E3 Sonic Next-Gen trailer on XBOX Live Marketplace

DackAttac · Post by **DackAttac** » Thu May 11, 2006 6:29 pm

I give it a day and a half before someone edits Sonic's victory pose into him flipping the bird.

KooshKoosh · Post by **KooshKoosh** » Thu May 11, 2006 6:44 pm

The music on the video on Sega.com sounds very un-Senoue-ish, and quite awesome (orchestral hits in Sonic music = instant win).

Thank fuck.

DackAttac · Post by **DackAttac** » Thu May 11, 2006 6:55 pm

KooshKoosh wrote:The music on the video on Sega.com sounds very un-Senoue-ish, and quite awesome (orchestral hits in Sonic music = instant win).

Thank fuck.

Senoue can rock. He really can. But whenever 90% of a soundtrack gets assigned to him, he buckles and stops writing melodies.

But orchestral is pretty clutch—remember the Egg Viper? Or the "Past" Event in SA1? Classic.

Post by **Popcorn** » Thu May 11, 2006 7:14 pm

I think Sonic looks pretty damn good. I even think Silver's game style looks fairly interesting. I can only pray for Shadow.

Ritz · Post by **Ritz** » Thu May 11, 2006 7:25 pm

SegaSonic wrote:This I worry about...will the PS3 version be better or worse? Also..did they scrapped the idea of passing time within the levels?

According to Sazpaimon of Sonic Cult (The guy at E3 recording the videos), the XBox 360 version of the game ran significantly faster, while the PS3 version looked better. Changes are bound to be made, though. As for the time thing, they made a pretty big fuss about it earlier, so I doubt they'd just drop it like that.

Also, he said that the PS3 crashed on him. Advanced NextGen technology man

Double-S- · Post by **Double-S-** » Thu May 11, 2006 7:40 pm

The Sonic stuff looks interesting and annoying in the same way the Adventure games were. Fast, but not so much actual platforming (and what is is a whole lot of suspended platforms over bottomless pits).

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Thu May 11, 2006 7:40 pm

Also, he said that the PS3 crashed on him. Advanced NextGen technology man

It's no wonder. The PS3 has eight cores. If you don't program it just so, the whole tower that is the game becomes unstable. Developers were complaining about the system being fussy to work with long ago.

Zarathustra · Post by **Zarathustra** » Thu May 11, 2006 7:55 pm

Don't know if someone posted the link previously, but here you'll find the PlayStation 3 gameplay footage. Didn't see it, I'm still downloading X.X

Anon · Post by **Anon** » Thu May 11, 2006 8:03 pm

FlashTHD wrote:Developers were complaining about the system being fussy to work with long ago.

Huh, that's almost starting to have parallels with what I've heard about the Saturn; good technology, hard to program for.

SegaSonic · Post by **SegaSonic** » Thu May 11, 2006 8:19 pm

If its loading times PS3 has, I dont care...Im a patient man.

Zarathustra · Post by **Zarathustra** » Thu May 11, 2006 8:21 pm

Fucking shit, late as always. Had to review at least the last two pages.

Well, something I have to say about this XBOX 360 vs. PS3 thing is that the SDK of the latter seems to be bugging the Sonic Team, or at least they were programming fully under the 360's one and have to do all the way again (so, how does it taste, eh? Having to do the same work twice, boring, ain't it, Sonic Team? =_=)

Also, the PS3 has 1 core and 8 SPE's (synergistic processing elements or something like that), one of them inactive, while the 360 has 3 cores... fuck, watta mess!

James McGeachie · Post by **James McGeachie** » Thu May 11, 2006 9:29 pm

Blah, the HD gameplay video I watched over at gametrailers really does NOT make Sonic's levels actually look fun to play, at all. The visuals are stunning yes, but there were tons of pit deaths in this video and most of them seemed to stem from gameplay flaws.

At this time I'm surprised to find I'm actually feeling a bit more interested in Silver's gameplay than Sonic's as it seems like it'll have more focus on slower gameplay and traditional platforming action, which is what I personally want as opposed to a huge focus on ridiculous speed. The supernatural powers actually look like they could turn out pretty well after all, although I'm curious about whether they actually control decently or not.

Zeta · Post by **Zeta** » Fri May 12, 2006 12:45 am

Silver's gameplay to me, sounds basically just like a retooling of the Knuckles gameplay from the Adventure series.

Post by **Esrever** » Fri May 12, 2006 12:57 am

I think this game looks HORRIBLE! I don't know what any of you are seeing in it. It's just another sea of shitty level design and mile after mile of bottomless pits. The visuals are lovely and all, but other than that it just looks like SA2 all over again.

DackAttac · Post by **DackAttac** » Fri May 12, 2006 1:16 am

Esrever wrote:I think this game looks HORRIBLE! I don't know what any of you are seeing in it. It's just another sea of shitty level design and mile after mile of bottomless pits. The visuals are lovely and all, but other than that it just looks like SA2 all over again.

