Wii are very frustrated. (SatSR) [Minor Spoilers Ahead?]
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Segaholic2
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The races are retarded because your opponent is way too fast, generally. One of the most annoying parts of the game is the difficulty in keeping Sonic moving at a satisfactory speed. While this could be seen as part of the challenge, it essentially boils down to simple level memorization, which in my opinion isn't all that fun.
I got to play SatSR for a few hours at a friend's house and I have to say that your review is spot on, Segaholic. Your paragraph about the charged jump particularly resonates with my feelings after playing the game. Also, I couldn't help feeling that the game suffered from the Wiimote set-up; I think I'd have enjoyed it more if I'd been using a D-pad rather than tilting the controller left and right.
Although I've got to wonder. Wouldn't level memorization be a pretty big part of racing games like Mario Kart 64 and Double Dash? I mean I know while it's possible for a newbie to hold their own on complicated Double Dash levels, its not very likely. And yet these games still manage to be fun. I haven't played secret rings but I am anxious to. Thanks for the informative review. You're absolutely right about sonic's success being determined by flow.
Got it today, and I'm a couple hours in. The jump mechanism is indeed a stupid decision, and I hate the racing levels, but I'm having a good time overall, which is a nice change. Does anyone else find it weird that more responsive handling has to be earned, though? Shouldn't they just give you good controls from the start?
I'm getting pretty far along in the game now. I just beat Erazor (which was, for the record, an incredibly cool but totally excruciating boss fight), but I don't have all seven rings yet. Here are a few random thoughts I have based on what some of you folks have been saying.
The Racing Missions
I swear guys, ignore the racing missions until you get all the various speed and momentum skill upgrades. Until then it's exactly like 'holic says... your opponent IS too fast. You can not win.
But eventually you will get:
* A skill that increases your acceleration
* A skill that increases your top speed
* A skill that eliminates the loss of speed when you land from a jump (Actually, it gives you a speed BOOST when you land a jump)
It's madness, MADNESS, to try and do the racing missions without at least getting the third skill I mentioned there. But once you have them the races are not very hard.
Isn't it kind of stupid that I have to "earn" good controls?
Well, yes. It is a little strange how you have to earn skills as essential as "better steering", at least! But ultimately I can see why they did it that way.
What the steering powerups really do is increase the speed at which Sonic can move left and right. Essentially you are upgrading his strafing speed to keep pace with his running speed, which also gets upgraded as the game progresses. The non-upgraded strafing speed, on the other hand, is designed to match the non-upgraded running speed.
Memorization
Secret Rings definitely requires some level memorization in order to get good rankings. In this regard it's no different than other on-rails score-based games like NiGHTS or Rez. It does, however, give it considerably different feel from the original Sonic titles.
If anything, you could say Secret Rings takes the changes made to Sonic's gameplay in the 3D titles and pushes it even further in that direction. Like getting the A ranks in Sonic Adventure 2, the Wii game is all about replaying, mastering, and making "perfect runs" on the game's courses. The difference, of course, is that the Wii version has adopted a control scheme and on-rails design that is much, much better suited to that kind of gameplay.
The missions were definitely designed with all this in mind. The main stages, which are usually 8 to 10 minutes long, contain tons of checkpoints and not life limits whatsoever. This makes them very forgiving... you can really just plow your way through to the end.
Alternately, there are a number of short, brutal missions that contain no checkpoints at all and have much more exacting standards for silver and gold medals than the longer missions. These are the courses that you have to replay over and over and memorize to master. And as a result, they're much shorter than the main missions... usually only 1 to 2 minutes long. Think of them as the Mario 3 to the main mission's Mario World.
Obviously you have to LIKE memorizing and mastering obstacle courses to enjoy those missions, but if you do like that sort of thing, they're short enough to make mastering them perfectly feasible.
Music
I like the level music. It sounds very reminiscent of the songs in the original Sonic Adventure that were not written by Jun Senoue. A lot of the new soundtrack was written by Kenichi Tokoi and Fumie Kumatani, and you can pick those tracks out immediately. The Skeleton Dome music sounds very similar to Tokoi's work in NiGHTS.
Jumping
This is basically the only part of Segaholic's review that I disagree with. He is totally right about the game's other flaws... some of the missions ARE stupid or annoying, and moving backwards really is awkward and frightening. But I like the jumping!
