565 replies to this topic

[JezMM]

Cross-post from t'other topic:
Just finished the single player without Chaos Emeralds. Some info dump and thoughts for you (overall opinion, FANTASTIC game, though won't convince any ep 1 haters I think , more of the same but refined).

There will be spoilers about everything up to the endgame ahead:

Music spoilers:

Spoiler

Eggman Boss music is the pinch music from episode 1 remixed. There's no pinch themes. Metal Sonic boss music is an original track.

Sylvania Castle Act 2 has a little section of Aquatic Ruin mixed in.

White Park Act 2 has a little section of Twinkle Park: Twinkle Castle mixed in.

A Stardust Speedway remix is used for a Metal Sonic battle.

Credits is a medley, natch. Uses the same intro/outro as episode 1.

Act content spoilers:

Zone 4:

Spoiler

Is indeed Sky Fortress Zone. Act 1 is a Sky Chase homage, in which Metal Sonic hounds you with a ship of his own. The achievement referring to defeating him here is optional. You just have to survive the flight to finish the act, but you can attack him back. I didn't beat him. There's also a segment where the Tornado cannot continue and you have to take to the air by... foot? Features a few intense clever homing attack timing puzzles.

Act 2 and 3 is Wing Fortress-esque, but much bigger in scale. Think Mad Gear but with more bottomless pit threats. Act 3 is at sunset and features Death Egg-esque zoomy flight things.

The boss sees you up against the ship from Act 1 again, and plays Sky Chase style.

Zone 5:

Spoiler

"Death Egg Mk II" Act 1 pits you against Metal Sonic, first time as a mini-boss and second time as a Sonic CD-esque race. There are mini sections of gravity mindscrew platforming inbetween.

There are no further Acts, after that is the final boss which is... somewhat beyond description. It's cool though, and not your run-of-the-mill Eggman mech.

Oh, one more impressions/opinion thing, with regards to the bosses:

Spoiler

They are loooong. Seriously a couple I wish had checkpoints because they tend to fuck you over at the very end and then it's just a slog to get back to that point. Glad they put enough rings in the arenas to go Super Sonic this time. Can't wait to fuck them over right back. >8C Also due to this reason, Eggman's boss theme gets REALLY DAMN ANNOYING. As if we hadn't had enough of it in E.G.G. Station. Metal Sonic's boss theme is lovely though, so that's fine. None are as hard as Ep 1's final boss I think.

Edited by JezMM, 21 April 2012 - 05:22 PM.

[Azure Yakuzu]

I hate to say it, but the game definitely looks good, its just hampered by questionable design choices. This game has potential, its just marred by trying to appease to the classic fanboys instead of actually trying to innovate with its design choices. If they can get past that(which they won't) the game can be infinitely better.

[Cola]

Played it for most of today.

I fucking love this game.


It's basically a refined Episode I, but loads more fun, and with better level design. I had a blast playing it.

May 15th and the full version can't come soon enough.

[Nintendoga]

Just beat the game, but didn't get all the Chaos Emeralds or Episode Metal yet.

Here's my impressions/review if anyone actually cares

Spoiler

Ever Since Sonic _____, Sonic Games have been _____. But then Generations came along and Sonic was back on top again. But is Episode 2 the true comeback of Sonic? Let's find out.

Gameplay wise it's great.

Physics have been mentioned before, but they are much better then Episode 1's. No Bounce unfortunately. Rolling down hill doesn't gain you any speed, BUT you don't lose any either. Plus you don't have to keep holding right, you can let go but Sonic will still come to a complete stop in a few seconds. Better then Episode 1, but not as good as Generations or the Classics

Oh and half the jump looks like Ep,.1's, but it really feels different. Hard to explain but you'll see soon. The Co-Op moves, are good. Now to the people saying "Rolling is OP, BOOOOSH" Well that's not true. You may get away with Rolling through half the stage the first zone, but after that, you'll die if you try it in other zones. This game makes sure to not make you over-use the Rolling Combo, which is a good thing. Also it can go over spikes (Which is actually helpful in two acts.)

Flying is also good. You use it if you either need to fly over a bottomless pit/ higher route. It's also pretty helpful when you spot another higher route you wanna take. But don't rely on it, as it powers out very quickly. So it may save you from one or two bottomless pits, but rely on it and you're dead. Especially in Sky Fortress Zone. Also the flying acts as a submarine underwater, giving you a lot of momentum as you travel underwater now.

Those golden boxes? They're a reminiscent of the Sonic Heroes Team Attacks. Hit one and you will do some fancy moves across the screen while mashing the A button, killing all enemies before plowing into the ground, giving you A WHOLE LOTTA RINGS. It's not common, but I've only found two so who's knows?