SA2 was a borderline pleasure for me. If it were whiddled it down to 15 levels total, I'd probably be sitting on a better-than-decent game. If I can have City Escape/Metal Harbor/Crazy Gadget/Wild Canyon fun with this, I consider it a victory, albeit a minor one, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it can go beyond that.

Yes, I saw a lot of pits of death, but they didn't look entirely difficult to avoid. Except for that jumping section, but that seemed to be the whole point of that stretch. And I'll take something challenging like that over another killer whale/GUN truck chase. ("Press down... and... hold it? Oh, man, that's too damn difficult for me!")

And I didn't see the level design as inarguably shitty, either. Seems to be making good, varied use out of its surroundings. Especially Crisis City, as much as it pains me to say it. Going in buildings and coming out the ground level, using a collapsed building as a floor... Reminded me of Speed Highway in ways (funny how that was all suspended yet it goes down as a fan favorite), and how it had bottomless SECTIONS, without being entirely bottomless... well, that was kind of Starlightesque to me. And I'll also give thumbs up to making it a city and a lava level—if the handheld games got one thing wrong, it's the fact that all the levels were formulaic. (Here's THE grassy level. Here's THE water level. Here's THE snow level. Etc.)

Gaz · Post by **Gaz** » Fri May 12, 2006 8:25 am

I just watched the Gametrailers gameplay video and quite frankly this game looks fucking terrible. The graphics and physics are an improvement but everything else looks pretty much just as bad as it did before. The level design looks horrible with the level still surrounded by bottomless pits and numerous platforms to navigate between. It looks pretty much just as bad as it did in Sonic Heroes. This might not be so much of a problem if the camera and control problems were fixed but there still seemed to be problems with them in the video I watched. There is still time for them to be improved but given the series track record I'm not too hopeful. Silver's gameplay looked like it could be fun but it also looked out of place. I don't play Sonic the Hedgehog games so I can play as some lame looking telekinetic hedgehog. Overall, I'm really not impressed and have pretty much given up hope now.

Zarathustra · Post by **Zarathustra** » Fri May 12, 2006 11:12 am

I've seen now just TOO MANY variations of the E3 demo gameplay, and as I previously promised, will give my 2 cents: IT'S THE SAME SHIT.

... That's all of it, to me it's mainly a mod of Sonic Adventure (Windy Valley), as SA2 and SH were, and most probably will have that Shadow-shooting shitty sections again, only that SEGA didn't want us to see them in the demo.

Pit deaths, EVEN MORE unstable cameras (balanced with what seems to be an slightly more forgiving control... the Moses section can be fixed with only moving the camera a little UP, but of course, that would ruin the speed sensation), THAT FUCKING SA2 BOXES AGAIN (this is particularly annoying in the Silver level, there should be only debris), THAT STUPID "?" HELPING TIPS AGAIN, etc.

Only good things are the same as always also; prettyness (and mostly no pop-up, if the demo has some I'm totally sure there won't be any in the final product). It would be very good to have some Silver-style stages and landscapes as Sonic, without these pits, but it seems that we'll have those even in Towns.

Again, we have to wait... but this time, for a miracle.

Frieza2000 · Post by **Frieza2000** » Fri May 12, 2006 11:14 am

I'm getting the impression that the graphics are high res and each texture detailed, but that there isn't much variety in textures, objects, or their placement. It's pretty, but not really detailed. I see a lot of the same arrangements of plants on the ground, the same pillars here and there. This isn't much to go on, I just have a feeling it's more impressive as a short movie then it will be playing through it.

Even if it is, what good are detailed graphics if you can't stop to appreciate them? Over a full minute of that video was spend in midair or on rails, and most of the time on the ground Sonic was dodging fire. It looks like it throws obstacles at you at a pace like Heroes. Fly to this platform, land on this rail, jump through this hoop, catch this light dash. I'd venture to say that Sonic Team doesn't intend to make 3d platformers anymore. This isn't much different from the way Sonic Wild Fire will play in that you can barely stop moving as you work your way through an interactive choreographed movie. The choreography looks better than ever before (if they'd put their level scripters to work for Sonic X the show could have been much less boring) but I'd rather play, you know, a Sonic game, instead of what's really Gitaru Man where the graphics respond more intelligently to mistakes in the patterns of buttons you're prompted to press.

I'd hope that the levels are more in the vein of SA2 than Heroes, but it isn't looking that way. And considering that it's about 3 hedgehogs, calling this Sonic Heroes 2 wouldn't be much of a stretch.

I'm planning to enjoy the town stages though. Hopefully they detail them well to reward explorers like myself.

Zarathustra · Post by **Zarathustra** » Fri May 12, 2006 12:05 pm

Frieza2000 wrote:I'd hope that the levels are more in the vein of SA2 than Heroes, but it isn't looking that way. And considering that it's about 3 hedgehogs, calling this Sonic Heroes 2 wouldn't be much of a stretch.

That reminds me, in Sonic Heroes you are NOT a hero since you aren't saving anyone from anything. In this semantical aspect, you're a hero in both Sonic Adventures and even in Sonic Advance 2 (albeit only the extra stage), and in this one you're a classical princess-saving hero, so a name like "Sonic Heroes 2", sans unoriginallity, would fit well. Only that.

