Lost World: Discussion, Impressions and Fan Reviews

[Dizcrybe]

This is the first time I've heard of any super-jump off of a wall. You can do that?

[azoo]

Its like the wall-jump, where you push off the side of the wall, except while running. It's super satisfying and exhilarating, but thanks to how the action was terribly designed in how you did it, it only works at least 1/10th of the time.

[Blue Blood]

Lost World's problems though are mostly in design. Besides that it just needs fine-tuning. I know that making it all momentum based would be very hard to do in development, but there already is momentum-based movement in the game, the snowball, the pinball, even Sonic spindashing are all done with momentum-based movement, there's nothing stopping them from tweaking that in future games.

 

Sonic Unleashed, Colours and Generations all worked differently in terms of mechanics. When I say "oh just fix these and it'll be fine!" I mean that if you ask me there really isn't much stopping them from making tweaks to the game mechanics and overhauling the design.

 

Design is not locked to a game engine, there's absolutely nothing about Lost World's game design that can't be rectified in another game. Tutorials, stage design and cheap deaths, all of its major failures are design-based. Parkour isn't horrible, just horribly explained, and Colours and Generations are proof that the game core game mechanics can be changed around to be made more comfortable. Colours added a double jump where Unleashed didn't have one at all, Generations and Colours both did Super Sonic totally differently too.

 

I think you're overestimating how much tweaking would be needed to make SLW a more comfortable experience. The core elements of momentum movement and acceleration already exist within the game and Sonic's whole movement doesn't need to be based off it. The fact that Sonic 4 Ep2 managed to heavily improve over Ep1 in terms of momentum too means it's not impossible using a very similar game engine - and in the end Sonic 4 Ep2's main faults were just stage design rather than the game mechanics which were pretty ok but people initially assumed were unsalvageable.

 

I know Sonic 4 and SLW are very different games but it's clear that they put way more effort into SLW. Do you have any examples of mechanics that you think are total dead-ends or why they are? (besides Wisps they can go)

 

How far does design go before you're overhauling everything? Lost World has the right ideas done badly. And I don't want to see those things return without them being totally reworked. The term "momentum" is really starting to bug me too. It's not a specific feature so much as it is something that would apply to all character movement within the game. That would require big changes across the board, or else you'd end up with something like Gens 3DS Dreamcast/Modern era where the level design doesn't reflect what the game is actually built for.

 

I also don't quite get why you're talking about engines. A lack of a tutorial is a problem that is totally unrelated and easily fixed, as you did say. The parkour though is something I would say is horrible and is in serious need of a reworking. It's very, very complicated. Even with a proper explanation and understanding, it takes a lot to actually get it to work properly. It's not outside of the realms of the engine though. On top of the parkour, we have other big issues:

 

Level design? Change it. Controls? Change them. Movement and character behaviour in general? Change it. You would end up with something that's totally different.

 

Basically, my point is still as it was before. Lost World has the right ideas (mostly...) and pulls them off pretty damn poorly. In order to make Lost World a more palatable experience, you'd pretty much have to change everything. And even if that just means design, it would still be bigger changes than just fixing things. That's what I mean by the problems being deep routed.

 

Hardly any of the mechanics are duff and need scrapping entirely though. There's the "crouch and roll" for safe movement on slime/sand/ice, the kick attack and charged homing for padding out combat that would have actually been fantastic without it and finally the planetoid gimmick that Sonic Team didn't have a clue what they were trying to with. Nothing that goes into the engine. Just a simple nip and tuck.

[MegasonicZX]

Its like the wall-jump, where you push off the side of the wall, except while running. It's super satisfying and exhilarating, but thanks to how the action was terribly designed in how you did it, it only works at least 1/10th of the time.

Its not that hard to pull off, heck even pushing it diagnolly in the opposite direction works, just don't hold it upward. Also, I can see why they wouldn't make that jump a standard jump while wall running since I can see it leading to a good amount of mishaps if your just trying to jump off.

[Celestia]

The parkour honestly never seemed all that complex to me. More complicated than most Sonic controls, but...that's not really saying much. I dunno.

 

The one thing that bugs me is what Azoo mentioned, accidentally doing a little jump instead of the actual wall jump. It's particularly annoying in 2D; if the walls are close together he automatically wall jumps when you tap the jump button, but if the walls are far enough together he'll do the little spin jump instead. It's odd, especially since I swear I can't remember any situation where I'd want to do the little jump...

