Ludger Kresnik
Member
You think Crazy Gadget is the worst level of SA2? When that game also has this?
opinions etc. but I'm pretty sure Mad Space is the lowest point of the whole thing.
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Sonic the Hedgehog Community Thread |OT3 & Knuckles|
- Thread starter Professor Beef
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You think Crazy Gadget is the worst level of SA2? When that game also has this?
opinions etc. but I'm pretty sure Mad Space is the lowest point of the whole thing.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
Mad Space is one of the nadirs of video game design I've ever exerpeinced
You think Crazy Gadget is the worst level of SA2? When that game also has this?
opinions etc. but I'm pretty sure Mad Space is the lowest point of the whole thing.
That's a level that where i can understands folks complaints with that level, but I found it easier than most. There 3 general areas, the emerald is generally in those areas, if you take one of the 3 rockets you will get a ping and investigate the area. Again, I can understand folks issue with it though. Not saying sonic adventure 2 is perfect by any means.I just think its waaay better than sonic adventure 1.
Mad space is one of those situations where you here foks like " fuck this level" and you are like " that level was super easy and nothing " . Crazy gadget was my bane.
Ludger Kresnik
Member
It might be easy if the RNG happens to be in a good mood at the time. The level is too big and the emerald radar is too shit for any of it to be a good idea. The completely unhelpful hints also really add to the fun factor. It's just such a bloated level that overstays its welcome in an epic way. Crazy Gadget's sorta confusing at first gravity puzzle is nothing compared to how fundamentally busted the whole design behind Mad Space is.
I just never had that much of an issue, the focus on rockets, going to and fro , for me allowed me to check area's super easy. That said, much like all the levels, it might be better if the detector worked like in did in sa1 where it detected multiple at once.
Crazy gadgets flow break, made me upset. " Hey you know this rad go fast level, he's sonic adventure 1 again, you like this sonic adventure 1 thing "
Crazy gadgets flow break, made me upset. " Hey you know this rad go fast level, he's sonic adventure 1 again, you like this sonic adventure 1 thing "
Shadow Hog
Member
Basically this. It was bad enough that I could immediately notice something was wrong playing it when the game was fresh off store shelves (albeit I rented it). SA2 never gave me that problem; in fact, going back to it via Steam and PS3, I still find it and the first Sonic Adventure surprisingly controllable.
Meanwhile, I recall Shadow being as bad if not worse than Heroes in terms of how slippery everything was, and 2K6 has cardinal sins of game control evident in pretty much any playthrough of the game on YouTube, such as completely tossing out the idea of "momentum" in lieu of turning all of your speed toward wherever you indicate the instant you move the analog stick, even in perpendicular directions and even in midair. I don't think the series has ever recovered - I recall Generations' momentum feeling very wrong whenever you're not boosting (although you should be boosting most of the time so you're not really gonna notice it), and Lost World felt janky in all sorts of ways (although how much to blame the weird physics it inherited from 3D Sonic games prior versus its new control scheme is debatable).
Admittedly SA2 kind of falls apart when it comes to hopping on/off rails (the hit detection for it isn't the greatest so I'll often end up clipping through them instead of latching onto them as I should), and Sciz's point about mapping everything to the same button is certainly on-point (I've lost track of how many times I meant to do a Spin Dash to gain speed but wound up in an uncancellable momentum-killing Somersault instead - worst addition to the game, frankly - or, perhaps, how many times I wanted to Light Dash a trail of rings but wound up Bounce Attacking instead, often into a death pit). I'm pretty sure both have improved significantly since, as I don't recall having issues with this sort of thing in Generations (especially the latter, since they started spreading the actions around to separate buttons with Unleashed).
Ludger Kresnik
Member
I don't remember having too many problems with that in SA2, but the bounce attack was pretty consistent with causing my many deaths in '06. Generations was really good about it, though. Unleashed still had some iffies like the homing attack and air boosting being mapped to the same button, but Generations thankfully separated them.
Nocturnowl
Member
The first time you get trapped in the gravity of a planetoid and just don't have a clue how to escape its pull while the game physics and camera go to shit, it's the kind of thing you never forget.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
and never forgive!
