What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Gamer707b]

All this platformers talk is making me fire up some Mario or Crash.

Went to Socal Gaming Expo last weekend and picked up Perfect Dark with the Expansion Pack for my N64. Never played it before, so no rose-colored glasses. Pleasantly, surprised on how good it is. Considering the first person shooter is one of my least favorite types of games is even more impressive that I'm enjoying myself as much as I have. Also got Super Ghouls N Ghosts at the convention on Snes, but I won't be playing that right away. Still have Strider to finish.

[Sumez]

Keep in mind I only played these as they actually came out. I never back-to-backed them and haven't touched any of them since probably 2001, so recollections are a bit hazy. Also, apparently the remasters change some things up rather drastically, but I've only played the originals so I couldn't say for sure.

Yeah, I do have the "remaster", but I haven't touched it. It looks nice, but the general consensus is that it screws up the physics for the first two games, so I deliberately avoided it to make sure I got the original experience. I already have all three games on PS1 lying around anyway. Back in the days these games would litter every single bundle deal you could get for cheap playstation games.

I think it was a good decision, because the little details in the controls seem to be very meticulously designed to match the stage design. The controls are super janky in general, especially compared to something like Mario 64 obviously, but they manage to work perfectly for their purpose - and nailing those precision jumps into the Z axis, which seems like it would be really hard to judge, generally relies a lot on just trusting how the physics work. If the remake even touched those mechanics slightly, I can see that drastically affecting the game experience.

I haven't played 4 but there are complaints about it having a lot of difficult perfect-run challenges that are required for the good ending. This seems pretty divisive, but you'll probably like it!

Sounds great!

[XoPachi]

I just can't wait for mods to remove durability because it was already stupid in Wild but the further you go into Tears, the less it makes sense in this game. All it does break combat flow and pacing constantly juggling a trash inventory system and makes general exploration unrewarding. So I'll just...get rid of that. It's still disappointing that for a game world this massive there's, again, only half the dungeons as past "mainline" Zelda entries and they're still the scaled back non traditional style of Wild. But they're much more exciting this time. They actually have unique themes again for one, very exciting interesting lead ups, some of Nintendo's best visual spectacle in forever.

And my god the bosses. MAN! These are the best fights since Link to the Past! At least as far as just fighting goes. I think in terms of visual design, OoT is still the peak of the series, but fighting these guys is so massively thrilling and a few of them were surprisingly difficult. You can't just spam them with bomb arrows and kill them before their health bar loads. And they're not "XBlight Ganon" now. They're their own things with great presentation, they're screen filling monstrosities, and have personalities all their own. They bring back some classic faces to fight that I was really happy to see again after so long. They don't have to do that but it's nice. Definitely a massive highlight for the game.

It's got shortcomings. It still does a lot of incredibly aggravating shit. There's still some missed opportunities. But focusing on them would be a disservice to my enjoyment. Ain't no "$70 good" or a 10/10 like people mindlessly give Zelda games for prestige alone. But it's a good game.

[Air Master Burst]

I may or may not have been playing it for a week already. But since it's out now I want to say that as someone who thoroughly could not stand the previous entry or modern open world games in general, Tears of the Kingdom has been a great time for me.

How much crafting is required this time around?

[XoPachi]

How much crafting is required this time around?

I guess a lot. But I started to not really notice. It's a bit obtuse, but there's neat stuff you can do like make rocket gliders, combat drones, all kinds of propulsion devices, and tanks. And the game doesn't ever feel like it's the only choice I have.

[NYN]

AKANE

Bought on sale with gold points, I almost regret not giving real full monies to this. With what it is, there is fun to be had here. Even with just pixel flavour, not authentic aesthetics is no offence. Learning how to survive by failing, well established program of old school. Unlocking new gear by becoming more lethal weapon in excercise. Not condoning smoking, it could be funny if the smoke itself would damage zako while much dashing. Apperance of female destroyer colour-coded after glorious bionic champion of Imperial Army Gottfried Groeder. Approve that. Fight on.

[Steven]

For some reason Sega put up a demo for Sonic Frontiers on Switch. I played it and it's completely miserable. I think it's very obvious that you should never play anything on Switch ever if the game is available on literally any other system, but don't play Sonic Frontiers on the Switch. PS5 version was decent enough to not be a complete waste of time, I suppose, and PC has Denuvo, so play it on PS5 or Xbox Series X instead.

