Act 1 or Act none?

[Speedy]

I agree with Prownage, actually story-relavant acts would be great again. In Generations stages had hardly anything to do with the plot, and in Colors and Unleashed it could be put down to #get to the end of the level to find the generator/Gaia temple'. I like those games, I really do. But they didn't tie the story to the levels in the way the Adventures did.

 

I generally like to have several acts per zone. Splitting a zone into several levels gives you the chance to go back to the parts you liked best easily. When you feel like playing one part, you don't have to go and do everything else that was in the zone.

 

Like Chaos Warp said, Sonic Heroes handled zones and acts pretty well, two stages with the same 'theme', but a slightly different focus. I also really liked that stages in Heroes are relatively long; you don't just rush through the act in a minute and that was it. Many of Sonic Colors' acts felt to short to me; Sonic rushed headlong into the goal ring before I really felt like the stage was getting started. I want to get something out of a stage.

 

Sonic Unleashed had some really nice long stages (gorgeous Adabat Day Act 1 anyone?). But Eggmanland showed you can also have too long stages in Sonic games. Don't get me wrong, I love Eggmanland. I think it's epic. The crux with it is that it's just one massive stage in the HD version of the game. My best time is 12 minutes, and that was a speedrun. I didn't bother to stop anywhere to beat up the robots. I play Unleashed quite often when I don't have hours of time to play, but just want a good short game. Then I go to the world map and pick the stage I feel like playing and have a nice run though it. It's good to relax. I really like Eggmanland, I think it got awesome design and a lot of interesting parts, but it's a little long sometimes. The Wii version has several acts in Eggmanland, I don't really see why the HD version doesn't. Heck, I'd even buy DLC if there was some for Eggmanland.

 

For a future game, I'd love to see acts show us different sides of a zone. We even had something like that before. In SA2, Shadow's Sky Rail seems to be Knuckles' Pumpkin Hill (or an area very near to it) by day. Unleashed made a theme out of having acts set in the same place at different times of the day. I think it would be nice to see that return.

Edited January 13, 2013 by Speedy

[Kamicciolo]

What if there was a combination of both acts and huge levels?  Like, all three acts can be played as one huge level, but there are visible dividers within the stage and if you reach one, you can start from there if you turn the game off, whilst not preventing you from going back to the previous act if desired.

 

That literally sounds like how Sonic 3 & Knuckles handled Acts. Stages follow on right after each other, being divided by the Mini Boss and then continuing right onto the next stage once you got the Goal Post, and once you've reached the new Act, it becomes your starting point for your save file til you progress further than that. Only thing it didn't do was let you go back through the previous Acts you'd just cleared, but then I don't know if that's really necessary anyway since in a modern game you could just quit to the hub and reselect the stage from there if you wanted to replay the act you just beat for whatever reason.

 

I do prefer having stages divided into acts instead of them being one long stage. As acts, there's a bit more freedom to diversify things up or place extra focus on specific gimmicks in a stage, even if it just ends up as silly little side stages like Windmill Isle Act 3 or the Yellow Spring stages in Colours, which wouldn't quite be as doable in the one full stage without coming off as a little bit random, tiring or even maybe frustrating depending on how it works (though I guess it could be argued that if they wanted to do it they probably could work to make it blend with the rest of the level's layout). So yeah, breaking things up also helps keep things from getting a bit monotonous when replaying too.

[JezMM]

That literally sounds like how Sonic 3 & Knuckles handled Acts. Stages follow on right after each other, being divided by the Mini Boss and then continuing right onto the next stage once you got the Goal Post, and once you've reached the new Act, it becomes your starting point for your save file til you progress further than that.

 

Actually I'm pretty sure in S3&K you had to finish a whole zone for the game to register it on your save file, so a Game Over on Act 2 will send you back to Act 1, since, from the file select you can only start from Act 1.

 

I like Akito's idea though, of having levels also selectable to play as one huge marathon stage of like 8-10 minutes length.