[azoo]

The one thing that bugs me is what Azoo mentioned, accidentally doing a little jump instead of the actual wall jump. It's particularly annoying in 2D; if the walls are close together he automatically wall jumps when you tap the jump button, but if the walls are far enough together he'll do the little spin jump instead. It's odd, especially since I swear I can't remember any situation where I'd want to do the little jump...

 

This is where the quickstep would be a nice thing that you can do on the side. One of the buttons "jumps" you up the wall a little bit, the other one darts you a bit down. I guess which button doing what would depend on if Sonic's running on a wall from the left of him or from the right of him.

 

The entirety of Lost World's gameplay could use some work, but I don't really want them to abandon (most of) the ideas. I do think Sonic's movement should be accelerative and have an SA-esque feel, but at the same time I think there should be a run button for going slightly faster than that, like an Adv2-boost with looser steering (broken record Zoo I know).There's no detraction there, just addition, and I think that would work best.

 

And there shouldn't be so much seperation between crouching/somersaulting and Spindashing/rolling. Why not just put crouching/rolling on the trigger, the Spin Dash hot button on X like it usually was (with crouch+jumptap as the alternative), and just make the somersault be part of the roll, as in like its just the one at lowest speed but can pick up speed from there into a regular roll? Taking these redundant abilities and putting them together with the more purposeful ones just seems like the better idea.

 

I dunno, just throwing ideas around as always.

 

Really, I think Blue Blood and SuperLink are both hitting the right notes. It's gonna take an overall reworking in every part of the gameplay to make it the best it could be, but at the same time it's not too terribly far off. The gameplay to SLW is basically the video game equivalent of "close, but no cigar".

[SuperLink]

Regardless of how much needs to change in terms of game design, I think they're very much on the right track on a conceptual level at the very least, which is more than I can say for past 3D Sonic games. They have the right idea, but don't seem to have the technical or design talent needed to pull it off first try (evidently).

 

Whether I agree or not with how much exactly needs to be changed doesn't really matter because it's not going to affect what Sonic Team do or don't do next time. I think we can both agree what Sonic Lost World isn't and what it needs to be fundamentally. What I hope they do is pay close attention to the criticisms and..

 

Hire some people who understand game design.

[Dizcrybe]

Or better beta testers

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I watch the story and gameplay and this is what I think:

-Sonic Galaxy. i know people say it alot and is tired of this but i have Mario Galaxy series and it's the same world layout except Sonic became a shinobi

-speaking of shinobi, Sonic, you can walk on walls, hang on ledges??!!! you are very amazing!

-Sonic makes me laugh again like Sonic colors.

-the worlds are colorful and fun

-the wisps... were random but they fit because this is a happy world and the wisps are colorful and happy

-Tails is getting out of his shell, i mean look at the fangs! Confident Tails, I am happy with

-Knuckles and Amy.... werent needed... they did nothing. but if Amy was like this in all the games, Id love her alot. Knuckles.... man bro you did nothing! you were just as relevent as the tree in the background. Same with Amy

-i like the deadly 6... except for the girl.... oh boy

-I was sad when Sonic lost his friend

-Tails was awesome, he was confident that he got himself out of being a robot. I want to see Tails to this more it brought out his smartness

-Gameplay looked intresting


all and all, I want to play but i dont have 3DS

[Dizcrybe]

Do you have a Wii U?

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Do you have a Wii U?

no i don't but I want to get one, I have a wii but they are not making games for it 

[Dizcrybe]

Probably because it's 6 years old

[Narukami07]

Hmm since I started talking about it in the Status Bar I guess I'll expand my thoughts here somewhat because I don't wanna send mixed messages I guess. Also keep in mind that I haven't even finished the game (I doubt my opinion will change when I do), I haven't touched it for a while due to the shock of the disappointment!! Before release people might remember me as one of the people who was quickest to defend the direction they were going and stuff because somehow I was convinced it'd be great .. and while I'll probably still defend the direction, yeah just read on I guess.

 

As mentioned I have probably never been so disappointed in a Sonic game before, I feel like this is my first real experience of the Sonic Cycle, especially since journalists hyped it up so much! My own fault for falling for it, I know, but why did people who had played it make it sound like Sonic was saved? Christ.

 

But Lost World isn't really a bad game, it has tons of great ideas hidden behind stupid design choices and shameless imitations. Yeah, while I initially thought "hey it's not copying Mario-" yeah it is, playing it made that much more obvious, Sonic tried too hard to copy Mario and didn't even do it right (mostly the gravity thing, but also level tropes in general).

