Devilman Crybaby has Akira looking up himself and getting nothing... Even though the 1972 Devilman series exists in the show Only explanation I can come up with is Smash exists but Sonic isn't a vi... God, I wish they didn't do this LMFAO
Hey, so I was looking up references of Mighty, and I don't know how to feel about his designs. His classic design is basically just a big bean that his shell is glued to, some artists interpret the shell almost like one big spike but just fill in the shell's extra space, and Archie has him look like a normal Mobian but with his shell strapped nicely to his body. The latter is personally my favourite, so that's my... Possibly unpopular opinion? Really dunno where else to talk about this
Okay; this is actually hilarious. And the description just completes it. Though it is clearly exaggerated, honestly looking at this stuff, I am unironically starting to question if CD’s level design is really as problematic as is generally thought. I might need to do another run through the game and pay a bit more atttention to it’s design.
Were the criticisms about CD ever related to what that guy is mocking in the video though? I thought it was generally agreed the game is generally pretty basic and easy to complete if the player just wants a straightforward Sonic experience, and the exploration elements are hit or miss depending on how much you enjoy that kind of thing
I have 100% heard that CD’s level design is just a mess, constantly interrupting your flow for nonreason, having confusing nonsensical design that can’t be made sense of and that bounces you around uncontrollably. In fact, I myself used to feel very similarly before I came around to the game.
I've just understood Sonic CD as a game that either rubs you the wrong way or clicks unlike any of the other classic games, and there's no in-between. I have a lot of friends who sit in the former, and I sit firmly in the latter. There's just so much more navigation and involved movement in CD that makes me appreciate it a lot. There's a lot of "how do I get up there?", "how do I get down from here?", "this isn't the right way", "where does this lead?", "I wonder if this will work" that the other classic games don't provide. And in order to answer those questions, you much more actively have to use your ability to roll down slopes, jump off walls and bounce on objects, not only to get where you need to go but also to time travel, or simply survey the area. The random obstructions or spikes are there to force you to get more creative than just holding one direction! I find that really engaging and fun, but others often find it infuriating. People argue it could be done better than CD does it, and they may be right, but I also don't think that takes away how much I enjoy it.
Al these Sonic fans saying Sonic levels need to be longer. CD fans be like, “Nah, bro. Levels need to be TALLER, and provide ways and opportunities to traverse up and down freely.” you know, actually thinking about it, I think Spark 3 essentially does the same thing. there is a path(s) through the level that ks pretty straightforward and non obtrusive. Just head straight into the horizon if you want to. but then so many of these levels are also just so freaking WIDE. There’s a lot of level design you can easily run past if you want to, but if you do want to explore, this wide design allowed for that as well without being obtrusive on people just trying to race to the end. it essentially is what CD does right? What I hear anyways. Having a whole lot of level design you can just run past if you’re heading straight for the goal, and the levels are kind of short if you do that. Meanwhile you can explore because of how wide or rather tall the level is. I say that’s what others say because I honestly don’t even remember the last time I tried to play CD in a “just get to the goal” way.
The problem with CD is that is doesn't reward exploration. Sure, you can do fancy stuff and get to weird places, but to what end? It really needed rewards like well-placed shields, speed shoes and invincibility monitors to help you get through the level. As it stands, there's a lot of nothing in most of the map. Sure, there's the generator you have to destroy, but once you know where it is it's not exploration in subsequent playthroughs.
Not really that much of an issue in my experience. 1) CD’s levels are freaking gigantic. 2) it’s not like 3K; where you’re just keeping an eye out for secrets hidden in the crannies of the one path you are traveling on, while you don’t really bother venturing off that path to explore the others on returning playthroughs once you find a route you like. I find my experience in 3K to be this due to there being multiple big rings on multiple paths, and you not needing to get anywhere near all of them. No. It is a bit more to it than that. Rather than keeping an eye out for the crannies of one route, you are exploring the entirety of the stage for one or two things scattered through out it’s many routes. Both those thing in mind, it takes significantly more memorization of the stages layout to get the point where you can just traverse to the thing you’re looking for without thinking much about what you’re doing. I haven’t played CD enough to get to that point in a lot of levels, but I do know a single play through is more likely that not not going to get you there. Also, I don’t think any of items mentioned in that post are significant enough I’d bother exploring for them outside MAYBE speed shoes.
A very curious piece of trivia, which @Devon brought up before, is that CD's level maps aren't actually any taller than the ones in 1 or 2, and are significantly less tall than the average 3&K level (3&K's ones are double the vertical size). It's really the vertical movement that is encouraged, forced etc. But because gravity is involved, I'm not sure a wide level in 3D works the same as a tall level in 2D. At some point you won't be able to tell wide from long, and there's no good way to fix that.