I think the charged jump fits well with the on-rails control scheme, just like it fits in well with similar on-rails games like SSX. There are occasional places where it doesn't seem to give you enough time to react to the things ahead of you, but I didn't find that happened nearly as often as 'holic did. Usually the game is very good about letting you see upcoming enemies lurking off to the side of the course, getting ready to jump in at you. There is definitely a reflex aspect to it, though. You're usually given a window to start charging, but it's can definitely be a small one.
I also like the charging because I like the sliding aspect. Honestly it just feels right to have Sonic to slow down before you plan, aim and execute a jump. It has a great sense of timing to it.
And finally, man do I love the jump cancel. This is my favourite part of the jumping system. The jump cancel lets you drop Sonic straight down to the ground from any point in the air. If you press '1', he'll drop and start running again; if you press '2', he'll land, stop, and immediately start charging for another jump. Using the jump cancel lets you make precise pinpoint landings that were totally unfeasible in previous 3D Sonic games. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes incredibly easy to land Sonic on the tiniest of platforms, or onto a small switch surrounded by a ring of spikey balls.
And I've already mentioned earlier how I love the targeting system for the homing attack. Honestly, the entire jumping system for the game is really well thought out. It's considerably more complicated than the jumping in previous titles, and it has a pretty steep learning curve, but once you get the hang of it it's really flexible and robust. When you have so little control over Sonic's running direction, the jumping really has to take on a level of depth and importance that it didn't have before, and I think it has done so quite admirably. I think it was handled really well overall, even though there are occasionally places in the level design that don't give adequate time for the jump charging.
The Racing Missions
I swear guys, ignore the racing missions until you get all the various speed and momentum skill upgrades. Until then it's exactly like 'holic says... your opponent IS too fast. You can not win.
But eventually you will get:
* A skill that increases your acceleration
* A skill that increases your top speed
* A skill that eliminates the loss of speed when you land from a jump (Actually, it gives you a speed BOOST when you land a jump)
It's madness, MADNESS, to try and do the racing missions without at least getting the third skill I mentioned there. But once you have them the races are not very hard.
Isn't it kind of stupid that I have to "earn" good controls?
Well, yes. It is a little strange how you have to earn skills as essential as "better steering", at least! But ultimately I can see why they did it that way.
What the steering powerups really do is increase the speed at which Sonic can move left and right. Essentially you are upgrading his strafing speed to keep pace with his running speed, which also gets upgraded as the game progresses. The non-upgraded strafing speed, on the other hand, is designed to match the non-upgraded running speed.
Memorization
Secret Rings definitely requires some level memorization in order to get good rankings. In this regard it's no different than other on-rails score-based games like NiGHTS or Rez. It does, however, give it considerably different feel from the original Sonic titles.
If anything, you could say Secret Rings takes the changes made to Sonic's gameplay in the 3D titles and pushes it even further in that direction. Like getting the A ranks in Sonic Adventure 2, the Wii game is all about replaying, mastering, and making "perfect runs" on the game's courses. The difference, of course, is that the Wii version has adopted a control scheme and on-rails design that is much, much better suited to that kind of gameplay.
The missions were definitely designed with all this in mind. The main stages, which are usually 8 to 10 minutes long, contain tons of checkpoints and not life limits whatsoever. This makes them very forgiving... you can really just plow your way through to the end.
Alternately, there are a number of short, brutal missions that contain no checkpoints at all and have much more exacting standards for silver and gold medals than the longer missions. These are the courses that you have to replay over and over and memorize to master. And as a result, they're much shorter than the main missions... usually only 1 to 2 minutes long. Think of them as the Mario 3 to the main mission's Mario World.
Obviously you have to LIKE memorizing and mastering obstacle courses to enjoy those missions, but if you do like that sort of thing, they're short enough to make mastering them perfectly feasible.
Music
I like the level music. It sounds very reminiscent of the songs in the original Sonic Adventure that were not written by Jun Senoue. A lot of the new soundtrack was written by Kenichi Tokoi and Fumie Kumatani, and you can pick those tracks out immediately. The Skeleton Dome music sounds very similar to Tokoi's work in NiGHTS.