 

There are soo many ways Lost World could be easily improved and turned into something great, which is why I will continue to defend the direction it's going in unless the next game turns out even worse (fingers crossed)

 

The parkour mechanic feels LOVELY when it's done right. The hugest problem with it and every other new mechanic is that the game does a HORRIBLE job of explaining how to do it, how everything works, the tutorial buttons are so out of the way that you have to STOP DEAD and check the Gamepad incase it tells you anything useful (and usually it doesn't). When you introduce a fresh mechanic that isn't immediately obvious to use by randomly playing with the controller (we don't live in an era where you can do everything with 2 buttons anymore, Lost World least of all) a good, comfortable but not too intrusive or patronising tutorial is paramount, that's game design 101 jfc and Sonic Team completely failed at game design 101 congrats Sonic Team. I don't know which part of them decided that just because we don't need a jumping tutorial must also mean we don't want a tutorial for how to run and jump across walls suspended above death pits.

 

Another thing, lives. Times have changed since the NES days where dying in one hit was normal. If a game is going to throw random cheap events at you that kill you and you have no idea they're coming until you're already dead, said game should probably not have a life system at all. Case in point, Rayman Origins and Legends. Has a lot of trial and error based gameplay but does so with finesse because you have infinite lives and you can retry the bit as many times as you like very quickly, seamlessly! For some reason, Sonic Team decided to make it easier than ever to suffer a bottomless pit death AND make lives harder to come by than previous Sonic games. Not sure why they thought this was "fun"! Another important point to game design, enjoyability is paramount, challenge and frustration do not go hand in hand, if your game design is more frustrating than the gained reward can suppress then you fucked up.

 

But man positives, Sonic Lost World has some really cool mechanics! A run button is a great idea, a spindash button is a great idea, and parkour is a fantastic idea! It also feels fantastic when it works. The problem is that running doesn't build momentum, and platforming sections can be very difficult when you can barely jump far at all from a standing position and holding the run button to do a running jump barely ever does anything. If it were up to me, I'd say ditch the gravity gimmick and have Sonic's movement heavily based on gaining momentum like the "classics". Spindash doesn't even do it that badly, when you jump in spindash you keep going, you can go pretty far! That's exactly what I want to see, but I want to feel like going down hills makes me go faster and I need speed to get up hills, and I want running to not slow down every time I turn around. If I'm Sonic and I'm parkouring around the universe I want to feel like the most free motherfucker in all of freedom. I CAN RUN SO FAST, AND RUN OVER ALL THESE WALLS, EFFORTLESSLY, AND IT FEELS AMAZING. That's what Sonic Lost World /could/ be.

 

And speaking of freedom and turning that brings me clumsily to my last point.

 

Don't make a game that supposedly emphasises multiple routes and explorability if the camera is only ever facing forward. Because jesus christ some of these stages have genuinely interesting multi-layered designs and I /want/ to explore it all but the game won't let me look backwards!!

 

See what I mean? There is all the potential in SLW's mechanics and formula for a fantastic game, the perfect 3D Sonic even, but dumb design, bottomless pits, Marioing everywhere, too much insta-death, no rewarding feeling of speed, and freedom-restricting camera, stop Lost World from being a World full of Lost things to find and instead makes it a World that you think should get Lost. (because you would rather use these mechanics someplace else.)

 

Sonic isn't Mario, floating above bottomless pits game design doesn't work hand in hand with speed, and neither do enemies that kill you in one hit out of nowhere work hand in hand with having lives. Make multilayered explorable stages without bottomless pits, just bottom layers and higher layers like Sonic 1-3. Lovely. Beautiful. It's not /that/ hard to avoid bottomless pits in stage design.

 

Fix pls. Make rly good game next. I know u can do it.

 

This is pretty much my impression on the game for the most part, having just finished it (despite a few disagreements).

 

Hopefully the next game pulls another Colors 2.0 in terms of reception and quality. :3

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

I swear, I'm the /only/ one who absolutely loves this game.

By no means are you alone.

[Milo]

Guess Who of Sonic Retro has posted the site's Retro Review of the 3DS version (to my knowledge there's not a review of the Wii U version yet There is a review of the Wii U version posted back in November by GeneHF. The timegap between the Wii U and 3DS reviews is actually acknowledged in the 3DS review. I didn't find it in their news archives though.).

 

It's...not pretty. It's also twice as long as GeneHF Wii U ver. review, so into the spoiler tags it goes.

 

"God, where do I even begin?