ViewtifulJC
Banned
Meteor Herd followed by Crazy Gadget is such a trash combo
BlazeHedgehog
Member
Sonic Adventure 2 is a mystery because it doesn't fucking tell you anything. Seriously, stop and think about the story of that game and try to separate what was added on later (Shadow, Sonic X, etc.) and remember what raw, basic, Sonic Adventure 2's storyline is like when taken exclusively on its own.
The game, for example, never explicitly tells you what was wrong with Maria. You see her weak and it is difficult for her to stand, but you're never told why. Gerald's diary at the end of the game simply mentions "the accident." Given that it's kind of the crux of Shadow's whole motivation, that seems like an awfully big hole to leave open.
You are also never told what "the ultimate lifeform" specifically was, or why Gerald felt the need to create it. Why was the prototype a big ugly lizard monster, and why is Shadow just a hedgehog?
Is Professor Gerald alive? When Shadow initiates Gerald's plan to crash the Ark, we see video of Gerald before a firing squad. The video cuts before he gunned down. When was that video taken? Was it a live feed? If it was pre-recorded, why was it set up to play when Shadow took control of the Ark? When and how did Shadow get that video? If they were executing Professor Gerald, wouldn't Shadow have already been in custody when that video was recorded? So if Shadow acquired the video and was playing it as part of the theatrics of crashing the Ark, how did Professor Gerald give him instructions to know any of that?
Was it the Biolizard? How did the Biolizard know? How would the Biolizard set ANY of this up? The Biolizard was at the core of the Ark when images of Professor Gerald's execution appear. Was Gerald a ghost? Knuckles mentions that the Biolizard is supposed to be sealed away. Did Shadow let him out? Did Gerald's ghost let him out? If Gerald's ghost is capable of physical manipulation, why did he even need Shadow in the first place? Why hasn't Gerald's ghost continued to be a problem?
Though it's never actually said in the game itself, the jail cell that Sonic is kept in on Prison Island is apparently Professor Gerald's. Why are all of his scribblings still all over the walls? Wouldn't they have cleaned them years ago? How come none of those scribblings are ever actually relevant? There's a literary device called Chekov's Gun that implies if you show something, it has to be useful, and Amy specifically points out the writing in Sonic's cell but it never comes up ever again. Were those the plans Gerald used to build Shadow with? If that's the case, how could Gerald build something like Shadow while he was in jail? If City Escape is San Francisco, then Prison Island is presumably Alcatraz, which brings up a new question: why was it so easy to break Sonic out? This should technically be the highest security prison in the world, and somebody of Sonic's ability wouldn't be lightly guarded, yet Amy waltzes in and frees him with basically zero effort.
Did the government know how important Gerald's scribblings were? If so, why didn't they have a contingency plan for any of this? Is that why Eggman blew up Prison Island?
How did Shadow have memories of Maria? In the journal that Rouge reads, Professor Gerald admits that he did not build Shadow until he returned to earth after the "accident" on the Ark. Maria would have been long dead when Shadow woke up. Why does Shadow have memories of Maria telling him to be a nice person? Why would Maria know to tell Shadow that? It's almost like her dialog is tailor-made to undo Gerald's programming, like she's responding to him. Did Gerald have genocidal tendencies before? If they were obvious enough that Maria could pick up on them, how did Gerald get a job working in the government on such a dangerous and volatile program? If Maria was such a kind and gentle child, and told Shadow to forgive humanity, wouldn't Shadow try to pass on this kindness to Professor Gerald, to convince him otherwise? Was Shadow's memory of Maria a ghost, too? Why are ghosts so powerful and prevalent in the Sonic franchise?
How did the Biolizard end up controlling the Ark? In Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow doesn't actually seem all that powerful. Onwards through Sonic Heroes, Shadow needs to be in possession of a Chaos Emerald to use any of his Ultimate Lifeform abilities, as otherwise he needs things like special rocket skates in order to keep up with Sonic. Shadow disables the Biolizard's life support system and Knuckles temporarily disables the Chaos Emeralds, so the Biolizard shouldn't have any ability to do anything but be big and ugly, yet it's implied he has some kind of psychokinetic power on a colossal scale because he can physical steer a space station presumably with nothing more than his (?) mind.
