The GHZ Forum

Every 3D Sonic game has included at least one additional playing style and has usually been criticised for doing so. While extra play styles are, arguably, unnecessary, Sonic Team still seem to insist on including them, so it might be worth examining which styles, if any, actually suit the Sonic experience.

The key word is concept – you might absolutely abhor Knuckles’ hunting stages, for example, but could have ideas on how to make the concept work properly.

Production constraints are important to consider. Although it may be possible to create the perfect Sonic fishing game, it’s unlikely that there will be enough time to achieve it and create a decent enough regular Sonic game in the typical 9-12 month development cycle.

Level design is a more significant problem of current games than play styles, so for the purposes of this poll, you can assume that this has been rectified, provided that development time isn’t eaten up by working on additional play styles.

I'm going to take the gameplay for face value here, because I don't what to get into what could have been and what should be just yet.

Sonic gameplay generally involves a certain amount of destruction, both of robotic enemies and the environment. The same can be said of the shooting stages of SA1 and 2. Like any industrial environment-based action game, both Sonic and shooting gameplay revolve around moving quickly and blowing stuff up. Granted, the mechs in SA2 had some shoddy acceleration and start-up control, but once you got moving you were going pretty quick; to say nothing of E-102's ability to switch between speeds.

Basically, for me, it felt very comfortable switching between Sonic and mech stages in the SA games.

I've never played Shadow, so I can't say anything about the shooting gameplay inherent in that game.

They all would work if used sparingly, however reverse Chasing and speed it up and Don't force Chao raising.

Except Stealth and Fishing those are best reserved for spin-offs.

As for the main Sonic games, I would perfer that they stick to their traditional gameplay style; select a character, run and jump, beat the level. I would not mind if any of the different gameplay styles were mid-level though, for example, that racing segment in Stardust Speedway Zone 3, Sonic CD.

Save the fishing for the hub world, Zelda style.

Shooting. While I'm sure most of us will agree that the shooting stages we've seen thus far haven't been particularly entertaining (With the exception of E-102's), I've always dreamed of a fast-paced, 3D Contra/Gunstar Heroes-esque shooter. Sonic Team would never be capable of attaining that level of greatness, but the way I see it, it'd work perfectly. I know it's hard to visualize such a thing, but SRB2's multiplayer match mode comes exceptionally close to what I'm looking for.

Racing, hands down. While it keeps the fast pace inherent to a Sonic game, it adds the competitive spirit which is always good for a video game. The AI could use some work, though, as it presents little to no challenge (this including the hardest difficulty).

Runner-up would be Stealth, which, although most people (myself included) say that stealth and speed do not mix, I distinctly have good memories of attempting to clear Team Chaotix's extra mission in Sonic Heroes's Frog Forest. Swiftly and silently.

Oh god I shouldn't have posted D:

I voted other. The compliment I liked the best was back in Sonic 3 where your friend could play as Tails. I guess I am sort of missing the point since it requires a second person, but I always thought that was a cool feature that worked really well.

For additional playstyles I'd probably have to say Chasing because it makes sense. Racing is kind of lame because why the hell should Tails be able to beat Sonic in a race?

Also for Stealth, maybe I missed the point, but what was the reason for sneaking through bad guys when it was quicker to just pummel them with the homing attack? Didn't they see you when you came out of stealth and the other two guys met up with you or did they just magically not see them and I've forgotten?

Light Speed wrote:I voted other. The compliment I liked the best was back in Sonic 3 where your friend could play as Tails. I guess I am sort of missing the point since it requires a second person, but I always thought that was a cool feature that worked really well.

Considering the mass of excess characters that have been stapled onto the franchise, I'm rather disappointed that the idea of co-op gameplay hasn't been toyed with recently, especially considering the team mechanics of Heroes.

Light Speed wrote:I voted other. The compliment I liked the best was back in Sonic 3 where your friend could play as Tails. I guess I am sort of missing the point since it requires a second person, but I always thought that was a cool feature that worked really well.

Really? You thought it worked well? I thought it was a cute feature, but ultimately pointless. It was barely playable. If you were Tails, you were just playing a desperate, constant game of catch-up the whole time.

Well sure when you are running through a level like mad, but when we were trying to explore all the different areas we found the flying to be very useful. Also in Launch Base, among other zones, we would use Tails to fight the boss that launches giant balls. Tails could stand up on the ledge and take him out really fast, that way Sonic would have all his rings for the final fight. This was before S&K came out, by the way. Marble Garden Zones final boss was also much easier with a friend controlling Tails.

Damn, I forgot about that. I should've voted other. When Sonic 3 first came out I would sit there and play it and my sister would watch, and when I wanted to get somewhere Sonic couldn't reach, she would pick up the second controller and play as Tails to fly me up there. It was pretty much the only way our emotionally retarded selves could bond with each other.

edit: lol i can spell

I remember in the first stage of Hydrocity Zone I would always get over to the edge on the left at the start of the stage and use the second controller to fly Sonic over to a path only Tails was supposed to reach. I was so proud of myself!

Shit, I read the poll wrong. I hate breeding Chao.

Anyways, I'd say that racing easily compliments the fast-paced style of the classic Sonic games.

I voted Racing, but on re-considering, Chasing might work better, as long as the camera doesn't switch to the "LOL YOU CAN'T SEE WHERE YOU'RE GOING" angle as in the Whale Chase, City Escape Truck Chase, etc.

Being chased by Zero was pretty scary sometimes because you're so used to Sonic, but Amy's acceleration is pitifully slow. So there's this sort of, "Hurry up, you stupid bitch! He's gonna rape you! Argh!" panicy vibe you get whenever Zero would show up.