 

Sonic Lost World for the 3DS is the latest in a recent trend of handheld Sonic games – while there was a long string of completely original Sonic titles, from many of the Game Gear titles all the way to the Advance and Rush series, the last couple have instead been downscaled versions of their console counterparts: Colors, Generations, and now Lost World. Why this is the case, I don’t know, because it will invariably result in comparing these games to their consistently better big brothers, and in every case they fall short, including this one. Which is tremendously worrisome, considering the Wii U version of the game didn’t exactly set a high bar to begin with.

 

From a mechanical standpoint, Sonic Lost World comes off as confused. It’s almost like a Mario game that’s trying oh so very hard to be a Sonic game. The controls factor into this feeling heavily; like a Mario game, there’s no acceleration or momentum, you just hold a direction and get instantly propelled forward in that direction, and if you want to go faster, you hold a run button. That’s not to say there aren’t Sonic-y elements, of course. You can spin dash with the X or Y button, which earns you a good bit of speed but at the cost of awkward handling. While jumping, there’s a variety of context-sensitive actions you can do. If there’s no enemies nearby after jumping, pressing jump again double-jumps a la Sonic Colors, and pressing the spin dash button does a stomp. If there’s enemies to lock-on to, however, you’ll get the traditional homing attack by pressing jump again, or a new “somersault” move if you press the spin dash button, which stuns enemies. Somehow.

 

There is one significant change to the homing attack in this game that I should mention. Sonic will now automatically homing attack groups of enemies, so you only have to press the button once and he will attack several enemies in a row. This sounds like it might be useful in theory, but in practice it’s terrifying. More than once I’ve tried to attack an enemy, and sure, Sonic will attack it, but then he’ll also fly ten yards backwards to attack an enemy offscreen, sometimes across a pit. Gross! Ultimately it’s an addition that, even if it did work less unpredictably, feels kind of useless. There was no harm in just pressing the homing attack button multiple times to hit multiple enemies before.

 

The somersault also seems a bit tacked-on, and sometimes it’s not entirely clear when you should use it. Mostly you want to use it on enemies that are otherwise protected from attack; for instance, using it on an Orbinaut will cause the Orbinaut to drop its spiky orbs, allowing you to homing attack it without getting hit. It doesn’t really adds any strategy or thought to combat, though, it’s just an extra step and a waste of time.

 

Also returning from Sonic Colors are Wisps. I really enjoyed Wisps in Colors, personally. I thought it was the first time in a while Sonic Team came up with a new game gimmick that actually meshed well with Sonic gameplay and kept up the pace and flow. In the 3DS version, the only returning Wisps are Laser, Drill, and Burst (from the DS version of Colors). The rest – Lightning, Quake, and Asteroid – are all new. Lightning stands out as the least offensive of the bunch, allowing you to zap around and move between “lightning rods” to access different routes. The other two are frankly painful. Asteroid basically lets you make tremendously long jumps and sort of hover for a bit, the problem being that the jump is disgustingly floaty and it can be difficult to judge where you will land, even with stereoscopic 3D on. Quake relies on the 3DS’s gyroscope controls, requiring you to tilt and turn the 3DS to aim Sonic’s trajectory as he rolls through obstacles. This controls exactly as well as it sounds. The worst part is, it’s not even the most awful use of 3DS gyroscope controls in the game.

 

One big new feature Sega made a point of hyping up before the game’s release is the new “parkour” system. In truth, this system isn’t terribly new to the Sonic franchise. Shadow the Hedgehog, of all games, implemented the main part of this feature years ago, allowing you to run across walls and jump across to the opposite wall to cross gaps or avoid obstacles below. Lost World takes it one slight step further, allowing you to run up a wall so that you can reach spaces you may not be able to simply jump to. Funnily enough, as you might already notice from the description, this works and controls almost exactly like the cat suit in Super Mario 3D World, which makes me curious exactly how much influence Nintendo had on this game. (Apparently not enough, because 3D World is far and away the better game.) Overall, the implementation of this whole mechanic is… okay. It works! It’s not fundamentally broken! There’s really not much else to say about it, it’s not particularly bothersome or particularly enjoyable.