Jumping
This is basically the only part of Segaholic's review that I disagree with. He is totally right about the game's other flaws... some of the missions ARE stupid or annoying, and moving backwards really is awkward and frightening. But I like the jumping!
I think the charged jump fits well with the on-rails control scheme, just like it fits in well with similar on-rails games like SSX. There are occasional places where it doesn't seem to give you enough time to react to the things ahead of you, but I didn't find that happened nearly as often as 'holic did. Usually the game is very good about letting you see upcoming enemies lurking off to the side of the course, getting ready to jump in at you. There is definitely a reflex aspect to it, though. You're usually given a window to start charging, but it's can definitely be a small one.
I also like the charging because I like the sliding aspect. Honestly it just feels right to have Sonic to slow down before you plan, aim and execute a jump. It has a great sense of timing to it.
And finally, man do I love the jump cancel. This is my favourite part of the jumping system. The jump cancel lets you drop Sonic straight down to the ground from any point in the air. If you press '1', he'll drop and start running again; if you press '2', he'll land, stop, and immediately start charging for another jump. Using the jump cancel lets you make precise pinpoint landings that were totally unfeasible in previous 3D Sonic games. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes incredibly easy to land Sonic on the tiniest of platforms, or onto a small switch surrounded by a ring of spikey balls.
And I've already mentioned earlier how I love the targeting system for the homing attack. Honestly, the entire jumping system for the game is really well thought out. It's considerably more complicated than the jumping in previous titles, and it has a pretty steep learning curve, but once you get the hang of it it's really flexible and robust. When you have so little control over Sonic's running direction, the jumping really has to take on a level of depth and importance that it didn't have before, and I think it has done so quite admirably. I think it was handled really well overall, even though there are occasionally places in the level design that don't give adequate time for the jump charging.
I didn't watch the ending on YouTube because I didn't want to spoil the surprise. I was, however, prepped for it by all the negative reactions posted here.
But once I saw it in-game, I was really surprised. Aside from the hankerchiefs throwback, which was incredibly corny, I thought it was great... a really slick looking, pleasantly in-character moment for Sonic. I couldn't understand why you guys had all been so down on it!
Then I watched the English version of the ending. Now I understand. Ugh...
In general, I think they really got Sonic's personality down pat in the Japanese track for this game. Watching the English version of the ending on YouTube now, I can see that the dubbing really does basically screw up the tone of the whole scene. Sonic sounded way more snarky and indifferent and much less earnest in Japanese. (And I think we all know that Erazor's English voice sounds horrific at all times.) It all came across much, much better... even the handkerchiefs bit (although that was still pretty corny either way.)
I found myself really enjoying the story throughout the game... Sonic acted like Sonic, and reacted to all this weird Arabian stuff exactly the way I felt his character should. But I played the whole thing with the Japanese voice track on. It makes me wonder how differently I would have reacted if I'd been playing with the English version... and how many of other people's criticisms of the story sequences stem primarily from the terrible dubbing.
But once I saw it in-game, I was really surprised. Aside from the hankerchiefs throwback, which was incredibly corny, I thought it was great... a really slick looking, pleasantly in-character moment for Sonic. I couldn't understand why you guys had all been so down on it!
Then I watched the English version of the ending. Now I understand. Ugh...
In general, I think they really got Sonic's personality down pat in the Japanese track for this game. Watching the English version of the ending on YouTube now, I can see that the dubbing really does basically screw up the tone of the whole scene. Sonic sounded way more snarky and indifferent and much less earnest in Japanese. (And I think we all know that Erazor's English voice sounds horrific at all times.) It all came across much, much better... even the handkerchiefs bit (although that was still pretty corny either way.)
I found myself really enjoying the story throughout the game... Sonic acted like Sonic, and reacted to all this weird Arabian stuff exactly the way I felt his character should. But I played the whole thing with the Japanese voice track on. It makes me wonder how differently I would have reacted if I'd been playing with the English version... and how many of other people's criticisms of the story sequences stem primarily from the terrible dubbing.
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theAMAZINGboo
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It's probably just me, but I actually like the voice acting this time around.
Yes, it's cheesy, but it fits the tone of the game pretty well. Erazors voice is hilarious. And well, Jason Griffith has some off moments, but overall this is my favorite work from him. I'll say it here, good job.
