Sonic Superstars: A New 2D Sonic Game (Fall 2023)

I do like bosses if they're not just mostly waiting games. I abhor any boss that makes me wait for no good reason so Superstars makes me want to pull out my hair sometimes.

I don't love those bosses in platformers like Mario, but in classic Sonic where bosses have always allowed you to beat them in no time, it's doubly frustrating. It's missing the entire point.

 

the thing I keep hearing though is that the Superstar bosses are long. For instance, the bosses in SA1 and SA2, even their final bosses, are pretty short, and their attack patterns are also generally pretty short, so they don't get really repetitive unless you die a lot. I don't remember the Frontiers bosses feeling long either, aside from the Ikaruga final boss that felt like it took an eternity, and also the Frontiers bosses are helped by how you can shorten the time it takes to beat them by coming in with a comical amount of rings.

 

The bosses in SA1 and 2, at least, also have health bars, helping to visually indicate to the player just how much of the slog they have left. Makes it much easier to mentally pace yourself.

 

I typically don’t enjoy bosses either. I mentioned it in my original thoughts.

I haven’t played Final Horizon but imo all the Titan bosses are just spectacle. I think they just wanted to give the player a cool Super Sonic fight in between all the navigation. None are particularly hard. Not even Supreme which requires Hard Difficulty to face The End. As long as you don’t take too long you’re fine.

I personally don’t find Superstars bosses too long. They’re longer but I guess in the heat of the moment I don’t really notice it or feel it.

 

I have experienced them, and a review I read at the time mentioned them as well.

Doesn't mean it's not there, except in the Switch version.

 

However, it only goes to show how inconsistent experience with either of these issues actually is.

Crashes in Superstars are not a widespread issue. Almost any game is subject to crashing sometimes, but it can often be the case that hasn't people don't see them at all.

And regarding the input lag, I just don't fucking care at this point. It's been mentioned time and time again by a very small subset of people who have decided that it's fatal flaw. Most people seem to be playing the game blissfully unaware that that it even exists in this game at all. The issue is being blown way out of proportion.

Superstars has little to no glaring technical issues. It ain't perfect, but it's rub stably and is comfortable to play. I really don't care for people pretending it so much more offensive that it is. This series has seen all sorts of crap, technical and otherwise. Superstars just doesn't fit that criteria.

 

I wish I still had my Xbox copy to confirm the input lag. I sold it after beating because I had a JP Switch copy and then I didn’t play for a while. I didn’t notice anything when I played it initially and I’m usually pretty sensitive to that. Though it’s a bit harder if I have no frame of reference like comparing a real Mega Drive to an emulator.

I assume it is on PS4/PS5 as well? That’d be the next version I get.

 

It's not uncommon to find people experiencing the game crashing, no matter the platform.

It has become more common to experience game crashes due to the release of unfinished games and cutting on QA, but it's still not normal for games to crash sometimes.

 

The game never crashed for me. What's up with your copy?

 

I played it from start to finish, all stories, on both a friend's Switch and my own Xbox One, and experienced neither crashes nor input lag.

 

I don't remember it crashing either.

 

How

Also, Superstars is full of technical issues. As someone who has run through the game several times at this point, I keep coming across so many bizarre glitches and weird things happening that don't feel like they should. Sometimes, the camera just straight up breaks, and that's just one thing out of a myriad of other issues. The most glaring is multiplayer, which is straight up the buggiest game in the series since 06, if not buggier. It's unacceptable and one of the reasons I still can't rate the game very highly despite still enjoying the single player main story a fair amount.

 

Strangest glitch I encountered was during the GC boss in Trip’s story.

The missile explosion lingered into a static smoke cloud traveling towards me that killed me on contact so this wasn’t just a visual glitch, the box seems to represent its hurtbox.

 

Personal taste I guess, but I agree with lavolamp, at least about some of the levels. Titanic Monarch always feels a bit of a chore, and I don't really enjoy Stardust Speedway or Metallic Madness that much. Flying Battery is quite drawn out too.