I'm really more interested in what Sonic Team does for the next game because Frontiers is a decent thing to build on. Probably, anyway. It's Sonic Team, so I'm sure the next Sonic game will revert back to having levels of quality somewhere between Sonic 06 and Forces again. At least Forces is better than Sonic Adventure 2, so it would not be the worst possible outcome, but still...

[m.sniffles.esq]

I'm really more interested in what Sonic Team does for the next game because Frontiers is a decent thing to build on.

Well, if you want to go backwards, Frontiers is just PSO2: NGS with sonic

[XoPachi]

Forces better than Adventure 2 is a great joke.

[guigui]

I'm really more interested in what Sonic Team does for the next game

I fear that I am not if it is not another Sonic & All Star racing installment.

[BrianC]

Forces better than Adventure 2 is a great joke.

Yes, Sonic is no match for the mighty square.

[Sima Tuna]

I have yet to play any fully 3d Sonic game that I thought was 100% good. Some of them have good sections but inevitably contain lots of garbage too. If you held a gun to my head, I guess maybe I'd take Adventure 1. The Big the Cat stuff is intolerable but there's not all that much of it.

I liked the Sonic and Shadow levels of Adventure 2 but couldn't stand any other characters.

[To Far Away Times]

Adventure is a not good game but it has "heart." You can tell a real effort was made.

If the next game was great, Adventure's legacy probably could have slid by relatively unscathed.

The problem is Adventure 2 takes all the wrong lessons from Adventure 1. It's more of the same rather than attempting to rebuild and improve a shaky foundation.

Adventure, the worst game in the series up to that point, became the gold standard, rather than something to be improved upon.

They hit the absolute nadir with Shadow the Hedgehog. Artistically with zero merit, and ill conceived in all aspects. Bad taste meets bad execution. It's the video game equivalent of an Insane Clown Posse facial tattoo.

[Steven]

Forces better than Adventure 2 is a great joke.

No, it isn't. Sonic Adventure 2 is a piece of shit. It's a very ambitious piece of shit, but it's still a piece of shit. The gameplay ranges from dull and uninteresting to annoying and uninteresting. It's not fun to play at all; while Adventure 1 still actually manages to occasionally feel like Sonic 1, 2, 3&K, and CD in 3D at points, complete with physics that somewhat replicate those earlier games, all that got thrown away in Adventure 2.

Here you run through some empty-ass hallways, pick up shit for the Chao Garden, and go raise Chao because that's pretty much the only aspect of the gameplay that anyone actually cares about. You ever notice that whenever someone mentions the game that the Chao Garden is usually one of the first things that is mentioned? That's because it's the only part of the game that's really "good", and even that is just a super-obtuse time-wasting slog that's barely more engaging than the rest of the game. The ultra-broken Heroes and Sonic 06 make Adventure 2 seem like a brilliant masterpiece in comparison, though...

Forces is also not great, but at least it's short, so you only have to put up with it for about 3 hours, and it's moderately more fun to play due to having slightly more interesting stage design than Adventure 2, unless you are Classic Sonic, in which case it's about as annoying as Adventure 2 because they decided to make Classic Sonic control like shit. Generations has exactly the same problem, but it wasn't as bad there and the Modern Sonic stages in Generations are really good, easily making up for the awkward parts. Anyway, Forces has... nice enough graphics, I guess, and it's pretty short, so the torture of playing it ends relatively quickly.

I'm really more interested in what Sonic Team does for the next game

I fear that I am not if it is not another Sonic & All Star racing installment.

That would be pretty cool, actually. Still need to find a way to play Transformed somehow.

Adventure, the worst game in the series up to that point

Not when Sonic Jam on the game.com exists. That is the true worst Sonic game. It's appalling. Definitely worth checking out if you haven't seen it before. Don't actually play it, though; I think you'll get a good enough idea from checking out footage of it as it struggles to run above about 8 FPS, frequently dipping into the 3~5 FPS range.

[null1024]

this post is a fucking mess but I'm still submitting it anyway lol

Personally, I'd say that the parts of SA1 and SA2 that are good are REALLY good. Namely, the parts where you're Sonic.
In fact, they're so good that they're the entire reason why people will defend the games for multiple decades despite so much of each game just being REALLY bad.

I'd also say that the long drought of Sonic's friends being playable is a direct response to Sega fucking up every god damned time regarding them, since Sega universally used them to pad out the game since Sonic-style gameplay is fast and you sure aren't getting a 20 hour game that's all Sonic.
...but fuck that, give me a game that's like, actually good, don't pad it out with dumb bullshit. For the last 20 years, I've advocated for a game that's basically just SA2 with only Sonic levels [and a few modern QoL changes, like lock-on indicators, separating each action onto a different button, that sort of thing].