But most importantly, almost little automation! You won't even realize you hit a booster or spring half the time. Yes WP Act 2 and SC Act 1 are full of them, but they really do cut back on them throughout the game, something I was surprised and happy about.

Haven't tried Co-Op online, (can't) but I hope it's just as fun as Single player.

Zones

Sylvannia Castle is great. the first act is more of a tutorial, but after that the game kicks in and delivers more fun then uh.....yeah.....

White Park is the same, with the first act serving as the Ice Cap of the game, 2 one serving as A WILD ROLLER-COASTER RIDE (seriously, this act may have looked bad, but it's really good in a fun kind of way), and 3 being an underwater act.

Oil Desert is another good act. all of them (3 is debatable) are fun and challenging to plow through.

Sky Fortress is one of my favorite zones in Sonic 4 (Next to White Park). The first act is Sky Chase, only you fight Metal in the background and do actual challenging platforming. Act 2 is Wing Fortress, only with these cool cages that you run along via Super Mario World. And Act 3 has the Death Egg-like Rings that warp you around the stage. It's okay, but the first two acts are what make the zone for me.

Death Egg MK. II is good. The first act has you running around with the gravity gimmick, before fighting Dr. Eggman and Metal. After you beat them you traverse some more before finding Metal Sonic and racing him ala Stardust Speedway, music included. Then the 2nd act is the final boss (which is unique, but I'll get into that later).

P.S. Only got 2 Chaos Emeralds, but they are hard as hell! Not easy at all, and it worries me that Jez and Blue blood say you need all the rings for the 7th Special Stage.

Yes, while most zones (including Sky Fortress and Death Egg) have the same level tropes, or look like old zones, the new layout and gimmicks make them so much different and unique enough to call them new zones.

Music

Honestly, I was shocked. The music is great! Most of the tracks in the game are memorable, or just won't leave your head (Metal boss theme). These don't sound like dying cats anymore, they sound like actual music. All in all, not the best soundtrack, but definitaley another good one delivered by Jun Senoue. Bravo!

Bosses

Sylvannia Castle is easy and repetitive. You just stay up in the air while it does almost nothing before opening up it's hatch and....still doing nothing. I've only seen it try to attack during pinch mode.

White Park is fun. People give this one flak for some reason, but it's really one of my favorite fights in the game. Metal constantly throws balls at you, charging into you via spindash, and homing attacking the bridge off to make you fall. It fun and my only complaint is, sometimes springs show that can throw you in the background. I would've liked it if Tails or your Co-OP partner missed and hit the spring, and while you two were separated, you couldn't use the co-op moves. Would've made the boss harder but meh.

Oil Desert looks awesome. Eggman keeps knocking boxes down like Tetris while you dodge them and wait for him to power up his saw blades before hitting him. It's kinda easy if you pay attention, but it's an okay boss. The pinch mode has him jumping through fore ground and background before landing in the middle for you to attack. It's okay.

Sky Fortress is shit. I hate this boss so god damn much It can fuck off. You're in the tornado and have to hit Metal's flagship while he's shooting lasers at you. But the thing is, if you get hit by the laser, you get stunned and can't hit Metal who will fly away. Or you'll boost through the lasers, but the screen will knock you back, and you'll miss Metal once again. OR You'll dodge the lasers, but the plane's momentum keeps you from stopping and turning around to hit Metal, THUS MISSING HIM AGAIN. And it doesn't help that Metal's hit-box is so tiny, that if you hit him anywhere but in the middle, you miss. Also he has this cheap ass penti-ultima attack where he throws missiles at you. You get hit? RESTART THE WHOLE FIGHT OVER AGAIN DERP.

Bosses are okay, but they need checkpoints.

I won't spoil the final boss because of how weird and unique it is, but trust me it's good.

Overall

This is still not Sonic 4 as I imagined. Nope not at all. But

Remember how Episode 1 was shit compared to the classics, and mediocrely bad on it's own? Well Episode 2 is mediocre compared to the classics, but a good decent game on it's own. I was very surprised that they put so much effort and improvement into this game. If it didn't bare the name, I'd think it was a different game overall. This is well worth the price and I will definitely be buying this on the 360 and Android. That's how good it is.

They listened. Boy did we give them alot of flak and criticism, but you can't say they didn't listen and do something about it. Videos do not do this game justice, you have to actually play it to see how fun it is.

Bravo Dimps! Bravo.

Edited by Nintendoga, 23 April 2012 - 12:18 AM.

