Super Sonic Galaxy

[Esrever]

Here's a new video that I don't think has been posted... a full run through video of Act 1 of Sweet Mountain.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-20 ... ors/700486

This is even better than the tropical resort stages. The player uses the drill (through the CAKE!) to find an underground route, but there was clearly a way of progressing above-ground... er, above-cake... as well. It looks like there are tons of places to find and explore. Neat!

As for the behind the back segments, it looks like they're using those mostly for Sonic Unleashed-style strafing sections... where you are generally running and jumping along a straight highway, but have to avoid things by moving left and right.

But in the con section... like Unleashed, Sonic's jumping mechanics look a little leaden. It's an improvement, but jumping from platform to platform still looks harder than it should be. It's like Sonic is too heavy... his jump hangtime is right, but the ascent and descent are too fast.

[Radrappy]

There was some great multi-tiered design going on in the 3d segments. How can anyone watch this and find it empty or boring?

I do think the end of level capsules are pretty goddamn unsatisfying though. I wish it were a little bit more dynamic, a little bit of a better celebration when you finish an act.

[Kogen]

This is still just Bubsy with a Sonic model thrown in to me. The level design does look better than Unleashed, but I had never intended to play Unleashed again. The complete lack of rolling, proper jumping, and momentum building makes it entirely alien to the main series. It literally has nothing to do with Sonic other than a few springs and the characters.

[Radrappy]

This is still just Bubsy with a Sonic model thrown in to me. The level design does look better than Unleashed, but I had never intended to play Unleashed again. The complete lack of rolling, proper jumping, and momentum building makes it entirely alien to the main series. It literally has nothing to do with Sonic other than a few springs and the characters.

Not a single 3d sonic game has had anything to do with rolling or momentum so I don't see why this one you find to be particularly offensive. But I agree with you. The entire point of sonic being a hedgehog is really his ability to roll. Not his ability to jump into a ball or grind or light speed dash or drift. His ability to roll. Something that has been robbed from him since Sonic & Knuckles and continues to be absent in all portable games and even the upcoming sonic 4. A shame really.

What do you mean by proper jumping? There looks to be plenty of jumping in this. It's not. . . proper enough?

[P.P.A.]

Here's a new video that I don't think has been posted... a full run through video of Act 1 of Sweet Mountain.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-20 ... ors/700486

Whoa now, though I wholly agree with Kogen I must say this does look genuinely good for what it is. Goodness gracious, I actually care.

[Rob-Bert]

What do you mean by proper jumping? There looks to be plenty of jumping in this. It's not. . . proper enough?

I think he might be refering to the jump physics, which in all honesty I think look better here than any previous Sonic game. It's not as floaty as Sonic Adventure but not as stiff as Sonic Unleashed.

If they could take what they have here and apply use of rolling in their next game, I think we might have that "proper" 3D Sonic that everybody is clamoring for.

[Kogen]

This is still just Bubsy with a Sonic model thrown in to me. The level design does look better than Unleashed, but I had never intended to play Unleashed again. The complete lack of rolling, proper jumping, and momentum building makes it entirely alien to the main series. It literally has nothing to do with Sonic other than a few springs and the characters.

Not a single 3d sonic game has had anything to do with rolling or momentum so I don't see why this one you find to be particularly offensive. But I agree with you. The entire point of sonic being a hedgehog is really his ability to roll. Not his ability to jump into a ball or grind or light speed dash or drift. His ability to roll. Something that has been robbed from him since Sonic & Knuckles and continues to be absent in all portable games and even the upcoming sonic 4. A shame really.

What do you mean by proper jumping? There looks to be plenty of jumping in this. It's not. . . proper enough?

Some of the portable games do have good rolling. Sonic Pocket Adventure, Advance 1, and somewhat Advance 3 and Rush Adventure. Sonic Adventure also had rolling down right - you could spindash anywhere with Sonic and pressing B with Tails on a slope made him start a roll that gained speed as it went down hill (just try it on the grass level or speed highway). Sonic Adventure 2 had it there for the spindash with Sonic and Shadow, and I felt that functioned pretty good for doing long jumps and such.

For jumping I just mean it working nicely. In these 'Unleashed' games it feels really loose and weird. There is nothing precise about it. Homing attack also ruins 2D Sonic jumps, as do the animations (in Rush games Sonic slaps enemies with his feet... it is stupid). I also see homing attack getting Sonic hurt a lot lately in games, which is just weird. It happens in the Rush games, Unleashed on 360, and I saw it in Sonic 4 footage.