Hell, even if we're talking about boost-era Sonic, Unleashed has really good main stages, and an absolutely fucking absurd amount of padding around them [seriously, FUCK the god damn Werehog]. Generations is a step down in level design, but it's still the best "3D" Sonic in years as an overall product, and that's honestly kind of embarrassing, holy shit because the level design is just that much lesser [if still not bad].


As for Sonic [and Shadow] in SA1 and SA2, there are a few bits of "wow that's fucking garbage" level design here and there [Final Chase is an atrocious level, and then like, huge parts of Sky Deck are fucking bullshit], but I'd consider them to be few and far between.

SA2's Sonic is an outright improvement in most ways regarding handling, with an unfortunate hit in level design being more stretched out and linear and not providing anywhere near the opportunity for cool skips like in SA1. It's a side-grade overall, but you can tell there was a clear attempt to step forward. Every character in the game feels less floaty and more responsive [SA2 Knuckles feels fantastic to control if I'm honest; shame about the absolutely stupid decision to hyper-fuck the radar compared to SA1].

Unfortunately, there's so much other shit dragging down what is a fairly solid base in both games.
In SA2, you just can't skip it either -- I've said this before, but in SA1, I can just play Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles' campaigns and ignore the rest; in SA2, I am stuck doing shitty Rouge and Tails stages, and even the Sonic/Shadow bits kinda just suck until you get the upgrades [in particular, having bounce makes grinding way better].

From what I can tell, SA2 is definitely rushed [especially given that like, the DC was busy preparing to leave the market], and I decidedly remember hearing a rumor that only Sonic, Knuckles, and Eggman were supposed to be playable characters [and quite frankly, I'd say that their levels are noticeably better than Shadow, Rouge, and Tails]. Like yeah, most of the franchise definitely was ramming against deadlines, but it seemed to hit SA2 really hard since the game really feels like an actual attempt to fix SA1's flaws, but ends up making so many new ones.


As an aside, I'm not going to say that Shadow is without artistic merit as a game... but god fucking damn, it really is a bad game. My nephew was all over it way back when, so I had to play a fucking bunch of it for him. It was shit then, and it was shit when I revisited it again a few years ago. I got like three endings and dropped it completely. Levels aren't good as get-to-the-goal affairs, mission design is terrible, at no point did I feel like the gunplay really came together, it's just a fucking mess. Sometimes, I thought it looked cool, and I was an edgy little shit like 15+ years ago so the music was cool, but as a game? Fucking hell, what a shitheap.
The most damning thing is that the first fucking level is shit, something I've never said about another Sonic game, including Sonic 06.

[edit]
I saw some absolutely dumb shit about Forces above, so I'm just going to say this: Forces is like, 100% padding. The entire god damn game feels like it was thrown together to fill out space, without there even being anything that feels like the real meat and potatoes in it. It looks and controls worse than Generations or Unleashed. It's not even like, impressively bad like Shadow or 06. It's just an immeasurably mediocre game.

[Air Master Burst]

I actually really liked the Knuckles and Rouge stages (to be fair a lot of that was probably the dope music) and hated the Tails/Robotnik stages, but all that aside the Chao gardens were fucking fantastic.

[null1024]

Knux/Rouge feel good to play, I just fucking hate scouring the map for shit. At this point I know a bunch of the emerald spawns, so it's less bad, but it's still a pain, and Rouge's levels tend to have more bullshit gimmicks in them vs Knuckles.
Tails' in SA2 has super boring levels that feel like they were thrown together last minute, Eggman's have a bit more level design and if EVERY Eggman stage played like Cosmic Wall did [having the space gravity meant that they could do real platforming, but there are also fun shooting bits in it], they'd be like, great overall rather than eh.

[Sima Tuna]

I'm not interested in playing stages made for characters who can't move quickly. I don't want to be shooting robots with Tails, hunting down hidden emeralds with Knuckles or fishing for Froggy. The Tails stuff in SA1 was fine because Tails played through levels like Sonic. I only want to play those kinds of levels in a 3d sonic games. Except I would also like the games to have some fucking momentum to them and not be quite so crack-addict fast or railroaded. My ideal 3d sonic gameplay would be something more akin to Mario Sunshine, only faster. The way you can slide and pick up speed when slippery in Sunshine is a good start for some momentum-based platforming. It just needs to be faster and have stage design built around it.

