The GHZ Forum

Radrappy wrote:I finished collecting all the red rings, put the disc in its case and placed it on the shelf. I am happy and satisfied with this experience and look forward to what's coming next.

I might try for an S-rank once in a while, but otherwise I'm pretty much in the same boat. It's a refreshing change! Re: spin dashing, I think replacing the slide button wholesale with a roll button would answer a lot of complaints. It could be dual function: activate the spin-dash while standing still to get some speed when your boost meter is empty; and go into a roll while running to deal with enemies and slip under low walls.

It has occurred to me that without negativity, this community is pretty quiet.

No kidding.

Radrappy wrote:It has occurred to me that without negativity, this community is pretty quiet.

I think a lot of people just haven't bought it. It's expensive and Christmas is in a month and "better than SA1" isn't exactly high praise in 2010. It also looks dumb.

Better than Sonic Adventure on DC? Hehe!

I do not think you can compare a spinoff of Unleashed on Wii to a game that launches a console and gets universal praise at the time (you can say it aged into diarrhea, but so will this in 6 months time when no one cares).

Crisis wrote:

Radrappy wrote:It has occurred to me that without negativity, this community is pretty quiet.

I think a lot of people just haven't bought it. It's expensive and Christmas is in a month and "better than SA1" isn't exactly high praise in 2010. It also looks dumb.

If I hadn't just bought a Sonic game in October, I'd probably be on this by now. As short as Sonic 4 was, I've spent a good deal of time doing time attack (on the leader boards, I'm in the top 10 on 3 different acts) and I'll be ready to move onto something completely different pretty soon.

I'll probably pick it up once I finish playing through whatever I get for Christmas.

Don't worry! We can always count on Kogen to provide the negativity. (Regardless of whether or not he's actually played it.)

Because you need to play a game to make a statement that has nothing to do with gameplay.

Oh, good! I'm glad to know the gameplay has nothing to do with how well the game will age. Thanks for clearing that up!

I forgot to add that we can ignore that this engine has been used previously and the game is a spinoff with moderately-positive reviews and low sales.

True merits of an unforgettable title, right? All the games going to be announced next year will just fade into obscurity over the prominence of Sonic Colours. Sonic fans are certainly not known for jumping onto hype wagons and forgetting everything else.

Kogen wrote:True merits of an unforgettable title, right? All the games going to be announced next year will just fade into obscurity over the prominence of Sonic Colours. Sonic fans are certainly not known for jumping onto hype wagons and forgetting everything else.

Way to fabricate hypothetical supporting evidence. Unless you've actually played the game all of this vitriol seems completely baseless.

An engine does not necessarily effect the way a game plays. It may have something to do with the way certain calculations are made (so certain physics models are likely to be similar), but that's it. It also doesn't effect visual style, how polished a game is, or even what genre it is. It translates script between different hardware variations to make ports easier. In the Hedgehog Engine's case, we also know that it does some things specific to Sonic games, like it's good at streaming 3D terrain so Sonic can move through large environments very quickly. But none of that has anything to do with what the games made with it have to be like.

If you want to say "the game is based on Sonic Unleashed's day levels" then you have a case, and I think that's a legitimate concern!

Because--regardless of Sonic Colors' quality--is anyone else bothered that the "solution" to Sonic in 3D is to make a game that's 80% 2D sequences? I love 2D games, but I also loved Sonic Adventure and even SA2, and I'd like to play sequels that take what was good in those games and address the problems in those games. I don't mean to say I don't want 2D! Especially good 2D! I wish more games were 2D! But doesn't it seem like a cop out that the challenge of making Sonic in 3D is left hanging like that? I feel incredibly conflicted about this!

No, your last paragraph is pretty much what I feel. I think that because 3D Sonic has been so bad historically, they're afraid to even get close to the SA1/SA2 way of doing things. Maybe next time.

K2J wrote:No, your last paragraph is pretty much what I feel. I think that because 3D Sonic has been so bad historically, they're afraid to even get close to the SA1/SA2 way of doing things. Maybe next time.

Surely you jest? That would require risk, oh no no no! We can't afford that when we can just pander to what the internet tells us to do. Easy money amirite? ...right? Hello?

