Sonic Generations: Trophy Analysis

[Badnik Mechanic]

A while ago I did a small look at various Sonic games that were on the PS3 and looked at what their trophy data (according to yourgamercards) tells us about peoples playng habbits of the games and how they differ.

Sonic Generations has been out for well over a month now, and doing this topic now we actually have a rather interesting opportunity to get an insight into not only it's trophy data, but how well it's actually selling/performing in the PS3 market... Because tomorrow is Christmas day.

So for those who don't know, a lot of people who are PS3 owners are signed up with yourgamercards, that website tracks your trophy data (theres a delay of about an hour or two from when you sync), it doesn't have everybody who has a PSN account on there, but it's a pretty good indication of playing habbits of people (especially when you look at the total numbers of people who have played games like Little Big Planet or Modern Warfare 2).

So lets take a look at Sonic Generations and some basic statistics for that game.

3872 people have actually had Sonic Generations in their PS3's and loaded it up. Now whilst that might not seem like a very high number... Compare it to another game which was released a month earlier and had around the same level of exposure. Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, like Sonic... been around for a great many years, a lot of pre release hype and had a price drop very quickly upon release as well as a lot of DLC also released worldwide for it. Total number of people who have played that game? 3567... Well maybe it can be explained by the platinum trophy difficulty? No, can't be. Ace Combats list isn't too hard, it's just amazingly time consuming... but also... it doesn't explain this too well..

Where the Wild Things Are, released the same day, total number of players 3883.

Spiderman edge of time: 1384

There are several other examples I could list (one surprising one was Dead Rising 2: Off the record), but you get the idea, Generations has been a very popular game compared to a lot of other titles released even a month in advance of it which have recieved similar price cuts which we're now seeing with Generations.

Already, despite what poorly spun blogs tell us, Generations has done very well in a tough year/release window compared to other titles that had a lot more mainstream appeal behind it.

So lets take a look at some of the trophies in the Generations list.

This will likely be the first trophy you unlock in the game, beat the first stage... out of the 3872 people who actually loaded up the game... 3768 bothered to play and beat the first stage, a difference of over 100. Not too uncommon, people put games on, then don't play them.

Whats more interesting is this one.

This is the trophy you get for completing the main story mode. In other words, just beat the game, no side quests, no extras, just clear all the stage... and the numbers who did it? 1747... thats a drop of over 2000 who bothered to beat the first Green Hill Zone...

So what happened? Did 2000 people dislike the game so much they didn't bother to beat it? Mmmm no I don't think so.

If you look at the list of trophies, you'll notice that the average numbers of people who bothered to get all the 'era' related trophies average out as follows...

Classic era level completion trophies = 3490

Dreamcast era trophies = 2571

Modern era trophies = 2031

So does this mean that people just played the classic era for nostalgia then stopped? Nope, not quite that simple. We also need to pay attention to something else too... specifically... these trophies...

The boss related ones, now you need to beat these bosses in order to progress to Time Eater/get all the emeralds, so technically they are story related... when you look at these, you can see where the drops happened.

Metal Sonic boss fight trophy: 2,863

Death Egg Robot boss fight trophy: 2,797

When you factor these in, you can see why theres such a drop to the Dreamcast era trophies, then look at the Dreamcast era boss fights, you can see an additional drop. It seems that a few people just either couldn't/didn't beat the bosses, or didn't like them enough to continue on. when you check out how the numbers relate to how many completely the next set of 'era' stages, you can see a more reasonable drop in numbers. It might be argued that the bosses for whatever reason contributed to a drop in people continuing with the main story.

Lets take a look away from the main story mode now, because this is where the appeal of the game as a whole comes into it. Usually, unless a player is trying to get 100% regardless as to if they're enjoying themselves, people stop playing/leave the extras (mission mode) as theres little interest or they're not having fun.

Unfortunatly, the trophy list on Generations doesn't make it easy to look at this... as rewards are only given once someone beats a large portion of the extras before they get the awards for 100% of completing the extras... but there is a rough way to tell/get an idea as to whats going on.