 

Superstars isn't as good as Mania and the bosses are a slog but yeah no I love the level design. I honestly have no clue how it's supposed to be slower or worse than other Sonic games, it still feels pretty close to Sonic 3. Maybe closer to Advance 1, but definitely still less waiting-around on an immediate moment-to-moment level than Sonic 1.

I think it might just be that even though the game's alright, it should have been better. The bosses are an obvious mistake, the soundtrack, while full of great tracks and compositions, shouldn't be this clumsy and inconsistent, the game shouldn't have had so many DLC pieces chopped off and made exclusive to fucking ihop or whatever, it shouldn't have given you a fucking Epic Games popup every time you started it (which I know got patched, but shouldn't have been there). It's maybe not death by a thousand cuts, but at least a fleshwound by 40 or 50 cuts.

 

I wouldn't say Mania's levels are a chore, I have the opposite problem with them - they basically play themselves. Superstars' levels are a lot more engaging on the whole.

 

Mania levels play themselves until they launch you into a set of Spikes or an enemy and go "YOU FUCKING IDIOT WHY DIDN'T YOU KNOW THAT WAS THERE GO FUCKING DIE" and then you slam your toes into a wall after walking on a bunch of LEGOs because it's a much better sensation than playing Sonic Mania.

 

I loved the level in Super Stars with the giant snake floor that you bounce on. There's actually quite a few Superstars levels and layouts that I love quite a bit.

You can play games with and without iframes, and immediately see why it's a thing. Turrican has two versions, the original C64 version, and the NES port under the name "Super Turrican" (not to be confused with the unrelated SNES game). The original turrican lacks iframes, the NES port does not. A few seoncds playing will instantly show why having iframes is a very, very good thing. The game isn't ruined without iframes, but it is extremely different. Every brush with an enemy or object can drain your entire health bar in just a few frames, to the point where you basically have to treat the game as thought you have 1-hit deaths and no life bar.

 

It's hard for me to really compare the level design between Superstars and Mania (at least from what I remember what I played of Superstars) because the amount of time spent you spend fighting the bosses instead really puts the former at a disadvantage. That's not to say Mania didn't have long bosses either (if anything, it was arguably a design precursor for Superstars); but it's especially audacious with Superstars when you can have a playthrough where you're actually spending less time in the actual levels than you are just waiting for whatever Eggman machine you're fighting to finally expose a weak point you can actually hit. Within a generous window of two seconds. It's enough for me to figure that as far as general level philosophy and level constructions go, I wouldn't consider either one above the other.

One thing I think I will definitely say though in strong favor of Mania's level design --and something I've felt consistently since the game's release-- is that I'd argue there was significantly more ingenuity with the gimmicks and the world design. With Mania you either saw new stage mechanics and new zone concepts outright; or new twists/expansions on existing mechanics/zones that allowed them to truly stand out in a major way. Superstars has far less going in that area, which actually hurts it more in that it's the big new game set in new worlds; rather than the retraux remix game with some new material snuggled in. As far as "carnival/night city/pinball" levels go, you pit Studiopolis and Carnival Pinball against each other in the ring, and it's a knockout punch by the former--possibly on sheer novelty alone.

 

I'll actually say Super Stars gave me something I'd never seen before in a Sonic game before: a level done backwards. Only problem: I *hated* that level. I think that's actually an awful gimmick for a level. TBH, most final levels in Sonic games I dislike. Hated Metallic Madness, hated Wing Fortress, hated Launch Base Zone, hated titan monarch. Only scrap brain zone (and only the first two acts) and Death Egg Zone in S&Knuckles are final zones I actually enjoy.

I also don't really like the original zones in Sonic Mania that much. Mirage Saloon is the one I actually really like, but i'm mainly ambivalent on Studiopolis zone (although I like act 2 much better than act 1), and I really dislike press garden and titan monarch. That said, the remixed ideas in Sonic Mania are awesome and I like them generally better than the original zones they were based off of, except for Stardust Speedway. I like the original Stardust Speedway a lot more than Mania's version. But, like Lava Reef Zone? Flying battery Zone? ESPECIALLY Metallic Madness Zone? Give me the Mania versions any day of the week.