I'd like to see them take a stab at a new 3D Sonic again, too. But considering how terrible most of the post-1994 2D Sonic games have been, I'll welcome a good new 2D Sonic every bit as eagerly as a good 3D one. And Sonic Colours is pretty bloody good. Not just "tolerable," not just "a good first step", but a game of legitimate quality and care the likes of which the franchise has not seen in a decade. As I've been going back to collect all the red widgets, the expansiveness and depth of the stage design has continued to impress me.

Kogen, I really don't mean to keep proding you. It's just that you are such an enigma! I try my best to get a read on you, but the content of your posts is so arbitrarily combative, inconsistent and generally nonsensical that sometimes I find it hard to believe you are actually a real person and not just some sort of elaborate social experiment.

G.Silver wrote:Because--regardless of Sonic Colors' quality--is anyone else bothered that the "solution" to Sonic in 3D is to make a game that's 80% 2D sequences? I love 2D games, but I also loved Sonic Adventure and even SA2, and I'd like to play sequels that take what was good in those games and address the problems in those games. I don't mean to say I don't want 2D! Especially good 2D! I wish more games were 2D! But doesn't it seem like a cop out that the challenge of making Sonic in 3D is left hanging like that? I feel incredibly conflicted about this!

Even the 3D segments aren't even particularly three dimensional. They're almost exclusively race track like in structure, more Crash Bandicoot than Mario 64, with very little room for exploration and few interactive stage gimmicks. The 2D segments feel less like a classic 2D Sonic game and more like a 2D adaptation of a 3D Sonic game, filtered through Mario sensibilities. It's a good game, and I enjoyed it throughout, but it's very much its own beast.

Sonic Adventure, I think, was the only sincere attempt to translate the formula of the Mega Drive Sonic games into 3D, despite all the bells and whistles attached to it. SA1 took all of the core entries of the series as its source material, but SA2 only seemed to take SA1 as its source material. Since then it's been a case of incremental trial and error, throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.

I like Sonic Colours a lot, taken on its own merits, but it's absolutely not the Sonic game we've all been waiting for - 3D or 2D.

Esrever wrote:And Sonic Colours is pretty bloody good. Not just "tolerable," not just "a good first step", but a game of legitimate quality and care the likes of which the franchise has not seen in a decade. As I've been going back to collect all the red widgets, the expansiveness and depth of the stage design has continued to impress me.

The Wisp system absolutely makes the game, particularly the fact that you can choose where and when to activate the abilties, and there being multiple abilities per stage. There hasn't been such a sense of freedom and exploration in a Sonic game since Sonic 3 & Knuckles. I had more fun going back to find the red rings and using newly unlocked Wisps in earlier stages than I did my initial run through. The sheer amount of option available in each stage also lends well to replaying for a high score or best time.

Oh, and nobody seems to have mentioned it, but the Egg Shuttle challange mode is brilliant and should be in every Sonic game. It's essentially Sonic Colours presented like Sonic 1 or 2. You start with 4 lives, play through every level and boss in order with no maps or story scenes, once you beat the end boss or run out of lives the game is over and you enter your initials on the high score board if you ranked high enough. THAT IS VIDEO GAMES!

So, DS or Wii version?

Crazy Penguin wrote:Oh, and nobody seems to have mentioned it, but the Egg Shuttle challange mode is brilliant and should be in every Sonic game. It's essentially Sonic Colours presented like Sonic 1 or 2. You start with 4 lives, play through every level and boss in order with no maps or story scenes, once you beat the end boss or run out of lives the game is over and you enter your initials on the high score board if you ranked high enough. THAT IS VIDEO GAMES!

Is it just high score or does it track your time too? Are there individual time attack leader boards for each level?

Kogen wrote:I forgot to add that we can ignore that this engine has been used previously and the game is a spinoff with moderately-positive reviews and low sales.

Ignoring for a moment that the game really doesn't play very much like Unleashed at all, and that you being determined to hate everything despite not having even played it is reason enough to completely disregard whatever nonsense you might come up with...

Why exactly do you think this game is a spinoff?

It's a Sonic game, starring Sonic, that plays like you'd expect a Sonic game to play. Why you'd arbitrarily decide that it's a spin-off is beyond any reasoning I can come up with, unless you're working on the assumption that any game which isn't multi-platform must be a spin-off... which is dumb.

