Sonic Generations

[Neo]

It looks unequivocally better than Fan Remix. For one thing, you can actually tell what the heck is going on! Nothing but respect for the remix dudes, who did a hell of a job for a fan effort, but this has the visual hierarchy of colour, structure and detail that Fan Remix (and Sonic 4, for that matter) desperately needed.

Fan remix is cluttered, plastic, overcontrasted, and overdone in general, and that's pretty much what I said when the demo was released. I found it difficult to identify things while playing it, and it's difficult to identify what's going on in that screenshot you posted to supposedly prove me wrong too.

THANK YOU. The ass-kissers over at Retro did nothing but praise the overly busy, utterly illegible look of Fan Remix like it was fucking perfection. Now, of all people, Sega themselves show how to properly make an insanely detailed environment, except one which doesn't make your eyes bleed.

Shitload of gameplay footage here.

woah woah Woah WOAH SLOW DOWN, CLASSIC SONIC, YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST

He seems to handle okay, but it's like he has no top speed! At least not a particularly sane one, he seems to be able to reach Rush speeds even without being able to boost.

[Alexrd]

woah woah Woah WOAH SLOW DOWN, CLASSIC SONIC, YOU'RE GOING TOO FAST

Hopefully not Sonic 2's "fast".

[Esrever]

I bet the reason classic Sonic can come to an instant dead-stop spindash like that is that they've assigned it to a button, like Sonic Adventure.

[Crowbar]

Yeah, that's pretty much what I assumed.

[P.P.A.]

Oh god, Classic Sonic’s GHZ looks gorgeous. I still have some doubts about the gameplay, although the one shown on that Spanish website makes me much more otpimistic than the trailer does. I couldn’t care less about Modern Sonic’s stuff.

Longtime Sonic fans will be happy to hear that Sonic Team's Takashi Iizuka is heading up the producer responsibilities

Longtime Sonic fans will be happy to hear that Sonic Team's Takashi Iizuka is heading up the producer responsibilities

http://wavechan.sepwich.com/images/goddammit.png

Longtime Sonic fans will be happy to hear that Sonic Team's Takashi Iizuka is heading up the producer responsibilities

http://wavechan.sepwich.com/images/goddammit.png

Longtime Sonic fans will be happy to hear that Sonic Team's Takashi Iizuka is heading up the producer responsibilities

SO. MANY. CONFLICTING. EMOTIONS.

[Crazy Penguin]

Hope they work Flickies into this somewhere. A Green Hill Zone looking this good shouldn't be uninhabited.

[gr4yJ4Y]

And after finishing Sonic Colors (which really doesn't play very much like Unleashed [or at least the HD version]) I thought I'd forever be disappointed by Sega's following efforts. This looks good though! I'm looking forward to this!

Thoughts:
-The red rings will hopefully encourage repeated trials
-The level design has a certain Dimps quality to it that has me cautious (See the ceiling running around 0:50 in the interview vid).
-The lack of a Wii version will help them focus on one version of the game, I'm hoping.
-Sega is going to sell so few copies of Episode II.
-Interactive menu? How curious...

[Delphine]

Shitload of gameplay footage here.

oh god I am having an emotion that is not apathy or derision what do i do

[CM August]

Gameplay looks an awful lot like Unleashed. I hope they at least cut the QTE bullshit this time.

[Arcade]

But... I just got used to his green eyes!

[Wombatwarlord777]

Neat trailer. My pipe dream is that any 3D segments in this game play like an open-ended, optimized Sonic Adventure, but it looks as if that isn't going to happen. Oh well. I can't complain. Yet.

[cjmcray]

Two things bug me about the trailer:

The jumping sound effect classic Sonic uses. ERRRRGHHHH. Why couldn't they use the sound effect from the Genesis games?

In the 2D segments, Sonic looks far away.

Otherwise, I love it.

[Malchik]

God, you people could be sold with an AIDs dick as long as it's "way past cool". Excuse me if I save hydration in case I see evidence worthy enough to get my vagina running. This is all flash with all issues I've had with Unleashed.

[Blount]

New trend: instead of complaining about the game, complain about the people who don't complain about the game.

[Farmer]

In the 2D segments, Sonic looks far away.

My one major criticism of Colours would be that during some side-scrolling stages, the camera zooms out and Sonic is tiny. That probably wouldn't be so much of a problem on a 40" plasma screen, but on my crappy TV set the action rapidly turns into a mass of squabbling phosphor dots.

