[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;45534686] and the whole level design thing seems pretty spot on[/QUOTE]
It's completly wrong. The level desing is complex and with layers to punish you for fucking up, instead of an instant kill, not to encourage you to go slow.
The more you fuck up, the lower the level design takes and the slower it makes you progress. This is still present in modern Sonic games like Generations.
[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;45534686]and there ARE tons of segments in the sonic games where you literally don't have to control your character[/QUOTE]
This are mostly in the earlier levels and serve as a way to teach the player how the physics work and there aren't tons, there's a couple of them in some levels.
This is why it comes up as nitpicky, because they aren't though out arguments, they are simple rambles, they came into the game biased and pick every single thing they could in order to favor their "point".
[QUOTE=Psyke89;45534962]This are mostly in the earlier levels and serve as a way to teach the player how the physics work and there aren't tons, there's a couple of them in some levels.
This is way it comes up as nitpicky, because they aren't though out arguments, they are simple rambles.[/QUOTE]
but those early levels are the ones people remember the most. the ones with the most iconic design and music. and those are the levels everyone praises sonic for.
[QUOTE=Zukriuchen;45534991]but those early levels are the ones people remember the most. the ones with the most iconic design and music. and those are the levels everyone praises sonic for.[/QUOTE]
They are still early levels, they are there to ease you into the game, not kill you right off the bat.
all their footage comes from sonic 1 and 2, which bothered me.
Sonic 3 and Knuckles is undoubtedly [I]the best[/I] 2D sonic, since it's basically sega improving on their issues with the first two games. It's a similar thing with Mario too, most people would argue that Super Mario 3 is the best Mario game. To then produce a video claiming that the NES Marios are way overrated and only showing footage of the first two, would be unfair to the unshown game.
Still a funny video, but it comes across as two people who grew up with nintendo struggling to work out why others grew up with sega.
I like the chemistry between the two.
They don't take themselves too seriously either which is always a plus.
[QUOTE=Laserbeams;45533846]Overrated doesn't mean bad. Most good games are overrated[/QUOTE]
They outright call the games flawed in the video.
i knew this side of rlm would be bad as soon as i heard about it
rich is very funny but a lot of his funniness comes from him as a character interacting with mike and jay. he's basically just comic relief. he is also only ever in half in the bag episodes when his expertise is needed - and that's comics. the dude loves comics. he obviously doesn't actually know that much about films (which mike and jay are obviously very well versed in) and this new series demonstrates that he doesn't know very much about games... at all
i mean i'm not saying that you have to be a [i]Gamer[/i]™ in order to talk about and form opinions on video games - in fact fresh perspectives from non-traditional backgrounds are often really interesting and valid - but jeez there's so much dumb stuff in this video
i'm not normally one to dismiss opinions with "you're wrong because you're bad at the game" because, often, people are only bad at a game because the game isn't designed very well. this is especially true with non 'gamey' types who are easily scoffed at for not understanding established video mechanic tropes by people who have honed their skills for years
but fuck me these guys suck at the game. there's so many shots used to establish that the game is badly designed where the guys are screaming "nooooooo!!" where it's obvious that they're just shit at the game - they're just walking into shit. it's not even a surprise or a trap or anything it's just bad reaction times. while personally i wouldn't design a game who's difficulty is based on reaction time, the entire point of sonic is the risk vs reward and satisfaction that comes from going really fuckin fast. of course you're going to suck at it if you have shit reaction times
Guys, chill your aspergers it's just redlettermedia
and jeez they really dedicate like 10 minutes to laughing at the storyline of an early 90s japanese video game? i get that there's a lot of comedy in how silly the story is, but if you're gonna relentlessly compare the game to mario (which it isn't even similar to) then i don't think it's worth much to laugh at a blue hedgehog that goes fast when the alternative is an italian plumber who fights sentient tortoises and rescues a princess
[QUOTE=Mad.Hatter;45535341]Guys, chill your aspergers it's just redlettermedia[/QUOTE]
to me, rlm is a really fair, really well educated, well researched content creator. it's silly as hell but its movie reviews are done by people with an incredible knowledge of their field
this is just lazy in comparison
Surprised no one has mentioned Sonic CD. CD is probably my most favorite 2D sonic game.
Also, this video did nothing to convince me that Sonic was overrated. It was a really poorly done video tbh. Plus the guys really fucking sucked. You can go really fast if you practice and work on the stages.