Take a look at these two trophies.

Technically those two trophies are Generations' 'collectable' related trophies. I would argue that 100% of all Red Rings is a harder task than beating all missions, which does seem to be whats happening here...

100% red rings = 628

100% mission competition = 773

Drop difference of 145. Looking back to those who beat the game over 1100 people didn't bother/couldn't find all the Red Rings... but when you look at the missions... it's not much better as it's still 974 people decided not to go for the 100% missions either.... however... with the mission trophy, we do have a 50% completition trophy... which shows 1081 people did attempt and beat 50% of all missions, a difference of 666 (OMG SPOOKY!).

So we know that 1081 people got 50% of the way through... yet only 773 managed to beat them? What could explain this? Possibly might be down to boredom... some of the missions were not that great, a lot of people complained about the doppleganger mission (planet Wisp) being a tad hard... but I suspect... this person should share a bit of the blame...

Yes Vector... you... Vectors music note mission... it's notorious, it's a long mission, a boring mission, requires a lot of concentration, and requires the use of the homing attack working every single time. If you're just playing for fun and not concerned for trophies, this is almost certainly a mission you would skip, even if you were after the trophy, this isn't a fun or easy mission compared to the others... Considering it's location in the hub world, is it totally out of the question to suggest that maybe this mission & planet Wisps doppleganger missions might explain the drop from 50% to 100%?

I'm now going to look at something a little different and it's something a little unique to the PS3 version of the game too.

Online trophies.

The PS3 version of the game has/had a bug which made it hard if not impossible for people to access the 30 second test mode... but... you could access the other time trial mode. Interestingly... the differences in the trophy numbers is not as vast as I imagined.

One of those for Time Attack, the other for 30 second test... have a difference... of only 57... one has 1657, the other is 1600. Thats really not as high as I thought it would be considering the issues that many people (including me) had just to get the 30 second test trophy to work.

The biggest drop however... comes from this...

Beat all stages in Time Attack. Only 631 people did this. The reason for this drop is almost certainly explained by the bugs in the online mode. That trophy is effectively a 'beat the game' style of trophy. Looking at those who attempted to do a single time trial (1657), it's not that different from those which got the beat the game trophy (1747).

So what happened? Well... the answer can be found in how buggy the online mode is for the PS3. For a lot of people, when you try to select another stage, it comes up with 'loading' followed by an error message, now whilst nothing has gone wrong, you can move o to the next stage, the trophy will unlock, but the error message gives the impression the game has failed to let you go to the next stage. I think that this is a big reason for the drop in those who attempted the time trials, and those who got the complete all time trials trophy.

Finally... lets take a look at this...

The Platinum trophy. It's considerd to be 'very hard' right now. Only 522 people have it... I bet you can all guess which trophy is the culprit for this...

Defeat time eater... without getting hit... We all know what this boss is like, not very well designed, annoying dialogue during it. Quite a long boss fight... and... theres a lot of bugs. We're not just talking about a trophy thats challenging by what it asks the player to do, but it's also hard because the environment it's in doesn't quite work the way it should, e.g. theres a building headding towards you... fly under it? Not too low, you'll get stuck on the bottom of the tube!

However... we shouldn't completely blame time eater for all this... if you look at the lowest trophy numbers, one which comes close is the 'walk on water' trophy for Chemical Plant Zone, a trophy that means the player needs to take a specific route without messing up. Get all S ranks and skills/collectables are also close calls too.

It seems that the Generations platinum is a lot tougher than it should be, as a combination of a badly designed final boss, buggy online and possibly some specific missions in mission mode. It seems that these things more than anything are great contributors to why the numbers who have the platinum is quite low.

Now during this I've not looked at some of the more level specific trophies as it's harder to judge them, some of them might pop up randomly for someone if they get lucky on a stage or without them even trying, others may need to work for them, it's too hard to judge it due to all the variables.

