Sonic Critique

[Opa-Opa]

Health? What are you talking about health?

I dunno. Ring placement to me was always about calling attention to the different routes you could take. If there's a platform up high with a lot of rings on it, I'd make the trouble to jump there. I think it's pretty simple. Also, it's different from other platformers where collectibles only give you score because it gives you the illusion that you are more protected. Also, you get bonuses in every Sonic game for having lots of rings in the form of the Special and Bonus Stages.

[Kogen]

In most Super Sonic bosses the objective is to avoid obstacles and slam into the baddie whilst collecting rings along the way. Sonic Rush Adventure actually implemented attacks into the gameplay, which worked rather well.

Except you can almost beat it without looking at the screen.

It is a simplistic, poorly designed shooter.

[gr4yJ4Y]

I thought that the Sonic Rush Super Sonic battle was a lot better than the SRA one... It was more like an homage to the S3&K Doomsday Zone.

It was the same boss as Sonic Advance 2.

See I never played through Sonic Advance 2...

[Popcorn]

Jesus Christ. That shit sucks, Zeta. What's with all the complexity? The goddamn special moves? One-button design, you lunatic. One button.

[Segaholic2]

Jesus Christ. That shit sucks, Zeta. What's with all the complexity? The goddamn special moves? One-button design, you lunatic. One button.

I agree with this sentiment, but always felt that the introduction of the third dimension required the addition of at least one more button to Sonic's moveset: Crouch/spindash, since there's no other way to indicate "down" with a full 360 degree range of movement.

[Crazy Penguin]

I've wondered why they haven't tried doing that properly. Instead of having a spin-dash/somersault/dash move they could just have a button that makes Sonic roll into a ball, functioning the exact same way the D-Pad's Down button did in the 2D games.

It'd be similar to the Goron transformation in Zelda: Majora's Mask, but not as stiff, and you'd need to gain some momentum beforehand if you're on flat ground.

[Zeta]

Jesus Christ. That shit sucks, Zeta. What's with all the complexity? The goddamn special moves? One-button design, you lunatic. One button.

The one button design philosophy never worked for me for Sonic. In all of the Sonic games, his moves are far too context sensitive. You'll crouch when you want to roll, roll when you want to spindash, and spindash when you want to roll. It's something that can be easily solved by moving away from the antiquated 1-button design philosophy. The Genesis gamepad had 3 fucking buttons, and the Sonic games refused to use 2 of them, really. It's just like making players waggle the damn remote.

Also, if you're just want his old basics of a spin attack and spin jump, you might as well stick to emulation. A new Sonic game is going to have to be more than just a half-assed Romhack like Mega Man 9 and 10 and New Super Mario Bros.

There's also the issue of speed. The old Sonic games had no way to manage Sonic's speed effectively. If you wanted to stop, you either had to clumsily wrestle with the D pad or hope you ran into something that wouldn't kill you. The games never attempted to address this. If a new game wants a larger focus on speed (and thanks to shitty fandom, it would have to), you need a larger range of options on how to manage the speed effectively. Otherwise you're going to end up with either a game where you can just press right indefinitely to win, or a game where you keep on running into cheaply-placed spikes, traps, and pits. In other words, without adding a speed management mechanism, a new Sonic game is going to blow chunks. The problem with the Sonic series is that it tends to take control away from the player. Adding in a more detailed and complex control system that allows many options to manage speed and momentum puts the control back into the hands of the player.

[Zeta]

There is also the issue of Sonic being forced to compete with his supporting cast for attention.

As people have noted here, there's no point in playing Sonic in Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Tails and Knuckles both play like Sonic, but better. They each have about twice the amount of moves Sonic has.

Thus, if Sonic is ever to be featured in a game with them again, he has to be brought up to their level, or we'll continue to have the fandom and SEGA ruin the series by focusing on the supporting cast, simply because the supporting cast plays more interestingly, has more complicated moves, while Sonic remains the most boring character with the smallest amount of special moves in the cast.

But hey, what do I know? All I remember is that nobody gave two shits about Sonic back in Sonic 3 and Knuckles and just played Tails and Knuckles the entire game.

