At least boosting cuts out all of the pretenses. Sonic 3 stopped being as fun as it used to be long before that for the same reason. But more and more playthroughs of Sonic 2 yielded less and less enjoyment because of the abusability of the spin dash. I used to love it, and couldn't imagine playing a classic Sonic game without it. The spin dash is not holy and untouchable. Sorry, I don't consider that real platforming. It's just separate roads, always straight, some blocks here and there. If only you could see what you miised, it would already be a big improvement. There is absolutely no interaction between the alternative paths, which makes them all essentially the same. The main reason is that the whole idea of "alternative paths" is not so strict as in Unleashed/Colors/Generations. That said, that's not the main reason Adventure gameplay offers more (it's worse, it's less polished etc., but still has a much better concept). Besides, I believe it would be for the best if the boost didn't make you invincible. But rings, even if there's only 10 of them in each stage, are something you were already going to collect anyway. b) Still according to that principle, the fact that the boost is "fed" by something is an amazing idea. Thus, having to stop in order to get a higher speed at the end only enhances the sensation of speed. This means, in Sonic's case, go slower in order to go faster. Now, all this talk about momentum gameplay is only half-true, since one principle that makes not only Sonic, but platformers in general stand out is that you have to think further than the moment. Those are: a) You can boost while running. They do the same, alright, but there are two differences that make the boost suck. Besides, it takes 20 seconds to get to the next level/boss/cutscene so it never bothered me. Was I the only one who enjoyed the overworlds of SA1? I'm a bit of a whore for world-building and while they weren't that amazing in that department, it really felt like a step into fleshing out the world of Sonic and if fleshed out could really do wonders in world-building (Majora's Mask-style worldbuilding in a Sonic game would make me sooooooo happy you don't even know). I wish Adventure 2 had simply refined and polished Adventure 1's style instead of completely throwing it away with a game I find inferior all around. But there's something about Adventure 1's potential I find so interesting. Granted, Generations mechanically speaking is a good deal better than what we saw in Adventure 1. Sonic's stages in SA1 are my favorite Sonic levels ever to speedrun for that reason alone. Being able to manipulate the spindash to make jumps that seem impossible otherwise and allow you to do stupidly awesome amounts of sequence breaking is an awesome feeling. I think Sonic's style of gameplay in Adventure 1 if really polished (By this I mean bugfixing and making the camera not suck and a bit more proper sense of momentum) and expanded upon (And removing the fat of the extra characters and junk) has more potential than what we saw in Generations. In the future if we had more levels like that, got rid of the boost and maybe tweaked Sonic's movement just ever so slightly, then it'd be almost perfect. In Generations, levels like Seaside Hill and Sky Sanctuary feel like a kind of happy medium between Adventure and Modern style to me they have the branching paths and some of the freedom of the Adventure games whilst keeping the speed and gameplay mechanics of the Modern games. It's different to what we had before but it's good fun and that's the most important thing. I still don't like the fucking boost (what's the point of having badniks if you can run straight through them, for example), but the overall feel of the game is a vast improvement. But when Generations came along, it was like a breath of fresh air. Colours was really good fun, but once I 100% completed it I never had any motivation to play it again. With the modern Sonic gameplay we have now, at first I loved Unleashed but I got bored of it very quickly because it felt so linear and too reliant on the god-awful boost for my liking. Why stick with a formula which clearly isn't being improved upon? In other words, for me, Sonic Adventure 1 > Sonic Adventure 2 > Sonic Heroes > Shadow the Hedgehog > Sonic 06. The thing about Adventure style though, is that I think it got worse as more games were released. The fact that some levels were fast (Speed Highway) and others focused more on platforming (Lost World) was also reminiscent of the classics and provided a nice change of pace. I like the freedom of the first Adventure game and the fact that some elements from the classics (rolling and spindashing etc) were still present. Nowadays I like both styles equally, for different reasons. I always used to swear by Sonic's gameplay in SA1 until Generations came around.
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