Tracker_TD

Both Riders games have tracks that literally exist just to shout out to fans of SEGA’s Classic hey day, completely divorced of any story logic. It’s not Classic Sonic (though he does appear), but it’s the same idea. (And I friggin’ love those tracks).

The Direct would’ve been 7/9 in Spain due to Timezones.

The bad takes here are melting my brain more than this bout of gastroenteritis is melting my stomach. 1. What Space Yeow said is pretty much correct as far as I can tell. It’s true they don’t work at SEGA and so can’t be certain - but the same is true of you, cakito. And they actually have citations and evidence to back them up, so do the maths. 2. There’s really nothing suggesting Forces lacked the budget of something like Generations. A new graphical engine, 3 playable styles including a full character creator, a lot of new assets (in addition to the old ones). Throwing more money at the design mentalities of Kishimoto isn’t going to make him a better director. You could give me £300 but I’m not going to magically be a better artist. 3. The “SEGA are just useless” takes are also dumb. The Yakuza series is *absurdly* consistent, and IIRC per the end of last year they only put out two games with a Metacritic below 7/10 (Sonic Forces and Valkyria Revolution). Certianly when it comes to 3D Sonic, things are questionable, but blindly tarring Sega as a whole for that when they’ve also been bringing requested games to PC, localising more of their JP library, sorting out the Shenmue remasters, etc. They’re not perfect - SEGA Europe’s continued fumbling with Denuvo is aggravating. But acting like we’re in dire straits just because of Sonic is a bit dramatic. Anarchy Reigns and Binary Domain were also both like, 6 years ago. I don’t think I’d call Sonic Team lazy, but they’re not the best when it comes to game design. Throwing more money at them doesn’t effect that - Unleashed is actually a great example of that, because the bulk of that game’s length was padding done for the express purpose of making the game longer arbitrarily, out of fear of the game market’s response. Generations wasn’t as grand in “scale” as Unleashed but it was far more focused and wound up more fun to play through as a result.

I’ll take “missing the point” for £200! Mania was a success because it was good, smarts. Solid level design, physics that worked, adding to the Classic formula with Mighty and Ray, plus the new stages and added utility of the drop dash. The main criticism of Mania across the board was that it didn’t have all new levels - it’s just that the past levels were designed so well in Mania that in the end it was forgiven somewhat. That’s not indicative of fans being scared of “new things,” that’s indicative of fans being able to recognise that “new” isn’t inherently better. (Though still recognising that entirely new stages would’ve been great) Which brings us to TSR, which is new but looks to be a considerable step down from Transformed for an array of reasons. Even without the comparison, as far as Sonic spin-offs go it isn’t doing anything particularly interesting (I.e. the lacklustre roster choice and limited array of locales) - it’s just ASR with a questionable at best team gimmick and a drop in variety from sticking to solely Sonic (exacerbated by the limited locale choice and roster). You can’t even really play the “but it’s Sumo!” Card, because it’s been established it’s a completely different team to the past games. It’s “Sumo” alright, but technically speaking Forces and Generations were both “Sonic Team” - what actually matters is the people involved, not the company name. It feels like you’re steadily running out of reasons to defend this game, so weird shots at Mania and making up conspiracies about Sonic fans being scared of “new things” (have you been under a rock for the Green Hill meme?) is your current bet. And that’s... kinda sad. There’s legitimate things to defend TSR over, but “MANIA CONSPIRACY!” isn’t one of them. We’re essentially back to the logic that got that Fire N Space person ridiculed a few pages back. If you want the actual reasons people aren’t liking how this game is coming along, try reading their posts instead of branding any criticism an “attack” or anyone who does so “grumpy”.

Thing is, Chemical Plant 2 is one of my favourite Sonic levels of all time. I don’t think the verticality is the issue, just the lack of sensible direction cues. I think the closest Mania came to this was Titanic Monarch, and really that was more about the length than actually working out where to go - and that was the final level. This is the second act in the whole game. Having only one feasible path to progress just doesn’t strike me as good level design since it limits the player’s options - even Titanic Monarch solved this with its hidden warp gates.

Honestly wasn’t crazy about this. The artwork is very nice, in fact in general the presentation is nice, but it highlights that all the good physics in the world don’t mean much without good level design. I spent 5 minutes trying to figure out Act 2, which for a second level is insane. It simply doesn’t do a good job guiding the player, and honestly I felt outright misdirected by it at points. The physics are good but they prioritise accuracy - Mania has that and some added nuances of its own that make it feel more fun to control than the originals, nuances I feel this lacks. It’s an incredibly impressive demo all the same, and I want to see more of it, but I think Mania comparisons stop at the graphics for me.

Uh huh... Yeah, no. Just take the L. It was a silly complaint for the reasons I made clear.

There's an orca!

If there’s nothing wrong with the orca model, why remake it? You still haven’t answered this. They wanted an orca in the level, they have a perfectly fine orca model - why not use it? It’s old, but it works perfectly and suits its purpose in TSR. Like, 2 people would notice if they bothered making a new one, because again there’s only so many ways to make an realistic orca model. Shit, I wouldn’t be surprised if this were a new one and it’s just that the fact it’s an orca makes it look the same. Do you expect this orca to be green and have wings? It’s a sodding orca! There are actual reasons to be annoyed about this game. This isn’t one of them.

If there was nothing wrong with the model or animation, why waste time on a new one? Just for the hell of it? 99% of people aren’t going to care, there’s only so many ways to model and animate a bloody orca. And orcas inhabit arctic seas as well as tropical ones. It makes perfect sense. You are absolutely reaching right now.

Yeah, that damn orca, looking like an orca and doing what it’s done in like, 3 other Sonic games! Man I don’t like how this game looks either, but this is some serious stretching. Reminds me of when Retro bagged on Mania FBZ because the plumbing wasn’t realistic. The game has enough issues without needing to make mountains out of molehills.

I’m not aggressive or nasty either. Or at least I wasn’t until you needed to pull stuff out of your rear to make my reasonable criticism sound worse than it actually is. Fans haven’t gotten more grumpy over the years - the games have gotten worse (Mania aside) and fan response has simply become more critical to reflect that. If I was like, “Damn Sumo, those bastards, I hate them they’re ruining Sonic!” then I’d agree I was being nasty. But I’m not like that, unless you think this non-sentient video game is going to have its feelings hurt. Comparing it to Transformed isn’t helping TSR because it looks bad in comparison. The fact it looks bad in comparison doesn’t invalidate the idea of making the comparison at all.