[Crowbar]

What was the name of that hack/fangame where Sonic could dash in almost any direction in midair, at the cost of a few rings, and had bosses with healthbars (both based on giant Orbinauts) and in the final act of the demo had you running at high-speed from a wall of fire.

I actually thought that was onto something pretty good in terms of managing speed.

[Segaholic2]

The one button design philosophy never worked for me for Sonic. In all of the Sonic games, his moves are far too context sensitive. You'll crouch when you want to roll, roll when you want to spindash, and spindash when you want to roll. It's something that can be easily solved by moving away from the antiquated 1-button design philosophy. The Genesis gamepad had 3 fucking buttons, and the Sonic games refused to use 2 of them, really. It's just like making players waggle the damn remote.

Wow, why the hell do you even like Sonic?

[Blank]

Thus, if Sonic is ever to be featured in a game with them again, he has to be brought up to their level, or we'll continue to have the fandom and SEGA ruin the series by focusing on the supporting cast, simply because the supporting cast plays more interestingly, has more complicated moves, while Sonic remains the most boring character with the smallest amount of special moves in the cast.

I thought the usage of elemental shields made him stand out well enough as well as the insta-shield, having an attack that didn't send you into flight or slow you down is perfectly fine for his playstyle. Its surprising you mention this though because I always thought the general opinion was that no one cared about the supporting characters and solo Sonic was preferred to all else.

When you talk about managing speed, your layout is a bit ambitious. Having control over Sonic is one thing, but I think you can still integrate that into classic play without so many different commands. You simply must control their situational uses so that Sonic doesn't need a new move just to do X. With a little resourcefulness with the analog, by differentiating tilting with full on jamming the stick down, you can still have different ways to control Sonic's roll or anything else like falling with momentum etc.

For example, tilting the stick slightly can cause a skid or somersault that slows you down, while fully mashing down will cause the roll. Just an example, not really something I figured would be ideal.

[Delphine]

The one button design philosophy never worked for me for Sonic.

You are putting way too much effort into trolling.

[Isuka]

I think most of the moves Zeta describes could be achieved by resorting to zone-specific gimmicks.

I'd totally add the ninja jump (already implemented in some of the 3D games as the triangle jump, basically the same as Mighty's wall kick but with classic, non-sucky physics) and maybe some stuff when inputting up+jump and down+jump (Hyper Sonic's mid-air dash was a pretty good idea). And maybe come up with an entire zone designed around Super Sonic's abilities and moveset rather than just the true final boss.

Of course, the same goes for 3D Sonic with, at least, two action buttons. I don't quite like the idea of having to resort to a third button other than for picking up items, which is also something I don't want to do much in a Sonic game, at least not in action stages.

[Zeta]

Wow, why the hell do you even like Sonic?

To be quite honest - I didn't. As I said, I played the games only for Tails and Knuckles and could not for the life of me understand why anyone would pick Sonic over them. Or why Sonic was the main character when all he could do was run fast, when Tails and Knuckles could do that and fly.

Sonic with Tails and Knuckles was and is like putting Hawkman in the Justice League. Hawkman's only superpower is that he can fly. Every other member of the League can fly and do other shit, too.

Sonic is and was suffering from the Mickey Mouse syndrome - a bland protagonist with a much more interesting supporting cast. At least in playstyle if not personality.

I thought the usage of elemental shields made him stand out well enough

The problem being that Tails and Knuckles don't lose their ability to fly after being hit once.

insta-shield, having an attack that didn't send you into flight or slow you down is perfectly fine for his playstyle.

I only found the insta-shield useful for killing those spinny spiked enemies (Orbnauts?) It was easier to avoid them than to fight them.

[Isuka]

But hey, what do I know? All I remember is that nobody gave two shits about Sonic back in Sonic 3 and Knuckles and just played Tails and Knuckles the entire game.

I remember enjoying playing as Tails in 3 because flying allowed to bypass many obstacles, but it got boring quickly and I shifted back to Sonic and never went back to young Prower. Essentially the same happened with Super/ Hyper Sonic, it broke an already pretty easy game, and I wanted to be able to use my W spin attack whenever I wanted to rather than transform him. Knuckles was an overall better deal; extra maneuverability, extra difficulty. Then again, his game was a bit short. I tend to alternate between both when replaying 3&K.