(I would still love Ryan and crew back but alas, I have to say they did a pretty decent job here.)
Yes, it's cheesy, but it fits the tone of the game pretty well. Erazors voice is hilarious. And well, Jason Griffith has some off moments, but overall this is my favorite work from him. I'll say it here, good job.
(I would still love Ryan and crew back but alas, I have to say they did a pretty decent job here.)
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theAMAZINGboo
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Black Rook
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Same here. I've never understood why everyone praises them when they're about the same as the Western voices. Sonic's random Engrish catchphrases are funny at first, but once the novelty wears off, it just gets stupid.theAMAZINGboo wrote:The japanese voices aren't that much better. =\ I've always found them as equally annoying.
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Yami CJMErl
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So I just got the game from Target, bonus disc and all. It's not that bad of a game--controls take a bit of getting used to, but otherwise it's quite enjoyable IMO.
One thing bothers me, though: how the F*** do you play that stupid Archie Comics bonus disc?! I tried my computer's DVD-ROM drive, my DVD player...hell, I even tried it on the Wii just to make sure; it just REFUSES to work!
One thing bothers me, though: how the F*** do you play that stupid Archie Comics bonus disc?! I tried my computer's DVD-ROM drive, my DVD player...hell, I even tried it on the Wii just to make sure; it just REFUSES to work!
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Black Rook
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Yami CJMErl
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James McGeachie
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Finally got this today. My Initial impressions are... fairly positive.
I'm up to Evil Foundry and have just got the speed break and time freeze skills. So far the game has been fairly fun and I've enjoyed most of the missions. Best feature of the game so far is probably the homing attack, it certainly feels a lot more satisfying to connect kills with the motion rather than just tapping A. The upgrades system seems pretty cool as well though I imagine it'll be worth more as I progress through the game.
Problems so far...while there is quite a few. Sonic moves in just as jittery a fashion as he did in all videos and the game rarely feels as smooth as I'd want it to be. Backing up is absolutely horrible in virtually all cases but I can deal with it. The story so far is absolute tripe but that was pretty much to be expected and story is almost a non-factor with me concerning Sonic games anyway.
Haven't slept for about 40 hours I was up all yesterday night so I'll post something a bit more substantial next time my brain is actually working.
I'm up to Evil Foundry and have just got the speed break and time freeze skills. So far the game has been fairly fun and I've enjoyed most of the missions. Best feature of the game so far is probably the homing attack, it certainly feels a lot more satisfying to connect kills with the motion rather than just tapping A. The upgrades system seems pretty cool as well though I imagine it'll be worth more as I progress through the game.
Problems so far...while there is quite a few. Sonic moves in just as jittery a fashion as he did in all videos and the game rarely feels as smooth as I'd want it to be. Backing up is absolutely horrible in virtually all cases but I can deal with it. The story so far is absolute tripe but that was pretty much to be expected and story is almost a non-factor with me concerning Sonic games anyway.
Haven't slept for about 40 hours I was up all yesterday night so I'll post something a bit more substantial next time my brain is actually working.
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Shadow Hog
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You know, I was thinking that exact same thing, myself. It'd REALLY bring back ye olde <i>Sonic 2</i>-racing vibe, wouldn't it?
That said, whatever the sequel to this game is, I think tossing some random nostalgia into the stages would be pretty awesome. I mean, who WOULDN'T want to try this gameplay mechanic out on, say... Three Seven Speedway (complete with Mr. "ROOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAART" and everything)?
That said, whatever the sequel to this game is, I think tossing some random nostalgia into the stages would be pretty awesome. I mean, who WOULDN'T want to try this gameplay mechanic out on, say... Three Seven Speedway (complete with Mr. "ROOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING STAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAART" and everything)?
I absolutely can't stand the English voices. I don't think I've done myself the torture of sitting through an entire cutscene with that noise. I preferr the Japanese voices by far. Every once in a whlie they say some Engrish that doesn't fit the context, but the subtitles correct this. It does make it a little difficult to read the clues and pay attention to the game at the same time, but it's far better than getting a headache over the English.