The momentum stuff I do not really want to explain, but I thought it worked absolutely fine in Adventure 1 and 2 (more so 1). Even Sonic 06 had it better than Unleashed, which has that shitty boosty feel from Rush/Advance 2 that ruined the 2D gameplay of the series.

Overall I just do not think these newer games are that fun. Adventure was really fun, then they half-assed the sequel and stopped. I already have Unleashed and all the DLC. I cannot find reason to want any more of this when it misses the whole point of the series' gameplay. It is like playing spinoffs repeatedly.

For obvious comparisons, look at everything Nintendo is doing with praise. Galaxy plays like 64, New Super Mario Bros plays similar to the NES/SNES games, Donkey Kong Returns looks like Donkey Kong, and so on. Sonic should just copy this. Make 2D games like the Genesis/similar games and the 3D games like Adventure. There was a reason Adventure had 9/10s when it came out, as did all the praise even 'recent' games like Pocket Adventure got (IGN gave it 10/10) which play liked a Genesis game.

[Crisis]

This game looks so schizophrenic. There are encouragingly frequent moments of brilliance in the aesthetics and level design, but the rest of the time it feels like SEGA have completely missed the mark. I can hope that consistency in the level design will improve over development, but certain conceptual art decisions like the "food level" (horribly reminiscent of Music Plant) seem firmly entrenched.

(100 posts! Because I posted this in another topic!)

[Blount]

As for the behind the back segments, it looks like they're using those mostly for Sonic Unleashed-style strafing sections... where you are generally running and jumping along a straight highway, but have to avoid things by moving left and right.

Am I the only one who can't see those segments as more than just pretty Tiger LCDs?

[Ritz]

I don't feel like going into much detail here, so I'll just say that this game looks incredible so far. Sure, it isn't exactly what I want (An entirely 3D momentum-driven platformer with black eyes etc. etc., or even another game in the vein of the original Sonic Adventure), but come on- are you actually expecting the series to meet your exact specifications at any point in the near or distant future? You might as well cave in and shut the franchise out of your life indefinitely if you aren't willing to compromise for what may otherwise be a fun experience on its own merits.

Also, everyone complaining about the level design is a paint-huffing autistic savant. Sweet Mountain Act 2 looks bland, everything else has exponentially more variety than anything we've yet seen from Sonic in 3D. j-man nailed it in likening the 3D segments to the cheap visual thrills that have been present since Sonic 2, and they're short enough to not detract from the gameplay any. Even then, Sweet Mountain's cannon segment looks great, and it certainly bodes well for the rest of the game- Tropical Resort is only the first stage, remember!

Honestly, the game is so visually stunning that I'd probably enjoy it even if it were comprised entirely of vacuous winding roads. I'll get back to you guys once the enemas have been administered.

[Neo]

Sure, it isn't exactly what I want (An entirely 3D momentum-driven platformer with black eyes etc. etc., or even another game in the vein of the original Sonic Adventure), but come on- are you actually expecting the series to meet your exact specifications at any point in the near or distant future? You might as well cave in and shut the franchise out of your life indefinitely if you aren't willing to compromise for what may otherwise be a fun experience on its own merits.

Yes let's all lower our standards and praise games for being mediocre or competent or merely acceptable.

[Ritz]

Sure, it isn't exactly what I want (An entirely 3D momentum-driven platformer with black eyes etc. etc., or even another game in the vein of the original Sonic Adventure), but come on- are you actually expecting the series to meet your exact specifications at any point in the near or distant future? You might as well cave in and shut the franchise out of your life indefinitely if you aren't willing to compromise for what may otherwise be a fun experience on its own merits.

Mediocrity not implied! A platformer doesn't need to have sophisticated rolling physics to be a genuinely decent game.

[Neo]

But yet we should just cave in and buy it even if we don't like it, because this is as good as Sonic games are going to get.

Does that argument work with your mom?

[j-man]

Jesus, man. If obstinacy was currency, you'd be Scrooge McDuck.

[Ritz]

But yet we should just cave in and buy it even if we don't like it, because this is as good as Sonic games are going to get.

Of course not. Still, I'd have to question the motives of anyone who's willing to stick with a franchise when all hope has been lost for over a decade. You know you're never going to get what you want, so what are you waiting for?

[Neo]

Jesus, man. If obstinacy was currency, you'd be Scrooge McDuck.