[Dash]

Ever since SA2, I've thought 3D Sonic could afford to have a dedicated "Tricks" button. Instead of all the auto-pilot swinging, grinding, grabbing, and wall-running, a button you could hit to do some well timed score-increasing new-path-opening stunts. It could open Sonic to some parkour/extreme sport ideas, which I think is fitting. Like Prince of Persia mixed with Tony Hawk, if you can picture it. If it came to including other characters, traversing levels in classic A to B style, they could even keep it a Sonic exclusive ability so it would make his gameplay more compelling. Tails and Knuckles have their flight and climbing, while Sonic has better speed and can find amazing routes if you have enough skill.

And yeah, a crouch button would be a good idea. It would encourage rolling again and maybe physics(!). A shoulder button kind of deal would be superb.

So I guess what I'm thinking is a jump button, crouch, and the context "trick" button(that isn't heavily required to actually finish a level.). I don't think three buttons are too complicated for a 3D space. You could have the boost button too, though I don't encourage it, since I'd like ball-type attacks and natural acceleration to be at the forefront and boost in it's current form just kills that. Maybe, for speed management, include a dedicated brake button? Since you can't just pull back and stop like in 2-D, this would solve that problem.


Oh yeah, about 2D Sonic, I think they've really done great with it in S3&K. Just get back to that, as none of the Advance/Rush games have. It's more about level design than gameplay tweaks. I would say possibly cut the boost button, include wall-jump, and make a "look ahead" feature(camera pan out as speed increases or actual screen scroll shoulder button), but there's little calling to reinvent the wheel until they can make one that isn't square.

[FlashTHD]

For a good 3D Sonic game that's vaugely like the Adventures, three buttons and a not-often used fourth ought to get the job done in most cases. Provided they're not mapped/executed like hell, as in Unleashed day stages. The Shadow game used that face button arrangement very well. Of course whatever else is helpful, beside the core functions, that can be tacked onto the shoulder buttons/second stick/ect. is a bonus.

Unleashed had a crouch button, but it only got used to slide, duck (very rarely), or do a somewhat awkward kick attack. I'm not going to fault them for not doing the spin dash strictly the old fashioned way all this time though, the games that have had the move seemed to do fine without the extra steps of having to stop and duck. It was maybe a smidge overpowered in SA1, but recall that SA2 needed you to hold the button for a sec to trigger it, and the Shadow game had slide on the same button so you had to stop anyway. let us not speak of Sonic 06

[Popcorn]

Jesus Christ. That shit sucks, Zeta. What's with all the complexity? The goddamn special moves? One-button design, you lunatic. One button.

I agree with this sentiment, but always felt that the introduction of the third dimension required the addition of at least one more button to Sonic's moveset: Crouch/spindash, since there's no other way to indicate "down" with a full 360 degree range of movement.

I've always felt that too-- I'd love to see a 'ball mode' button in 3D Sonic, and to bring back the physics as other people have mentioned-- but that only applies to the 3D games. Zeta's talking 2D.

Speaking of Zeta... well, it turns out that from now on, Zeta and I... are enemies.

The one button design philosophy never worked for me for Sonic.

Mystifying.

In all of the Sonic games, his moves are far too context sensitive. You'll crouch when you want to roll, roll when you want to spindash, and spindash when you want to roll. It's something that can be easily solved by moving away from the antiquated 1-button design philosophy. The Genesis gamepad had 3 fucking buttons, and the Sonic games refused to use 2 of them, really. It's just like making players waggle the damn remote.

Baffling, boggling, bewildering. How is Sonic's one-button design "like making players waggle the damn remote"? I seriously have no idea what you're talking about.