If Maria's a ghost that hangs around Shadow, and Knuckles invokes the spirit of the Master Emerald, do you think Maria and Tikal met each other?
...Ahem.
It's even worse than that, anyway. The first half of the Hero story is straight up incoherent because the game skips between perspectives and points in time like an ADD six year old on Netflix, and the cutscenes anywhere in the game don't flow properly because they're completely devoid of context. It's like watching an animated version of a plot synopsis.
RomanceDawn
Member
All that just reminded me why I gave up on stories in video games.
I remember a lot of what you mentioned and questioned it all myself when I first played through the game on gamecube. At the time I was really trying to understand the Sonic universe.
In Heroes the Shadow we played as was a robot right? What ever happened to the real Shadow? I assume that was him in Shadow the Hedgehog and 06 right?
If it wasn't for those beautiful high end statues and Smash I would barely have anything to do with Sonic any more and it's a shame. I love Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Engman/Robotnik so much.
I remember a lot of what you mentioned and questioned it all myself when I first played through the game on gamecube. At the time I was really trying to understand the Sonic universe.
In Heroes the Shadow we played as was a robot right? What ever happened to the real Shadow? I assume that was him in Shadow the Hedgehog and 06 right?
If it wasn't for those beautiful high end statues and Smash I would barely have anything to do with Sonic any more and it's a shame. I love Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Engman/Robotnik so much.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
It's implied he might be a robot, but in Shadow the Hedgehog (the game), if you get every single ending (read: beat the game ten times) and reach the very final form of the final boss in the final story (ending #11), if you wait eight and a half minutes, Dr. Eggman will contact Shadow on the radio and tell him that when he "died" in Sonic Adventure 2, Eggman actually rescued Shadow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2CmPf6Cr_c
So, not a robot
Junahu
Member
If you're talking about the fact that
Maria is dead
If you meant the afflicition that Maria suffered from, which gave Gerald the impetus to carry out his research on the ultimate lifeform in the first place, that's not particularly important to the plot, and it certainly doesn't factor into shadow's motivations.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
What happened to Maria is at the very core of Shadow's motivations! He was there when she got shot! Without that knowledge, literally anything could have happened to her. She could have even still been alive, without us having the knowledge that she was killed.
Literally Shadow's entire pathos as a character relies on what happened to Maria, and the fact that he knows how she was killed, and wants revenge. G.U.N. is basically the government in Sonic Adventure's universe, it would be like the President of the United States sending a SWAT team up to the International Space Station and accidentally killing some innocents.
I'm sure there would be a lot of issues with something like that.
Azure Dream
Member
"I should check on what Community's talking about."
Tikal is in the 2-Player mode... Maybe there's an angle we never looked at!
There's a couple things in your "SA2 doesn't explain itself" list that I think could easily be interpreted within the game easily enough. The cell isn't there to be important, it's there so Amy makes an off-hand comment about it, and you later think back to it and realize "Oh, that was Gerald's cell!" in a sort of fridge moment. As for Biolizard being a lizard and Shadow a hedgehog, I mean, it's this:
I don't think there was an actual Super Sonic mural in SA1 (apparently the one shown in Super Sonic's story is different, but I skimmed a YT and didn't see it), but imagine Gerald was going through echidna ruins for information while he was reconstructing the Master Emerald Shrine (which you see in Cannon's Core in SA2). He started work assuming one thing in the murals was the most powerful creature of all, but after a point, realized he'd been looking at/reading things the wrong way, and the hedgehog-shaped one was actually the ultimate creature able to stop the other. Hence why Biolizard has Perfect Chaos' roar. (And assumedly why Shadow's quills more closely resemble Super Sonic.)
Both of these murals have featured very prominently in the series prior, both are supposed to be in the echidna ruins, I don't think it's a stretch or anything. They're not technically contained in SA2 (or at least the Sonic & Knuckles one isn't), but they've been meaningful before.
