Sonic Unleashed: The Post-PC Port Discussion Thread

You shouldn't want to avoid fighting enemies in a game about fighting enemies.

 

If that's bad game design in your eyes, fine, but I don't think that's bad at all.

It's a can, not a must, to fight them. With a decent time, you can even still get an S rank.

 

For a casual playthrough, I agree. But on repeat playthroughs, or when not going for an S rank, having the ability to avoid enemies is nice. Do you REALLY want to deal with every damn enemy every time you do a hotdog challenge? Or when you're just hunting for medals?

 

Maybe not every single one if I'm trying to be efficient. But the gameplay is based on combat. Thats the bread and butter. It's a problem if you're looking to skip as much cost as possible, because I should be enjoying the combat.

 

I view it as equally about combat as it is about platforming. And I actually like how the platforming flows in many of the Werehog stages; it's pretty satisfying to thread the needle and time grabs and jumps just right. The combat is the most contentious part but it's okay; it could be a lot better (insert action game here) but it could be a lot worse (insert any other Sonic game with combat here). It gets a lot more enjoyable when you figure out which attacks help you move fast or take out enemies quicker.

IDK, I have a mild, if not positive experience with the Werehog. Shamar and Empire City are the worst of it for sure, but even that becomes pretty breezy when you learn the route. I dunno. I can't make myself hate it!

 

Yes, you should, but consider the fact that God of War doesn't ask you to replay the same levels over and over. Even with the best combat system ever, I would not want that. So if you're going to force me to replay the same bloody stages over and over when doing missions, or when finding collectibles, you better at least give me the ability to skip fights if I can.

And furthermore, maybe this is a combat game, but it's also a Sonic game. I didn't sign up for a beatemup, I signed up for a platforming adventure. So at least some of the parts that don't contribute to that should be optional for players who have the right to not want to engage with it. And yes, I feel that way for the non-Sonic gameplay of the other Adventure titles as well.

 

The werehog is inherently a pace-breaker and probably a bad addition to the game. My opinion has always been that if you're not going to completely overhaul something from the ground up, patching the hell out of it to be as inoffensive as possible is better than leaning in and trying to force it. "You shouldn't want to avoid fighting enemies in a game about fighting enemies"? Yes, in a good game about fighting enemies, but the werehog isn't that. I absolutely believe that dev intent and vision should be completely bulldozed if it leads to a better-paced game. Werehog is a were-slog, and turning it from bad God of War into Mediocre Climbing Sim 2008 With Some Enemies isn't great, but it feels less exhausting, especially as part of a campaign. I feel this way about a lot of things -- Shadow's branching paths, Silver's slow-ass gameplay, enemies in Sonic having healthbars instead of dying in one hit in general. I understand the appeal of some of these things and I'd never want to see the original versions go unpreserved, but for my tastes or how I'd handle rereleases with a focus on User Experience, I would be happy to see these mechanics completely bulldozed in favor of something more traditional, more briskly paced and more sane.

"You shouldn't want to avoid fighting enemies in a game about fighting enemies"? You're right, but in this game I do. If I can mangle that game in such a way that I don't have to do it as often, suddenly the game I'm playing feels better! No amount of leaning into the original idea is making it better, so why take the path of more resistance?

 

Even if you patch a ton of the Werehog's problems out with mods, as I mentioned, the issue of the Werehog is more of a systemic one: Sonic Team is desperately trying to find ways to pad out the length of Sonic games, because otherwise they're building levels that are 10 miles long only for the game to be beaten in 3 hours anyway. In SA1, this was done by making you replay the same fucking story 6 times with different gameplay genres slapped on. In Heroes, this was done by making you beat the game 4 times to see the final boss, and every level takes half an hour to beat. In Shadow, this was extended to 10 times. In Unleashed, it's the Werehog stages which take, again, upwards of half an hour. It wasn't until Colors and Generations where the devs finally gave up and just let Sonic be a fucking platformer, game length be damned...only to go back on this afterwards by shoehorning in MORE padding, MORE combat, and/or making everything slower.

At least the Werehog contains platforming. It controls like shit (without mods) and breaks all the rules for how those kinds of games should be designed (even WITH mods), but it IS platforming. The levels themselves are not even poorly designed; it's all the camera and controls.

 

I feel like the werehog has a problem of polish. The actual core systems are fine. Inoffensive at best - but it's missing a lot that'd make it feel actually fun to play, which causes it to feel like a chore when playing.

Stuff like, better sound effects (it legitimately sounds like you're hitting things with a foam stick at times), less intrusive QTEs, a proper scoring system, reasons to actually use different moves, a better character controller for movement (the fact you turn in a wide half-circle when turning backwards feels absolutely awful, for example), a combo system that didn't feel so limiting, and a less janky-feeling way of speeding up platforming sections/combat. A lot of this just comes down to polish, and having more time to develop the systems into something more than a barebones GoW clone.