Anyway, I haven't beaten my first run-through yet - I'm taking my time, I know - but in general the game is really fun and a hell of a lot more polished than anything they've done before. There are a few shaky moments here and there, like when the first level of Starlight Carnival begins with a 10-second scripted sequence of Sonic just running forwards (why take control away from the player for this?), but on the whole I'm really impressed with what I've played. The opening moments to Planet Wisp's first level were the turning point for me, where I went from thinking the game was "really solid", to thinking it was "really good".

Hybrid wrote:like when the first level of Starlight Carnival begins with a 10-second scripted sequence of Sonic just running forwards (why take control away from the player for this?)

It's not unprecedented

Baby steps, I suppose.

I got an impression it was a spinoff as well, to be honest. The cartoony story and brevity are more in line with what you'd expect from a side-project like Rush, Rivals, or the storybook series, and that's the context in which I see it (and also Unleashed). It's not a re-imagining of the franchise like Sonic 06 or Sonic Adventure, nor is it a direct sequel like SA2 or Sonic 4. It's exclusive to the Wii, which was ignored completely for 06 and shafted with Unleashed. The fact that the DS version is clearly a continuation of the Rush series muddies the waters even further.

I feel that probably the single most significant change to the series that Colors has brought is that it presents a complete break with everything we thought we knew about Sonic when it comes to dialogue. Honestly, if there has been one consistently awful aspect of the Sonic games (with the sole exception of Chronicles), it's the good damn words coming out of the characters good damn mouths. And for years i have been pondering why this is, and why nobody at Sega has ever bothered to try to do anything about it.

Until now! Of course, it must still be stated that the dialogue is only great compared to what we have heard in other Sonic games. More generally speaking, i must say it comes of as something taken straight from a saturday morning cartoon. That is, a saturday morning cartoon produced like twenty years ago. But as i said, still miles and miles above "all those Eggmans robots".

Dr. Watson wrote:I feel that probably the single most significant change to the series that Colors has brought is that it presents a complete break with everything we thought we knew about Sonic when it comes to dialogue. Honestly, if there has been one consistently awful aspect of the Sonic games (with the sole exception of Chronicles), it's the good damn words coming out of the characters good damn mouths. And for years i have been pondering why this is, and why nobody at Sega has ever bothered to try to do anything about it.

I'd have to agree (although I'd like to add Sonic Battle to the list of acceptably written games). As for why SEGA never tried it before, well, the one time they outsourced Sonic to an RPG company it didn't exactly work wonders for the franchise. And from what I can tell, SEGA's (or perhaps just Sonic Team's) big flaw is internal product testing and quality control. It might never have even occurred to them that writing was an issue. It was probably beneath box art on the priority list, and I can imagine Pontac and Graff having to approach SEGA about writing for the project rather than the other way around. I mean, what sort of corporate official looks at MadWorld or Happy Tree Friends and thinks that's the kind of writing they should be using for their family-friendly mascot?

Writing that paragraph reminded me once again of what a bad idea Sonic Colours is from the company's standpoint. This is the best they could do? I mean, sure, they've had worse ideas, but how did they manage to get this one right and Sonic 4 so wrong?

Sega should really be glad over the decision to release Sonic 4 prior to Colors though, considering that whatever praise Sonic 4 got was probably mostly due to "well, it's better than most of Sonic's other recent games".

And from what I can tell, SEGA's (or perhaps just Sonic Team's) big flaw is internal product testing and quality control. It might never have even occurred to them that writing was an issue.

Also, localisation.

It's basically the JRPG syndrome. When a Japanese dev team (Sega) makes a game in Japanese (Sonic), then makes it very story-driven (3D era Sonics), and the story is then translated to English by people who aren't on the team, is it really surprising that the end result is drivel?

Do you know for certain that the Japanese scripts were any better written?

(...) wrote:

And from what I can tell, SEGA's (or perhaps just Sonic Team's) big flaw is internal product testing and quality control. It might never have even occurred to them that writing was an issue.

Also, localisation.

It's basically the JRPG syndrome. When a Japanese dev team (Sega) makes a game in Japanese (Sonic), then makes it very story-driven (3D era Sonics), and the story is then translated to English by people who aren't on the team, is it really surprising that the end result is drivel?

Uh, what? I don't know how you can blame localization for directly screwing up Sonic games when unintended localization changes have been pretty rare, outside of the obvious backstory changes in the 90's (which don't affect much). If anything, (relative) accuracy to the original script means most problems are the fault of the scenario writers.

aaaaaaand crowbar snipes me while i'm typing this :(