The Sonic games only needed one button because there was no need for any others. (There are even some who argue the spin dash was a complexity too far.) The one-button system isn't "antiquated", it's elegant, accessible, intuitive and endlessly flexible-- and a huge part of why the original games were so successful. Between 1991 and 1994, a seemingly bottomless pit of subtle and varied gameplay emerged from that one damn jump-and-roll mechanic. These are simply perfect, unimprovable games. If Sonic's one-button philosophy "never worked for you" then you really did never like or understand Sonic the Hedgehog and you have no business improving him.

Also, if you're just want his old basics of a spin attack and spin jump, you might as well stick to emulation. A new Sonic game is going to have to be more than just a half-assed Romhack like Mega Man 9 and 10 and New Super Mario Bros.

I can't speak for Mega Man 9, but the reason New Super Mario Bros sucks is the same reason all the modern handheld Sonics suck: it's a lazy, shallow rehash of the better ideas that came before it. Like the classic Mario games, Sonics 1-3K were made by a development team that was absolutely at the top of its field, a crack squad of talent assembled to create what was at the time the absolute cutting-edge of consumer entertainment with all the money and marketing and industry thunder in the world to back it. Sonic Rush was farmed out to some third-rate developer - Dimps, was it? - instructed to throw existing Sonic assets into a superficially new configuration and call it a product. "Half-assed" is the term for it, yes. If anything, the modern 2D Sonic and Mario games are crippled by their hapless misunderstanding of the games they ape, familiar ideas applied in familiar contexts but missing various critical elements like proper level design or art direction or good old-fashioned charm.

Of course, I don't actually want a new 2D Sonic game. Not even a great one. That's been done. At least three times, depending on whether you count Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles as the same game or not (and you should). Now, a properly brilliant 3D Sonic game - that hasn't happened yet. Not that I hold out much hope.

There's also the issue of speed. The old Sonic games had no way to manage Sonic's speed effectively. If you wanted to stop, you either had to clumsily wrestle with the D pad

You press back on the D-Pad and Sonic stops. Admittedly he has some stopping distance, but so does Mario. And in fact pretty much every cartoon platform hero ever.

or hope you ran into something that wouldn't kill you. The games never attempted to address this. If a new game wants a larger focus on speed (and thanks to shitty fandom, it would have to), you need a larger range of options on how to manage the speed effectively. Otherwise you're going to end up with either a game where you can just press right indefinitely to win, or a game where you keep on running into cheaply-placed spikes, traps, and pits.

No. The classic Sonic games managed Sonic's speed through sensible level design. You're rarely, if ever, led blindly into any kind of danger during sequences designed to encourage fast movement. Instead, the levels slow the player down through smart placement of obstacles and platforms. Contrast this with the recent handheld Sonics, whose levels involve long and rather boring speed sequences with massive spike pits placed mercilessly at the end of them. These are games designed under that classic assumption that Sonic is "all about speed", which was never true.

There is also the issue of Sonic being forced to compete with his supporting cast for attention.

The simplest solution to this is to remove the supporting cast, who've never been as compelling or fun as the star they're meant to support.

When the time of the cleansing comes I'll spare Eggman, probably Metal Sonic if he keeps the original Sonic CD design, and maybe Tails if I do a sequel, but that will be it.

As people have noted here, there's no point in playing Sonic in Sonic 3 and Knuckles. Tails and Knuckles both play like Sonic, but better. They each have about twice the amount of moves Sonic has.

There are three reasons to play as Sonic in S3K. The first reason is that Sonic is, simply, by far the coolest character in the whole damn franchise and possibly even the history of video games. The second reason is that while Tails' and Knuckles' play modes add layers of variety and depth they are ultimately only diluting what is, as I said above, a beautifully elegant control mechanism that doesn't need much mucking about with anyway. The third reason is that the game still has a bias towards Sonic in terms of him being the real star of the show, and it's only Sonic that lets you see every level and unlock the "real" ending. (On a more fiddly note, as other people have said, only Sonic gets to use the various bubble shield power-ups, which add a small element of strategy and decision-making to play; and Sonic obviously takes different routes to Knuckles, routes which typically emphasise his speed and agility over Knuckles' brute strength. But I'll let you off without those ones.)

I will concede, however, that it always bothered me how Sonic's top speed was (I think) no better than that of Tails or Knuckles. Allowing other characters to match him devalues one of his defining character traits.