 

 

Obviously the main point of this post was just to point out your error Kami, wouldn't have made a post just to one-sentence agree with Akito.

 

It's a shame, but don't worry... that error shall be your last.  8D

 

INFECTED.

[Mr. Taxi]

Like Wolfy, Jez and Grumpy said, Acts have more benefits than simply breaking what would have been a boring mass of gameplay otherwise into pieces of enjoyable length. 

 

There is - or it's optimal to there be - a reason why you would want to cut a level at that point, specifically, and why not tie them all together. If you want a gimmick to stand out, if you want to explore one single trope in different ways or if you want to make the player notice something peculiar about the trope itself - how it changes, for instance - acts are the way to go. Sonic Advance 3 does not do that too often, but Chaos Angel is a brilliant example of how different, yet connected are the acts of the stage.

[Alluusio]

Come to think of it, the way acts are played after one another could be mixed up a little. If I'm not mistaken, every Sonic game so far requires you to play every act in one zone to move onto the next zone. Now this seems like a missed opportunity at times since apart from some acts in S3&K, very little seems to change between the acts to the point where you almost forget that you are playing a different stage altogether.

 

Now, of course it makes sense for Sonic to clear one area before moving to the next one, but in some games Sonic returns to some of the zones he has already been to. I'm going to use Sonic Colours again, since it has a perfect example of a missed opportunity like this. When Sonic returns to Tropical Resort after he has destroyed all of the generators, Eggman's plan backfires and the entire space station starts to crumble. This would have been a perfect opportunity to mix up the act structure a bit and place the final act of Tropical Resort here, when the entire atmosphere of the area has turned from a bright and colourful amusement park to a chaotic and fiery mess, surrounded by explosions and collapsing buildings that you have to dodge while racing to the space elevator. I think it would have been a nice surprise to see Tropical Resort act 7 pop up on the screen and see how the entire zone has changed but I guess that's just me.

 

Colours as a whole was a bit of a disappointment in this regard. It had 6 acts in each zone, yet all of them looked more or less the same. They had so much to work with but they just didn't take advantage of it. 

[Tara]

Actually I'm pretty sure in S3&K you had to finish a whole zone for the game to register it on your save file, so a Game Over on Act 2 will send you back to Act 1, since, from the file select you can only start from Act 1.

 

I like Akito's idea though, of having levels also selectable to play as one huge marathon stage of like 8-10 minutes length.

 

 

Obviously the main point of this post was just to point out your error Kami, wouldn't have made a post just to one-sentence agree with Akito.

 

It's a shame, but don't worry... that error shall be your last.  8D

 

INFECTED.

You are correct.  In Sonic 3/&K , you have to complete a whole zone before it saves.  In the Sonic Advance series, you can choose levels based on acts, but they're not "one huge marathon" or anything.

[Speedy]

Come to think of it, the way acts are played after one another could be mixed up a little. If I'm not mistaken, every Sonic game so far requires you to play every act in one zone to move onto the next zone.

 

Unleashed handles it differently; most of the Act 2's are bonus acts you don't need to play to complete the story or move on to the next zone. You also sometimes return to a zone you already visited during the story.

 

I'm going to use Sonic Colours again, since it has a perfect example of a missed opportunity like this. When Sonic returns to Tropical Resort after he has destroyed all of the generators, Eggman's plan backfires and the entire space station starts to crumble. This would have been a perfect opportunity to mix up the act structure a bit and place the final act of Tropical Resort here, when the entire atmosphere of the area has turned from a bright and colourful amusement park to a chaotic and fiery mess, surrounded by explosions and collapsing buildings that you have to dodge while racing to the space elevator. I think it would have been a nice surprise to see Tropical Resort act 7 pop up on the screen and see how the entire zone has changed but I guess that's just me.

 

It's not just you. The idea never occured to me, but that would have been awesome. Parts of the stage could've been on fire, debris threatening to fall on Sonic. It could have also been a timed mission, get to the goal before the station falls apart under your feet. I think something like that would've made the ending feel a lot more tense.