[Blue Blood]

I've played the game to death now, and have had time to let it all sink in. Apart from the last Special Stage. Still haven't finished that. Bleh. Little, crappy review below. I can't be bothered to write a proper one now. I'll elaborate on any points if you want. I've tried to judge it as it's own game instead of Sonic 4 (as Sonic 4 it's shitacular, but cause most of you don't care about that I'm ignoring it here). The only part where I'm comparing it to the classics is the music, because that tries to imitate them without doing anything original

It starts on a low (SC1), shoots up to good standard (SC2), gets a little better (SC3), plummets thereafter (SCB), give you false hope of improvement next (WP1) and then drops down to a range of shit to poor for the remainder (WP2 and on). Quite a few times there are some clever ideas not well executed (all of WP2, Special Stages, gimmicks and enemies in ODZ). SFZ is a terrible stage though. It's worth mentioning that although E2 has mostly very good physics, it never used them. Generations HD has worse physics, but uses them well. It makes for a better final product. They can still be dodgy sometimes. If you break on a steep slope and keep a hold of the button, Sonic will continue to break on the spot. He can also moonwalk on walls.

Music includes some good compositions, but again Jun proves can't make an interesting variety. He should not have composed everything for the game. It all sounds fairly similar. The soundfont is really odd too. I mean, it's nothing like the MD titles and the instruments are the same for every piece. It's like E1 in that respect. I cant tell what the instruments are supposed to be. The game constantly looks pretty. I was quite surprised by that.

Bosses try to be interesting. SC is too easy and wasted potential. WP is a simple and not very exciting battle against Metal. There's nothing wrong with it until the end when he starts to attack you with bottomless pits. OD is a great boss. It's creative, it's fair it keep you on your toes. You don't have a lot of time to get the last attack in but it's still very fun. The SF boss is just awful. Like, shouldn't even have been conceptualised awful. It still tries to be interesting, it just shouldn't have ever existed. The Final Boss is creative and very original. I liked it.

It's a marked improvement over E1. If you enjoyed that or have seen enough of E2 to think you might enjoy it, then spend a tenner and get the game. If you don't like what you see, wait for a sale or don't get it at all. I doubt it will be worth your time. I enjoyed playing the game the first time, and then on subsequent play-throughs problems stuck out to me and it's a wonder I missed them before. There's a lot of the game that's still so much like E1 bumped up to an average level. The creative touches that are littered throughout in weird and random places help make E2 more enjoyable, but it's difficult to appreciate them amongst everything else. It's a very polished E1 served on a silver platter.

k, done. I don't know how I'd rate this game out of 10 if I were to. Did I enjoy the game? Yes, and I still enjoy playing SC over and over, not so much the rest of the game though. I think this is the best Dimps can do, so they should probably stop now. No Episode 3, thank you very much. Big budget, Sonic Team produced 2D retail title instead please.

Edited by Blue Blood, 23 April 2012 - 02:10 AM.

[Discoid]

^I get the feeling I'm going to agree with this almost completely once I beat the game.

I've got six Chaos Emeralds now, and I'm at Oil Desert Act 3; I stopped playing because I was just sick and tired of the game by that point. I'll probably pick it up again tomorrow to finish it off for good. My verdict on the levels so far:

SCZ 1 - Boring. Disliked it.
SCZ 2 - Had a good amount of platforming and was actually somewhat expansive. I enjoyed it.
SCZ 3 - Even better! This is actually on par with Generations' Classic Green Hill (my least favorite Classic level, but I digress).
SCZ Boss - Boring as hell. Hated it.

Overall, Sylvania Castle does a decent enough job of leading into the game, and actually had me thinking it would be pretty enjoyable on its own merits from there. It got off to a rough start, but it picked up, and I'll forgive the boring boss battle on account of it being the first one.

WPZ 1 - Boring. Disliked it.
WPZ 2 - BOINGBOINGFWOOSHBOINGFWOOSHFWOOSHFWOOSHBOING. Hated it.
WPZ 3 - It's like Labyrinth Zone but slower and abuses its stupid team gimmick ad nauseam. Hated it.
WPZ Boss - Fuck this boss. It's dull for the majority of the fight, the music is only really enjoyable when the melody kicks in for a few seconds before going back to being generic and dull, and the latter half of the fight is downright cheap. When Metal starts shooting bottomless pits at you, you've got about a split second warning before it happens, and I guarantee you'll die on your first try because it comes right the fuck out of nowhere. Absolutely hated it, and to make matters worse, I loved the Metal Sonic fight in Generations.

Overall, White Park was an absolute travesty. The level order makes no sense (you go from half snow/half theme park to full theme park to full snow... what?), the levels are all boring as hell, and the boss is total crap. The music is also awful in Acts 1 and 3, and the only part of the Act 2 song I liked was the part where it switched to a different song entirely; the rest of it was just the same bland, generic shit that filled up the rest of the soundtrack. This really killed any excitement I had for the game.