Tikal is in the 2-Player mode... Maybe there's an angle we never looked at!
There's a couple things in your "SA2 doesn't explain itself" list that I think could easily be interpreted within the game easily enough. The cell isn't there to be important, it's there so Amy makes an off-hand comment about it, and you later think back to it and realize "Oh, that was Gerald's cell!" in a sort of fridge moment. As for Biolizard being a lizard and Shadow a hedgehog, I mean, it's this:
I don't think there was an actual Super Sonic mural in SA1 (apparently the one shown in Super Sonic's story is different, but I skimmed a YT and didn't see it), but imagine Gerald was going through echidna ruins for information while he was reconstructing the Master Emerald Shrine (which you see in Cannon's Core in SA2). He started work assuming one thing in the murals was the most powerful creature of all, but after a point, realized he'd been looking at/reading things the wrong way, and the hedgehog-shaped one was actually the ultimate creature able to stop the other. Hence why Biolizard has Perfect Chaos' roar. (And assumedly why Shadow's quills more closely resemble Super Sonic.)
Both of these murals have featured very prominently in the series prior, both are supposed to be in the echidna ruins, I don't think it's a stretch or anything. They're not technically contained in SA2 (or at least the Sonic & Knuckles one isn't), but they've been meaningful before.
"I should check on what Community's talking about."
do we have to tip
Azure Dream
Member
Was also silly how Shadow the Hedgehog's real ending is…basically good-good. As was SA2, really.
I can somewhat understand that from a continuity perspective but then, well, as the discussion above shows.
The Super Sonic mural -> Shadow idea is really interesting. I always assumed that somewhere, somehow, Sonic Team found out that those kids really liked Super Sonic's design and wanted to capitalise on it. (It is hilariously weird to see Shadow next to Super Sonic in SA2)
Where does King Boom Boo fit into all of this?
Nocturnowl
Member
My favourite part of the SA2 plot is Shadow promises REVENGE all game long based on Maria's last words but then it turns out that he just briefly forgot that she actually wanted Shadow to do the complete opposite, boy he must've felt a bit silly after all that.
Also "now I know who you are, you're that government spy Rouge the Bat!", indicating Shadow knows that this a person that exists but doesn't twig that the Bat calling herself Rouge who he's been teamed up with all game long is in fact this spy until near the end.
In conclusion: Shadow is dumb as fuck.
Also "now I know who you are, you're that government spy Rouge the Bat!", indicating Shadow knows that this a person that exists but doesn't twig that the Bat calling herself Rouge who he's been teamed up with all game long is in fact this spy until near the end.
In conclusion: Shadow is dumb as fuck.
Junahu
Member
I've always assumed that Gerald had something to do with that, deliberately fudging his memories so that he'd carry out the doctor's plans.
As for him knowing Rouge the Bat, she makes it sound like shadow found out off-screen, rather than it being something he was aware of from the beginning ("so, you did your homework, is that it?")
Eh, that wasn't the dumb part really. The last thing he remembered before he was put into whatever the fuck stasis. Which is also dumb, why would you keep the thing that will wake up wanting to kill you. The only reason he stopped wanted to kill you is that sonic and co went " come on dude" gun is the fucking Dumbest organization in the history of ... ever.
So there are two thoughts on this, so there's this idea that maria isn't real? The explanation given in some info is that shadow was only a week old before shit went down. And while yes an experiment only week old loosing the only person it had contact with and going fucking crazy is reasonable, I like the idea that no she was never actually real, she was just some weird welcome to the world program Dr. Gerald was running, and when he knew he was about to get run up on by gun , he started writing some more, revenge oriented progamming . In tune with my love of characters being with cold hard fists of harsh reality, I personal like that idea. And would sorta explain why she is running around in shadow the hedgehog, with whatever desese she had. She could do whatever shadow wanted in his memory.... she not real. I like the idea he wasted all his time on some shit that wasn't even real.
Yes, I know the actual pictures of maria throws that shit in the fire. I just like idea.