But... since it's Christmas Day tomorrow, in the next week and early into January, it will be interesting to see if the following happens.

* The numbers who have platinum increase (by a significant figure).

* The numbers who play the game increase (by a significant figure).

Combination of christmas pressies, and people having more free time to play Generations.

Oh and one final thing you might find interest... It's been nearly 3 years since Sonic Unleashed came out... in that time 11,775 people have had Sonic Unleashed in their PS3's... total number of people to platinum it... 449.

Main culprit?

Hard Boiled, beat the Eggmanland hot dog trials.

So whilst we've complained about Time Eaters trophy being hard... Sonic Unleashed's Hard Boiled trophy is statistically a much harder challenge.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Hogfather

[Chooch]

I'm planning on getting a Platinum trophy in this game eventually, but I'm really slow with my progress now because of the Red Star Rings and the total bore that is the Time Eater boss battle. Getting those trophies simply isn't that fun to do and to be entirely honest? Not that rewarding either.

You get Super Sonic just by beating the game, for crying out loud.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

I wanted to become the 1st person to get the platinum, but I ended up 26th... dayam it...

There were two things that stand out for me which annoyed me in this game. And Hogfather mentioned them both, the first one was the Vector mission. It left a bad taste on my mouth honestly. The BGM was annoying and sometimes the homing attack does not respond in time and you will lose. I can't remember how long I've been on this mission, but it was pretty dayam long.

Another was the "Can't Touch This". I didn't know at the time you CAN touch the rocks and stuff and still get the trophy, so I made it more difficult for myself. The BGM was dull (yes I know I can change it, but I wasn't bothered) and "Sonic's friends" repeating the homing missile attack. I was going to mute the TV, but to me sound plays an important factor for this so I had to leave it on.

But Sonic Generations is a much MUCH easier game to platinum than Unleashed, little skill is required to get the platinum. Disappointed on the difficulty as you can pretty much say, Sonic Generations falls in the category on the "fastest to get platinums". With solid trophy guides in place, you can get the platinum within 2 days.

Sonic Unleashed is in a different level, the "werehog" was a major turnoff for starters, then collecting 400 moon/sun medals which are ridiculously a pain, then the "Hungry Hungry Hedgehog" trophy as well as the hot dog trophies. And I still haven't counted all of the time consuming trophies in this game.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Spiced Christmas

[Autosaver]

Once I saw the Hot Dog Eggmanland missions, I threw the game out the window.

Yeah, I still need to get those Red Rings in Generations. I wish I got a reward for S ranking the missions, since I could've spent all that time getting the other trophies. :/

[Linneus]

I'm actually one trophy away from getting Platinum, and it's "Time Attacker". I've been doing speedruns and I refuse to move on to the next level until I get at least in the top 100 for the next one. I'm up to Crisis City Act 2, which leaves on two stages- Rooftop Run Act 2 and Planet Wisp Act 2 before I get my third Platinum Trophy. (The first two being "Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time" and "inFamous".)

Unleashed is an absolute BASTARD with those trophies-- I'm 92%, missing the Hot Dog missions from Empire City, Adabat, and Eggmanland. (And by proxy, Hungry, Hungry, Hedgehog.) It's so disheartening because I got EVERYTHING else. All the skills, all the stages, all the damn medals, but those Hot Dog stand missions... *Shudder*

I'm glad Generations is a lot more forgiving, as all you really need to do to get the Platinum Trophy is be dedicated to the game and its completion, and also just get good at it, which is how it should be.

Also, I really enjoyed reading up on those stats, Hogfather. I took Statistics! So I like this kind of stuff.

[Solkia]

I didn't find the Time Eater trophy very hard, I did it on my second try.

[sayi50]

Am I the only one who actually LIKES the Vector mission? Seriously? I guess you guys can't use HA well huh? Just for clarification, HA is much more "loose" than usual, which is something I like. You need to aim it yourself properly.