Thus, if Sonic is ever to be featured in a game with them again, he has to be brought up to their level, or we'll continue to have the fandom and SEGA ruin the series by focusing on the supporting cast, simply because the supporting cast plays more interestingly, has more complicated moves, while Sonic remains the most boring character with the smallest amount of special moves in the cast.

Just kick all the other bastards out the back door, for god's sake. Fuckin' pretenders. This isn't hard.

[Segaholic2]

I will concede, however, that it always bothered me how Sonic's top speed was (I think) no better than that of Tails or Knuckles. Allowing other characters to match him devalues one of his defining character traits.

I'm fairly certain that Tails' top speed is noticeably slower than Sonic's, and Knuckles' jumping height is noticeably shorter than Sonic's.

[Isuka]

I think I also enjoy more playing with Sonic in 3&K due to the fact that each zone's gimmicks, as a part of the general interactive scenery, allow for more control in the game's pace. This is most apparent in previous titles since those were developed only with Sonic as a playable character (and Tails is hardly any different from Sonic in 2), so in 3&K Yasuhara and the others had to come up with gimmicks that also took into consideration the other two characters' abilities, and since the player could bypass obstacles, enemies and pace-regulating gimmicks by flying above them, they narrowed some routes with stuff like fans in Hydrocity, tops in Marble Garden, the infamous drums in Carnival Night, corkscrew elevators in Flying Battery, sand traps in Sandopolis, just to name a few, gimmicks that were absolutely required for all characters to work with in order to advance. Some of them weren't especially fun, precisely because of this additional function of forcing Tails and Knuckles players into the path, while still providing variety to differentiate each zone, so in this respect 3&K is somewhat inferior to the original and maybe even CD. Some parts of Knuckles' stages (like his second act at Angel Island) are specifically designed around his gliding and climbing abilities and are therefore free of this kind of "obstacle gimmicks".

You press back on the D-Pad and Sonic stops. Admittedly he has some stopping distance, but so does Mario. And in fact pretty much every cartoon platform hero ever.

It is also important that this holds true when in midair too, lacking inertia while still keeping momentum leads to some pretty imprecise, even frustrating platforming when travelling at high speeds. Just look at Jazz Jackrabbit 2, most of the time there are very few natural hazards in the stages because of this lack of "aerial accuracy".

[Crazy Penguin]

I will concede, however, that it always bothered me how Sonic's top speed was (I think) no better than that of Tails or Knuckles. Allowing other characters to match him devalues one of his defining character traits.

Agreed. Also always bothered me that a fluffy fox had the same rolling attack a spikey hedgehog did. Tails was introduced for the sole purpose of having a two-player mode, and although he makes a nice contrast to Sonic visually it's Metal Sonic who is ultimately better suited to this role.

[Esrever]

In Sonic 3&K's 1-player mode, Sonic and Tails have exactly the same top speed and jump height, while Knuckles runs distinctly slower and has a lower jump.

But in Sonic 3's two player mode, Tails does get his own set of unique attributes... he runs even slower than Knuckles, but jumps even higher than Sonic. They also give each character a distinct traction attribute (which determines how quickly they can skid to a stop). It was an interesting way of making the characters feel distinct, especially considering that Knuckles didn't have his climbing or gliding abilities yet.

* Sonic: High speed, medium jump, low traction;
* Tails: Low speed, high jump, medium traction;
* Knuckles: medium speed, low jump, high traction.

I have no idea why I remember all this! But it basically determined which characters could obtain the best time attack lap times on each course.

[Jack Bz]

What I liked about Sonic Adventure was that Sonic was made more special and fun by being the only character that had the spin dash, which made him faster than Tails and Knuckles while they still all had similar running speed. It also gave Tails and Knuckles the "ball mode" by pressing b when they were running, which was a good way to keep incorporating the slope physics (except Knuckles didn't really get to use it for anything useful).

[Kogen]

I have an idea !!!

Make the light dash and the downward bounce the same button.

[Malchik]

I have an idea !!!

Make the light dash and the downward bounce the same button.

So many times have I bounced down a bottomless pit.