the ending sorta implies that they go away alongside the fading of the black moon. I wont be beat up about losing wing or morph but if the big two can stay, we're in good hands those two especially have so much potential, surf too why not make a chaaos energy manta ray why dontcha

 

also everyone going on about rouge this and amy that and short fat sonic's belly this but they changed the blimps so they say stuff other than "Got Ring?" and that to me is a truly unforgivable change

 

Wing is a super form anyway and honestly how I think Super Sonic and so on should be done in boost games going forward (maybe speed it up quite a bit though). Surf and Morph would be a good way to bring back the vehicles from Shadow and 06.

I think there perhaps should be some thought given to how Sonic can match this stuff now though. Not saying he needs his own Surf and Morph transformations but Shadow’s homing attack being able to pass through grates and lasers opens up new design opportunities for him, so I’d like to see Sonic have a way of accessing his own paths in a game where he’d coexist with this iteration of Shadow. I think the way to go would be to give Sonic’s homing attack and boost a wind effect, so when he homing attacks one enemy, others around it are lifted into the air and you can create your own homing attack chains that other characters can’t access (assuming we’re having characters share levels).

 

That seems reasonable. So if we factor in the other characters, then you would need to make Sonic create a homing chain up to what looks like a cliff face with an overhang or some form of platform in the air just too far away: this way, Tails can't fly to it and Knuckles can't climb his way up, as well as Shadow being unable to reach since he can't create the chain himself.

It all really depends on who's in as well, you would have to account for their abilities that might enable them to enter a route they shouldn't. Of course, players being players it's inevitable you'll get some people figuring out how to get to those routes anyway, but hey, you do what you can.

EDIT: So shall we note the irony that Shadow Generations' story is that you shouldn't change the past, and strive towards the future, when Ian Flynn has changed the past twice (Sonic Origins and Sonic Generations' rewrites) and SEGA has basically not moved passed reusing certain levels from the Classic games since Sonic Generations' original level?

 

Working my way through the game right now. It's alright I think, but I have a lot of nitpicks. For one I just met Gerald and Maria and...

"I've deduced that we are in some kind of temporal anomaly... we must be careful not to cause a paradox"

Did you now, Gerald? Did you deduce that? Was it the white void and landmarks you've never seen before that gave it away?