Next which is actually more reasonable, shadow knew he was doing wrong in the first place. Shadow's gradual progression just seems like a guy who wanted some revenge, and slowly realized that just wasn't pheasable. I think he realized that near the beginning . And by the end, just was at the point where he acknowledged it. I mean you are some immortal science experiment, if you are at the Mr. Manhattan point, you are way to far gone. Amy rose, isn't going stop you from being "I don't care", he cared, the memories in his mind just told him what he wanted to here.
He saves the world and then falls to the earth, and the lives. Because he was infarct literally too cool to die.
" He's a robot "
" everyone thinks that's lame"
" we'll he's not a robot I guess, eggman saved him "
" cool, and he will have blasty powers, and explions, and be an alien, and do a bunch a chaos control still wth a chaos emerald, and have deadly karate chops" IIzuka and Jun say before scribbling in their shadow doodles in their notebook.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
remember that time Shadow died at the end of SA2 and then came back inexplicably because fan service
also
" Who is this cool guy , why is he here, Why has he bopped sonic, with reletive ease, why is he trying to blow up the planet?"
You ask these questions you eventually find out over the course of the game. hell that mystery was the selling point
Not really arguing on that one, that was weird. To be honest It was like before the game came out some guy ran into someone's office like
" yo you fam, we did some demo tests on shadow"
" how do people feel about him "
" Yo dude, you might not wanna kill this dude off"
" Oh ok,Time to actively remove plot "
Not hard to explain, Gerald is a smart guy.
There are 3 explanations.
1) gerald knew gun was coming for a while now, created a contingency plan if he got taken that revenge would eventually be gotten
2) The biohazard is what they wanted, shadow wasn't they came through and took shadow, he never told him about that.
3) Biohazard is an earlier failed experiment turned into a revenge plan.
As far as the ultimate life form goes, it seemed to be " it was going to be help people with disease. And turned into " no its an immortal living weapon to surpass metal gear"
The last two seem to be implied and eventually work their way into later stories.
So in a world of The metal gear solid 5 truth tapes, I don't even think that's fair to even ask. But an half assed explanation would be, he knew it was going to happen, and hacked into their system to record special messed up events leading up to his eventual death to motivate shadow? Not going to pretend that wasn't weird.
I mean the biolizard seemed to be running on programming , so maybe? I mean , why would an organic creature on its own accord wish to end its own life by body slamming a planet. As rad as that is, an an extinction level body slam even. it was also going to die. So the idea, with all that metal junk on its body , it was running on programming would work. If Egelord.ULT enters Home.LAB, activate Fuckthisshiterf.EXE
To offer another explanation
1) gun is whole sale incompetent as mentioned before
2) They wanted to eventually make their own shadow. Which would also explain why they are keeping him . gerald seemed to have created a miracle of science and wanted to possible create their own version. A living breathing immortal weapon, we later found out it wasn't all him. And eggman and gun respectively will never create their own shadow, no matter how hard they tried. And eggman tried for a little bit. Gun saw some writing on the wall and had been trying to decipher it for years, but couldn't . Doesn't explain why they threw sonic in there, but that's what I got. This one of the questions you are asking that can be left up to imagination.
Why was a so easy to break sonic out? GUN is incompetent, you remember when eggman broke in twice? Twice. Also fun fact, eggman killed everyone on that island blowing it up. Eggman killed a lot of people. That was a military that was active. Them people is dead.
Maybe they were trying to figure that out. When guy that allegedly engineered immortality, something that people have litteraly searching for since the beginning of society in general. Is rambling about revenge and doodling on your wall, hell if he is eating an egg sand which, you watch whatever the fuck he's doing. Because he's smarter than you , and if he's mad at you its probably going to get you back at some point.
Maria isn't real explanation above.
Gerald changing his mind, becase his work was too far gone. See maria isn't actually real explanation.
Its never explained in game , and is kind of a plot hole. Post explantion is that shadow eventually gets to a point where he doesn't need chaos emeralds to do much of anything short of time stop. So maybe the lizard unlike shadow wasn't in a stasis state, it was just locked up and was able to develop its abilities over time.