Sonic started to finally land on its feet during Unleashed with the daytime stages. And before you guys go all "BUT ADVENTURE!!!" it's my opinion that the adventure games were terrible. I only played them recently so I'm not blinded by the nostalgia. They both have some good moments but DX was almost just as if not more glitchy than '06, and Adventure 2 had more fucking eggman stages then actual sonic stages. I want to play as SONIC. Not shitty knuckles stages and boring tails shit.
And be real guys: '06 is pretty much a carbon copy of Sonic Adventure 1 that wasn't finished. I honestly had more fun with '06 than Adventure.
Anyway, Sonic Unleashed daytime stages pretty much defined what modern 3D sonic games should be. They're fast platformers that have multiple routes to competing the stage, and there are many tricks and alternate routes that can be found using speed and practice. Colors definitely helped by introducing phenomenal level design though it did do away with some speed elements which I enjoy.
Generations refined everything Sega has worked on and they made a near flawless game. Great level design, great gameplay, great controls, and plenty of side objectives.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqzGrmRxiGM[/media]
^Stuff like this is what makes the modern games so great.
Let's just hope Sammy doesn't find this video...
[video=youtube;Ef3rm9PXdCI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef3rm9PXdCI[/video]
I've been saying this shit for years. The original Sonic games are just badly designed and it's bewildering how they ever caught on. You could actually tweak the gameplay in a lot of little ways to make it better, but there was just a lot of amateur choices and design aspects in the game.
[editline]29th July 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=redBadger;45535443]You can go really fast if you practice and work on the stages.[/QUOTE]
But where do you draw the line between "you need to practice" and "trial and error"?
Sonic Generations is still the best Sonic.
The lack of vision in front of you is what made me prefer the Sonic Adventure games over pretty much any other games, as the modern sonic games often either make you go stupidly fast to a point you can't really move or pull off those 2.5D bullshit sequences.
In Sonic Adventure 1/2/Heroes you could actually see what was coming up and play accordingly, the acceleration was also pretty spot on so you could have those slower platforming section without shitty controls (like Generations had).
[QUOTE=Qwerty Bastard;45535672]I've been saying this shit for years. The original Sonic games are just badly designed and it's bewildering how they ever caught on. You could actually tweak the gameplay in a lot of little ways to make it better, but there was just a lot of amateur choices and design aspects in the game.[/QUOTE]
there's a lot of rose-tinted glasses with sonic
there's a lot of rose-tinted glasses with a lot of games
pmuch every game is terrible when you go back a certain number of years in terms of proper design ethic - lots of old games are way too based on artificial difficulty that require lots of time dedicated to learning their nuances to master them. this is partly why a lot of old games were and are so ridiculously satisfying once you get good at them. this is also why lots of people think games are 'dumbed down' now but the reality is that they're just more intelligent and more accessible, albeit they may have less depth than some more classic video games
it's not bewildering that sonic caught on at all - it was a product of its time. when it came out it was graphically very advanced, it had a state-of-the-art physics engine and character control, and it was really fucking fast. like faster than any other game ever made. compared to other platformers at the time it was groundbreaking. the first game is sketchy as hell and pretty broken but, by the time & knuckles came out, they were getting close to really perfecting the formula in my opinion
it was also a different type of game designed to appeal to different people. i think there's an obvious reason why there's such a mario/sonic feud that goes deeper than the consumer choice of nintendo vs sega and that's because they are mechanically very very different. one is a very fast game that relies somewhat on trial and error and learning to get the best run and satisfaction from the sheer speed of it, while the other is a more traditional platformer relying on pure skill and timing. while these days we would consider such borderline "trial and error" gameplay to be bad practice, it was pretty commonplace in its day and really drove a lot of people to get addicted to and find great satisfaction in the somewhat artificial difficulty (which, funnily enough, is something that a lot of people miss in modern games)
you say "You could actually tweak the gameplay in a lot of little ways to make it better" but that could be said for literally any game ever made and is really down to personal opinion and taste. i think bioshock infinite, for example, a game that was reviewed as 9/10 almost everywhere, is a very solid game - but i would change hundreds of things in that game to make it more fun for me... but those same changes would probably annoy someone else. so what's the point?
and you call it 'amateur' which i think is a null point because jeez it was fuckin 1991 - the whole industry was incredibly amateur. yeh there was a lot of money in it but in terms of design it was an absolute shambles. pretty much everyone in the industry at this point had come from a purely traditional programming and computer science background- it's no wonder games of the era were so badly designed. have you ever played the original metal gear? it's a mess. it was also a groundbreaking mess that grew and changed. i believe megadrive/genesis-era sonic is similar
Pretty much every sonic game (to me) feels like stuff is happening to me, rather than me actually playing the game. This extends all the way to generations, where everything is just happening and I'm vaguely controlling this character along a straight path with very little room for movement. Sonic is an on-rails platformer. You hold forward and it happens so quickly, it feels bad when you're punished for not knowing to jump within a quarter of a second because it isn't your fault.