[Burtzman]

Come to think of it, the way acts are played after one another could be mixed up a little. If I'm not mistaken, every Sonic game so far requires you to play every act in one zone to move onto the next zone.

 

Don't forget how Sonic 4 Episode 1 lets you play the zones in any order after clearing the first.

 

I'd rather have acts in Sonic games. They seem to be a staple of the series that gives the stages more personality. Rather than calling them "levels", they have cool names like zones or acts. Acts also can make the same stage interesting by dividing it up into different places in the same location, but use enough different gimmicks to make the acts stand out. Sonic 3&K and Heroes did this best. For instance, in Sonic 1 and 2, there wasn't usually a lot of differences between acts, with rare exceptions like Chemical Plant. But in Sonic 3, you have zones like Hydrocity or Ice Cap, where the two acts play completely differently, and of course Sonic Heroes has been mentioned enough already.

 

My ideal zone length would be to have 3 acts, that are the size of Unleashed's stages for the 3D games, and Sonic 3's stages for the 2D games. And keep the bosses as a separate act. As retro as it would be to have the bosses at the end of act 3, they play better as separate acts, so you don't have to play through an entire act 3 just to attempt to defeat the boss again.

[Kuzu]

Given Sonic is a more traditional platformer, I'd say the act structure works fine. The only problem with it recently is that the extra acts to feel like mission levels, rather than a full on Level. I think Heroes(ironically enough) was the only game to do the two act structure right. the every even numbered level obviously borrows it's level tropes from the previous one, but basically amped up to feel different.

[Alluusio]

Unleashed handles it differently; most of the Act 2's are bonus acts you don't need to play to complete the story or move on to the next zone. You also sometimes return to a zone you already visited during the story.

 

But then again, that's just extra content which doesn't really contribute to the story and is in fact completely optional. I was talking more about making the acts play a bigger part in the story by making you play the first act and then have a couple of levels before the second act, and by the time you get there something has changed. You wouldn't have to do it all the time but it could be a good way to give you a greater sense of progression every now and then. Sonic 1 actually did something like this with Scrap Brain act 3, which was essentially Labyrinth zone act 4, only more polluted than the previous Labyrinth zone acts.

 

Don't forget how Sonic 4 Episode 1 lets you play the zones in any order after clearing the first.

 

Well I probably should have worded that better, but I meant that there really hasn't been a Sonic game where the story would make you play the acts out of order rather than the player doing it just for the heck of it. Sonic 4 has very little story in it and none of the zones connect to each other in any meaningful way. And when you have cleared all 4 of the main zones you are suddenly back in Splash Hill anyway, watching as Eggman escapes into the Egg Station zone. I can't really praise the game for that since it didn't take any advantage of it at all. It only shows what an unorganized mess the game was.

[n00neimp0rtant]

The Colors acts felt like challenge missions to me. More often than not, they were centered around a specific gimmick like the challenge gates in Generations (hey, press all these buttons! hey, grind on all these rails!). Not to mention, they were all made up of smaller "chunks" hacked off of the first act.

[Ebby]

I prefer having multiple acts as opposed to having one large level. Only I didn't like exactly how it was done in Sonic Colors. I thought having 6 acts per zone felt a bit much, as many of the acts were over before you knew it. I think having all of these acts within the zones was an attempt to pad the game, but it failed miserably. Having more zones and less acts per zone (like 3) with a bit more length to them would be ideal, I think.

 

Having multiple acts in Sonic games has pretty much been standard. I think it would be strange not to see it any other way. As mentioned, having various acts per zone allows for more diverse level design and gimmicks and whatnot among them. I've always looked forward to each new act in Sonic games wondering what would be different about it from the others among what other surprises I would be running into.

 

Also, having multiple acts gives opportunities to have music tracks with a different variation of a track per act. For the most part, the music in Sonic games have been outstanding, so to get variations of these tracks via various acts I think sweetens the deal. In recent games, I love how it was done in Sonic Colors with the first 3 acts having a different track. I also loved how Sonic Generations did it having a Classic and Modern version of each track within each zone.