I wasn't expecting much from the story. The comic-style telling had me entrigued at first, but after the opening cutscene, I think I would've liked it better if the entire thing was pretty FMV. When it happens in the game's story it feels out of place and disjointed. I still think there's something appealing about the artwork in the storyboards, but would rather see it kept to portables.
I really like the controls on the other hand. They add a certain depth to the game I was afraid would be lacking. The sliding makes things feel fresh and the targeting system is a Godsend. I'm am a little baffled by how many upgrades there are for the sliding.
The upgrades too add depth. For those of you who haven't played, think of the character specific upgrades from SA2, but a ton more and actually useful for the most part.
I wasn't expecting much from the story. The comic-style telling had me entrigued at first, but after the opening cutscene, I think I would've liked it better if the entire thing was pretty FMV. When it happens in the game's story it feels out of place and disjointed. I still think there's something appealing about the artwork in the storyboards, but would rather see it kept to portables.
I really like the controls on the other hand. They add a certain depth to the game I was afraid would be lacking. The sliding makes things feel fresh and the targeting system is a Godsend. I'm am a little baffled by how many upgrades there are for the sliding.
The upgrades too add depth. For those of you who haven't played, think of the character specific upgrades from SA2, but a ton more and actually useful for the most part.
I played this for about 20 minutes in Gamestop yesterday, going through a handful of Lost Prologue "paragraphs", the first two missions in Sand Oasis, and the first one in Dinosaur Jungle. I was a skeptic going in, going out i'm...still a skeptic.
I braced myself for control hassles but walked away a bit annoyed all the same. Sonic is slow as molasses in the early leg of the game, and steers like it too. There's no excuse for how they start you off with such sluggish and stiff steering. Until you can get a handle on it and the weird new jump/braking mechanics, it's rough going responding to painful obstacles dead ahead of you at a moment's notice. And this is all for when you're on foot.
About halfway into Dinosaur Jungle's first mission, Sonic does some more log surfing. I had a hard enough time steering that plank down the raging river out of the way of rocks, but then I didn't have the threat of instant death breathing down my neck. In this segment, you've got mace balls floating on the water to dodge around, and they float back and forth too. Now, I wasn't sure if it was me sucking or my holding the remote at an angle that was making trouble, but there was one particular ball I crashed into and died upon four times in a row because the game refused to let me steer anywhere but straight into it. I think I must've retried six or seven times before I got through that madness.
Game Informer just recently took an unexpected dump on this game, and unecessarily harsh as they were (Sonic Next sat better with the same reviewers, inexplicably), they get one point absolutely right: no one should have to unlock more responsive controls and upgrades to speed him up from "slow as cinderblock" levels. Sonic Team, or whichever studio Yojiro Ogawa got to develop this, are leaving a lot up to faith and patience here, more than usual.
I lost count of how many times I would walk into any place that had a demo of SA2:B and watch some guy Spin Dash into the same stack of crates over and over trying to break them and proceed, until they got sick of it and left. Maybe mapping the Somersault and Spin Dash to the same button wasn't so hot an idea in the end, though neither was making Omochao's control directions so vauge that the not-so-bright-bulbs can't tell the difference between "press" and "hold". This is what you call counter-intuitive controls, and as much as that as Wildfire has, I think i'm going to be seeing a lot more of what I just described. I did yesterday:
The guy who playing this before me, frankly, sucked hard, but it was a two-way street. He was on one of the Lost Prologue missions, that I think instructed you how to do high jumps and jump dashes. He kept plunging into the same bottomless pit like 20 times before he gave up. The part that's his fault is that, despite myself and clerk's efforts to show him how it's done, he still kept cocking it up. The part that's not his fault is, it's the exact same case as the Somersault/Spin Dash brouhaha. Shahra's instructions aren't clear enough, and if I didn't watch a playthrough of this from TGS a few weeks ago on YouTube, I prolly wouldn't know what the hell was the proper way to launch the dash. "Push the remote forward"? More like "Raise it up and slam it down" which is nothing like "push the remote forward". Is the manual clearer about this?
To that guy's credit, he made the steering look a lot easier than I found it to be in Sand Oasis' first mission.
