Generations 3DS Chat - Oh look guys new rules (p.58)

[Blue Blood]

I can't be the only one that thinks homing attack benefits Classic Sonic? I loved how it worked in the HD versions.

I loved how it worked as a completely optional extra you had to go out of your way to unlock. It was fun to use every so often, but honestly I think it's better without. Keep your speed going and all that.

[Crazizzle]

If Side Scrolling games are going to use homing attack, the move should be altered so as not to discourage actually jumping on enemies yourself. It makes the games WAY too simple and monotonous, especially when we get crappy "homing attack chains" in a straight line.

I wholeheartedly approve of the Homing Attack in Modern Sonic 3D gameplay, as long as there are limits to it's power. But yeah, it makes no sense for Classic to use(at least from the start).

[JezMM]

I have nothing against Classic homing attack, but it annoys me that it was mandatory.

Having it there to pinpoint an enemy when uncurling from a jump to "correct" yourself = good.

Having chains of enemies that you have to slow down and use it on because the 3DS version doesn't have the extra bounce from spin attacking badniks = bad.

I mean, come on, even in Sonic 4 you could do a natural bounce up rows of enemies instead of homing attacking if you had the right speed and angle. In Generations 3DS Classic Sonic slips through bopped badniks like a hot knife through butter if you don't use the homing attack.

[Autosaver]

I loved how it worked as a completely optional extra you had to go out of your way to unlock. It was fun to use every so often, but honestly I think it's better without. Keep your speed going and all that.

I personally haven't unlocked it, just seen videos with it. Since the levels weren't designed with HA in mind, it came out to be optional.

Dimps should of taken that same cue.

[Treacher]

As I said on there, saying Classic Sonic should have the homing attack because of an item in 3D Blast is like saying Modern Sonic should control gravity because of an item in Free Riders; both 3D Blast and Riders are crappy, non-canon, inconsequential games that shouldn't seriously be acknowledged.

... And Jesus fucking Christ, how hard is it to understand that Classic Sonic should play like he did in Sonic 1-3K? Barely anyone gives a shit what the color of his eyes are; if Sonic 4 actually played like it should have, nobody would have hated it.

Oh hey, it's Darkkirby from the Sega Forums. Pay him no mind, he's another stubborn type.

[Soniman]

When was it ever said that 3D Blast and Riders we're non canon?

[Dantemustdie00]

The word "Non-Canon" has no meaning in the Sonic series, you think that be obvious by now.

[Neon]

When was it ever said that 3D Blast and Riders were non canon?

AAUK even said Riders was probably considered canon. Same with Battle. Really, the only games we know that are definitely non-canon as far as the ones which actually have a story are Knuckles Chaotix and Sonic Chronicles.

The word "Non-Canon" has no meaning in the Sonic series, you think that be obvious by now.

The series does have a canon though. Albeit loose. There are games which have to have happend to allow other games to make sense. Case in point - without Heroes and Shadow being canon, Shadow's involvment in the series wouldn't make sense.

Edited December 8, 2011 by Neon

[Sami]

Either way, neither game bares any importance whatsoever to the main series; you know, the one that actually matters.

[Autosaver]

Oh hey, it's Darkkirby from the Sega Forums. Pay him no mind, he's another stubborn type.

[Kuzu]

Either way, neither game bares any importance whatsoever to the main series; you know, the one that actually matters.

[Sean]

Oh hey, it's Darkkirby from the Sega Forums. Pay him no mind, he's another stubborn type.

[Sami]

But its part of the handheld main series...

I'm talking about 3D Blast and Riders.

Also I don't think this game is important because it's only a cheap imitation of the actual Sonic Generations, but that's a whole other debate right there.

[Kuzu]

I'm talking about 3D Blast and Riders.

Also I don't think this game is important because it's only a cheap imitation of the actual Sonic Generations, but that's a whole other debate right there.