Oh, and as always the texture department is very complex (probably over the thousand of them in a self-respectable next-gen title), you have some quality ones and some which aren't (specially those corresponding to land, walls, floors, etc.; they need stretching and are repeated ad eternum, so they seem poorly detailed most of the time), and sadly some particles (like water) look ass-ugly... at least in the videos, that is O_O.

(...) · Post by **(...)** » Fri May 12, 2006 1:25 pm

A brief word on the whole "bottomless pit" thing...

It was unavoidable. In the 2D games, you only ever played on the XY plane, but in 3D, there's the Z axis. How do you stop the player from just running sideways into infinity? Barriers would be crap, natural barriers (e.g. trees and cliffs) would make the game feel like an endless corridor, free-roaming would defeat the purpose of a platform game (why jump on platforms when you can just run on a ground plane?), so the most logical solution for a platform game would be to put the game on platforms. There's always the risk that the player will fall off the world and die, but that's what happens when you're crap at platform games. You fall and die a lot. I mean, as long as the falling doesn't seem unfair (like during a mis-directed homing attack or getting bumped-off by a dodgy camera), why shouldn't the game levels be suspended in mid-air?

SegaSonic · Post by **SegaSonic** » Fri May 12, 2006 2:03 pm

http://sonic.sega.jp/sonic/

ENJOY!!!

Post by **Delphine** » Fri May 12, 2006 2:14 pm

(...) wrote:I mean, as long as the falling doesn't seem unfair (like during a mis-directed homing attack or getting bumped-off by a dodgy camera), why shouldn't the game levels be suspended in mid-air?

Becuase the bottomless pits <i>are</i> unfair. Sure, I died a few times in the pits because I didn't know the level well enough yet, but far, far too many bottomless pit deaths have happened because the camera was shit or a homing attack didn't work or I hit the button before it rotated to the action I wanted. I don't understand why anyone defends this crap.

PSMad · Post by **PSMad** » Fri May 12, 2006 2:34 pm

The only game I remember having a real problem with the pits in was Shadow. The other games never bothered me, not even Heroes. The only reason some of the guys fell off the level in these videos is because they sucked, quite frankly.

The game is looking great, I'm quite excited by everything I've seen bar Shadow in his car. I've got my fingers crossed for a demo on Live in the not too distant future. They've already got a demo sorted for E3 surely it wouldn't be hard for them to whap it on the marketplace.

Post by **Esrever** » Fri May 12, 2006 2:53 pm

Even when the pits ARE "fair," they are still lazy level design. They promote vancant, unmemorable, shallow levels... in fact, its usually the same level over and over again, with a different visual "skin" slapped on each time. I'm sick of roads hanging in space stage after stage after stage. Sonic is not F-zero. Let me explore some REAL environments!

Bottomless pits are COMPLETELY avoidable in 3D platform design. There are plenty of games that don't lean on them like the feeble, creaky crutch that they are. Even Sonic Adventure has examples of 3D Sonic stages that find ways around the "problem" of the Z axis without resorting to elevated highways. Emerald Coast mixed closed in tunnels surrounded by natural barriers with wide, open beaches. It didn't matter that you could run a long way off course to the left or the right... the game provided visual clues to show you where the "path" was without punnishing you for taking two steps off of it. Meanwhile, Twinkle Park had some bottomless areas, but most of the time falling down would just place you on the wider, lower area of the stage. This is closer to how the upper and lower routes worked in the old games.

Confining Sonic with pits is every bit as claustrophobic and corridor-like as doing it with walls... the only difference is that walls don't kill you. Pits are completely at odds with the Sonic forumla... they encourage you to slow down and move cautiously, instead of letting you tear around and experiment and do fun shit! Obviously you can't let the player run along the z axis infintely, but you can give him WAY more space than Sonic Heroes gives, and you can find ways to guide and confine him that don't involve removing every inch of the ground he's not "supposed" to stand on.

FlashTHD · Post by **FlashTHD** » Fri May 12, 2006 5:14 pm

Zarathustra wrote:EVEN MORE unstable cameras (balanced with what seems to be an slightly more forgiving control... the Moses section can be fixed with only moving the camera a little UP, but of course, that would ruin the speed sensation), THAT FUCKING SA2 BOXES AGAIN (this is particularly annoying in the Silver level, there should be only debris), THAT STUPID "?" HELPING TIPS AGAIN, etc.

None of which are anything worth popping a blood vessel in your brain over. The camera is likely buggy because the game isn't even finished yet, and you had to pump up the text size over fucking crates?

The only reason some of the guys fell off the level in these videos is because they sucked, quite frankly.

Thank you.

I don't mind that they're sticking bottomless pits in a city. All I want is for them to tone down the ferocity of the pits and make them a lot less cheap and frequent (less flying over them after launching off a ramp, plz). Unfortunately, Nakamura had a hard-on for those in Billy Hatcher.