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[papersleeves]

Man does that Sonic cycle never fails to deliver the bads.

It's like a card game where Sonic Team starts with what appears to be a decent deck, only to quickly discover that the rest is the same bad, predictable cards they keep using for the last 15 years over and over and over...

Will they ever learn?

How hard is it to create Colors successor? Create new contents, tweak the physics and call it a day! It's been 7 years! Seriously...

 

[Silvawuff]

I would take twenty games like this, if it gives us another Mania.

 

[dickroach]

this looks like a solid 68 on Metacritic

 

[Not75Drops]

So the reveal trailer for Forces' basically misleading? Since the team is mostly from Colors and Lost World

The Colours and Generations "teams" merged after Generations finished development if I remember correctly. I say "teams" in that there was still some crossover between the two.

As has already been said, the director for Generations was moved to the Mario and Sonic games for some reason The programming director and game design lead were also relegated to lower positions for Lost World.

 

[Waddle Dee]

To the people that are saying Sonic should be given to Nintendo... you do realize that Sonic is one of Sega's few money makers, right? No chance in hell are they gonna give him up. Plus, Nintendo has never made a platformer like Sonic before so who knows if they could even do it.

As long as Sega isn't dumb enough to let go all of the talent that worked on Mania, and is smart enough to green light another new Sonic game for them, I think Sonic still has a good enough future... Sonic Team just might not be a big part of it...

What goodwill? Mania wasn't that amazing and was targeting a different market than Forces is.

Ow The Edge

 

[Mr-Joker]

Not sure I'd want a Sonic mania 2 but I definitely think the mania team should be allowed to do a big budget 3d game.

They haven't even proven themselves to create an official Sonic games with original levels nor have they proven themselves if they can do a 3D Sonic game.

The UI is still WAYYYYYY too big and obnoxious

E: Man they other characters REALLY need to stop talking.

But, at the end of the IGN clip we see the Casino from before - still no enemies, still massive visual clutter. BUT, it seems like they're at least altering the physics from before. Seems like he's actually gaining speed and doesn't stick to the vertical wall as before.

I feel that Sonic Team fail to understand the whole point of Casino levels and why Rings were fun rewards out of the slots machine.

 

[TheDinoman]

In general, no company sells off their IPs like that. SEGA isn't going to sell Sonic to Nintendo, just like how Microsoft isn't going to sell Rare's franchises off, or like how FOX isn't going to give up the film rights to X-Men/Fantastic Four to Disney and Marvel Studios.

The only way Sonic would wound up being owned by Nintendo is if they flat out bought SEGA as a whole.

 

[moltonasty]

I almost feel bad for Sonic Team. They've been broken.

Me too...almost.

But they had a long time to work on this game, so nah. Plus they've had like 19 years to make a great 3D Sonic game, the games should be better by now.

 

[Gin-Shiio]

Ow The Edge

Mania was good, but I'd still rank it at the bottom of the classics. I think it is overrated. People saying the entire franchise should be handed to Christian Whitehead have bad business sense; Mania didn't sell crazy well, 2D Sonic does not have the mass appeal 3D does in the current market climate.

 

[RecRoulette]

Mania was good, but I'd still rank it at the bottom of the classics. I think it is overrated. People saying the entire franchise should be handed to Christian Whitehead have bad business sense; Mania didn't sell crazy well, 2D Sonic does not have the mass appeal 3D does in the current market climate.

According to what? Capcom sales goals?

 

[IronicSonic]

Meh. Still I'll buy day 1 but probably not double dip on switch though

 

[Mr-Joker]

Ow The Edge

Mania was 90% levels that I have already seen and played before and the stuff that I actually liked only made up a small part of the game.

So no, in my eyes Mania is a fun game but I am reluctant to call it amazing and I won't.

 

[MrBadger]

I'm not knockin' Generations or Mania for this, but Forces, c'mon. The asset reuse is ridiculous, it came out 6 years ago. It feels like they're taking the worst page out of Mario's book and sticking to a permanently entrenched Sonic-level formula, like the 2D Mario's Grass-world, Desert-world, etc. Who asked for that? And based on the videos we've seen, these levels seem to have been far better realized in 2D and 3D with Mania and Generations respectively, so what's the point of revisiting them?

