Sonic The Hedgehog (2k6/Next) Thoughts

[Kulock]

Not much I'm going to say now. Lots of loading for short cinemas and sequences. High speed stages are fucking broken. (Got through the stage without dying once, took me EIGHT tries to get past the high speed stage, particularly the final loop to dash ramps to the goal ring. Big hint: FAVOR THE LEFT SIDE OF THAT CORKSCREW. There's apparently two "sides" to it, and the right one doesn't fucking work.)

Forced bit with Tails, who had to use dummy ring boxes ala Heroes soloing, instead of being able to... well, use his tails. Logically, though, he flies faster than he runs.

Playing on.

[Kulock]

Town area feels retarded and pointless so far.

Boss I just fought was good, though.


Edit: WELL THANK GOODNESS IT TOLD ME ABOUT THAT MOVE BEFORE I WALKED ON THE SAND WITH MY LAST LIFE. GRR. Thankfully restarting puts me right at the stage again.

[BlazeHedgehod]

You seem pretty frusterated right off the bat.

I either have 3 hours or 6 hours until I can pick it up, depending on when Mom gets off work.

[Kulock]

Silver sounds like a UFO when he floats down in a cinema.

Right after CHEESIEST CINEMA EVER. I can make no excuses for it.

[Jet the Hawk]

Does the Egg Carrier look alike have a name or is it just "EGGMAN'S BATTLESHIP"?

[Seph]

Wow, Kulock, the most optimistic person I've seen by far, is frustrated with it. That doesn't bode well...

[Optimus Prime]

Hey hey hey, Ku, is there an option to either turn voices off or swap to Japanese?

I'm guessing 'no' to the second one. You sound happy as a clam! In boiling water D=...

[Jet the Hawk]

Oh Christ I just knew they were going to force you to play as the "amigo" I just knew it , please tell me they don't actually say "amigo"

[Optimus Prime]

Sonic r hables der espagnol hee hee hee.

I wonder how long it'll take for the game to damage his brain irrepairably? Anyone wanna visit and snap his disc in half so Ku won't become an angry vegetable?

[Kulock]

It's not terrible, but there's rough bits. The first boss fight (Egg Cerebus) was the most fun. The second boss fight (Silver) no so much, because if you get in range he has an overpowering attack that's cool looking but annoying at the same time, so you have to run away from him, and since you can't keep your focus on him, you're pretty much running away blindly.

No option to swap voices, you can turn subtitle text on or off, but not change the language that's in either. I might try changing my 360's language, though, that worked with the Xbox Sonic games.

Right now I'm a little... confused. I think the developers missed the point of having a mini-map when they generally don't mark important things on it. (Tails) "Hey Sonic! Can you hear me? Knuckles wants to meet you at the city's warehouse!" ... OK, an icon or something would be nice... this is following a rousing game of "Who's the Captain". I'll give you a hint: don't bother thinking about it.

The strangest thing is the little "town" missions. It loads for a bit, shows a tiny sequence with them introducing a challenge with music (but it's the same models, the same area), then it stops and loads again, you play the challenge, then it stops, and loads again, then shows the NPC talking about whether you passed or failed. There's like... two loads there that are completely unnecessary, the way I see it. I realize the version of the town the challenges take place in probably requires separate loading, but loading for them to say a tiny bit of text accompanied to some music?

Edit: So Knuckles wasn't in the same section, he was in that exit I had just unlocked. That sounds logical, but the way it's presented... it would've made more sense for Tails to phone in as soon as I arrived in the new section, since that was my destination anyway.

[Kulock]

KNUCKLES USED THE HEART OF THE CARDS.

Edit: Just kidding, by the way. But you'll understand once you see it.

And right now I'm a little creeped out, got a Sonic Heroes formation going on. (Although it's more like Power arrangement than speed.) They're probably just sticking with me through the city area until I get to the next stage, where I choose one. I hope.

[Kulock]

Oh my. Broken snowboarding. Quick camera changes lead to you pushing in a "dead" direction.

I'm... going to go try out Silver now.


Edit: Much better. Also, kitty.

That road doesn't have the capacity to destroy anymore, it just doesn't look too solid now.

[Kulock]

Hee hee, I've already figured out Mephiles. That's clever.

Edit: Well, maybe I haven't, that was just my first instinct. But there seems to be a pretty big hint about him, one way or the other.


Silver's definitely slower, but he's really not that bad. Biggest issue is the stuff you pick up for ammo often gets in the way of the camera, and you can't quite always perfectly aim it.

And the biggest drawback was shown in the boss fight following: when you're out of ammo, you really can't do much until more presents itself (through the boss' actions, or some respawning rubble at first).


