Post by Kulock on Dec 15, 2006 22:43:00 GMT -5
I enjoyed the demo after a little bit of getting used to the subtle control quirks. The trouble is that the levels don't end at those little segments. You're sometimes expected to run through three or four sequences, at least two of which will probably have a different control style (Amigo, or Snowboarding, or Mach Speed), and all of which you need to do well on, or your rank is going to take a major dip. And some are tuned to be too hard or haven't gotten enough work, like the Mach Speed bits (seriously, Crisis City LOOKS cool when you watch it being played, but when you're actually playing it, the cars it chucks smash into lots of little pieces, and virtually ANY of those pieces can hurt Sonic, and being hurt means losing ALL your previous rings with none to pick up past what was in the segment anyway, like on the friggin' Game Gear) or the snowboarding in White Acropolis.
Here's a good way to explain what I meant above. I just decided to find the last three Silver medals I was missing in White Acropolis as Shadow. So I went into the Normal Mode version and hunted them around. Took my sweet time checking the various corners and trashing bots. I found the two I was missing earlier as Shadow, and one as Rouge, so from there I just plowed on a bit, trashed some things with the buggy as I saw fit, blew out the five searchlights necessary to end the stage from a pretty remote place (you can easily tag three of them from one spot with a little fiddling), and score rank. Because I'd fought enough bots, and smartly (like aiming for the leader when those small ones would spawn), and had a decent amount of rings (105, and I got hit a few times earlier on, make no mistake), even though my time was well past 13 minutes and I didn't receive a score bonus, I still had enough to clear past S-Rank.
This would not happen in Silver or Sonic's levels. It just wouldn't. (In fact, Silver often has to strike a VERY weird balance between "as fast as you can" and "don't forget to trash stuff along the way" to rank high.) But here I had a casual, moderately fun time, blew some crap up as I wanted, didn't have to mess with snowboarding or outrunning a huge snowball with glitchy controls... I'm not saying it's the best game ever in the mode, but it just works so much better than the other two sides do.
Here's a good way to explain what I meant above. I just decided to find the last three Silver medals I was missing in White Acropolis as Shadow. So I went into the Normal Mode version and hunted them around. Took my sweet time checking the various corners and trashing bots. I found the two I was missing earlier as Shadow, and one as Rouge, so from there I just plowed on a bit, trashed some things with the buggy as I saw fit, blew out the five searchlights necessary to end the stage from a pretty remote place (you can easily tag three of them from one spot with a little fiddling), and score rank. Because I'd fought enough bots, and smartly (like aiming for the leader when those small ones would spawn), and had a decent amount of rings (105, and I got hit a few times earlier on, make no mistake), even though my time was well past 13 minutes and I didn't receive a score bonus, I still had enough to clear past S-Rank.
This would not happen in Silver or Sonic's levels. It just wouldn't. (In fact, Silver often has to strike a VERY weird balance between "as fast as you can" and "don't forget to trash stuff along the way" to rank high.) But here I had a casual, moderately fun time, blew some crap up as I wanted, didn't have to mess with snowboarding or outrunning a huge snowball with glitchy controls... I'm not saying it's the best game ever in the mode, but it just works so much better than the other two sides do.