That said we later find out, that shadow is the son of
IS MARAI HIS STAND?! or would black DOOM be his stand?! Be called Doomsday have an mf doom type mask be like, MUDA MUDA MUDA.
Sonic Eyes of Chaosu
And knuckles is Kars, YOOOOOOO
As far spirits meeting, I got no idea about that but. Some people like the idea of tikal and shadow meeting up.That's a weird one.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
shut it down ya'll, we've reached the greatest GAF post
BlazeHedgehog
Member
This is not how you tell stories, dog
Shadow Hog
Member
He even has a whole Tumblr filled with almost nothing but answering questions from randos about it.
This is more interesting than it sounds.
This is more interesting than it sounds.
Yep. Disappointing, since social media is a poor substitute for the sort of discourse you get on a forum, but I expect a fan forum to take its place before too long.
Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
On some of the SA2 questions, I recall when I was young and first played it, I knew Gerald's recordings were in the past since everyone refered to Gerald through past tense and Maria died 50 years ago, and Biolizard I thought was modeled after Perfect Chaos because both were reptilian and the arena you fight him in is modelled after the Master Emerald shrine in SA1, and Biolizard was sealed there sort of like how Chaos was. That was my kid logic, at least.
pennypincher
Member
Sonic 2016 = last chance for him, for me.
If that fails, I'd rather have Sonic on my shirt than on my screen.
If that fails, I'd rather have Sonic on my shirt than on my screen.
BlazeHedgehog
Member
HUELEN10
Member
Aaron Strife
Banned
Even though it would be a rehash of Tikal, I personally think Maria should have been the spirit-form hint-giver of Adventure 2 over Omochao.
When I finally got around to playing the Adventure games to see what all the fuss was about my experience was
SA1: Beat it, an okay game with a ton of rough edges. The non-Sonic stuff was at best a slight variant on Sonic's quick platforming at worse busy work that at least was over quick.
SA2: I gave up. I did the Dark campaign but that wore me down and when I want for the heroes it got to me. It was a Tail's level. Trying to turn that mech was damn chore and not fun at all. I LIKE big lumbering mech games, but in those I'm in a level made for that plodding movement and not in a linear corridor. Also the enemies are more fun to gun down and I can use all sort of neat weapons (...I need to see if it's possible to get EarthSiege 2 running on a modern computer.) The non-sonic stuff was just not fun at all.
SA1: Beat it, an okay game with a ton of rough edges. The non-Sonic stuff was at best a slight variant on Sonic's quick platforming at worse busy work that at least was over quick.
SA2: I gave up. I did the Dark campaign but that wore me down and when I want for the heroes it got to me. It was a Tail's level. Trying to turn that mech was damn chore and not fun at all. I LIKE big lumbering mech games, but in those I'm in a level made for that plodding movement and not in a linear corridor. Also the enemies are more fun to gun down and I can use all sort of neat weapons (...I need to see if it's possible to get EarthSiege 2 running on a modern computer.) The non-sonic stuff was just not fun at all.
also
damn
The Hermit
Member
omg, thats hilarious
Nocturnowl
Member
I swear SA2 has a placebo effect in place where Eggman's mech feels infinitely better than Tail's cyclone when I'm pretty positive they're like the same thing.
Ludger Kresnik
Member
You should've done Hero first, it's a much better campaign. There's six Sonic stages as opposed to just four Shadow ones, and Knuckles's treasure hunting stages are waaayyyy less obnoxious than Rouge's. The only thing the Dark side has going for it is Eggman.
I still can't get over SA2 straight up taking out some of my favorite parts of SA1 for no reason (most notably the hub worlds and separate character specific storylines, both of which I love having) while also simultaneously making everything else worse. Sonic isn't as fun to play as, level design took a step down, and the treasure hunting and shooting are both a million times more frustrating and obnoxious. Story isn't anywhere near as good either.
God what an awful fucking sequel hahaha
God what an awful fucking sequel hahaha
Ludger Kresnik
Member
SA2 removes a lot of the repetition and doesn't have mandatory fishing levels. So it's not all bad!