It's unbelievable how dead this game looks next to Generations.

I know what they're going for, but Tropical Freeze did the "lifeless abandoned factory in the snow" thing much better. Usually Sonic games look great so I have no idea what's going on here...

 

[dickroach]

I'd bet my left stomach that Mania solid better than Lost World or Rise of Lyric

if Sega wants to maximize profits with Sonic they're better off just sticking to mobile runner games
if they wanna make good Sonic games, they gotta get rid of Sonic Team and put the IP in the hands of people who actually want to make a good Sonic game

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

Mania was good, but I'd still rank it at the bottom of the classics. I think it is overrated. People saying the entire franchise should be handed to Christian Whitehead have bad business sense; Mania didn't sell crazy well, 2D Sonic does not have the mass appeal 3D does in the current market climate.

I think you're gonna be slightly humbled in a year when the sales figures of Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces are known. Mania doesn't even have a retail release nor doe it have the Sega hype machine behind it like Forces will, and I fully expect it to stomp Forces in sales when all is said and done. Forces will have no legs compared to Mania. Poor quality tends to do that.

 

[Not75Drops]

Mania was good, but I'd still rank it at the bottom of the classics. I think it is overrated. People saying the entire franchise should be handed to Christian Whitehead have bad business sense; Mania didn't sell crazy well, 2D Sonic does not have the mass appeal 3D does in the current market climate.

Has Sega even said anything regarding Mania's sales yet? I did say earlier that Forces will do well for various reasons, but I don't think Mania's sales will turn out to be disappointing.

I think giving Whitehead and PagodaWest the keys to 2D Sonic would be a good idea since Sonic Team doesn't know how or just flat out won't implement pinball-like physics correctly, if Sonic 4 was any indication.

The entire franchise? Yeah, that would be a bit over the top. They have experience in 2D games specifically.

 

[Sami+]

This thread is more proof that 'buttrock' has no meaning.

This game has lead me to believe that anything with a guitar is "buttrock" because this and the rock in SA1/SA2/06 sound nothing alike.

 

[Waddle Dee]

Mania was good, but I'd still rank it at the bottom of the classics. I think it is overrated. People saying the entire franchise should be handed to Christian Whitehead have bad business sense; Mania didn't sell crazy well, 2D Sonic does not have the mass appeal 3D does in the current market climate.

Mania was good, but I'd still rank it at the bottom of the classics. I think it is overrated.

Fair enough since you're entitled to your opinion but as someone who grew up with Sonic 1 & 2 being the first games I ever played, I think Mania is generally better than both of them. The level design in Sonic 1 is too "Stop and go" and the level design in Sonic 2 often lacked vertical space in it's levels and both it and Sonic 1 have weird difficulty spikes. Sonic Mania feels near-perfect to me in terms of level design.

People saying the entire franchise should be handed to Christian Whitehead have bad business sense

No denying that.

Mania didn't sell crazy well, 2D Sonic does not have the mass appeal 3D does in the current market climate.

To be fair, Sega didn't advertise the game a ton. I don't think Forces is going to sell as well as most previous 3D Sonic games, either.

 

[Sami+]

They haven't even proven themselves to create an official Sonic games with original levels nor have they proven themselves if they can do a 3D Sonic game.

Well hey Sonic Team has proven they can't so might as well give em the ol' college try

 

[Waddle Dee]

Mania was 90% levels that I have already seen and played before and the stuff that I actually liked only made up a small part of the game.

So no, in my eyes Mania is a fun game but I am reluctant to call it amazing and I won't.

It wasn't 90%. Also, most of the level design was cleverly mixed up in the first Act of each Zone and the second Act was often more or less brand new.

 

[Seik]

This thread is more proof that 'buttrock' has no meaning.

Meh, this ain't buttrock to me. This is like techno-pop with some "saving the world bla bla bla" vocals.

Crush 40's was waaaay better and more hype than this...this is lame as fuck.

