Detailed E3 Impressions

[SoNick Belmont]

Original topic by SoulDreamX from Sonic CulT. Note: Images removed and replaced with links.



Hey, y'all. It's been a while. My online time isn't what it used to be, so I've been a bit out of the loop. But I did have the opportunity to attend E3 this year, so I figured I'd share my impressions of all the Sonic games there. I probably don't have anything to say that you haven't heard before, but I figured I'd post about it anyway. I haven't really had the chance to see what the news sites posted and all that, so these are just my impressions based on what I saw on the show floor and in the E3 Daily News paper that they had available to attendees each day.

Here are some write-ups I did after getting back from LA. Pictures included.



Game: Sonic the Hedgehog
Platform: Cell Phone

This was a cell phone port of Sonic 1, featured along the hall outside of the Sega booth. The game itself looked great. Only played through Green Hill Zone, but it seemed like a pretty faithful port of the Genesis original. I didn't think to check which version of Sonic 1 it was, unfortunately. The game looked great, very bright and vibrant on that tiny screen. Seemed to have no problem running at full speed, either. Only one problem: You have to play it on a fucking cell phone. I had the same problem with all of the cell phone games that I played (played a bunch over at the Square-Enix booth, too). The control is horrible. I mean, I don't even like the controls on the N-Gage, and that's set up for gaming. But trying to control a game with shallow little arrow keys the same way you would on a console just doesn't work out too well. Fortunately for Sonic, much of the game is just holding right and jumping, which wasn't too hard to pull off. But because of the way the arrow keys were set up, you couldn't really switch directions quickly, which would probably make boss battles a bitch. I didn't play far enough into it to see if they'd taken this into consideration, but just making it through the level was mildly frutrating because of the cell phone button configuration. I guess that might vary from phone to phone, though.

Here's a picture of the display:
www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/sonic1cell01.jpg
(Continued below due to Proboards' stupid post length limit)

[SoNick Belmont]

Game: Sonic Gems Colelction
Platform: GameCube (US, Europe), Playstation 2 (Europe only)

The featured games were Sonic CD, Sonic R, and Sonic the Fighters, with various Game Gear games to unlock (damn it, we already have these in Sonic Adventure DX and the PS2 and Xbox versions of Mega Collection). Missing were Chaotix and SegaSonic Arcade, which had me rather disappointed. I was hoping that they'd maybe be unlockable extras, but there was no sign of them in the little movie playing above the demo (that featured about half a dozen unlockable Game Gear games) or in the little press release that was featured in the E3 Daily News, which seemed to indicate that those games featured in the demo and the 6 Game Gear games were all that would be included. Still hoping to be proven wrong here. Anyway, Sonic CD, Sonic R, and Sonic the Fighters (which did go by its Japanese name in the demo and not "Sonic Championship") were all playable (with other games, presumably the Game Gear ones, displayed as underneath). No extras present, but it was just a demo, after all. The games all seemed to play very well. I have to admit that Sonic the Fighters is a million times more fun when played on a GameCube as opposed to an emulator, and I'm looking forward to dumping the Windows XP-incompatible PC version of Sonic CD for one I can play on a nice big TV. The hall was so freaking loud that I couldn't tell if they were using the US or Japanese soundtrack for Sonic CD. I guess time will tell.

And here's a picture of the booth:
www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/sonicgems01.jpg

Game: Shadow the Hedgehog
Platform: GameCube, Playstation 2, Xbox

There was a nice big display for this game over at the Sega booth with a huge banner and a big Shadow statue outside the semi-circle demo station. The game was also playable in less flashy form at the Nintendo and Microsoft booths, and probably the Sony booth, though I don't recall spotting it there myself.

The game itself is looking pretty sharp, though it could still use a lot more polish. There were four stages available in the demo, two of which I had the chance to play. I think most people only played the first one because it seems that you had to use the d-pad (as opposed to the analog stick) to select a stage, and that wasn't everyone's first instict. I know I played the first stage, Westopolis, and I think the other one may have been Sky Troops. In Westopolis, Shadow is joined by Sonic, who kind of follows you around (though it seems pretty easy to lose him) and reminds you not to kill humans. In the second stage I tried, it was Eggman (well, a flying monitor broadcasting Eggman's face), who followed you around pretty much telling you to destroy everything. But going with the whole theme of choosing whether Shadow is good or evil, you can kill whatever the hell you want. I think the type of enemy you kill determines whether you fill up your blue meter or red meter, which gives you a nice super powered Chaos form (making Shadow glow red or blue for a limited time). I guess the enemies are made up of humans, aliens, and robots. Some of the robots seem to be taken directly from Sonic Heroes, though now they drop their weapons when they die.