 

So the core mechanics of the game are reasonably sound, if not particularly compelling, but that’s not enough to immediately discourage anyone from giving it a try. But, well, you might notice there was a pretty substantial gap between the Retro Review of the Wii U version and this one. The reason is because this game is so unbearable it took me this long to force myself to finish it, and primarily at fault is the level design. The game starts out well enough, with Windy Hill serving as a typical, simple level with open spaces and plenty of tutorial spots to help you learn the ropes. The problem is that once you leave Windy Hill, everything goes to hell. Desert Ruins starts off the Cirque du Merde by introducing the Asteroid wisp and asking you to cross giant, empty chasms with it’s floaty-ass jump and immense momentum. Yes, momentum! They decided it was a good idea to make the Asteroid Wisp incredibly difficult to stop, so you will frequently barely make a jump only to fall off the platform a second later because the god damned thing just keeps moving. And good luck trying to change directions with it.

 

One wonderful (did I say wonderful, whoops, meant “miserable”, the keys are like right next to each other) mechanic Sega likes to reuse in Lost World’s levels is pushing balls around. One act of Tropical Coast involves filling up a room with water to raise a platform higher and higher by going to separate areas and pushing fruit onto switches to raise the water level. Over and over and over. Because, really, that’s what people enjoy about Sonic games, the parts where you slowly push stuff around to get it onto a switch. This mechanic is brought to its most absurd extremes in Frozen Factory, where an entire fifteen-minute act consists of doing this, the second half of which has you followed by a giant sentient snowball that you can’t kill, only stun, and that will freeze you if you touch it and bring the ball you’re pushing back to its starting point if it comes in contact. Someone was paid to create this. Someone else was paid to go “yes, that’s a good idea, ship it.” Consider this for a moment.

 

At the end of each “zone”, you of course fight a boss, one of the Deadly Six. I don’t think I have anything worth saying about these. They’re simple and boring and typically have you use some Wisp power against them. The last world, Lava Mountain, is basically a giant boss rush where you fight all these dudes again with nothing in between. Whatever. Utterly forgettable.

 

This game also has special stages, because for some reason (with the sole exception of Sonic Heroes) Sonic Team has decided special stages are only a thing in their handheld titles. In this instance, they are a terrible, terrible thing. The basic concept is that Sonic is floating in what I assume is space, and you have to fly him around the great empty void collecting spheres and avoiding obstacles. Sounds simple enough, right? But, no, no, no, this is Sonic Team, we have a very strict rule against making sense. Let’s make Sonic controlled by the 3DS gyroscope. And let’s make the sensitivity so low you have to play in a god damned swivel chair to actually move around. (I’m not exaggerating. I literally sat in a swivel chair and spun around so I could navigate these.) I honestly don’t know why they even bothered with special stages when they could’ve just done without them.

 

So that’s the game, basically. Let’s talk graphics! I’ll admit, the game actually looks pretty decent for a 3DS game. There’s antialiasing when you have 3D off, and with it on there’s a nice sense of depth to the environment. Either way, you’re playing with a fairly stable thirty frames per second. You can see how they cheated just a bit in some cases – rings are sprites, for instance, not 3D models – but you’ll hardly notice in normal gameplay. The soundtrack is done almost entirely by Tomoya Ohtani, director on Sonic 2006 and Sonic Unleashed and composer on Sonic Colors. Ohtani possesses incredible talent, but I can’t help but feel like he was stretched a bit thin on this soundtrack. There’s some standout tracks, absolutely, but a bit too many unmemorable ones. Sonic soundtracks are great for their variety – some tracks from Wave Master’s other greats like Fumie Kumatani or Kenichi Tokoi would’ve really helped liven it up.

 

So, Sonic Lost World for the 3DS isn’t great. It’s mediocre even at its high points, and straight-up garbage at its worst. I know, I know, oh, look at me, I’m reviewing a Sonic game and calling it trash, what an incredibly new and interesting viewpoint. But honestly, it’s kind of painful for me. Sonic Colors was so good! It was like a magical wave of purity that washed over me and gave me hope and made me believe in love again. Or at the very least, it was a flawed but still incredibly fun game with a lot of new ideas and great presentation. Generations was a very strong follow-up that made huge improvements on Unleashed’s gameplay with tighter controls and more elaborate (albeit less challenging) level design. But Lost World? Lost World just abandons all the progress the series has made over the past few years and makes changes for the sake of making changes. It’s starting to feel like we’re back to that aimless Sonic Team of years gone by that doesn’t really know how to make a great Sonic game and, even worse, doesn’t really care that much. And I think that’s the most worrying, but also most important thing to take away from Sonic Lost World. Here’s to hoping there’s someone over there that can see what a misstep they’ve taken and can get the series back on track."

[Tails spin]

Eh, at this point i dont care for reviews i like lost world 3ds and thats all that matters

[Candescence]

Superlink's post is mostly what I'm getting from the Wii U version so far, really.