ODZ 1 - Boring and bland. I don't even really remember it to be honest. Meh.
ODZ 2 - The stage itself is nothing special, but the music... good lord, the music (No linky. -Sean). I'd say "meh", but the music was so horrendously bad that it can't be ignored. That, and I'm pretty sure this level had six fucking boosters within two inches of each other. SIX. WHY. ... Ugh.

And that was where I stopped for today. I couldn't play anymore after the dying ducks..

Edited by Sean, 23 April 2012 - 02:56 AM.

[Blue Blood]

I wish I could post a video to show you this, but Super Sonic has Episode 1 physics. Like, what the fuck?

[Eternal Xtreme]

I wish I could post a video to show you this, but Super Sonic has Episode 1 physics. Like, what the fuck?

I saw a Youtube vid of that. What threw me off was why does S sonic look.....weird when moving.

[Shadzter]

http://www.gamerlive...urns-better-may

Ken pretty much confirms they still have a story to tell after Episode 2.

[-Bender-]

Yes your right. Ken says they want to finish telling the story. Perhaps Sonic will get a 'Knuckles sandwich' in the next episode.

[Barry the Nomad]

Spoiler

So apparently, if you play Episode 1 as Sonic (the version that we've had since release) with the knowledge that Mad Gear was built to revive Metal, you can destroy Mad Gear before Metal gets revived and Episode 2 never happens. Like, the game just won't boot up. It's pretty crazy how SEGA was able to make the game do that sort of thing.

Regarding Ken:

Spoiler

I'm glad he's pushing for an Episode 3, because to be honest, Iizuka pissed me off when he said what he said. It's one reason I don't think he should be allowed to speak in interviews.

[Komodin]

http://www.gamerlive...urns-better-may

Ken pretty much confirms they still have a story to tell after Episode 2.

Cool.

Hm... you know, it would be rather neat if, at the end of whatever episode they're planning on ending Sonic 4 with, it showed an epilogue where Eggman discovers the tablets pertaining to Chaos.

[Liam The Animator]

http://www.gamerlive...urns-better-may

Ken pretty much confirms they still have a story to tell after Episode 2.

Did anybody notice the attention seeker at 0:25

[Blue Blood]

Hm... you know, it would be rather neat if, at the end of whatever episode they're planning on ending Sonic 4 with, it showed an epilogue where Eggman discovers the tablets pertaining to Chaos.

That would mean that the best place for S4 to end would be on Angel Island. Would be a very nice tie in.

[Barry the Nomad]

At the intro of Episode 3, Knuckles says "Not this shit again!" and he just bails.

[Dreamy Luigi]

At the intro of Episode 3, Knuckles says "Not this shit again!" and he just bails.

along with Eggman fooling Knuckles that Sonic is evil while using Metal Sonic to trick him

[ArtFenix]

Spoiler

So apparently, if you play Episode 1 as Sonic (the version that we've had since release) with the knowledge that Mad Gear was built to revive Metal, you can destroy Mad Gear before Metal gets revived and Episode 2 never happens. Like, the game just won't boot up. It's pretty crazy how SEGA was able to make the game do that sort of thing.

Regarding Ken:

Spoiler

I'm glad he's pushing for an Episode 3, because to be honest, Iizuka pissed me off when he said what he said. It's one reason I don't think he should be allowed to speak in interviews.

I'm glad that they plan on expanding and continuing the series. It just BEGS for Episode 3 (and maybe even 4) and for Knuckles! Maybe some more levels for Metal Sonic, this time, from episode 2))).
Speaking of Metal Sonic, I think he should be in the main cast like Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Shadow (though Shadow's been kind of left out in the more recent games). (I also think Blaze and Rouge should be in the main cast as well but that's for another topic)

Edited by ArtFenix, 23 April 2012 - 08:46 PM.

[-Bender-]

I hope Metal Sonic has survived because I want to see more of him in Episode 3. Being able to play through an entire epsiode as Metal Sonic would be nice-hell yeah!

In a way I would be happy for Knuckles to be evil again, not that he was ever a saint. Knuckles made a good villian in Sonic 3. Just imagine if they allowed Knuckles to be played in Ep1 (like 'Knuckles in in Sonic 2'), he would make those levels looks so piss easy. In my mind I can hear Ken Balough stating 'Oh we couldn't design the levels to accomodate Knuckles (limited budget) so we made him a co-op partner to Sonic. So no Tails for Ep3, but if you lock Ep2 with Ep3 you can then play as Tails'. Sounds familiar.....

[Soniman]

Im surprised people still want more of Sonic 4, considering the lukewarm reception Episode II seems to he getting.

[Shadzter]

Picked up the new issue of Official PlayStation Magazine UK. Here's their preview:




There's also a comment from Iizuka: