Sami

They honestly should've just gone in a less Mario-esque direction while still keeping the mechanics Lost World was using and focused on those more. It's frustrating finally seeing a new formula that isn't the shitty Unleashed thing that actually could work and has been proven to work in other games only for Sonic Team to fuck it up as usual.

They honestly should've just gone in a less Mario-esque direction while still keeping the mechanics Lost World was using and focused on those more. It's frustrating finally seeing a new formula that isn't the shitty Unleashed thing that actually could work and has been proven to work in other games only for Sonic Team to fuck it up as usual.

I still feel like Lost World was just Sonic Team getting the silly willies out of their system before they got back to the actual games. It has its moments and a few good ideas, but it was clearly designed to "fit in" with the Nintendo-Mario demographic as the essential "Wii U" Sonic.

I'm just hoping that it stays that way and doesn't become the standard.

I still feel like Lost World was just Sonic Team getting the silly willies out of their system before they got back to the actual games. It has its moments and a few good ideas, but it was clearly designed to "fit in" with the Nintendo-Mario demographic as the essential "Wii U" Sonic.

I'm just hoping that it stays that way and doesn't become the standard.

I actually enjoyed Unleashed and the rest of its trilogy a lot more than I did Lost World from a gameplay perspective, which I found utterly middling at best at the time. My ideal game would be a genuine mix of SA1 and Unleashed'a design sensibilities, as I feel like they cover each other's weaknesses brilliantly in concept.

But I don't agree with the hate the boost formula gets. Different as it may be for a platformer, if you can even really call it one, I got more enjoyment out of it and far more playtime than I did most other Sonic games. The novelty may have dimmed a bit but I think it's far from deserving of the criticism it gets on here only because it doesn't feature a lot of traditional platforming.

Honestly, Unleashed's horrendous level design that basically required rote memorisation to not die several times in the later levels was mainly what soured me on that game, though I felt the formula was always lacking in substance, it always felt more like one big reaction test than a real game - Unleashed Wii may have been 'empty' by comparison but the emphasis on drifting over the quick-step made it feel more like a single-player racing game, at least, and the level design was actually fair.

Colours and Generations dropped the bullshit like a hot potato, but the limitations of the actual gameplay become blatant when you're not in 2D or dealing with either game's gimmicky stuff. The boost formula is too shallow to have actual longevity.

Say what you want but Unleashed is by no means horrendous.

@Indigo Rush It's still a bad game, the second half of the damn thing was when things went to shit, especially Jungle Joyride and Eggmanland. It's only made worse with the medal collecting.

I thought we were talking strictly how the day levels were designed? Are we moving the goal posts now or something?

I am talking about the day levels. The Werehog was honestly mostly benign compared to the luck-based nonsense that was those two levels with regular Sonic.

Okay but you threw in medal collecting so...?

Also it isn't luck. If you can memorize a level then it's not luck. Luck is random.

Memorization and twitch-reaction may not be your ideal, but it's by no means a game of chance, and it's a matter of preference at that point.

And the last two levels are not a second half of the entire game, fam.

I don't get what makes rote memorization inherently "horrendous" as a core mechanic for a fast paced cinematic game like Sonic. It's a very different approach from most platformers and you're free to not like it but I think pointing it out as an inherent flaw is a fallacy. I play a lot of rhythm games that I enjoy a lot, and high performance in those relies on a relatively similar skillset to what Unleashed asks of players. 

Besides, it's not like the punishment for messing up is particularly egregious. There's always going to be room for improvement but I feel Unleashed's level design was the best out of the trilogy because it was the only one that really embraced what the system was about while also being the most visually striking of the three.

Lmao Jungle Joyride is my favorite level in the game actually, framerate aside. The setpieces and level design are sublime.

How can it be reliant on memorization if it's also luck-based? Those concepts run completely counter to each other. You can't memorize something that's based on luck lol.

The medals was a side thing, but it was mainly to point out that it was an incredibly dumb idea that didn't remotely mesh well with how you were supposed to play the day levels.

And I wouldn't mind the memorization thing if it wasn't absolutely required to not die. There's increasingly little room for error in the later levels that require reaction times that humans don't have without prior memorization. And if it just did what earlier Sonic games did and just put me on a less optimal route, I would be far more okay with it. Instead, the flow is killed completely. That's not fun. Colours and Generations, by comparison, generally only punish you for not memorizing things by forcing you on a less optimal path, and generally only kill you with things that make you feel like it's your fault for dying.

I guess "luck-based" was not my best choice of words, but I'm basically saying that if you're encountering an obstacle in the later levels, generally you need plenty of luck to not die the first time.

Honestly, I would dig the hell out of the boost formula if the focus was more on speedrunning and getting more optimal times ala Trackmania. Relatively short levels, no real penalty for dying/instant restart, etc. A Trackmania-style game with boost formula mechanics (aside from the quick-step) would be fucking rad.