And on a side note... Vector throws the note to few places, they are always same. Tennis players might get this: I play from the net on that mission.

[Solkia]

Am I the only one who actually LIKES the Vector mission? Seriously? I guess you guys can't use HA well huh? Just for clarification, HA is much more "loose" than usual, which is something I like. You need to aim it yourself properly.

And on a side note... Vector throws the note to few places, they are always same. Tennis players might get this: I play from the net on that mission.

In other words you stand really close to him? Tried that, the mission is still annoying.

[sayi50]

In other words you stand really close to him? Tried that, the mission is still annoying.

Not really close, like... Half of the "stadium" close. Think with a tennis court in mind because that's exaclty what you are playing with Vector except the "ball" must not touch it once. And like I said, the HA actually needs you to FACE the thing you want to HA properly or else it doesn't lock on.

And for being on topic:

If I had a PS3 and SG on PS3, I'd get that Platinium so hard that it would hurt

Nice stuff BTW. For some reason I love reading stuff like this.

[Chooch]

That Vector challenge really was not that difficult at all. Seems like the lot of you were tricked by Vector at the very end or just weren't paying that much attention in the first place. I suppose it's understandable considering how repetitive the mission was, but even so I don't understand why this challenge in particular is getting so much ire.

It's one of the easiest in the entire game. I completed it on my first try with no problems and personally, I enjoyed it.

Edited December 24, 2011 by Chooch Kringle

[Badnik Mechanic]

That Vector challenge really was not that difficult at all. Seems like the lot of you were tricked by Vector at the very end or just weren't paying that much attention in the first place. I suppose it's understandable considering how repetitive the mission was, but even so I don't understand why this challenge in particular is getting so much ire.

[Linneus]

If I could've gotten a Sonic avatar for my PSN account, I wouldn't have wasted ANY time. My two favorite series are Sonic and Ratchet & Clank, and as much as I love Ratchet, I want to show off Sonic! He's not PlayStation exclusive, so I feel he'd be a cooler avatar. As for PlayStation Home... I unlocked bother PSH rewards in Sonic Adventure and I still haven't bothered to go check them out.

[supersaiyanmikito]

The Vector mission wasn't THAT hard. I found a trick to completely skip the first part with the blue notes.

As for Unleashed's Hard Boiled, It wasn't really difficult. With glitch abuse, this level is painfully easy. The ones that did give me trouble were Holoska(LONG AS **** NIGHT STAGE!) and Empire City.(Those spiked girders can suck it...)

[Emmett L. Brown]

This is fascinating. Still, as Hogfather pointed out, we may see a lot of those who've only played partway through the game pull the rest o the way when they get some free time. There's such a close release of superb titles so close to Christmas, that I can easily see a lot of players put some hours into Sonic Generations and then get hooked on a different game, like Skyrim, Battlefield, or Batman.

To put in perspective, I've got all achievements on Generations, but I still haven't completed New Game Plus on Arkham City. Skyrim trumped Batman for my attention span, which is damned impressive.

[Totally]

I still need to get all the online achievements and the one with Time Eater and then I'll get the Platinum!

[mclaren6]

I did everything on this game no problem, "Time Attacker" was my last earned trophy in the game.

[Linneus]

I did everything on this game no problem, "Time Attacker" was my last earned trophy in the game.

And to think, there was a time when you couldn't play because the trophies weren't working for you.

[mclaren6]

And to think, there was a time when you couldn't play because the trophies weren't working for you.

Fixed,

System Restore is always handy

[Badnik Mechanic]

Well now, one week since Christmas, so do we think Sonic Generations' trophy data has changed much?

Oh yes it most certainly has.

Now remember, this data doesn't include every PS3 owner who has or since last week has recieved/played Generations. It also doesn't take into account Xbox 360 owners (something we can't ever find out).

Pre-Christmas day Generations players = 3872

New years Day Generations players = 4955!