Watching a guy fail a jump over and over is one thing, but having to hear Sonic's "Oh no!" every time makes it about 10 times less bearable. This is hopefully the farewell appearance for the 4Kids cast, but they're doing their damnedest to annoy as many people as they can before they go. Specifically Jason Griffith. His Sonic voice has regressed back to Shadow game bad. Everything that's been said already about his voice coming off as bored, flat, and corny is true. Over 2 years now, and this guy still -cannot- do Sonic right. Shahra's not bad...in moderation. Her whining about getting dizzy in Dinosaur Jungle made me grit my teeth and wince a bit.
On the other hand, this script's got some nice comedic bite to it in places, even if the voice cast sucks at reading off it properly. Shahra's pot shot at Sonic's inability to swim was cute, and I got a good chuckle out of the one cutscene I bothered to not skip (with King Shayryar or however it's spelled and the pterodactyl). I like the storybook cutscenes, if only because I know that if they tried to render them all in-game, they'd look miserable. Sonic's model here is on par with his one from Heroes/Shadow, and no anti-aliasing doesn't help beat it.
As for the qualities I can say I definitely liked from those 20 minutes, there's the music for one - I couldn't make out the allegedly nonsensical lyrics over the music from where i'm standing, but I can tell it's nowhere near as atrocious as Sonic R. It's got a good sound to it, and that includes the theme track. Equipping skills is exactly like the badge system from Paper Mario, only better since you can make four different sets to experiment with, so i'm sold there but again, having to use up skill points to struggle less when trying to steer is a gyp.
So it sounds like i'm making it out to be a flounder of a game, but not really. I recognize that this is not a game that demos very well, and it's probably a better game in the long run than the short. There's a sort of addicting quality to it too. I'm eager to give this another shot, and I will if my damned social security info will come in the mail already so I can get a proper photo ID.
I braced myself for control hassles but walked away a bit annoyed all the same. Sonic is slow as molasses in the early leg of the game, and steers like it too. There's no excuse for how they start you off with such sluggish and stiff steering. Until you can get a handle on it and the weird new jump/braking mechanics, it's rough going responding to painful obstacles dead ahead of you at a moment's notice. And this is all for when you're on foot.
About halfway into Dinosaur Jungle's first mission, Sonic does some more log surfing. I had a hard enough time steering that plank down the raging river out of the way of rocks, but then I didn't have the threat of instant death breathing down my neck. In this segment, you've got mace balls floating on the water to dodge around, and they float back and forth too. Now, I wasn't sure if it was me sucking or my holding the remote at an angle that was making trouble, but there was one particular ball I crashed into and died upon four times in a row because the game refused to let me steer anywhere but straight into it. I think I must've retried six or seven times before I got through that madness.
Game Informer just recently took an unexpected dump on this game, and unecessarily harsh as they were (Sonic Next sat better with the same reviewers, inexplicably), they get one point absolutely right: no one should have to unlock more responsive controls and upgrades to speed him up from "slow as cinderblock" levels. Sonic Team, or whichever studio Yojiro Ogawa got to develop this, are leaving a lot up to faith and patience here, more than usual.
I lost count of how many times I would walk into any place that had a demo of SA2:B and watch some guy Spin Dash into the same stack of crates over and over trying to break them and proceed, until they got sick of it and left. Maybe mapping the Somersault and Spin Dash to the same button wasn't so hot an idea in the end, though neither was making Omochao's control directions so vauge that the not-so-bright-bulbs can't tell the difference between "press" and "hold". This is what you call counter-intuitive controls, and as much as that as Wildfire has, I think i'm going to be seeing a lot more of what I just described. I did yesterday:
The guy who playing this before me, frankly, sucked hard, but it was a two-way street. He was on one of the Lost Prologue missions, that I think instructed you how to do high jumps and jump dashes. He kept plunging into the same bottomless pit like 20 times before he gave up. The part that's his fault is that, despite myself and clerk's efforts to show him how it's done, he still kept cocking it up. The part that's not his fault is, it's the exact same case as the Somersault/Spin Dash brouhaha. Shahra's instructions aren't clear enough, and if I didn't watch a playthrough of this from TGS a few weeks ago on YouTube, I prolly wouldn't know what the hell was the proper way to launch the dash. "Push the remote forward"? More like "Raise it up and slam it down" which is nothing like "push the remote forward". Is the manual clearer about this?