[Doctor MK]

Right, I just tackled the infamous "defeat 6 enemies with a Laser Wisp in 20 seconds" mission and did it with a good 8 seconds or so to spare, so here's my handy hints for anyone wishing to attempt it:

If you just run straight through the level, you will find no Laser Wisp. You will see the diamonds you can use one on, but nothing more. The Laser Wisp is located after the grind rail section, to the left of the laser beam gate just before the first diamond, suspended in mid-air. Now, you can probably try to pull some fancy moves to reach it from the platform where the gate is, but my advice is this - you need to be boosting on the grind rail and leap off at the right moment (it's hard to explain, it's when the rail is at its highest point before going down towards the ramp that leads you to the laser beam gate). If you do it successfully, you'll boost straight into the Wisp capsule and land on the platform in front of the diamond. Press X and you're away. If you don't jump at the right second, you're likely to go flying past and miss the capsule entirely. It's a bit trial and error, that's for sure, but as far as I can tell this is the best way to approach the mission.

Good luck, fellow players!

[Treacher]

I don't know if you're joking around, but it'd be appreciated if you refrained from making jabs at other members here.

Wait, is Darkkirby here too? In any case, sorry, the post was made with the intent to say that it might end up going in circles like how this thread was a while back.

[Salamander]

After some delay, I've finally played and beaten this game. I've been looking forward to commenting on this, which I intend to do from a few angles and a large quantity of text.

I think the game starts off with maybe its one really intelligent move: Explaining the absence of Sonic's friends at the birthday party as being due to Sonic arriving early. It's plausible, it doesn't ignore the fact that Sonic has friends besides Tails, and it shows some awareness of the need to adapt Generations to this scaled-back 3DS context. Sadly, the rest of the game shows complete ignorance of this principle.

Plotwise, I was surprised by how closely the game followed the script of the console version - pretty much exactly, with only a few tweaks to, say, adapt the Chemical Plant cutscene to Casino Night. However, given that the cutscenes are expressed in this game by character models talking from either side of a background, the lack of script adaptation causes the game to fall down in a few areas. When Sonic is showing off the Homing Attack, or in the pre-battle showdown with Time Eater, Sonic and Tails are performing a number of evidently rather elaborate actions, and the player sees and understands none of it as the limitations of the cutscene format prevent it from being possible to express. The homing attack, like the boost, and for that matter the stomp, are just blue flashes sweeping across the screen. There's nothing there for the player to interpret except that movement is happening involving someone. Moments like these cried out for some competent script editing, to remove the implied motion and replace it with dialogue that expresses the same point. Either that, or it needed actual animated cutscenes, and it's not like Dimps can't do them, as Rush Adventure had several and even Rush had a couple. Why aren't there any here? I can only presume it's due to lack of time or staff availability - or, if you dislike Dimps, the old "laziness" fallback.

The same problem of undue adherence to the console version prevails in both the level selection and the gameplay. The intention of having alternative levels in the 3DS version was supposedly to celebrate aspects of Sonic's history not covered by the console versions; however, in fact, it covers exactly the same ground. 1, 2, Knuckles, Adventure, Adventure 2, Rush, Colours - only one of these games isn't already represented in the console version. In fact, it's the sole Rush level, Water Palace, that exposes the principles behind the selection of the other levels - one of style over substance. They're all famous, memorable levels - memorable chiefly because they're the first in their respective games. But they don't demonstrate the creativity or the versatility of the series - mainly, they demonstrate its ability to rehash the same old tired level tropes over and over again. Water Palace stands out in this respect not just for deviating from the tedious grass hill zone / electric city zone archetypes, but as a level that's not from a major game. In fact, I'm sure nobody would have picked Water Palace as Rush's most notable level, even though it is a good one. It appears to have been picked quite at random. What its presence says to me is that somebody realised that the 3DS version needed to have some kind of acknowledgement of the fact that Sonic has a history outside of a few big console titles, and so they went to the best-known DS title and ripped out one of the levels that actually showed some variety in relation to the rest of the game. Because of this, Water Palace feels out of place, even though it's really quite welcome as an addition. Because in fact, Water Palace should be the rule; rather than paring down the Sonic "canon" to a few past hits, they should have been showing off everything that the Sonic series can be, and indeed, actually representing games that aren't so well-known but are genuinely good. The level selection is a triumph of style over substance in that respect, and the game is worse for it.

Gameplay shows the same misguided faithfulness. Modern Sonic's gameplay is ever-closer to that of the consoles - despite the fact that this gameplay is practically alien to the handheld context. Wall jump, stomp, even the homing attack as implemented - whose Modern Sonic exactly is this? In a 2D world rife with 3D gimmicks, it's the gameplay of neither the console games or the handheld games. It's absurd, considering that the 3DS certainly is powerful enough to manage full 3D console gameplay. But instead of coding a new engine for this, or sticking to the familiar Rush gameplay, we have an awkward halfway house that satisfies nobody. In fact, quite often 3D gimmicks take the place of actual gameplay and obstacles - consider all those loving corner-turns executed by our hero in Modern Emerald Coast, or Water Palace, which the player controls by pressing the same old directional arrow as if Sonic was just running straight on.