Like the only ones which were maybe a bit different were the adventure games, but then the game was ruined by being an awfully buggy game which made it almost a chore to play.
It's an unpopular opinion because people grew up with Sonic, and I did too with the MegaDrive. But Sonic is over-rated.
[editline]29th July 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;45535812]there's a lot of rose-tinted glasses with sonic
there's a lot of rose-tinted glasses with a lot of games
pmuch every game is terrible when you go back a certain number of years in terms of proper design ethic - lots of old games are way too based on artificial difficulty that require lots of time dedicated to learning their nuances to master them. this is partly why a lot of old games were and are so ridiculously satisfying once you get good at them. this is also why lots of people think games are 'dumbed down' now but the reality is that they're just more intelligent and more accessible, albeit they may have less depth than some more classic video games
it's not bewildering that sonic caught on at all - it was a product of its time. when it came out it was graphically very advanced, it had a state-of-the-art physics engine and character control, and it was really fucking fast. like faster than any other game ever made. compared to other platformers at the time it was groundbreaking. the first game is sketchy as hell and pretty broken but, by the time & knuckles came out, they were getting close to really perfecting the formula in my opinion
it was also a different type of game designed to appeal to different people. i think there's an obvious reason why there's such a mario/sonic feud that goes deeper than the consumer choice of nintendo vs sega and that's because they are mechanically very very different. one is a very fast game that relies somewhat on trial and error and learning to get the best run and satisfaction from the sheer speed of it, while the other is a more traditional platformer relying on pure skill and timing. while these days we would consider such borderline "trial and error" gameplay to be bad practice, it was pretty commonplace in its day and really drove a lot of people to get addicted to and find great satisfaction in the somewhat artificial difficulty (which, funnily enough, is something that a lot of people miss in modern games)
you say "You could actually tweak the gameplay in a lot of little ways to make it better" but that could be said for literally any game ever made and is really down to personal opinion and taste. i think bioshock infinite, for example, a game that was reviewed as 9/10 almost everywhere, is a very solid game - but i would change hundreds of things in that game to make it more fun for me... but those same changes would probably annoy someone else. so what's the point?
and you call it 'amateur' which i think is a null point because jeez it was fuckin 1991 - the whole industry was incredibly amateur. yeh there was a lot of money in it but in terms of design it was an absolute shambles. pretty much everyone in the industry at this point had come from a purely [I]games[/I] background derived from traditional programming and computer science - it's no wonder games of the era were so badly designed. have you ever played the original metal gear? it's a mess. it was also a groundbreaking mess that grew and changed. i believe megadrive/genesis-era sonic is similar[/QUOTE]
But in 1991, Super Mario World had already shown what a 2d platformer could be a year beforehand. It had perfected what Super Mario Bros 3 had tried, and was technically pretty impressive and played just as fast as Sonic would. And whilst Sonic 1 was the first game of the series, it has a lot of inexcusable problems such as pretty bad feeling controls which don't feel tight, unfairly punishing gameplay and poor level design.
Trial and error isn't always fun
[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;45535812]and you call it 'amateur' which i think is a null point because jeez it was fuckin 1991 - the whole industry was incredibly amateur[/QUOTE]
Yet Super Mario World did everything Sonic tried to do, but better. They designed the levels in a logical way. Enemies had at least some kind of telegraph before popping up out of nowhere. The movement didn't have that weird slow build up, so you were able to react to things faster, the camera was actually placed a little bit in front of the character so you could see what was in front of you, and it wasn't pulled in so close to mario that you could see his goddamn nose hairs.
This is a game that came out [i]before[/i] the original Sonic the Hedgehog, a game that Sonic could've learned from a bit, but they were too busy copying off the old NES platformers and just cranking up the speed without taking any consideration for the consequences. The old 'they didn't know any better' excuse doesn't really hold up when there were other games that were better because the devs took their time and put some thought into their design choices.
Also you generalize when I say you can tweak the game, when what I mean is you could just change like a dozen (I know I said a lot but bare with me) things, maybe less, and it would be a lot better, even with the same exact level layouts. Sonic Generations is a good example of this, they actually went back and tweaked things like the movement, the camera, a few of the bullshit pop-up traps, and made those levels not just playable, but really fun, and they didn't use time-tested techniques that were only feasible in 2012, they used shit that fucking Super Mario World did.