I actually enjoyed Unleashed and the rest of its trilogy a lot more than I did Lost World from a gameplay perspective, which I found utterly middling at best at the time. My ideal game would be a genuine mix of SA1 and Unleashed'a design sensibilities, as I feel like they cover each other's weaknesses brilliantly in concept.

But I don't agree with the hate the boost formula gets. Different as it may be for a platformer, if you can even really call it one, I got more enjoyment out of it and far more playtime than I did most other Sonic games. The novelty may have dimmed a bit but I think it's far from deserving of the criticism it gets on here only because it doesn't feature a lot of traditional platforming.

... Did you just repost your earlier comment?

Mobile is weird

Where's that Unleashed LP boi.

Was gonna start it today but I got invited to play Smash lol

START IT FASTER!

I said the same thing yesterday. It almost looks like they made a CG trailer using in-game assets. And if so, we very well could've had our first glimpse of PS4 8th gen Sonic and what Sonic Team's now capable of with that kind of hardware.

I mean look at the Ratchet and Clank PS4 game for example and how good that looks as another example, and that game used assets from the film, so it's not too far fetched of an idea that Sonic Team's got similar visual goals considering Unleashed last gen.

Dude I thought the same fucking thing. Like Sonic's model looked in game but Classic Sonic did not

I really wanted to see Sonic Team take on some kind of momentum stuff in 3D, but I may just be satisfied (if a little selfish tbh) in the fact that this may be the closest thing to a PS4 spiritual successor to Unleashed that I've wanted for years, a graphical powerhouse of a game with full unhindered use of the Hedgehog Engine's capabilities to finally challenge what Unleashed did almost a decade ago now. Sonic Team's original goal with the H.E. was "Pixar Quality" graphics, and if those really are in game in any way then they're closer to that now than ever before.

*if those visuals

I disagree it may not be the most mind blowing cgi but it is still far from looking realtime. Even if you compare it to ratchet and clank it look far better plus this game is going to have you going far far faster.

It really doesn't look better than Ratchet IMO. Smoother, sure, it's very likely 4K downsampled from the PC version with some extra bells and whistles because it's a cutscenes but that's about it.

because trying to convince people that the gamepad was worth a shit was more important than making a good game

Did you play the Tutorial missions? and Co-op helps a lot if you're the gunner because then you get the shooting controls down. Alternate control scheme helps in the start(move only when shooting, it's on the pause screen), then you just gotta treat it as a flight simulator or arcade game: give yourself time to master it. Aren't you someone who praised Dark Souls? some games take time to get, and that's not a bad thing

The same reason they tossed any Star Fox game (besides Adventure and Assault, but no one likes Assault for whatever reason) our way.

"WE NEED STAR FOX TO DEMONSTRATE WHAT THE SYSTEM CAN DO DIFFERENTLY AND NOTHING MORE"

Star Fox SNES - SuperFX
Star Fox 64 - RumblePak
Star Fox Command - Touchscreen
Star Fox 3D - Glasses-free 3D
Star Fox Zero - GamePad

They didn't make one for the Wii because it probably wasn't gimmicky enough, and because Miyamoto couldn't think of anything he wanted to do with it.

Star Fox exists because Miyamoto wills it, and he'd rather die than have a straight-forward SF experience with no strings attached. It's like the Sonic series, except the games are at least polished but only release once every time the planets align.

I'd like to say I like Star Fox but I only like one game and it came out like 10 years ago so yeah

I like Star Fox 64 though!

They needed to prove the "usefulness" of a shitty controller on a dead console.  I would've been fine with just gyro controls, but instead I got this control scheme designed for mutants with two heads.

Really stupid.

Why bother? I already beat it and hated it, not really in a hurry to smash my head against the wall until I master this terrible control scheme. Dark Souls is hard because of good game design, and the barrier of entry isn't even that high. Star Fox just feels terrible.

Because nobody wants or ever wanted a traditional sequel to SF64. A modern SF game with the classic SF game structure and fresh content and presentation would be dead in the water in today's market and instead a new SF needs to have a new hook attached to it to make it sell, even though there's only been two (three if you could 64 3DS, four if you count the canned SF 2 on the SNES) games of the original format in the entire franchise.

...of course, that's not what I honestly believe, but that seems to be the implied argument and train of thought for every game since SF Adventures (or SF Assault if you want to excuse Adventures for being a different IP shoehorned into the SF universe).

But space shooters are more popular than ever, they just take a different approach compared to classic Star Fox while still maintaining quality and traditional game design conventions. Just look at Eve Valkyrie, No Man's Sky, Star Citizen, and so on. Nintendo just doesn't want to invest a budget in Star Fox for whatever reason, and Miyamoto is Miyamoto. 