I do not like Boost gameplay at all. It feels way too haphazard and automated. Going from Generations to Sonic Mania, you can really feel the jump in quality. Boost is ironically too fast, too weightless and too railroaded. Mania has the loops and speed boosters, but you're not locked to them. Your speed isn't a fixed quantity that's set to specific constant values-it increases and decreases with the terrain. Without a lock-on, you have to actually aim your ball form at enemies and hit them using the momentum and speed generated by your movement.

I want Sega to go back to the drawing board and build a new 3d engine for Sonic, which uses momentum-based physics. Extra characters are nice when the core of the gameplay is already rock-solid. Mania with 5 characters? Fucking sweet. Sonic 06 with a bunch of characters? Dear god, kill me now.

[Steven]

I saw some absolutely dumb shit about Forces above, so I'm just going to say this: Forces is like, 100% padding. The entire god damn game feels like it was thrown together to fill out space, without there even being anything that feels like the real meat and potatoes in it. It looks and controls worse than Generations or Unleashed. It's not even like, impressively bad like Shadow or 06. It's just an immeasurably mediocre game.

It's not dumb because it's the truth. Yes, Forces feels like padding. It being immeasurably mediocre makes it way better than Adventure 2's garbage gameplay and boring level design. They're both awful games, but I'll take Forces over Adventure 2 since it will end way sooner and then I can go play something better instead.

I do not like Boost gameplay at all. It feels way too haphazard and automated. Going from Generations to Sonic Mania, you can really feel the jump in quality. Boost is ironically too fast, too weightless and too railroaded.

Frontiers actually fixes most of this. It's actually got some real momentum, as well, but it's only really noticeable when you use the drop dash on slopes, in which case the slope affects your momentum as it should. The drop dash is probably pretty okay in Cyber Space, but I always forget to use it there. It's pretty useless in the open zones since you can just boost everywhere, but even then the boost typically feels way too slow unless you have max rings. Yeah, the one Sonic game where top speed is normally way too slow is the only one that's got massive areas.

[Air Master Burst]

So basically what I'm hearing is that the Saturn 3D Blast special stages are still peak 3D Sonic?

[Steven]

Yep, those and Sonic R.

[Creamy Goodness]

Playing Trials of Mana. Kind of surprised it got decent reviews considering how linear and generally easy it is. But honestly I could use a game like that these days. Something I can just turn my mind off with and enjoy.

[cfx]

Playing Trials of Mana. Kind of surprised it got decent reviews considering how linear and generally easy it is. But honestly I could use a game like that these days. Something I can just turn my mind off with and enjoy.

I've only played the demo but really liked it. I like linear; "open world" can go to hell.

[XoPachi]

Playing Trials of Mana. Kind of surprised it got decent reviews considering how linear and generally easy it is. But honestly I could use a game like that these days. Something I can just turn my mind off with and enjoy.

There's a boss in the game that is extremely bullshit and nearly made me quit. I think it was some kind of door or wall with eyes and there were spikes all over the damn place with hazards you just couldn't focus on from every angle.

[ryu]

Playing Trials of Mana. Kind of surprised it got decent reviews considering how linear and generally easy it is. But honestly I could use a game like that these days. Something I can just turn my mind off with and enjoy.

Been playing that one with a friend. It's decent, but Secret of Mana was more fun. Somehow they've only managed to make the combat even more brainless by removing the necessity to charge. I mean charging did feel clunky in SoM, but in hindsight it contributed in the sense that it put some sort of flow into the game's combat. ToM is just mash A to win. :/

Finished up Zelda. Nice game!

I think I'm finally done with the franchise. Breath of the Wild was fun for a couple hours but increasingly felt like a waste of time (like any open world game, really). Tears of the Kingdom is just making it worse for me with how its introducing crafting instead of focusing on a straightforward gameplay experience.

[Sumez]

For some reason Sega put up a demo for Sonic Frontiers on Switch. I played it and it's completely miserable. I think it's very obvious that you should never play anything on Switch ever if the game is available on literally any other system, but don't play Sonic Frontiers on the Switch.

I've heard how bad the Switch version of Frontiers is, but from what you get to play in the demo, I didn't really see much of a problem?

The game doesn't look amazing, but from what I've seen of higher fidelity ports like the PS5 one, adding more details doesn't save it from being a mostly ugly game anyway.

60fps obviously would be ideal for a game of this sort, but that's something consoles have been mostly denied for years at this point, so it doesn't feel offputting to me. The stages you could play in the demo all run fine on Switch, so I'm assuming the bigger issues are in the true open world segments. But even speeding through the (time limited) demo you can only just barely make it to something resembling that.

Forces better than Adventure 2 is a great joke.

I struggle to think of any video games that aren't at least better than Sonic Adventure 2.
Agreed with Steven, that game is a piece of garbage. It's kind of funny how much hate Sonic 06 always gets, but playing it and SA2 back to back, it's obvious they share most of the same problems, and ultimately I find 06 way more enjoyable despite its super janky nature.

[ryu]

and ultimately I find 06 way more enjoyable despite its super janky nature.

The world just wasn't prepared for the amount of cringe induced by watching a human cgi girl kiss a blue cartoon hedgehog. In terms of gameplay you're not entirely wrong. I thought the stages in Sonic 06 were good fun. Unfortunately the busywork quests inbetween and those load times on PS3 absolutely killed it (putting the awkward story aside entirely).

[Sumez]

Yeah the hub world and load times are strictly worse. But I don't mind the idea of such a hub world, it was just extremely boring. Feels more like a missed potential than something that really drags the game down IMO.
The core gameplay feels better than SA2 though. It's awkward and glitchy, but so are the SA games.

[Steven]

For some reason Sega put up a demo for Sonic Frontiers on Switch. I played it and it's completely miserable. I think it's very obvious that you should never play anything on Switch ever if the game is available on literally any other system, but don't play Sonic Frontiers on the Switch.

I've heard how bad the Switch version of Frontiers is, but from what you get to play in the demo, I didn't really see much of a problem?

The game doesn't look amazing, but from what I've seen of higher fidelity ports like the PS5 one, adding more details doesn't save it from being a mostly ugly game anyway.

60fps obviously would be ideal for a game of this sort, but that's something consoles have been mostly denied for years at this point, so it doesn't feel offputting to me. The stages you could play in the demo all run fine on Switch, so I'm assuming the bigger issues are in the true open world segments. But even speeding through the (time limited) demo you can only just barely make it to something resembling that.

Forces better than Adventure 2 is a great joke.

I struggle to think of any video games that aren't at least better than Sonic Adventure 2.
Agreed with Steven, that game is a piece of garbage. It's kind of funny how much hate Sonic 06 always gets, but playing it and SA2 back to back, it's obvious they share most of the same problems, and ultimately I find 06 way more enjoyable despite its super janky nature.

Yeah, it's the open world stuff that the Switch struggles with. I skipped all of the cutscenes in the demo so I could check it out without the time limit stopping me. It has weird spots even on PS5 where the framerate drops to around 50FPS, but on Switch it's even worse. For some reason the PS5 version starts you in the 30FPS quality mode, so you have to set it to 60FPS manually, but it mostly runs at that target. Switch... yeah.

The game is kind of ugly even on PS5, though; aside from the whole game just being kind of soulless in most aspects, including the art, it's like they took some generic realistic art assets from another game, added some Sonic stuff, and called it good. Sonic and his friends don't look like they belong in the world of Frontiers. Sonic Adventure 1, Unleashed, Colors, and Generations all look way better than Frontiers does because those games have excellent art direction. Sonic Adventure 2 and 06 look fine, but both are also a bit closer to the more realistic style of Frontiers, and there are those super high-budget prerendered cutscenes in 06 that look super out-of-place in a Sonic game (and the Japanese voice acting doesn't sync properly with the lips, even on the Japanese version of the game lol. Yep, English is the original language of 06 and I think everything that came after, as well). I greatly prefer Sonic games to have that awesome trippy checkerboard dirt and stuff over whatever Frontiers is supposed to be.

As for 06, I think it's very obvious that they ran out of time on that game and were forced to ship what they had; the game is clearly incomplete. Naka also left Sega partway through development, too, which probably didn't help, even if he is a jackass. I need to go finish playing 06; I find 06 to be pretty boring overall, but I do want to finish the game eventually.

[Sumez]

I greatly prefer Sonic games to have that awesome trippy checkerboard dirt and stuff over whatever Frontiers is supposed to be.

Doesn't everyone? When Sonic Adventure came out, the thematic and tonal shift was the most offputting aspect to me, even moreso than the completely glitchy mechanics. Then Heroes kinda was back on the right track, and then they forgot it again until Colours. It's baffling to me that Sega refuse to make Sonic bright and fun, and instead opt for that dreadful boring look of the Frontiers overworld.

For as super janky as Sonic Lost Worlds is, visually and tonally I think it's possibly the best the series has been in decades, and it looks a million times prettier than Frontiers, while running really smooth on a WiiU. Of course, that was yet another one-off.