Here's some proper impressions of the demo at Summer of Sonic from me. XD
I played two 2-player games with my friend Edd on both Seaside Hill and the Billy Hatcher level. I think I came 4th on Seaside Hill playing as Sonic and then first on the Billy Hatcher stage when I played again later as Beat. The graphics look really nice and polished and the menu system is lovely. Each car has specific stats, something you can view by pressing 'Square' on the character select screen and you can also view stage stats by pressing the same button on the course select. R2 was to accelerate, L2 was to drift, R1 and L1 for tricks, X was to fire an item and Square was to look back. I also tried shaking the controller while in the air to trick out of sheer Mario Kart Wii habit- Steve noticed and said SixAxis motion will be used like that in the final version.
The weapons were wacky. Boxing Gloves acted as Green Shells so to speak, Rockets Red Shells, the Cones were basically Bananas, Speed Shoes acting as Red Shrooms and the coil was quite original turning the other players screens upside down! Courtesy of some chap sat watching I also learnt if you hold down 'X' if you posses more than one item you'll fire all three at once! I'm unsure about the Allstar moves, I mean I got one as Beat while I was in second place! A tad unfair, but it was bloody cool! He got on his skates and boosted off, allowing players to spray graffiti by pressing 'X' and pointing in the desired direction at other racers. Knuckles glides around when his allstar move is activated and players can tap 'X' to charge up his fist ready for an epic punch towards the ground, taking out any racers around him.
SASR is a bit more forgiving than Mario Kart too, with course fall-outs and item hits only slowing players down for a fraction of time. I felt that hitting a cone only slowed players down half the time a banana does in Mario Kart Wii. It takes a while to get used to the drifting, but it's really fun to use around long corners and you get a boost after each you do. I liked the little 'stall' mechanic they added if you land mid-trick. You can string together trick combos while in the air for a bigger boost when you land, however if you land in the middle of a trick you'll spin out and loose some speed!
I mentioned the good feedback Kotaku had gave them to Travis and he'd read it all right. They go on forums to read all of the feedback of course (I think he mentioned GameFAQ's, a heads up to SOL I guess, who I now realise was actually Steve) and they were pleased with the feedback they've received so far. His views on SASR when compared to Mario Kart were much like mine really, Mario Kart spawned a genre and they're simply diving into the same waters as that. I said if people do keep comparing it to Mario Kart then they should acknowledge it's Mario Kart on a 360 and PS3, something he laughed at and said it would be a good marketing line. XD
I noticed some errors in the game though, but seeing as though this is just a beta build there's bound to be some! Eggman's animations seemed to spazz out after he won a race. He'd jump out of his car and do his winning pose from Superstar Tennis, but kinda twitch around a bit in mid-animation. The game would hang a few times too, most likely because of un-optimised code and you could certainly tell, on two player at least, the race wasn't running at 60fps. They were using what I assume was place holder art too, the Sonic and Knuckles arts were taken directly from Sonic 06 I believe.
The two major questions I asked Travis whilst playing, actually, it was more
telling him then
asking now I think about it. XD I said it'd be a cool idea to include Xbox Avatars and Nintendo Mii's in their respected versions and he nodded saying 'Yes, that would be awesome' with a look on his face as if to say they've already considered it. He did the same when I mentioned adding Axel from Crazy Taxi in it, though I know he couldn't tell me even if they had already done that.
He said
half the characters have been announced so far and there's four out of the twelve still to be revealed that'll really surprise SEGA fans apparently. Wonder who they can be!
This post has been edited by bolt7: 01 September 2009 - 12:21 AM
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Sharky, on Aug 29 2009, 09:45 AM, said:
It was grating on me too, believe me.
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