 

[RockmanBN]

Man I miss the soundtracks like Colors.

 

[Sami+]

Meh, this ain't buttrock to me. This is like techno-pop vocal shit.

Crush 40's was waaaay better than this.

It's hard to look at Crush 40 from a non-biased because of how important those games were to my childhood, but my impression of them is that they have endearing kind of cheese. Kind of like your dad plugging in an electric guitar and shredding to look like a cool dad when your friends are over (or in my case, Mom deciding for no reason to blast "Daddy Cool" and "Ra Ra Rasputin" over the speakers like ten minutes after my sister's friends came over, lol). It's kind of embarrassing but it's also fun to play along with and kind of hilarious.

This is just... bad. Doesn't come off as earnest imo, but that's also hugely tinted by perception obviously.

 

[Diprosalic]

Sonic will never fail to fail.

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

Imagine if Sonic Unleashed was a good game. Imagine how different the franchise would be right now if the last game Sonic Team and Sega went all in on was good.

 

[Blueblur1]

hey guys remember this

I'm glad this gif keeps getting reposted. Its a great reminder of how awesome and open some of the Sonic Adventure stages were for Sonic gameplay.

The Forces footage is awful. The staff that made Unleashed/Colors/Generations or the lead(s) from those games must be gone because the amount of poor decisions present in Forces is staggering. Awful level design, one note abilities, bottomless pits, mid-level cutscenes, canned after canned after canned animation with cinematic angles.

And what was with that boss? There was no clear visual feedback showing the boss had been damaged when the player character attacked. It looked like something out of Sonic 2006.

 

[Village]

The rock song was pretty cool , i like it
I also like the little slowmo bit, It makes your character feel cool and its a nice break from gameplay

The gameplay looks like it lacks grace, and the two good parts I said, would fit better in a game dedicated to that. Like the custom sonic hero thing, should be its own video game, with its own action slower paced gameplay. But its in this game, which is trying to be like an action game, and also a modern sonic game, and its failing. Because its trying to 4 video game ideas at one time.

Not to mention infinite continuing to not look interesting in any regard, and his genericness if rumors are true, with his origin is going to make things worse.

It just, there's a lot of shit in this game, that needed to be its own focused on done well video game, and its not that. And I got a feeling this game, isn't going to make any of the demographic's its aiming for happy

Except if you like Character creators, that should be fine, they can't mess that up. That's a menu, I guess you gotta play the game to unlock clothes but if you on pc, someone will have figured a way past that soon enough. Oh the PC version has denuovo fucking fuck

 

[flashman92]

I really hope the 3D Sonic fangame community starts to pick up. I've seen some cool stuff but they were basically tech demos. Hopefully they can make actual good levels with them.

Why is Sonic Robo Blast 2 still the best 3D Sonic game I've played T_T

 

[Nocturnowl]

Amazing, I clicked off the video when the train came into play thinking "oh a cool bit of gameplay may be about to happen, let's not spoil myself!"
only to enter the thread and see it's a cheesy QTE cinematic in gif form, why did I even dare to have hope?

 

[Sami+]

Imagine if Sonic Unleashed was a good game. Imagine how different the franchise would be right now if the last game Sonic Team and Sega went all in on was good.

Long ago in Tokyo, Japan,
I, Iizuka, the shape shifting master of darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil!
But a foolish NeoGaffer wielding white-out and an eraser stepped forth to oppose me...
Before my precious Werehog was wiped from the design doc, I tore open a portal in time, and flung him into the future where my evil is law.
Now the fool seeks to return to the past and undo the future that is Iizuka!

Gotta go back
Back to the past
NeoGAF

Spoiler

I know he didn't work on Unleashed I just needed a name and have no clue which stupid-ass it actually was

 

[AfterTheFall]

I was intending to buy this but I'm going to hold off and wait for the reviews. This footage didn't give me much confidence in the game, sadly.