The gameplay was all right, but it still suffered from some of the loose controls that Sonic Heroes did. Not quite as bad, but still not nearly as tight as Sonic Adventure 2. The weapon thing worked out pretty well, though I still think Shadow looks fucking ridiculous holding these huge guns, many which are more than twice his size. It just looks kind of silly when he's holding them and then does the rolling-into-a-ball-thing to jump and the weapon is spinning around everywhere. The functionality was pretty good, though, and there was a decent bit of variety. And it seems you don't really have to use a weapon at all for most parts of the game, if you don't want to. Weapons are taken from defeated enemies. Just about every one dropped something, so there was always plenty to choose from. My favorite was one of the big-ass alien swords. You could swing it around and take out whatever's in your way. Baically, the G.U.N. army dropped realistic type weapons, the aliens dropped weird futuristic weapons, and Eggman's robots dropped big-ass lances and bazookas and the like.

I think there was some sort of goal ring that ended the stage. Like in previous 3D Sonic games, you receive a "grade" at the end depending on your performance. Again, the control could use some polish, but overall, it's looking pretty good. The intro was kind of nifty looking. Basically the whole "Shadow: Good or Evil?" thing with an air of darkness to it. There were some nice CG parts, ending with a rather battered and pissed off Sonic. I wish it wasn't so loud so that I could hear the music. Not sure if it was Crush 40 doing the intro or not, but from the little I could hear, it did sound like it problably was.

When I played the game at the Nintendo booth, one of the Nintendo guys asked if I liked it. He said that the Sega guys kept coming over and asking what people thought of it. I pretty much just told him that I liked it but thought the controls could use some tightening. Yay for indirect feedback.

And now for the pics:
www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/shadow01.jpg
www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/shadow02.jpg
www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/shadowdisplay01.jpg
www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/shadowdisplay02.jpg
www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/shadowstatue01.jpg
(Stopping point #2)

[SoNick Belmont]

Game: Sonic Rush
Platform: Nintendo DS

While I'm sure Shadow will end up having the deeper story and more complex gameplay, my favorite Sonic game at the show was by far Sonic Rush. Like I said before, this is 2D Sonic on crack. Seriously, after seeing all of the kick-ass games for it at E3, any doubts I had about the DS are now gone, and I'll definitely be buying one before the end of the year. Sonic Rush doesn't appear to use the touch screen for the main game, but it uses the dual screens beautifully. When running through the level, both screens are used to display the environment as one large image, and it acts to give the game more vertical action in addition to the standard fast horizontal scrolling that you'd expect from a Sonic game. At first I was concerned that with the two screens, it might be easy to lose track of Sonic, but that isn't the case. Sonic will be centered on one screen until it makes sense for him to switch to the other screen, such as running down a huge slope or shooting up from a bungee-cord-like vine. There was only one simple stage and one boss available as part of the demo, but it all felt very fun and satisfying.

For the main part of the stage, Sonic is a cel-shaded 3D model running against a 2D background. There were enemies in the stage, and I do believe that little animals popped out of them. There was also this big-ass wheel thing that chased you down a long slope. You had to run from it, which was easy considering that they gave Sonic a new dash move, no spinning required (though I think you still have your spin dash move, as well). Just push a button and get this short burst of speed. For the boss stage, Sonic, the boss, and the little bit of land he's standing on are all 3D, which allows for a change in camera angle for one of the boss' attacks. The action is still controlled as if it's a 2D game, though. The boss stage only took place on one of the screens (top one, I think), with the other screen just displaying the game's logo. The boss was pretty easy -- just jump on his head 3 times -- but it seemed to be about the same difficulty as other first-level Sonic bosses in the 2D games. Once you kill the boss, you get a little sequence of still images showing you kicking the thing's ass. Both the level and the boss were "graded" like you would be in the 3D Sonic games. For instance, I got an "S" grade for beating the boss very quickly. It looks like there's also a trick bonus in this game, which made me happy.