Blaze is twitchy, absolutely, but she seems more responsive than Sonic. I already like how she handles a little better at the moment, but people will definitely have problems with it. One thing to make it easier: you can do homing attacks by hitting "Attack" (X) during a jump. Or the uppercut move works fine too. It's only that weird floaty aerial dash attack that feels peculiar.


And if this was holding you back for purchase, the localization works just like the other Xbox Sonic games did: setting the console's language to Japanese effectively gives you the Japanese version of the game, at least in terms of text language and spoken dialogue. It's all or nothing. The PS2 games let you choose between the options freely, they just technically suffered elsewhere, so perhaps that's something to keep an eye out for once they get the PS3 version done. (And frankly, I hope they do clean it up a bit more. Noticeable lag due to slowdown in an early cinema before the desert with Sonic was... not encouraging.)

[Jolly Joes]

kulock said:

impressions!

Boy oh boy! I'm really going to enjoy this game now!












:-(

Please tell me at least you are able to skip the cutscenes.

[Bartman3010]

THIS GAME IS RETARDED!

The collision detection is so off, theres so many problems moreso than it fixes. Hell, the first spring I ran into in the game sent Sonic FLYING INTO SPACE TOWARD HIS DEATH. I dont care who programmed this game, they're terrible at what they do and need to be FIRED. Cooperative mode is stupid, just run into a bunch of areas, kill the enemies, watch Sonic and player 2 go through these terrible looking loops then press both switches to deactivate gates. Silver sucks because all he can do is pick up boxes and watch them disappear and -NOT- hit the enemy.

Also the Single Player, what are they DOING? Its Grand Theft Auto with Sonic! Talk to a person who has an objective for you, loading sequence, they tell you what to do, loading sequence, Sonic must go through all the rings, loading sequence, you get some rings based on how you didnt suck.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING SEGA? YOU'RE RUINING THE FRANCHISE!

[Kulock]

jollyjoes said:

kulock said:

impressions!

Boy oh boy! I'm really going to enjoy this game now!

We pretty much knew by now that you were going to have to be chloroformed, tied to a chair, and threatened with bodily harm before you bought this game.

jollyjoes said:

:-(

Please tell me at least you are able to skip the cutscenes.

Yes, you can. Maybe you have to watch them at least once, but I know I was able to skip the desert one the second time through.



Well, Moogle Needs Sleep Badly. I'm getting near 24 hours awake, and am undoubtably getting crabbier as time goes on otherwise. I'll play more once I awaken, but first day's impressions... this wasn't ready for showtime. At this point, drop all pretense and push the PS3 version even further back, another month or two. They need someone who actually plays the game to be in the room with them, smack them, and say, "WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING WITH THIS?" Like... the snowboarding. I mean, that was WORKING alright in Sonic Adventure last I checked... even when the camera switched angles, it worked naturally.

And that bit at the end of the first high speed stage... I literally died several times with no chance of survival because... it just flung me the wrong way into the sea constantly. Only after several deaths did I learn that it wasn't a one-off thing and I had to start that final corkscrew on the farthest left I could...

Also, more slowdown and choppiness around than I'm comfortable with, although sometimes when it's zipping along at 60 FPS it's looking great. Tails, especially in anything cinematic, looks like he's out of a CG Sonic movie. And I don't mean that as a silly contradiction or obvious thing, they just really did some impressive modeling work.







But then someone decided, "Let's take this model of Knuckles, give him a weirdly crappy punching attack that just looks epic, and make him yell EVERY time you tap the button." (It's not lengthy, but you have to rapid tap it to break the rocks in this one mission, so... yeah.)

[Kulock]

One other thing, moves like Light Dash and Sliding are obtained by buying them in undramatic manner as "chips" from a store. They're required purchases to progress with the story, and there seems to be no way to turn them off once you've bought them, so it looks like the upgrades will just stack over eachother.

I still don't have Bounce Attack yet, and now I kind of miss it.

[Jolly Joes]

kulock said:

We pretty much knew by now that you were going to have to be chloroformed, tied to a chair, and threatened with bodily harm before you bought this game.

Well, I was going to rent the game, at least. Though with these new impressions, I fear I might get only the same amount of enjoyment as I did with Sonic Adventure 2 or Sonic Heroes. =/

[Kulock]

Well, I'm still pretty early in, so it remains to be seen. (But you didn't enjoy SA2?)

[Jolly Joes]

Only the Speed levels and Chao breeding at the time. Though I wouldn't want to play it again.

And I rented twice, but not consecutively. Once when I played through the Dark Side--up until Rouge Security Hall and played some of the Light Side, but didn't bother finishing because I was bored of the game. And the second time was several months later when I got into the Sonic 'net fandom and it encouraged me to at least finish the game. Though I was still disappointed.