The Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Megathread

Okay, seriously, I'm getting sick of your shit Glem. Every fucking time you dissect shit like this as if you have to prove that the person posting it is incompetent. It is absolutely possible for people to dislike things. You don't have to get into a fight about it every damn time.

If this was your first offense sure, I'd let it slide, but you do this all the fucking time.

 

I wasn't trying to say he was incompetent. I was pointing out that he was complaining about things that existed in the classic games.

Edit: The first point was literally something that could be proven wrong, and the second was one where he said he didn't like it because when he used it he couldn't hit enemies. We've seen other people use the homing attack fine, so this probably isn't a problem with the game, but a problem with his playing. It's not really fair to dislike something because you're bad at it. If he just said he didn't like it because it takes the skill out of defeating enemies, it would make a lot more sense.

 

Wasn't Iizuka's reason for including the homing attack make the game more user friendly?

 

I'm not sure how I feel about the homing attack, honestly it works pretty well in Megamix but it pretty much ruins Sonic CD. I think that the target thing is suppose to show where you will go if you use the homing, which makes good sense as it could be frustrating to home into the wrong object when there's lots of stuff on screen.

 

You took his first point far too literal. He is talking about how the game seems to guide him into a direction it wants the player to take and how he doesn't seem to have the same level of freedom as in the old games. However, he still has to guide Sonic towards these contraptions in order for the game's gimmicks to propel him forward in the guided path.

Control, but no control.

The second point he didn't specify what made him lose all the rings. He could have initiated a homing attack out of range that just propelled him into a spike trap or uncurled him into an enemy. We don't know, he didn't say anything. He just found it to be useless when the tried and true jump and aim on things works just fine. Maybe he's never seen how to use the attack properly or he just hates the automation and just prefers to attack directly. Preferences motherfucker.

 

Have something from my blog about this stuff:

Out of interest, how long was the extension?

 

We can't be sure. We don't know when the game was first declared 'finished', when it was put back in production and when the production ended/will end for the second time.

 

SOTI you have a very valid point but you're not a game company. Remember how extensive the testing process is. Did you ever read PACHUKA's game testing duties on the sonic game he tested? They literally had him do things like:
- touch every wall
- collect every ring
- touch every wall and collect no rings
- touch every ring and collect no walls
- complete the level without dying
- complete the level in under a minute
- destroy every badnik in the level

This has to be done for each new build QA gets. It may have been simple for you to change that one location but if sonic 4 was to be given the proper treatment, every level would pretty much need to be redesigned from the beginning. Especially if they did the smart thing and took out the homing attack and spring sequences. They'd have their testers intentionally colliding with every pixel and jumping over every chasm repeatedly for months. It'd be impossible for Ruby to convince SEGA to do any of the needed changes to episode 1. Episode 2 is a completely different story and the campaign to change THAT game needs to start now.

 

SOTI, to be fair, I think that a big company like SEGA has to do much more extensive testing than you do for a hobby rom hack. I mean think about it: most companies hire people just to test the games. It's not like whoever is doing the level layouts can just tweak everything in one sitting and then call it good.

EDIT: Ninja'd by dude. I'm glad we were thinking on the same lines :D

 

Doubt? Hah, I almost want to guarantee a "no" for that question.

 

It's times like this I wish that boycotts/pacts/petitions or whatever worked. Cause you know, this image speaks a thousand words and I'm sure nobody would say the game would be worse if that didn't happen. We just have to keep going on about what's wrong with the game and hope that future instalments in S4 and otherwise are much, much better.

That said, I'd love to hear that the game was scrapped and rebooted.

 

You know that the homing attack in Sonic 4 has a 100% failure rate if it's initiated close to the target, right?

 

Indeed, if Sonic is within a certain distance of an enemy, he will begin moving towards it before it becomes an attack. What I should have said was if it is triggered from within a certain range while not spun up. In one video in particular (I think it was Jim Sterling playing, in fact), he died while leaving a homing attack trail during his death animation.

 

I agree. The more evident these mistakes are, the higher the chances of them being fixed eventually.

I wouldn't have anything against that either. But we all know it won't happen, because it would mean a big monetary loss for SEGA, seeing as most people will buy Sonic 4 anyway.

 

I'm pretty sure that happens if you're far AWAY. If you do a homing attack from an uncurled state, I think you turn into a ball for a second and then go out of it again. At least, that's what I gathered. However, the ONLY example I've seen of the homing attack failing is on fast enemies, if you're too low down (obviously), and on bosses.

The homing dash also only turns you into a ball for a second, and then you're vulnerable again.

 

This is a few pages late but I just wanted to point something out: Iizuka is NOT the director of Sonic 4, nor is he a designer of any sort for the game. He is the producer. He has a pretty hands-on role, granted, and was responsible for the game's existence, but he actually isn't to blame for every single problem in the game. He showed DIMPS some sections of Sonic 2 and said "I want it to play like this," and was behind the inclusion of the homing attack. But for the most part his defense of the boosters and physics seem to be more PR speak than something he deliberately wants. I honestly don't think he cares though either.

The funniest thing to me is that while I don't think he should be in a managerial role for the series by any means, he is a fairly competent level designer and probably would have done a better job than DIMPS did. And on the subject of level design, judging from the leaked videos the game basically stops playing itself after Splash Hill. There are boosters here and there but Mad Gear in particular looked like it had pretty good level design. At this point expecting Sonic 4 "as we imagined it" is ridiculous, but the game doesn't look bad to me at all. Go in expecting Sonic Advance Classic Edition and it'll most likely deliver... Or at least that's how it seems to me.

Also, while I truly appreciate RubyEclipse's honesty and frankness and know that much of Sega's Western staff pushed for exactly what we wanted, he's dodging the biggest question that should be on everyone's mind:

WHEN IS PSP2 INFINITY BEING LOCALIZED OH GOD I WANT IT NOW

 

We don't even have PSP2 out in the states yet! Get out there and support it next week, and we'll talk after that.

Something I posted on the official boards today when a thread went up stating that we were all liars (naturally) because they saw a section of Splash Hill that required a homing attack - the last paragraph may be the most important part for most here.