To that guy's credit, he made the steering look a lot easier than I found it to be in Sand Oasis' first mission.
Watching a guy fail a jump over and over is one thing, but having to hear Sonic's "Oh no!" every time makes it about 10 times less bearable. This is hopefully the farewell appearance for the 4Kids cast, but they're doing their damnedest to annoy as many people as they can before they go. Specifically Jason Griffith. His Sonic voice has regressed back to Shadow game bad. Everything that's been said already about his voice coming off as bored, flat, and corny is true. Over 2 years now, and this guy still -cannot- do Sonic right. Shahra's not bad...in moderation. Her whining about getting dizzy in Dinosaur Jungle made me grit my teeth and wince a bit.
On the other hand, this script's got some nice comedic bite to it in places, even if the voice cast sucks at reading off it properly. Shahra's pot shot at Sonic's inability to swim was cute, and I got a good chuckle out of the one cutscene I bothered to not skip (with King Shayryar or however it's spelled and the pterodactyl). I like the storybook cutscenes, if only because I know that if they tried to render them all in-game, they'd look miserable. Sonic's model here is on par with his one from Heroes/Shadow, and no anti-aliasing doesn't help beat it.
As for the qualities I can say I definitely liked from those 20 minutes, there's the music for one - I couldn't make out the allegedly nonsensical lyrics over the music from where i'm standing, but I can tell it's nowhere near as atrocious as Sonic R. It's got a good sound to it, and that includes the theme track. Equipping skills is exactly like the badge system from Paper Mario, only better since you can make four different sets to experiment with, so i'm sold there but again, having to use up skill points to struggle less when trying to steer is a gyp.
So it sounds like i'm making it out to be a flounder of a game, but not really. I recognize that this is not a game that demos very well, and it's probably a better game in the long run than the short. There's a sort of addicting quality to it too. I'm eager to give this another shot, and I will if my damned social security info will come in the mail already so I can get a proper photo ID.
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James McGeachie
- Posts: 589
- Joined: Tue Oct 18, 2005 11:09 am
- Location: Scotland
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Finished the "Last Chapter" last night. Plenty of missions still to do but for now I've had enough of the game.
Final opinion is that it was an enjoyable experience of high enough quality for me to label as a "good" game, though it was without a doubt rushed out the door and could've used a few extra months of development time, especially on things like balancing out the gameplay so that the controls don't feel incredibly slow and unresponsive until you get a bunch of upgrades. I can imagine many people far less patient with me giving up with the game in like the first level for reasons like thinking not being able to steer quickly enough to get all the rings was a serious design flaw, where well....it actually is a design flaw, but it's not an omission from the game.
Thinking about it now actually the game is pretty unique in that it manages to be riddled with design flaws and technical issues and yet remains run at the same time. The backtracking is incredibly awkward and never ceases to be, most of the missions are poorly executed and feel like they were thrown together in no time at all for the sole purpose of being extra content, many areas of the game are completely unfair and unforgiving, requiring impossible reaction times that means you simply HAVE to die before you can even consider passing them... really the list of problems could go on for quite a while. Regardless of that though, I felt the desire to continue playing.
Someone else I know who took the game back doesn't have a clue how I could enjoy this over any of the previous 3d Sonics. If I was to give a reason for this I think it'd simply be because I've always considered the previous 3d Sonic formula to be flawed to the very core of its design, to a point where I flat out can't enjoy those titles. Secret Rings takes a completely different approach to 3d Sonic gameplay and although nowhere near perfect, it's definitely more successful in my eyes. New and inspiring level themes that are both aesthetically pleasing and have no reliance whatsoever on nostalgia to impress the gamer, challenging and rewarding gameplay that had me genuinely excited about getting new upgrades to see how they affected my gameplay experience, less focus on a ridiculous contrived plot and more of a light hearted storybook feel to the adventure with no attempts to be "cool" of "edgy"....there were many aspects that kept me having a good time throughout the experience.
In the end this is the second Sonic game in the last 10 years I haven't regretted the purchase of, with the only other being Sonic Rush. I can only hope sales are strong enough so that Sega realises again that making games that are fun actually pays off somewhat.
