The other day I saw a thread here of a guy who wanted to talk about the Mega Drive/Genesis Sonic games. He wrote about Sonic 1, saying that although Green Hill Zone was great, some of the other areas were not favorable to Sonic's speed and movements. He said that a Sonic game should be about the flow and speed, which was impossible to achieve on some maps. I couldn't answer back then, nor I could find the thread, but I still want to talk about it many days latter.
For me, one of the best things a game can do to remain interesting is change the pace. Let's forget a bit about Sonic and get the Call of Duty franchise as an example. Which one was the most memorable entry on the CoD franchise? CoD4, right? And which ones was everyone's favorite part on that game? The stealth/sniper stage. And why? Because it was a dramatic change of pace. See, Call of Duty tend to try to make you feel like you're in the most absurd and dangerous situation. Sometimes you start the game and it feels like you're finishing it from the very first minute because it is so effin intense! Then comes a slow stealth part. It's still tense, you still cannot breath, but it's different.
Now let's go back to Sonic, and get Sonic Rush on the Nintendo DS as another example. People usually say it was a good game. Yeah, it wasn't bad, but is it good as the Genesis/Mega Drive games? No. It had better graphics, it had that flow and speed, but it wasn't so good.
So, in my opinion, Sonic was never about speed. Yeah, he's fast, be he shouldn't be that fast all that time. Changing the pace is important. Sometimes you have to take it slow and watch the scenery, listen to the music and breath. The Japanese have this word "ma", which translates as something like "gap", a space between, like a pause. You can see it on Japanese art, like on the movies made by Studio Ghibli. It's not exactly the same concept, but it serves the purpose of what I'm trying to explain. What I mean is: every great game has to have boring parts, so when the good parts come, they feel truly special. You need to work to get there. If everything is made to feel like special, it becomes routine, so it's not special anymore.
EDIT: Okay, I'm not saying that annoying parts are good.
And no, I didn't meant that slow pace and "boring" are the same thing. I still think that boring parts are important, like an uninspiring area, for example. Great games like The Last of Us and Half Life have a lot of then.
For me, one of the best things a game can do to remain interesting is change the pace. Let's forget a bit about Sonic and get the Call of Duty franchise as an example. Which one was the most memorable entry on the CoD franchise? CoD4, right? And which ones was everyone's favorite part on that game? The stealth/sniper stage. And why? Because it was a dramatic change of pace. See, Call of Duty tend to try to make you feel like you're in the most absurd and dangerous situation. Sometimes you start the game and it feels like you're finishing it from the very first minute because it is so effin intense! Then comes a slow stealth part. It's still tense, you still cannot breath, but it's different.
Now let's go back to Sonic, and get Sonic Rush on the Nintendo DS as another example. People usually say it was a good game. Yeah, it wasn't bad, but is it good as the Genesis/Mega Drive games? No. It had better graphics, it had that flow and speed, but it wasn't so good.
So, in my opinion, Sonic was never about speed. Yeah, he's fast, be he shouldn't be that fast all that time. Changing the pace is important. Sometimes you have to take it slow and watch the scenery, listen to the music and breath. The Japanese have this word "ma", which translates as something like "gap", a space between, like a pause. You can see it on Japanese art, like on the movies made by Studio Ghibli. It's not exactly the same concept, but it serves the purpose of what I'm trying to explain. What I mean is: every great game has to have boring parts, so when the good parts come, they feel truly special. You need to work to get there. If everything is made to feel like special, it becomes routine, so it's not special anymore.
EDIT: Okay, I'm not saying that annoying parts are good.
And no, I didn't meant that slow pace and "boring" are the same thing. I still think that boring
parts are important, like an uninspiring area, for example. Great games like The Last of Us and Half Life have a lot of then.