 

THIS! I fully agree, six acts for one zone is way too much. And if your level can be completed in less than a minute, then what's the point? The same can be said with the extra day levels in Unleashed. When I found the second act of Rooftop Run I was thrilled, but it was nothing but doing three laps of air boosting and homing attacks. Then the next act was searching for chao. Granted these things are great ideas for missions, but for acts that is a joke!

 

As started before, three acts with music variations would be perfect! Music variations makes me happy in any Sonic game. Generations, Colors, Sonic Advance 3, Sonic Rush Adventure, Sonic 3 and Knuckles, whatever! I love it anytime it's done!

[Jolt_TH]

Personally I think 2-3 acts per zone is a great way to play. As long as the acts are of a decent length, like one act of generations ( I think a 3rd act where you switch between both sonic's would have been a cool idea maybe? Or 2 acts per sonic?)

Agreed that the 6 acts in colours were horrible, act 1 was great then by the time I hit starlight carnival i was dreading the other 5 acts!

I do like s3&k acts and transitions, with two levels of the same theme but differing slightly (like green forest/White jungle from SA2) as they were a good length and you could see that it was the same area, you were just in a different part, and the transitions showed you how sonic and co got to the next area.

Now I'm all for having missions, it increases the lifespan and replayability of the game, but has everyone forgotten SA2? I think that any missions should be on the act menu after completing It and that they should use the same level ( with some altercations and different starting points) so you aren't playing the exact same level but it's familiar with new bits added on

[The Pit of Mystic Cave]

I think the Acts should stay. They make the Zones themselves MUCH more memorable in a way. Like Sonic 3 and Knuckles for example, in the sense that there is hardly any breaks between acts and the two acts had different themes to accompany them.

[Tani Coyote]

Multiple acts are good for being able to set down the controller and take a break.

Even in games that were longer levels and officially had no acts, there was some act-like nature to them. In the two Adventure titles, though there were no acts, most characters were exploring different parts of the same overall area, and it was an "act" in that sense; they were just not continuous and characters had different powers.

Overall I'm content either way. I love the blue guy and will take whatever he can put out that doesn't strike me as ridiculously dumb usually.

[Dandp]

I think one huge level would be a terrible thing for one reason: Most people complaints about sonic heroes is that the levels are too long, and one huge act would leave everyone complaining. Also, red rings. Having to go through a huge level for them each time would get tedious.

[C.J]

I think the act system works well for 2D. As for the 3D games, it's been a bit of a hit and miss. I liked how they did it in Heroes with the same theme/environment but with a different layout or pathway. However I really didn't like how they used it in Colors where there were lots of short acts that you had to complete in order to advance as it really felt like a chore to do. I also wish that they were more connected to the story, like how the levels were in the Adventure games. I think 3 acts would be fine as long as they have a reasonable length, not too short or too long (roughly the same as each other with the same theme but with a bit of transformation to feel less similar to each other).

 

Also like Akito said it would be interesting to combine them together. I also agree with Jez about adding a single big moment or an interesting ending to each act/stage which was also something that Heroes did with all it's levels. I would also like to see more of the same acts but set at different times of the day which was also done in Unleashed and we saw a bit of this when doing the missions in Generations. I personally think it would be interesting to see more of this again so it make the acts even more diverse and unique.

Edited February 2, 2013 by C.J

[Ebby]

I don't mind super huge levels as long as there's only ONE and it's at the end of the game. Though I hated Cannon's Core and Eggmanland takes forever, the idea of this "make you work for it because this is the final stretch" level is cool by me.

 

...just don't make it so cheap. =/ The "Roller Coaster of Doom" was NOT cool. Even with lives that respawn.

[FractaLad]

Sonic 3 & Knuckles style all the way! I loved the feeling of one HUGE adventure zig zagging all over the floating island. I loved the way angel island is split between lush jungle and then fire bombed disaster zone, there should definatly be more transitions like that.