The same applies to Classic Sonic once he learns the Homing Attack. I'll give them credit: I know exactly why they did that. Classic Sonic is learning from Modern Sonic as they adventure together, and is beginning to grow into Modern Sonic. It makes a lot of sense. But once Classic Sonic is given the Homing Attack, his gameplay becomes largely indistinguishable from Modern's; there's no Boost, but otherwise they work on the same principles. It's thematically appropriate, but from a gameplay perspective, it undermines the game's whole gimmick. The development of the stomp move for Modern, itself an obvious counterpart to Classic's development of the homing attack, is basically completely redundant and uninteresting. What the heck does stomping have to do with lighter shoes providing greater control in the air? If anything it should require heavier shoes.

Then there's the inclusion, at the end of many levels, of a show-stopping moment of spectacle - the roulette wheels, the orca chase, and so on. I say "show-stopping," but what I really mean is game-stopping, as input in most of these is extremely limited. I'll give credit to Modern Tropical Resort's meteor-dodging, which requires careful control, but for the others - well, I literally put my 3DS down and took my hands off it when Modern was fleeing the whale in Emerald Coast, and he went happily running off on his own until I needed to insert a few arbitrary button-presses. The transition between the two stages of the Egg Emperor boss fight have the same problem - Sonic does things without me needing to press any buttons at all. Is this meant to be a game, or a movie? Sometimes it's sadly hard to tell.

On the subject of boss fights, it's baffling that the boss selection is, once again, changed from the console version, but the rivals aren't. I'll say this: I do think the actual arrangement of bosses isn't too offensive. They actually style the rivals as "race bosses," and the presentation of them as races makes them fundamentally different from the actual boss fights which immediately follow. But these factors necessarily raise the question of why the same rival selection was used. Silver is a bit player in Sonic's history, especially in a handheld context, in which everyone is more familiar with the more popular Blaze, who also happens to have speed comparable to Sonic's, and for that matter has raced and fought against Sonic as many times as Silver has, that being never and once respectively. Why change the bosses and not the rivals? Who knows. One more baffling area where the 3DS version pretends it's the console version whilst simultaneously being a completely different animal.

Which I suppose brings us to the Time Eater. I can't say whether he's better than the console version, but he certainly has his own unique flaws. The "Modern" aspect of the fight is pretty good, with the teleporting arms put to good use and a convincing illusion of full 3D movement. The side-scrolling aspect is very strange, though. I spent some time trying to figure out what I was meant to do in it, before realising that actually, what I was meant to do was nothing. I can't attack Time Eater even though I'm right next to him. I can dodge his attacks - but there's the rub. There's no reason to. It doesn't cause Sonic to lose rings. It doesn't stop Sonic from attacking Time Eater. I've played the battle a few times and I really can't see that getting hit by Time Eater's attacks makes any difference - and his green beam attack isn't even aimed at Sonic, so you can just sit around, pressing no buttons, while Time Eater blasts away at thin air, or even press no buttons while he's blasting Sonic, for all the difference it makes. Also, Time Eater actually crashed on me at one point - I ran out of rings while he was transitioning between stages, and the screen went black and stayed that way. You'd have thought that would either have come up in testing or have actively been tested. In any case, I think it's not exactly fair play for Sonic to lose rings during what's essentially a cutscene.

Then we have the missions. I was going to call them, like Rush Adventure, an example of quantity over quality, but then I remembered that the console version had like ninety missions as well. The difference with the 3DS version is that none of the ones I've unlocked - which are clearly going to be exactly the same as all the rest - are meaningful; they're just the same old rote tasks repeated over and over. The means of unlocking them are pretty dull, too. StreetPass someone, which is unlikely, or buy them with Play Coins? It's good that they actually put Play Coins to use in the latter, but it's still a pretty cheap fix. I think I'd also have made it so that S-ranking an act or boss would immediately unlock all missions associated with that act or boss. It makes sense; you show that you can master a part of the game, and are then given tasks which test your mastery under new conditions. But no.