[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;45535352]to me, rlm is a really fair, really well educated, well researched content creator. it's silly as hell but [b]its movie reviews are done by people with an incredible knowledge of their field[/B]
[/QUOTE]
There you go :v:
Their field is movies, not games.
[QUOTE=Fangz;45535284]They outright call the games flawed in the video.[/QUOTE]
One of them also outright says the games aren't bad.
[QUOTE=icemaz;45535846]But in 1991, Super Mario World had already shown what a 2d platformer could be a year beforehand. It had perfected what Super Mario Bros 3 had tried, and was technically pretty impressive and played just as fast as Sonic would. And whilst Sonic 1 was the first game of the series, it has a lot of inexcusable problems such as pretty bad feeling controls which don't feel tight, unfairly punishing gameplay and poor level design.
Trial and error isn't always fun[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Qwerty Bastard;45535887]Yet Super Mario World did everything Sonic tried to do, but better. They designed the levels in a logical way. Enemies had at least some kind of telegraph before popping up out of nowhere. The movement didn't have that weird slow build up, so you were able to react to things faster, the camera was actually placed a little bit in front of the character so you could see what was in front of you.[/QUOTE]
you didn't even read my post? or at least not properly:
[quote=me]it's not bewildering that sonic caught on at all - it was a product of its time. when it came out it was graphically very advanced, it had a state-of-the-art physics engine and character control, and it was really fucking fast. like faster than any other game ever made. compared to other platformers at the time it was groundbreaking. the first game is sketchy as hell and pretty broken but, by the time & knuckles came out, they were getting close to really perfecting the formula in my opinion
it was also a different type of game designed to appeal to different people. i think there's an obvious reason why there's such a mario/sonic feud that goes deeper than the consumer choice of nintendo vs sega and that's because they are mechanically very very different. one is a very fast game that relies somewhat on trial and error and learning to get the best run and satisfaction from the sheer speed of it, while the other is a more traditional platformer relying on pure skill and timing[/quote]
mario didn't perfect sonic before sonic came out. sonic isn't mario and mario isn't sonic. they're completely different games. the things you feel are negative about sonic and its controls and level design are literally the things that [I]make sonic what it is[/I] and make it [I]not mario[/I]
if you don't like that about the game, that's cool, but saying that "mario had already done it" just isn't true because what mario was doing and what sonic was doing were completely different. the games just aren't similar at all once you get past the fact they're 2D platformers. it's like saying "i don't understand why call of duty exists? unreal tournament has already done it better??" - while, yes, they are both FPS games, they play in completely different ways
personally i have always found mario dull and slow and too reliant on natural platforming skill. i like that sonic is a game about learning that gets better the more you play it. i like that its at its most satisfying when you have perfected the flow of a level. that's just my opinion. sometimes i like those games, sometimes i dont
but i find comparing the two to be very frivolous
[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;45535939]you didn't even read my post? or at least not properly:
mario didn't perfect sonic before sonic came out. sonic isn't mario and mario isn't sonic. they're completely different games. the things you feel are negative about sonic and its controls and level design are literally the things that [I]make sonic what it is[/I] and make it [I]not mario[/I]
if you don't like that about the game, that's cool, but saying that "mario had already done it" just isn't true because what mario was doing and what sonic was doing were completely different. the games just aren't similar at all once you get past the fact they're 2D platformers
personally i have always found mario dull and slow and too reliant on natural platforming skill. i like that sonic is a game about learning that gets better the more you play it. i like that its at its most satisfying when you have perfected the flow of a level. that's just my opinion. sometimes i like those games, sometimes i dont
but i find comparing the two to be very frivolous[/QUOTE]
Yeah no shit they're different, but fundamentally they will always be compared because Sonic is literally designed to be a competitor to Mario games. The things which make Mario games good, they don't exist in Sonic games. If bad controls and bad level design make sonic what it is, then I guess it's a pretty bad game. I've tried and tried to go back to Sonic games over the years and every time, the just naturally exhibit poor quality and bad design.
At least in other 2D platformers, the difficulty is fair and because of their tight controls you always know it's your fault. Sonic is nothing like that, the difficulty is artificial because it has bad controls and design which is purposefully designed to take lives from you. Also Mario is just as fast as Sonic, but due it's fair camera zoom and good controls it's actually a pleasure to play. They can both be played in a very similar way, it's entirely up to the player. Right down to the flow of a level, literally every other good 2D platformer has that in spades, it's not something exclusive to Sonic.