I actually enjoy the idea of a stretchy armed action game character - but Sonic Unleashed barely does anything with the idea.

 

To be fair, that's the most consistent aspect of Sonic games -- they always come pretty close to feeling like decent games; it's always clear they just need a bit of spit and polish before final release to really make everything about them properly click into place in the ways the developers intended, which is something they never get.

 

Frontiers combat > Werehog combat

In fact, Frontiers' combat was (dare I say) enjoyable. It was actually quick-paced and the moves were lightning fast to perform, something I wish the Werehog was more like. It wasn't quite Zelda-level of course, but I found it less tedious than Genshin Impact's combat (though that's not saying a lot).

Anyway, the Werehog's combat would be more enjoyable if it was more responsive (mainly faster/shorter attack animations ala Frontiers) and relied less on button mashing and QTEs. Ditto for the Werehog gameplay as a whole -- it should be faster-paced and less reliant on context-sensitive actions with slow animations.

 

There are multiple ways you can try and crowbar Unleashed into shape and the beauty of mods is that none of them are incorrect, per say, but if we were talking about some kind of official remaster I'd appreciate changes toward making the combat more rewarding as much as I would seeing lowkey changes made for for pacing but that's down to personal preference, I don't really care what someone else decides to do with it.

My point was more that if we're talking about the official version of the game, complimenting how an action game plays when you decide to avoid enemies seems contradictory when most people aren't going to look at the werehog's kit and decide to do that. Ideally the thrill would be getting in and busting some heads. You should want to do it. You should see enemies and get fired up. That's my only point.

Ideally, yes honestly? S ranks should be based on your efficiency with the combat system since that's the meat and potatoes of the mode. If anything I think there should be bonus points for playing every encounter and playing them well. If pacing is an issue than I'd say Sonic needs more tools to efficiently dispatch enemies more than I'd say stuff needs to be cut out.

 

...I don't think I agree the Werehog stages are bound by destiny to become a combat mode and you should want to beat up all enemies. Their objective is always to reach the goal, not defeat all or even any number of enemies-- except of course for the sections where the game decides you have to beat all enemies to proceed. Of course the combat being nice to play would make the game better, but that's just a truism.

There isn't anything inherently wrong with avoiding combat, or wanting to avoid combat, in the new Tomb Raider games or Prince of Persia or or even (crazy, right) Dynasty Warriors depending on the mission. I think the format can be flexible like that, and if anything Unleashed's night stages become boring, more than anything else, by not embracing the many things you can do by making combat and movement one and the same in different map designs and mission structures. It usually and neatly separates "platforming" and "combat" in two different moments, and when they're together it's just critters stopping you from platforming and being very annoying about it. Surely there's more you can do even if you're not focusing on making the stage just an arena.

 

I get all that, but I don't view them as wholly separate. I'm primarily interested in the scene for the "Vanilla+" experience, I can say that almost every mod I regularly play with in a Sonic game is something I'd rather see integrated officially as the default, regardless of how wildly it changes things from how someone might read the original dev intent (though, as stated, don't bury the original versions). The only exceptions are niche things I use that rely on my own skill as an experienced fan, rather than QOL changes that would make it more accessible for general audiences, and there's not a lot of those. Far be it from me to once again rant about how bad Cyberspace controls in Frontiers and how extremely quickly and easily it was fixed by fans, only for SEGA to leave them basically unaltered.

And, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the combat shouldn't be more engaging, but as of now there aren't that many mods that make it that way for my tastes. So making the engagement more transactional with the player's score as opposed to ignoring enemies they don't feel like bothering with just results in a better game.

It's not like it actually does remove the combat after all, if you did improve the feel and mechanics themselves I still would want to let players run past if they really wanted to, I think it's only a net positive for the most part, since if it does work for you, you'll be fighting just as much as you would otherwise.

 

Ideally in an action platformer combat and platforming would be one, yes, and the game would leverage both to create unique gameplay scenarios but that's not really how Sonic Unleashed is built. Sonic Unleashed is built like a beat em up where getting into most fights is inevitable and thus SHOULD be the fun part of the game. In a beat em up the goal is ALSO actually just to reach the end of the stage with a litany of mandatory fights between you and it, with a few optional encounters on the periphery. This is as true of the Werehog as the games that it's actually aping. Since this game is built in the shape of a beat em up, and not a game with a ton of Adventure Game or Strategy game elements, it is bad that players generally just want to avoid combat. It's not even for any emergent reason like it would be in something like Dynasty Warriors. It's strictly because combat is a chore.

The platforming some people are praising in this thread is so simple it honestly feels more like an after-thought. There are better games where you have access to a grappling hook to explore with and can mow down enemies as a pace breaker.