For me, the core aspects of a Sonic game are speed and exploration.
Although racing and chasing keep up the speed, they prevent exploration at occurring at your own pace, and so don’t compliment the Sonic experience (or at least my definition of it).

Hunting should fit my definition. However, a Sonic game should also be about moving forwards. That doesn’t mean backtracking doesn’t have a place, but it should be optional. In hunting games, backtracking is often mandatory.

That leaves shooting. As Shadow and Gamma’s shooting stages showed, firing projectiles at high speed compliments the traditional Sonic experience fairly well (Both characters had problems, but these weren’t caused by the shooting concept).

From a production view point, shooting is efficient to create, as the main Sonic levels can be re-used with no major changes. Simply increase the enemy count, add a few unique shooting specific puzzles/bosses for each level and a mechanism for the shooting character to acquire the weapons of enemies and you have an experience that will be different from the main Sonic game without veering too far from the original Sonic concept.

Perhaps the only real problem with shooting is that many games have done it countless times before. However, if Sonic Team insists on adding extra adventures, a shooting game has the potential to be the most Sonic-like without impinging on the time available to develop the main game.

I rather liked the concept of Amy's levels in the first Sonic Adventure, but their execution seemed lacking. Aside from the fact that they were stupidly easy (what with Amy's ability to reach top speed instantly just by hopping as you start off), they just didn't really seem to go any where with some of the ideas, such as being able to hide in barrels; I mean they threw that in, but what was the point? They were typically located in places where they were of little use (like located before a slope that you can't move fast enough to climb while in one), and even if you were to use them the robot just starts using its attack which hits everything in a certain radius which you're also no longer mobile enough to avoid.
Beyond that, what happens if you're caught up with? Nothing at all really. There's no real sense of urgency there. I don't mean it should catch up with her, break her neck, INSTANT LOSE! or anything, but when it just uses the same ineffectual attacks it was using anyway, there seems to be little reason to get a move on.

I'm torn between hunting and pinball.

Chasing really. It still had you moving around your general stage trying to get to the end, but involved a reason for you to move forward quickly. And not to forget solving that damn puzzle on Hot Shelter without standing still for half-a-second.

I would have voted for team play but my asshole friends would always fly me into spikes and crap just to piss me off.

BlazeHedgehog wrote:Being chased by Zero was pretty scary sometimes because you're so used to Sonic, but Amy's acceleration is pitifully slow. So there's this sort of, "Hurry up, you stupid bitch! He's gonna rape you! Argh!" panicy vibe you get whenever Zero would show up.

When I play her stages, I definitely get the feeling they were aiming for that "semi-helpless lass constantly on the run from an unstoppable maniac" deal. I guess facing down ZERO in her final boss made sense too, but at the same time was cheap and couldn't have been more anticlimactic.

SA1 was a good example of applying the old formula to a number of things and doing it consistently well (Big is the tragic exception). SA2, though, didn't handle it as well. I don't have a problem with refining it to platforming/shooting/hunting - I have a problem with making the entire game more linear. Doing that hurt all three styles, especially the hunting stages since the radar only worked for one shard at a time. There is no sense in making it like that when the standard size of the stages has been almost doubled.

I'll go with smile and vote shooting, since E-102 and the shooting mechanics in the Shadow game proved that weapons can fit in. The Sonic & Tails modes are cool, but they come up short because playing the old games co-op was clunky unless both players knew what they were doing.

I voted for racing. Those levels with Tails in SA1 were really enjoyable.

But the co-op Sonic & Tails stuff brought a second player into things rather than having them just sit there and watch. It also let them walk away in the middle of a game without any penalty to the main player.

Exploration does disserve a spot in the Sonic games, but I would rather have it be incorporated into Sonic's levels rather than "Here's a large level. Go find a needle." Some of the extra emblem stages did this fairly well in SA2 (go find the chao, etc).

Stealth could also work well. I was excited to hear that it would be in Heroes before it was released, but was disapointed with the execution. I wouldn't mind if they had Espio stay around in future games, even if stealth goes against the entire speed aspect.

I hated raising chao.

Fishing...Totally

Raising Chao was pretty fun, but so utterly alienated from the actual gameplay that at first I thought it was some promotional crap for a new Tamagotchi-esque game. Guess not. Chao have been cemented into the Sonic world now.

I can't vote on the poll (why?), but when I first looked at it, I thought racing, hands down. It just seems like such a perfect complement to a game where speed is already a key point. But the more I think about it, the more I think exploration is a better complement. Not necessarily searching for an item (although it was pretty fun in S3+K to try and find those elusive items on ledges or above roofs, not to mention the giant rings), but rather trying to find the best route through a level. Angel Island and Icecap strike me as the best examples of this: in Angel Island, you'd be given a few simple choices: take the high route or the low? Better yet, there were about three points where these routes overlapped, so you could go low-high-low, low-low-high, etc. This got ten times better and more elaborate in Act II. The same technique was used in Icecap, but then it was more a matter of "which route gives me the best speed and the most rings?" And you could piece together different parts of the paths to get your favorite. Adding the Sonic-Tails-Knuckles capability restrictions made it even better.

I'd argue that the same was true for Advance 1, but I know how you all feel about that :P

Hmm. When I looked at this poll I thought to myself not only which ones I think would work well in a Sonic game but also which of these were in the classic Genesis-era games. I picked Racing, simply because facing Metal Sonic on Stardust Speedway was enjoyable at the time. Were they to make that type of boss battle on the 3D game, it would have the potential to rock incredibly.

raising chao wasn't fun, it was horrible! I can still see little blue creatures in my nightmares. thank goddnes I don't have to come back there...