The jumping sound effect classic Sonic uses. ERRRRGHHHH. Why couldn't they use the sound effect from the Genesis games?

That's the Sonic CD jump sound, if I'm not mistaken.

[Rob-Bert]

It sounds more like an odd mix of both the Genesis jump and the CD jump. I kinda like it.

God, you people could be sold with an AIDs dick as long as it's "way past cool". Excuse me if I save hydration in case I see evidence worthy enough to get my vagina running. This is all flash with all issues I've had with Unleashed.

...Did you watch the same footage of Classic Sonic as the rest of us (bar Izuka) did?

[Blount]

From the other topic:

Maybe that's their strategy- load the game up with mostly Unleashed and Colors stages, changing next to nothing. It's less work that way.

If this article is correct, we have confirmation that Colors levels will be featured. It says so near the bottom of the first page. It also mentions some kind of "new and mysterious nemesis" in the beginning of the third page.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

New rival Slipshod the Hedgehog?!?!?

[Radrappy]

So after cooling my jets for a bit (sorry for snapping, Isuka), I do have some pretty serious concerns.

It appears that Modern sonic plays 100% like Sonic Unleashed and 0% like Colors. Which isn't surprising seeing as its made by the unleashed team, but is bad news none the less. The speed stages from the HD versions of Unleashed were sloppy boost fests with minimal player input and as a result just weren't very much fun. It's hard to see where you're going and the designers punished players often with cheap deaths for not knowing the stage. I realize that following the Unleashed model versus the Colors one will lead to better contrast between the styles as the Colors model favors the platforming and precision which classic sonic already monopolizes, but this will result in extremely frustrating and broken modern Sonic sequences.

Some awful things I noticed from the modern Sonic gameplay:

-Boosting is ring based again which guarantees more or less unlimited boost. In colors, believe it or not, boosting was hard to come by and was a lot harder to abuse as a result. Unleashed encourages the player to be constantly boosting leading to, you guessed it, cheap deaths via pitfalls.

-They've removed the double jump from colors and replaced it with that awful spazzy mini homing attack from Sa2 - Unleashed. The double jump was a fucking god send in terms of platforming and being responsible for not careening off the edge of stages. The fact that its gone is definitely a step backwards.

-Level design favors the narrow narrow racetracks made popular in Unleashed's first level, Apostos. Colors had tracks as well, but they were wide, giving the illusion of freedom at the very least. These fenced off speedways are serviceable but arbitrarily restrictive. Why not widen them out as in Colors? It would even provide more opportunities to inject multiple routes.

-I swear to god if there are any run-on-water-instant-death sequences returning from Unleashed I will not buy this game. Colors delt with underwater sequences magically and even gave you the option to skim on the top if you were going fast enough.

All in all, it just seems like the Unleashed team hasn't taken any notes from what worked so well in Colors which is very troubling indeed.

[chriscaffee]

Colors feels like a watered down Unleashed (360 version) with worse controls. I like it, but Unleashed is leaps and bounds better and I couldn't be happier that they are using that as the basis for "Modern Sonic" over Colors.

[Radrappy]

Yeah those running on water sequences in unleashed were great weren't they. Also the QTEs. Loved those! And oh man, the way you would die over and over and over again because of cheaply placed bottomless pits was poetry. Gosh I still have such fond memories of eggmanland. What a treat.

[Isuka]

No offense taken, Rad.

-They've removed the double jump from colors and replaced it with that awful spazzy mini homing attack from Sa2 - Unleashed.

The homing attack in HD Unleashed is as short as SA2's? I'm askin 'cause I've only played the PS2 version, and that one's homing attack has a pretty long reach, at least in those parts where you're obviously meant to home in from one enemy to another, and another...

And maybe chris is talking about stuff like quick/side stepping being more precise in Unleashed due to it being mapped to a dedicated button? Or maybe it's just the 3D sections of Colors that are watered down when compared to Unleashed's, while the 2D ones are much better?

[chriscaffee]

I don't have a problem with any of the things you listed. And other than the QTEs, all your complaints stem from level design, not the engine.

The quickstep, wall jump and drifting around corners are all better implemented in Unleashed.

[Cuckooguy]

I really dig the underground cavern with bodies of water sections of this Green Hill Zone. It somehow makes the level feel new again!

[Crazy Penguin]

http://www.sonicstadium.org/2011/04/son ... in-europe/