I realized in my playthrough of jet set radio future that I don't think imprecise controls and outcomes should be paired with strictly precise objectives. There's a dynamicism in any extreme sports game that you want the player to lean into, but that doesn't actually happen unless you encourage it. Take the score and time driven objectives paired with the trick system in THPS, or Bomb Rush Cyberfunk's crew battles for counterexamples. They pressure you into exploiting the terrain and the goodies throughout in ways that didn't seem possible at a glance. Jet Set Radio Future's race track like design and precise tag points, in contrast, can pull the player away from experimenting. In, say, Sonic Mania's huge levels there are multiple things to work towards and look out for on each route, so part of the fun becomes exploiting this knowledge for optimization ie: how fast can I collect the chaos emeralds in a given playthrough, there's a shield that I know will open up x shortcut, can I reliably take it where I need to without getting hit? What is the line as far as milking scoring opportunities while being efficient? CD lends itself to this style of play too by nature of being a classic Sonic game, but because demands are more precise and there are way less rewards for exploring throughout the game actually comes out less dynamic. I know exactly where the generators and projectors are, and I know how to get them, so why do it any other way? I'll be frank and say that I've never once been convinced of CD's potential for dynamicism. The game's levels shine when they're approached a very specific way. This is true for a lot of good games, but it doesn't play to strengths of the series's dynamic physics system and 'loose' control scheme imo. In a lot of places the screen crunch combines with the object placement to lead to a lot of frustration until you understand exactly what you're walking into. 3K and Mania are pretty careful about object placement and pacing to prevent this feeling, and come out the other end of it proving more ways to the player to explore and have fun at the higher end. Makes CD feel less like a more exploratory offshoot and more like a first draft at something like that.
Sonic CD is great but I do agree that the level design can be quite annoying at times. I think the thing that annoys me most about the game is how it has paths which serve no point but to waste your time. There can be a few paths and only one actually leads you to a way to progress through the level. I'm not fan of that design honestly. A good example is the beginning of Collision Chaos Act 2. Red arrows waste your time and green arrow is only route forwards. When people say the game has terrible level design I think this is what they are referring to and I do agree it is pretty bad. However, you have to take the smooth with the rough. I really like the way Sonic CD has levels that are all genuinely distinct and have interesting focuses. Stardust Speedway is obviously nothing like Wacky Workbench. But then Quartz Quadrant is also nothing like Tidal Tempest or Palmtree Panic. It takes much more of a Sonic 1 approach in giving levels more distinct identity which is part of the reason I like it so much because Sonic 1 is the best Sonic game. Also, while it is true that CD doesn't give much of a reason for exploration, I'd argue no Sonic game gives a reason apart from Sonic 1 and Sonic 3. Sonic 3 gives you the purpose of Special Stages. Sonic 1 is most successful because you need to explore to beat the game, which is by far the hardest of the series and so warrants exploration to find shortcuts and lives. Sonic CD has the projections and badnik spawner but I agree it's fairly restrictive in that sense. But if we are thinking of exploration for exploration's sake, I'd say Sonic CD is by far the most successful of the games. I think it's funny Sonic 3 is usually held as the pinnacle of exploration simply because it has the biggest maps. I do like Sonic 3 but Sonic CD's exploration lets you discover new art, music, level design. Even the discovery that you can clear a level of all badniks and free all the animals (which most players aren't going to expect on an inital playthrough). I think Sonic CD gives players a lot more of substance to discover when playing for exploration's sake in that respect. Even for return players, since most but the most hardcore won't remember all the art and music from one playthrough.
Yeah to be clear I don't think the level design is dog shit or anything like that. It's a step down in quality from the "main" titles but it's still head and shoulders above most Sonic games released afterward. Bro is indeed part of the team. Just not on the starting line up unless Mania is sick that day. There's also something to be said for the incentive to explore being intrinsic rather than extrinsic. I typically prefer more intrinsic motivators and CD's stellar art direction certainly counts in that sense(I won't count the soundtrack because most of my playthroughs were on the subpar American version, lol). I've talked about this before but it also has, by far, the best characterization for Eggman despite his relative lack of appearances, and you only get to experience that by exploring each time zone and seeing what he does with the world. All good points. I wish there were more things like this if this was the direction the game decided to go in, but you're right to point it out as is. I'd argue most Sonic games would wind up leveraging the difficulty point because difficulty is relative. For me, Sonic 2 was a war of attrition where I got really good at the milking the early levels to get more shots at the game's difficulty spike later on. I didn't appreciate how much more mindful this game made me of exploration until I was older and even to this day I'd rather play it without saves. This is where Sonic 3 and Mania start to suffer a bit for their length. They're past the point where you can reasonably complete them in one sitting so save files become necessary and the value of like 90% of the collectables in the game drops like a rock as a result. The utility shields dull the impact of this change some, but I can't help but wonder if a shorter classic entry would hurt all that much.
They may well do but this is right at the beginning when you have no chance to time travel. So you would need to time travel and then go all the way back to check out the routes. As much as I like CD I don't think I can defend that as stellar design.
It's not stellar design, but it's a quirk that I think adds a lot of personality to the game. The world changes around you whether it's useful to you or not. The very existence of it by itself (without the time travel) is like that too; this dead end shows the world isn't a map made exclusively for you to traverse, it just is what it is and you're making the most of it. The gamer in me thinks "well what's the point?" but the artist in me thinks that's beautiful. Sonic CD rules, idk.
