Sonic Lost World (Wii U, 3DS, PC) Megathread

I'm just going to cross my fingers with the DLC. I actually enjoyed the Yoshi's Island DLC, so hopefully they'll decide to push out more in the future.

 

I didn't see anyone talking about it so it's worth mentioning! Sonic Lost World has antialiasing in 2D mode! It looks it just smooths things across lines, not between columns, though!

 

What's wrong with the 3DS version? I'm considering it, and I don't have a Wii U.

 

I enjoy Lost World.

... the lesser half of it that's worth replaying

... if I stick to the main path and don't deviate to tackle boring obstacles

... and avoid the dreadful parkour and Wisps

... up until I come to a boss battle.

*sigh* Parts of it are fun, but definitely only a minority. It's riddled with design problems, and the tubular 'Mario Galaxy' esque layouts do Sonic no favours, made abundantly clear by the strongest levels being DR1 and TC1 which are flat (in the sense that they don't offer a 360° playing field). There's no slopes or typical Sonicy level design anywhere to be seen in 3D, and with the way the levels are designed you won't even come across many obstacles because they're all on the slower, non-main paths that you have no reason to want to explore. The 2D stages too are the really pretty naff. They're like Generations' 2D Modern areas.

The graphics are really flat too. Under the right circumstances, the game can be pretty to look at. Most of the time though, it's abundantly clear that there's very little going on in the way of lighting and it feels tacky. Even the music falls short of the usual standards for the series. Oh and the Wisps. I could forego them being shoehorned into the game with no story explanation if they were fun to use. But they couldn't actually have been any worse. They all slow you down, and prior to the patch that added traditional controls for all the Wisps barring Rhythm (which is God awful, doesn't always work and can be skipped in all instances) were a nightmare to control.

The biggest issue I have with it design-wise is the parkour. Ever since I first played Jet Set Radio, I've wanted a Sonic game that incorporated lots of mechanics from it. Instead, we've got little more than a glorified wall-run from ShTH, complete with needlessly cumbersome controls (also a major issue outside of the parkour). It doesn't just leave something to be desired, it leaves me with a feeling of bitter disappointment because I honestly expected so much more. Lost World is a mixed-bag at best, and pretty poor at worst.

If you consider Colours and Generations to be Unleashed 2 and 3 respectively, both building on the positive parts of the game before without changing the fundamentals, would you want to see Lost World 2? Personally I'd say no. The foundations set here are much weaker than Unleashed's. Redesign the parkour system, and implement it into something more akin to SA1/2/06, please SEGA.

Everything I've written above. Except, the visuals are worse (even by 3DS standards), the controls are never good, it has the worst HA in any Sonic game and arguably the worst level design to boot. Stay away. It's a bad game.

 

Hold on, I've played the 3ds version and the only thing I've found bad about it was the special stages. the controlls work fine. but you do have to know when to slow down.

 

I take it you haven't beaten the game on 3DS yet? Trust me, you'll come to loathe this game in the later levels, as they get longer and longer and LONGER STILL. 30 minute stages would be too long on a console game because they lack variety and become trudges (see: Shadow the Hedgehog), but this problem is compounded when handheld stages are this long, as it makes it impossible to enjoy in bite-sized chunks, which handheld games really ought to be tailored for. The 3DS game does get off to a strong start, and in some ways is better than its console counterpart, but by the end it's reduced to nothing but one long slog.

 

[Deleted post]

 

What a shame, I was looking forward to the Xtreme-looking gameplay.

What's the point of the 3DS version? Did Dimps try to stuff the Wii version into a 3DS game or is it a completely different game?

 

Very different game. The 3DS version has a much heavier emphasis on Wisps and level designs that make Sonic Heroes's levels look good.

 

Mmm, a much bigger emphasis. Not 100% required, though. Here's a little thing I did about the Wisps being required in the 3DS version (in brackets are the number of stages that do not require Wisps to go through):

All of Windy Hill Zone [5, note that the tutorial level gives this level 1 more Zone than others, but it's not really much of a tutorial stage so it counts as a normal stage]
All of Desert Ruins Zone, excluding Zone 1 [3]
All of Tropical Coast Zone, excluding Zone 1 and 3 [2]
All of Frozen Factory Zone, excluding Zone 1 and Boss [2]
All of Silent Forest, excluding Zone 1 [3]
All of Sky Road, excluding Zone 2 [3]
All of Lava Mountain Zone, excluding Zeena Boss [3]

So, let's calculate. 5 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 21 stages you can beat without Wisps out of the total 29 stages. That's not too bad, now is it? If you have Super Sonic unlocked, that number rises up one or two due to Super Sonic's incredible mobility.

 

Actually, I have beaten it. It's the Wii U version I'm still working on.

I'm up to lava mountain act 3 on the Wii U, and I'm working on the extra stages on the 3ds

 

I played it from start to finish, and found that past Windy Hill the game was an absolute nightmare. My first impressions of it even were something along the lines of "wow, this is great. Not up the standards of the Wii U version, but a decent game in it's own right. I look forward to seeing what the other levels are like". Not to shit on Dimps because it's cool, but they really do not seem to have it in them to make a good Sonic game.

 

I'm not sure I get your definition of "great"...

 

Anyone else particularly curious to see SEGA's next financial report? Lost World has done pretty poorly in the UK charts, not just on the Wii U but on the 3DS too. And on top of that, it's not even managed well in the eShop charts. I really want to know what their sales expectations were, and what the sales actually have been. Despite being a Wii/DS exclusive, Colours managed to outsell Generations in the same time period between an early November release and the next financial report by some 200K units (Gens was about 1.8M, Colours was about 2.0M), and I bet that the ease of developing for just Nintendo platforms, which they've had the most success on in the past, as well as the partnership with Nintendo is what they were banking on to bring them success again with this game. But that was probably decided after they struck up said partnership and before the U failed to live up to anyone's expectations.

It's still pretty shocking to have seen the 3DS version to have seemingly done so poorly though. The handheld games normally do very well. Generations stayed in the UK all-format top 40 for a long time solely because of the 3DS version.

 

From what I'm hearing, as much as I already love the 3DS version, I can't wait to try out the Wii U version!

I agree that the later levels are turning out to be a bit underwhelming, but nothing feels particularly bad so far.

 

I've found a pretty cool Parkour trick in the Wii U version of Lost World. If you run up a small obstacle (like the stairs at the very beginning of Windy Hill Zone 2) and tap ZR as you vault over it, Sonic will flip faster over it and do a small air dash. Pretty sweet.