So in the week since Christmas day an extra 1083 people have either bought Generations or recieved it as a Christmas gift (remember this isn't total users so the number is likely a lot higher than that).

However... if you then look at the numbers of people who actually beat the game, the increase from the old number is only 341. The extra 1000+ people only saw an extra 341 people beat the game? Whats going on? Well... it's possible that people simply had a lot of games, if someone has a lot of games and gets them on one day, chances are they might simply be playing one game. Might be interesting to see if this number changes significantly when it gets to the end of January.

However, signs that people have been playing the game come from these two trophies...

Beat Metal Sonic & Death Egg Robot.

The numbers of people who have these over the numbers pre christmas day are as follows.

Metal Sonic: 713 extra people.

Death Egg Robot: 667 extra people.

From those it does seem that the extra 1000 odd people who have since picked up Generations have played a good chunk of it if this data is accurate.

Now then.... the platinum... has that changed at all?

Pre Christmas Day platinum numbers: 522.

New Years Day platinum numbers: 595

It's quite a small increase but sorta expected since Generations has two tricky trophies in it, defeat time eater (which hasn't changed too much since last week). However, the week since Christmas has brought up some additional interesting data.

Pre Christmas Day: 628.

New years Day: 720.

Difference: 92

Pre Christmas Day: 773.

New Years Day: 891

Difference: 118

The numbers are very close together, it brings us to two possible conclusions... 1: Either trophy hunters are after the platinum. 2: People are enjoying Generations enough to play the replay value.

Due to the numbers being so similar, I would have to leave that it would mainly be trophies driving this change. However, that doesn't mean that people are not enjoying the game, many people who don't enjoy the game will stop playing it and abandon getting platinum, I suspect that this would be very true after christmas day if someone got a lot of new games. Why be playing a game you didn't like if you had some new ones that you did?

What can we draw from this data?

Well... it would suggest that Generations has sold remarkably well considering the competition it had from Uncharted 3, MW3, Dark Souls and several other big popular titles.

Remember when I mentioned Ace Combat: Assault Horizon in the openning post? Well look at this.

Total number of people who have played AC:AH pre Christmas Day = 3567.

New Years Day numbers = 3901

Difference of 334 new players to the game in the week since I last took down the numbers. Meaning in 1 week, Generations saw an increase of 749 people playing that game over Ace Combat. Now Ace Combat is a very good game which got a metacritic score very similar to Generations.

So you might say, well maybe popularity had something to do with it? Maybe... but how do you explain this?

Spider-Man Edge of Time has seen an increase in people playing it of only 147.

I think the increase in people playing the game has a lot to do with people believing that Generations is indeed a very good game, whilst the trophy list has a tough trophy in it which might explain the low platinum number (11.96%). It doesn't explain the huge jump in new players to it over other games which also should have seen increases in people playing.

The data is open to interpretation, but from what I've seeing, it looks like people really wanted this game, the high number of people playing it pre-Christmas Day was a good indicator that it was selling well to it's competitors, but the jump since Christmas Day seems to support this, that Generations was something that people really wanted....

Now... if only there was a way to see the same data for Xbox achivements.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Hogfather

[MykonosFan]

Well, it's not a complete set of numbers by any means, but you could look at a site called TrueAchievements as a sample, if you will.

http://www.trueachievements.com/SONIC-GENERATIONS-xbox-360.htm

It only counts people who have registered for the site, but it's better than nothing at least...I'm sure you've considered this or a site like it though.

EDIT: Changed the link to the standard game view instead of my personal progress view, derp.

Edited January 2, 2012 by Merry Mykonos

[Your Vest Friend]

I will still protest with my dying breath that the homing attack screws you over a lot more in the Espio VS mission than the Vector VS mission. The only thing that makes the latter 'hard' is the fact that there's an actual defined 'failure'. I still find it (both of them) enjoyable, and they're the ones I replay the most.

l need to get the Time Eater trophy before I get platinum.

Edited January 3, 2012 by VEDJ-F