The sooner someone else can work on the series, the better.

@Indigo RushI was actually playing assault recently and I see why people hate assault. The ground sections (while not actually bad) drag on a bit too long and there'should a lot of seek and destroy type missions. I also played 64 (it was on an emulator though), but my gosh the framerate and the controls were just ughhh. I actually like how assault controls and I do think it deserves to be called a star fox game (from what I played so far).

maybe it says something if you think the series keeps going to the trash

maybe

just maybe

what if it IS the trash

No Fox's Sky will save the Wii U

(Realtalk a Nintendo-themed No Man's Sky where you're flying through space StarFox style but then when you land on the planet it's Metroid-style first-person gameplay with lots of exploring and combat... Oh I'd love it so)

I only played a little bit at a store kiosk and it seemed pretty fun. I think everyone knew what they wanted from a Star Fox revival in 2016 and this wasn't it, but still seemed pretty good to me.

Controls are difficult but they never felt to me like they weren't functioning correctly.  I was having a fun time struggling to fly a spaceship. Felt pretty cool to me. 

I think gamers just aren't ready for hardcore motion controls. 

@Chili Dawg People on the other hand were very receptive to Splatoon though (a game I've seen compared to SF Zero a lot regarding its control scheme). And that game offered traditional controls as well as gyro controls; though general consensus seems to be that the game's gyro controls are the preferred choice.

What does Splatoon do with Gyro controls, though?

(I've never played it)

@Indigo Rush You use the GamePad as your camera in a sense for Splatoon. You use it to look around and aim your weapons.

ah

People weren't receptive of Splatoon, they learned to adapt to and like Splatoon because being stubborn and going back to dual analogs meant they were going to get trounced by the opposing gyro forces. Zero doesn't have the benefit of human competition, so while a traditional option is there and should have been enough, it's not the same.

Granted the split between who could get them down and who couldn't was a lot smaller for that game since they were a lot more traditional, but they were still there.

Also anyone playing with two screens equally is doing it wrong. Whenever I do that, I end up hating it too. Anything else, (TV 100%, GP 0, or GP 80%, TV 20% preferably) and it handles like a dream.

@Sami: I've been following the Neogaf SFZ thread for weeks, but I don't have an account on there, (ridiculous email requirements ahdsf) so do you mind if I reply to this quote on here?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=203930839&postcount=2589

To me, Star Fox has been several things. It's been about the vehicle gameplay first and foremost, because unlike other rail shooters, the games treat the ships as actual vehicles to control and master rather than a icon-on-screen meat bag to protect. (not that those games are bad, mind you, just Star Fox is clearly unique like that) Speeding up, slowing down, doing maneuvers with it, all while shooting down unique enemies in the air and on land as easy as pie. More in line with a fantasy flight simulator than a barebones rail shooter.
 

It's also a great controlled shooting-and-scoring experience with unique enemies. Of course this is a symptom of being a rail-shooter, but the fact that enemies come in waves with unique ways to deal with them and gain as many points as possible was always the most fun part of the stages for me. Again, moot for a barebones rail shooter, but should Star Fox go in any other direction, I don't want to see them ditch this, else the enemies would become pretty boring.
 

And then there's the "cool" factor. Now this one is weird because... I don't really mean the "crazy" levels of cool you'd get from Bayonetta or the W101, or the "awe inspiring" levels of cool you'd get from Xenoblade Chronicles/X's world scale or every AAA game's action setpieces. It's sort of a... controlled, yet unique type of cool? Like flying alongside a star in Solar. Not anything spectacularly cool, but uniquely cool in that it's something you don't see all the time in games? Same for a submarine level in the murky depths, or dodging spotlights in Zoness, or chasing a train on Macbeth, or even the one time where they break through a massive enemy fleet, since they haven't been doing it all game, it makes that moment all the more unique and cool, which wouldn't be possible if it were just another space shooter with about a dozen of those levels.
 

Which brings me to level variety, also helping the "story" along in turn. No two levels are the exact same (at least in 64) with certain things being changed up in a way either in premise or method. Saving a city from the enemy, getting ambushed while traveling through space, clearing out a world of bioweapons, taking out a bunch of missiles before they hit their target, saving a fallen teammate from a hostile planet, fighting a rival team of mercenaries who are keeping you from deactivating a bomb, taking the fight to a giant armada to break through, and then fighting the evil mastermind behind it all makes the story for this kind of replayable game a lot more palatable than anything with generic "get to the end of the level" goals, and makes up for the lack of a true story presentation in spades.