[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;45535939]you didn't even read my post? or at least not properly:
mario didn't perfect sonic before sonic came out. sonic isn't mario and mario isn't sonic. they're completely different games. the things you feel are negative about sonic and its controls and level design are literally the things that [I]make sonic what it is[/I] and make it [I]not mario[/I]
if you don't like that about the game, that's cool, but saying that "mario had already done it" just isn't true because what mario was doing and what sonic was doing were completely different. the games just aren't similar at all once you get past the fact they're 2D platformers. it's like saying "i don't understand why call of duty exists? unreal tournament has already done it better??" - while, yes, they are both FPS games, they play in completely different ways
personally i have always found mario dull and slow and too reliant on natural platforming skill. i like that sonic is a game about learning that gets better the more you play it. i like that its at its most satisfying when you have perfected the flow of a level. that's just my opinion. sometimes i like those games, sometimes i dont
but i find comparing the two to be very frivolous[/QUOTE]
This kind of falls apart when you observe that Sonic was almost directly copying Mario in nearly all aspects but the level layouts and the way your dude moves. I understand that they're different games with different design goals, but I don't think sega fully understood that at the time.
Oh, and if you had even read [i]my[/i] post, you'd see that I cited Sonic Generations as a good example of the classic sonic formula being tweaked intelligently (in exactly the ways that SMW did to the original Super Mario Bros) to make the game better. So regardless of whether the games are different, those differences between the original Sonic and Super Mario Bros [i]would have made Sonic a better game, and the proof is playable.[/i]
Crash Bandicoot was better.
If Sonic had a wider aspect ratio then it would play pretty damn well. As it is the camera is just too close in and there's not enough time to react when you're going at the pace the game expects of you.
the sega genesis sonic felt like some snes mario shit grabbin coins and 2d bullshit
then these 3d sonic games are
here's a rollercoaster ride press a button a few times until the end
[QUOTE=Rocâ„¢;45536129]Crash Bandicoot was better.[/QUOTE]
but crash bandicoot was called the "Sonic's Ass Game" during development due to the behind-the-character camera :v:
[QUOTE=RikohZX;45536280]but crash bandicoot was called the "Sonic's Ass Game" during development due to the behind-the-character camera :v:[/QUOTE]
And it was still better.
I feel that people buy into the "Sonic is FAST!" wayyy too much, Sonic Team included. Even growing up with a Megadrive, I never saw that as the focus of the sonic games.
For me, fast sections were like cutscenes are today - if interactable, then they're comparable to QTEs.
It was a bit of a break from the pretty damn slow platforming meat of the game, a bit of visual porn to treat the player after completing a section - during these sections you're only supposed to put sonic in a spin and let it play out, maybe jump here and there.
With Sonic 3, even more elaborate 'interruptions' were added, with many of them removing player control entirely.
I feel this is most obviously shown in the boss design - if sonic is all about going fast then why are the boss fights not dynamic races, sonic rushing from platform to platform pinballing off Robotnik?
Yeah sure you kinda do that with the casino night boss except I always found that to be a quick way to fail, you have to take your time and only go for controllable dashes at the right moments. Every other boss I can recall right now is a straight platforming challenge.
I haven't enjoyed any Sonic game after the Megadrive games because I've not found any of them to recall that Sonic is a platformer first, and goes fast second.
Generations remembered for a bit until the later levels, but only for the 2D variants.
[QUOTE=subenji99;45537113]I feel that people buy into the "Sonic is FAST!" wayyy too much, Sonic Team included. Even growing up with a Megadrive, I never saw that as the focus of the sonic games.
For me, fast sections were like cutscenes are today - if interactable, then they're comparable to QTEs.
It was a bit of a break from the pretty damn slow platforming meat of the game, a bit of visual porn to treat the player after completing a section - during these sections you're only supposed to put sonic in a spin and let it play out, maybe jump here and there.
With Sonic 3, even more elaborate 'interruptions' were added, with many of them removing player control entirely.
I feel this is most obviously shown in the boss design - if sonic is all about going fast then why are the boss fights not dynamic races, sonic rushing from platform to platform pinballing off Robotnik?
Yeah sure you kinda do that with the casino night boss except I always found that to be a quick way to fail, you have to take your time and only go for controllable dashes at the right moments. Every other boss I can recall right now is a straight platforming challenge.
I haven't enjoyed any Sonic game after the Megadrive games because I've not found any of them to recall that Sonic is a platformer first, and goes fast second.
Generations remembered for a bit until the later levels, but only for the 2D variants.[/QUOTE]
This would be fair, but even during the "normal" platforming segments, sonic moves like an old man building up into a jog. The movement mechanics were clearly designed for you to go fast as often as possible.
As I said, even Sonic Team fell for it. But the evidence is right there in the level design and boss design.
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