And of course, pictures:
www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/sonicrush01.jpg
It was also a Gamespot People's Choice winner, and for good reason. Blaze was shown in the background of the monitors, but was otherwise not present in the demo.
www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/sonicrush02.jpg

his is a 2-minute video composed of the 20-second video clips I took with my digital camera. Please forgive the video quality. It wasn't a video camera, just a digital camera that took little 20-second videos. Footage from Shadow, Gems, and Rush.

www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/video/souldreamx_sonic_e3_2005.avi (7.1 MB)


Let's see... other than the games, I did see Yuji Naka and Shigeru Miyamoto go into the employees-only area of the Sega booth together, though I wasn't quick enough to get a good picture.

www.rainknight.net/e3_2005/sonic/segabooth.jpg

Also, there was a display case full of Sonic merchandise, most of which was stuff available in the US (action figures, comics, t-shirts). The one thing I didn't recognize were these round, fat plushies of various Sonic characters that I believe were marked as prototypes. As a plushie collector, I'm very interested in those. Unforutnately, I didn't get to see the tech demos in the Sega Theater (in 3 days, I didn't even get a chance to check out half of the games there, let alone all the stuff you had to wait in line for hours to see), so I didn't get the Sega "GAMER" t-shirt they were giving out. I think they were also giving out Aiai plushies at some point, but I'm not too upset about that since I already have one. I did get a Phantasy Star Universe t-shirt for being at the right place at the right time when I played that demo. And that's all the Sega swag I'm aware of.

And that's it.





It's refreshing to see some positive opinions of the new games, and SoulDream's post at the CulT made the new Sonic games sound very interesting.

[Sabator]

This...really shouldn't be on page 2. The Sonic Rush info sounds interesting, the Shadow logo looks better, and the news about upcoming DS games makes me a little more positive.

[Optimus Prime]

Sonic the Fighters...

Assuming something doesn't happen, I'm -so- importing that. Then I don't have to rig my SCD to play imports and get a Japanese Sonic CD game.

The DS game sounds nice, but who the heck is that character? Looks like Rouge, yet... *shrug* ah well. As long as it doesn't become yet another leather tramp, it's good.

Shadow still sounds wacky. Aliens. Does killing them make you good?!...

[midopa]

That Rouge-like character is the newest addition to the Sonic crew. Name's Blaze the Cat or something. A jewel thief like Nack, I believe?

[Jolly Joes]

Blaze the Cat is a queen from another dimension and the supposed guardian of the Sol Emeralds(gems from her dimension).

[Optimus Prime]

Poor Nack/ Fang. Everyone steals his gig...

When will he have his popgun again? When?

[Bartman3010]

Well, there are secret games to be discovered in Sonic Gems Collection, so dont fret!

[BlazeHedgehod]

While on the subject:

www.planete-sonic.com/videos-sonic/shadow-the-hedgehog/r74.htm

At the bottom is a new Shadow handycam video from E3. Things of note:

- Four levels in the demo. "Westopolis", "Sky Troops", "Death Ruins" and "BOSS: Black Bull"

- In the previous handycam, we figured whoever was playing sucked. Either the controls are horrible, in Shadow, or this guy (and the guy next to him, if you listen) are just as horrible at the game.

- It seems like you have people always shouting at you throughout the entire stage; be it Sonic, Doom's Eye, Eggman or Etc..

- Shooting looks terrible. I had heard it was auto-lock (depending on where you were aiming), but this guy frequently misses his targets and runs head long into the enemies he was trying to shoot.

- When you do the Triangle Jump (wall kick), while stuck to the wall, you can move the control stick to run across walls, quasi-Prince-of-Persia style. (A nice touch, I'll admit)

- The Alien Faction is apparently named, "Black Arms".

- Killing Gun Soldiers is harder than it looks. You can "wound" them, knocking them down where they don't get up - but are still alive (allowing you to take their weapons). Meaning you're gonna have to wound them and then kill them while they're defenseless to really be nasty.

[Optimus Prime]

That's lovely. Willinging killing helpless enemies. It just warms my cold metallic heart. Eh.

If it uses the Heroes engine, the controls barely sound suprising. I hate that game...

Sticking to walls is for lizards! LIZARDS!

Bring on Bark! Bakr Bark Bark! !#@$ polar bears with hats. He just squooshed enemies. He didn't need a fraggin' gun. *Goes on a nostalgia rampage* roar!

[dead]

Wow, Shadow the Hedgehog looks more and more shitty every time new info pops up.

[Andrusi]

Shame there's no new info on Blaze.