At this point I'm mostly just having fun while gauging reactions. I'm not the only obstinate one around here, what with people sticking to the "This game isn't a complete pile of shit, so I'll just say I like it!" spiel.

Still, I'd have to question the motives of anyone who's willing to stick with a franchise when all hope has been lost for over a decade. You know you're never going to get what you want, so what are you waiting for?

Who says I'm waiting for anything? I still play Sonic 2 every now and then, that should be enough.

[Locit]

At this point I'm mostly just having fun while gauging reactions. I'm not the only obstinate one around here, what with people sticking to the "This game isn't a complete pile of shit, so I'll just say I like it!" spiel.

Again, no one is saying this, because it makes no sense. If you'd like to give some analysis of what you've seen and then discuss why you think what you think, great! If you're not, it's kind of hard to justify bothering to post in or follow this thread.

[Neo]

I think reactions to this game are following more or less along the footsteps of reactions to Sonic Unleashed. After the downhill ride 3D Sonic games took with the sequence of Sonic Heroes, Shadow and Sonic 2006, anything seemed good at the time. People instantaneously fell in love with the daytime segments of Unleashed mostly because they were so much better than what they had been treated to in recent times. I haven't played Unleashed that extensively, but my first reaction to it was realizing that it really wasn't the best 3D Sonic gameplay ever as people made it out to be, and didn't even come close to what Adventure could accomplish nearly 10 years before. Something odd happened, though. People were so anxious for the daytime levels, that they actually persevered through the universally panned nighttime stages, just to play the next daytime stage, essentially letting somebody shit on their face just so they could have the pleasure of washing it off afterward.

I feel the exact same thing is happening with this game, albeit to a lesser degree. The 2D segments look okay -- not terribly fantastic, but passable and probably actually enjoyable, but the 3D segments are just... I don't know, filler. Boring. Unappealing. Shit. Yet, the argument most people seem to employ is that the 2D segments are so good, that they can forgive the poor quality of the 3D parts. The problem is, like in Unleashed, the "good parts" aren't really that good. One wonders why not just play Sonic Colors DS, or Sonic 4, which seems to be around the same quality as the 2D segments of Colors Wii. Or why not play different games entirely? It is exactly because of the "eat anything they throw at us" philosophy that we will never see a Sonic game as great as they were in the first 10 years of the franchise's run. Why work on making the games better if people are buying them anyway? Seems all they have to do is keep alternating between a poor game which people don't buy, and then a slightly better game that people perceive as the fucking second coming and throw their life savings at.

I know this post will enrage a lot of you, because you think I am wrong, the game is actually pretty good, I have unreasonably high standards, and you want me to know all of that. Don't bother replying just to tell me this. If I have such high standards it's because Sega set them themselves with Sonics 1, 2, 3, CD, and to an extent even Adventures 1 and 2, and I should not have to feel like an asshole by demanding them to be met again.

alright, i'm done :V

[Rob-Bert]

I think you're wrong, the game is actually pretty good, you have unreasonably high standards, and I want you to know all of that.

[Esrever]

I just honestly think it looks pretty fun, is all. But maybe that's because I DID enjoy many of the portions of the Sonic Unleashed daytime stages... and this looks like a more polished version of that, at a more reasonable speed, with more 2D sections and exploration and less cheap bullshit. It's absolutely not classic Sonic at all, but it looks like it might be a different thing that I also enjoy. You know what I mean?

Of course, if it turns out to be total balls, it'll wind up being one more in the long line of shitty modern Sonic games that I never bought. But even then, at least we're getting a sequel to Sonic Rush Adventure out of it.

[Esrever]

Izuka and US producer Patrick Reilly mentioned that American writers (whose previous credits include Madworld -- yes, that Madworld) have been hired to create a story for the game that both adults and kids can get into.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/109/1099357p1.html

Totally, totally weird. But I guess that explains why some of the announcements Robotnik reads over the intercom in Tropical Resort are actually funny.

[Kogen]

He also did the storyline for Lazy Town.

[K2J]

Well that explains the cake level.

[j-man]

Oh my god.

Oh my god, you guys, I think I figured it out! Conspicuously Nintendo-only addition to the main franchise. Sonic Adventure being re-released on PSN and XBLA. Sonic's 20th anniversary next year. Crush 40 about to work on a new game soundtrack.

They're going to make Sonic Adventure 3, aren't they?

[Zeta]

http://gaygamer.net/2010/06/e3_10_sonic ... ly_re.html

Seems Sonic Colors is being praised universally.