Final opinion is that it was an enjoyable experience of high enough quality for me to label as a "good" game, though it was without a doubt rushed out the door and could've used a few extra months of development time, especially on things like balancing out the gameplay so that the controls don't feel incredibly slow and unresponsive until you get a bunch of upgrades. I can imagine many people far less patient with me giving up with the game in like the first level for reasons like thinking not being able to steer quickly enough to get all the rings was a serious design flaw, where well....it actually is a design flaw, but it's not an omission from the game.
Thinking about it now actually the game is pretty unique in that it manages to be riddled with design flaws and technical issues and yet remains run at the same time. The backtracking is incredibly awkward and never ceases to be, most of the missions are poorly executed and feel like they were thrown together in no time at all for the sole purpose of being extra content, many areas of the game are completely unfair and unforgiving, requiring impossible reaction times that means you simply HAVE to die before you can even consider passing them... really the list of problems could go on for quite a while. Regardless of that though, I felt the desire to continue playing.
Someone else I know who took the game back doesn't have a clue how I could enjoy this over any of the previous 3d Sonics. If I was to give a reason for this I think it'd simply be because I've always considered the previous 3d Sonic formula to be flawed to the very core of its design, to a point where I flat out can't enjoy those titles. Secret Rings takes a completely different approach to 3d Sonic gameplay and although nowhere near perfect, it's definitely more successful in my eyes. New and inspiring level themes that are both aesthetically pleasing and have no reliance whatsoever on nostalgia to impress the gamer, challenging and rewarding gameplay that had me genuinely excited about getting new upgrades to see how they affected my gameplay experience, less focus on a ridiculous contrived plot and more of a light hearted storybook feel to the adventure with no attempts to be "cool" of "edgy"....there were many aspects that kept me having a good time throughout the experience.
In the end this is the second Sonic game in the last 10 years I haven't regretted the purchase of, with the only other being Sonic Rush. I can only hope sales are strong enough so that Sega realises again that making games that are fun actually pays off somewhat.
Last edited by James McGeachie on Mon Mar 05, 2007 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Man, that early leg of the game with the sluggish Sonic and the horribly awkward tutorial implementation is just painful.
So is getting chucked back to plow through all those stupid menus again and again every time you try and fail to get a Gold on a particular mission, especially in Lost Prologue when the missions are only like four seconds long. You spend more time in the menus than you do in the actual level!
I really enjoyed the game on the initial playthrough, but trying to get Gold rankings on all the levels is shaping up to be incredibly tedious and I probably won't bother to earn them on anything but the main stages. (Assuming it's possible to earn them at all at my skill level.)
So is getting chucked back to plow through all those stupid menus again and again every time you try and fail to get a Gold on a particular mission, especially in Lost Prologue when the missions are only like four seconds long. You spend more time in the menus than you do in the actual level!
I really enjoyed the game on the initial playthrough, but trying to get Gold rankings on all the levels is shaping up to be incredibly tedious and I probably won't bother to earn them on anything but the main stages. (Assuming it's possible to earn them at all at my skill level.)
Just finished "Last Chapter" as well. Did anyone else die like a jillion times in that level? Because I did! I was, however, pleasantly surprised with the quality of the ending (Japanese version), with Sonic wrapping things up in characteristic speed.
Overall a positive experience, with a few awkward/sloppy sections. Thankfully they don't really take away from the game as a whole, at least for me. I don't think I'll be going for the gold on any missions, though. Do you get anything for it that would make it worth attempting? Outside the, um, satisfaction of a job well done?
Also, Esrever, which chucking are you talking about? Can't you just avoid it by just pressing "2" to restart the mission at the fail screen?
Overall a positive experience, with a few awkward/sloppy sections. Thankfully they don't really take away from the game as a whole, at least for me. I don't think I'll be going for the gold on any missions, though. Do you get anything for it that would make it worth attempting? Outside the, um, satisfaction of a job well done?
Also, Esrever, which chucking are you talking about? Can't you just avoid it by just pressing "2" to restart the mission at the fail screen?
You can press 2 to restart if you fail a mission, but you can't press 2 to restart if you "completed" it. This is a problem when you're trying to beat the level with a gold rank. If you complete it with only a silver or bronze, there's no option to retry... you have to go back to the menu, reselect the mission, reselect your skill ring, and then OK to start. Every single time. Argh!