 

[shaowebb]

This looks fun to me. Not certain what all the over the top hyperbole is about. It looks like a Sonic game and the levels look fun. The create-a-character dudes are pretty much rocking the Sonic Colors wisp powers with a few extras and I remember when that game hit it completely flipped the opinion of Sonic games and was universally loved for "saving the franchise." Dont try to rewrite history on that one either in case you were only there for Generations and didn't have a Wii at the time. It happened and it was in reviews everywhere both here, magazines and from youtubers with nothing to gain or lose.

Anyhow, history lesson aside, I reiterate that it harkens back to Sonic Colors which was fun and in and of itself looks like its good fun. Definitely seems better than Boom or Lost World, and it seems especially close to Colors so win all the way around.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

I... kinda like it and thinks it looks ok? Am I weird?

No. You’re not. The game does look average at the very least. But most of Gaf operates on the “it’s either GoTY or it’s shit” scale of opinions.

 

[CrisKre]

This is gross. Sad, especially considering I liked lost world plenty. They should have built on that.

 

[SpokkX]

Haha omg!

Really looking forward to

.. watching this game get absolutely panned in reviews

 

[perfectchaos007]

It is a QTE.

Why does it piss me off that they put in a ring cap? Sonic can't hold more than 100 rings at a time now lol

 

[Dead End Irony]

I don't even know why I still have my preorder going. Maybe the JSR outfit? I don't know.

I enjoy really good/inspired Sonic games, so I feel like I'm not part of the target audience for this one.

 

[Jhn]

Original thought incoming: Thank fuck for Mania, this looks awful.

 

[RockmanBN]

Why does it piss me off that they put in a ring cap? Sonic can't hold more than 100 rings at a time now lol

What's worse is that you can't even recollect rings like in every Sonic game ever.

 

[MrBadger]

Why does it piss me off that they put in a ring cap? Sonic can't hold more than 100 rings at a time now lol

And he can't pick them up again if he drops them...

Edit: beaten

 

[RocknRola]

What's worse is that you can't even recollect rings like in every Sonic game ever.

.....................but why!?

 

[Lijik]

.....................but why!?

if ya just gonna use a bunch of old assets ya gotta change something to call it new

 

[moltonasty]

No. You're not. The game does look average at the very least. But most of Gaf operates on the ”it's either GoTY or it's shit" scale of opinions.

I don't know, I feel like we should expect better than simply average considering how many chances they've had to get this right, and how many years of development time this game has had.

 

[RocknRola]

if ya just gonna use a bunch of old assets ya gotta change something to call it new

Fair. Still silly though.

 

[flashman92]

Rings affect the avatars' powers, or something, so the cap makes sense (supposedly)

Classic Sonic still can't pick up rings though

 

[Professor Lexicovermis]

What's worse is that you can't even recollect rings like in every Sonic game ever.

This is such a bizarre design choice. Imagine if, when you lost a power up in a Mario game, you were not allowed to get another for the remainder of the level.

 

[theofficefan99]

The level design seems a little lazy but it doesn't look that bad. I like the Chemical Plant zone minus it looking pretty static. The area where you're fighting Infinite looks nice.

 

[RRockman]

Also, there has been zero mention of best girl.


Freaking Silver gets in but no BLAZE?

This is such a bizarre design choice. Imagine if, when you lost a power up in a Mario game, you were not allowed to get another for the remainder of the level.

Um actually, that sounds pretty good. I think this would make a great hard/trial mode.

 

[HF2014]

Christ, am i the only one who thing this game will be interesting? Lol. Im close to cancel my amazon pre order because of general opinion

 

[Waddle Dee]

No. You’re not. The game does look average at the very least. But most of Gaf operates on the “it’s either GoTY or it’s shit” scale of opinions.

I don't think the game looks bad. It just looks mediocre.

To be fair to some of the people posting, it's been a relatively long time since we got a new 3D Sonic game (not counting RoL, obviously) and this game is looking noticeably worse than Colors or Generations so I can understand some of the hyperbole. It's a shame that the game is sort of looking like another Lost World (relatively forgettable and limited in scope).

Of course, I'm sure some people are here just to shit on Sonic for the sake of it, cause this is Neogaf, but whatever. The mods sure don't care.