Which reminds me - the Special Stages. Another example of 3D gimmickry put to bad use. Quite a lot of the time the curves of the stage mean you cannot for the life of you see the huge wall of spiked balls approaching you beyond the horizon, and for a level which encourages you to boost to then punish you for boosting is poor form, I think. Add that to the way that the first and last were pretty pitiful, and the fact that they are unlocked in the most uninspiring way possible, and... well, it makes you wonder what exactly is meant to be special about them.

But, in short, the game's biggest problems are the areas where it completely misjudges its audience. For a handheld game in a prominent handheld tradition of Sonic games, Generations 3DS seems ashamed of its handheld predecessors, with only the most token of references to them while it tries hard to pretend it's a full console title despite its incomplete efforts to represent console conventions. I can only hope Sonic Team and Dimps learn from this - which is to say, that I hope they're able to distinguish the stupid reviews from the constructive ones, as for every legitimate criticism of Generations there's a counterpart which is just the usual baseless anti-Sonic garbage.

[JezMM]

DarkKirby is awesome though. >.>

Does anyone know if the Supporting Me music is a remix? Can't really tell due to the poor recording of 3DS footage.

It is a remix, but just a simple one, like the Open Your Heart one was on the HD version.

[Cheddly]

It is a remix, but just a simple one, like the Open Your Heart one was on the HD version.

Simple isn't the first word that comes to mind when I think of that remix.

[JezMM]

Which I suppose brings us to the Time Eater. I can't say whether he's better than the console version, but he certainly has his own unique flaws. The "Modern" aspect of the fight is pretty good, with the teleporting arms put to good use and a convincing illusion of full 3D movement. The side-scrolling aspect is very strange, though. I spent some time trying to figure out what I was meant to do in it, before realising that actually, what I was meant to do was nothing. I can't attack Time Eater even though I'm right next to him. I can dodge his attacks - but there's the rub. There's no reason to. It doesn't cause Sonic to lose rings. It doesn't stop Sonic from attacking Time Eater. I've played the battle a few times and I really can't see that getting hit by Time Eater's attacks makes any difference - and his green beam attack isn't even aimed at Sonic, so you can just sit around, pressing no buttons, while Time Eater blasts away at thin air, or even press no buttons while he's blasting Sonic, for all the difference it makes. Also, Time Eater actually crashed on me at one point - I ran out of rings while he was transitioning between stages, and the screen went black and stayed that way. You'd have thought that would either have come up in testing or have actively been tested. In any case, I think it's not exactly fair play for Sonic to lose rings during what's essentially a cutscene.

[Emmett L. Brown]

Played through the whole game today, and I was both pleasantly surprised and disappointed. Specifically, I was surprised at how much more fluid and fun the Modern Dimpsified handheld Sonic had become compared to his Rush and Colors DS counterparts. Maybe it's just the way the levels are so much better built to compliment his handling rather than detract from. My disappointement stemmed from how utterly, utterly pointless Classic Sonic was. Apart from being able to spin-dash, he brought nothing to this game other than being a reskinned nerfed Modern Sonic. Even the classic gameplay charm is gone, since Classic's levels don't try to replicate the Genesis ones (apart from the initial three copy-paste outings) but instead just give him more Rush-style levels.

The bosses were awesome. Biolizard was practically built for 2D, and Big Hand is my favourite Eggman vehicle type boss in the entire Genesis era, so automatic win. Egg Emperor was okay. Time Eater was probably the best Super Sonic boss fight I've played since Doomsday - even I can't defend the lacklustre HD version having seen how great that boss could've been.

Overally, I'm pleased with this game.

Now, can someone please tell me what the heck those coin point whatever things you're supposed to use to buy missions are? I know it's a total noob question, but this is my first 3DS game.

[Koopalmier]

Now, can someone please tell me what the heck those coin point whatever things you're supposed to use to buy missions are? I know it's a total noob question, but this is my first 3DS game.

[JezMM]

Walk while the 3DS is in sleep mode to get Play Coins. Use them to buy missions, and get stuff in Find Mii.

[Old dead account]

I really don't want to unlock every single mission by playcoins. What exactly must you do to unlock them just playing the game a lot?

[JezMM]

Every now and then beating a mission would unlock me another one, but I don't know if there's any particular pattern.

The unlocking system for missions/supporter points/profile card backgrounds is all very vague and confusing.