The variety in how the stages are played, be it in on-rails levels, all-range mode, and different vehicles entirely is also great. (most of the time) Maybe not on their own as their own full thing, but they're great short diviations from the main gameplay. Variety boosts the gameplay experience, no question. (duh)
 

And the last factor: The pick-up-and-play nature of most of the games in this series is astoundingly high. Not in the same way rail shooters are replayable, which yea, they are, but the (good) Star Fox games have always been really accessible and easy to play, yet somewhat deep and hard to master games, with loads of replay value in their overall content. The short and small but neat and somewhat epic story, the simulation feel of the gameplay making it feel "full" like an autoscrolling Mario game rather than a Temple Run game, the variety, the optional gameplay styles you can choose, the optional level paths, and how you can finish a full playthrough in one sitting and the levels are 7 minutes, tops - It all comes together to form such a rich replayable game. 64 is like the Sonic 3&K of rail shooters imo because of this, and I'm pretty sure it's why everyone else likes it so much as well, even though it's so old and "better", more fantastical games have come out in the genre since then.

These are all the foundation elements for why I love the Star Fox series, and also what I think a Star Fox game should be at the very least.

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Now, what can the series be in terms of sequels? Well, for what it could have been back then, probably the exact same type of game 64 was, since it's gameplay was clearly in favor of the on-rails experience, and on-rails is on-rails; there's no real change you can make to it to make it more versatile. It's honestly hard to imagine Star Fox going anywhere else outside of the typical "Bigger, better" sequel syndrome in this case, only going for better graphics, more exciting levels, faster speeds, and deep stories and the like. This would all be well and good, perhaps, but it'd be ditching most of the things that make the Star Fox games so great and timeless for typical sequel stuff in the AAA industry, with things like higher speeds or crazier scripted levels overlapping the unique gameplay, level features, and enemies for excitement alone, or deeper stories and longer playtimes getting in the way of replayability for the sake of making the $60 gamers spend feel worth it in typical "longer and more cinematic is worth more" fashion.

In a way, no other way than straight up, and it'd be awesome to a point, but also heading straight away from "Star Fox" in the process the further they go with it.

Star Fox Assault fell prey to this somewhat, to the extent they "Sonic Team'ed" it with the third-person-shooter gameplay trying to pad out the game with another gameplay style popular at the time. Didn't go as far as it should if it wanted to be "64 but better" in a linear and cenimatic campaign, though.

So, to be honest, the idea of a new Star Fox game back at 2014's E3 didn't really "excite" me. I was looking forwards to it, sure, it was another Star Fox game developed by Nintendo, but they could either A) Make 64 again with updated everything, but inherently the same, or B] Make a Star Fox game that totally "Platinum'd" it up and made it as crazy as possible. The former was far more likely than the latter, and even if the latter was the case, I couldn't get excited for something like that until I see it in action; companies simply saying games are "action-packed" can mean anything these days.

So, I was looking forwards to it, but it'd likely be only as good as or better than 64, and little else. It'd be fun likely, but nothing truely new, and just worth playing if I wanted more of the same.

And if it were a "Platinum-esque" game, I'd likely be HYPED because that's what games like that do to me, I wouldn't necessarily love it as a game more than 64 since it'd obviously be worse from my point of view, but it'd be up there just due to the exhilaration and fun, different experience from it, but there was no guarantee for this at all, so I really didn't get hopes up for this at all, thus no reason for excitement.

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What can it be now, though? That's a different thing entirely. With Zero, as divisive and debatable as it is, it surprisingly utterly perfected the 3D gameplay the series was trying to do, making it less about turning around forever to shoot enemies and more about shooting as much as you can out of the sky, divebombing targets, maneuvering through complex 3D stages and dungeons easily, flying around enemies and setpieces with a clear sight of what they're doing while still keeping control, and dogfights that are more fun and engaging than ever. The gameplay is finally on-par with the on-rails sections the series lives on, and no longer has to live under the rules of what rail shooters have to do to be better than one another.

We can have more 64-esque games, we can have open world games, "Zelda" world-based games, and multiplayer based games, all because of this one difference this game brought. It's not like it strays from Star Fox's roots; the series has always been more about pushing optimal vehicle simulation games in arcade-y design. Just give the 3D stages enemy scripting on almost the same level as the on-rails levels most of the time, and keep the linear on-rails levels to support the game still for whenever they want to make the more controlled "roller coaster" levels.

That's one of the main things I love about Zero, tbh, outside of the game itself. It's just opened up so many possibilities for any new Star Fox games afterwards without deviating from what makes Star Fox games good at their core

And it really makes me scratch my head when you and others say that the game added nothing better for the series. It didn't change the series to something that'll appeal to the mainstream gamer looking for an exciting experience by "Platinum'ing it up", no, but it added so much to the core and versatility of the series now, I can't understand how you guys can't see it yet.

Plus the shooting mechanics in this have been updated by so much, they're basically like the Platinum-combat-tier shooting mechanics for the space-shooter genre for all of time now, all while being basically the same as the simple gameplay the series has always had. I keep coming back to Zero because the gameplay is just that good, tbh.