 

So far, as I suspected, the core gameplay faults seem to rest more with the sheer unrefined technical state of the mechanics mixed in with some very odd design decisions. It's fairly obvious even at this point that the game has some fantastic core gameplay ideas that could go above and beyond the Boost games if given the chance, but it's restricted by a studio who doesn't seem to have a damn clue what they're doing, for whatever reason, which is a huge shame. I like it so far, but it feels like a game with a lot of potential squandered by an incompetent studio.

 

Also, hilariously, it's incredibly easy to get a lot of lives by just playing the NiGHTS and Yoshi levels (I somehow managed to get the Deadly Six Edition despite not pre-ordering, weird), and the re-implementation of the 100-ring lives makes in-level life gain rather easy even early on, they clearly didn't design the ring distribution with that mechanic in mind. Though considering what I've heard of the difficulty in later levels, this is probably a blessing.

[MegasonicZX]

The levels later on actually aren't that bad, just make sure to be careful when proceeding through certain parts of stages and as a tip for a certain ice stage, if you don't hold the run button you can do normal jumps (without slowing down too).

[SuperLink]

Actually while I have access to this place I'm gonna take the time to post my final impressions on the game, which I completed both versions of due to lack of laptop boredom. While initially I believed the 3DS version to be superior, that's been flipped somewhat.

 

My view hasn't changed too much, but after cooling off and giving the game its own time, I actually found the Wii U version pretty enjoyable in the end. The patch helped - tons, because by far one of my biggest frustrations with the game was getting a Game Over on a level with stupidly dumb bottomless pit placement, the platforming in 2D sections is far too sluggish and I stick by my idea that lives should be scrapped completely in a game so reliant on trial and error, dying a lot is fine when you have regular checkpoints (which is rarely a problem) and infinite lives (which isn't a big problem anymore). I've also gotta say that SLW is far more fun to play as an A to B game, just run forward through the level in any way you choose, and that's pretty fun. Unfortunately however the game actually seems to punish you for backtracking or exploring, which is ironic considering SEGA apparently wanted to have the world more explorable.. the camera and controls just don't make for that kind of gameplay and it makes the game infinitely more frustrating when you try to take your time and explore, ironically the game is more fun if you just go forwards all the time your own way. A shame.

 

Next is the gravity and spherical nature of stages. Seems harmless right? Thing is, in Mario Galaxy it served a point by allowing the player to play with the gravity physics and the way this affected platforming and flying through space. On SLW.. it's just boring, static, constantly sucking you down, absolutely no fun physics at play here, it's literally pointless. In some situations it removes the problem of bottomless pits, but if that was the goal why are bottomless pits by far the biggest death-causer in the game? It feels like they were trying to do what Mario Galaxy did whilst managing to have no idea from a design perspective why Galaxy did it in the first place. It effects the gameplay in no way at all besides more camera problems and headaches.

 

To add to my notion that the main flaw in the gameplay is its dumb cheap difficulty (and slowness), I found myself really enjoying myself when I finally unlocked Super Sonic. I sped through every stage without worrying about exploring, Super Sonic is really fast, he can jump high, playing as him is just darn rewarding compared to the rest of the game, I can't believe I'm saying this but the game is more fun when a lot of the challenge is just outright removed. Also the slowness doesn't really help you avoid dying, it just makes jumping over the bottomless pits way too hard and sluggish (something else Super Sonic is way better at).

 

Bringing me onto the 3DS version I kinda hated it in the end. What started out really promising with good fair stage design and tutorials and explained smooth gameplay just turned into FLOATING PLATFORMS FEAT. POINTLESS WISPS: THE GAME. Seriously, the later level designs are just ridiculous, labyrinths with no sense of direction or flow, repeated gimmicks that make you feel you're replaying the same section over and over, stupid platform placement over bottomless pits.. again it'd be far worse if lives were hard to come by in this version.

 

In the end, while the Wii U version is fuckin stupid for doing a terrible job of explaining how to actually play the game and for occasional clunky controls, getting used to it gives you the most rewarding experience as the levels stay at least decent throughout the game, with some clever bits here and there. Once you get past the first world or so on the 3DS version, the good bits just get rarer and rarer until the whole thing is plain frustrating to get through. Not even Super Sonic could make those later levels enjoyable for me. When I fancy replaying SLW for fun (which I imagine I will eventually) I'll be going with the Wii U version and not touching the 3DS version.

 

Also after collecting my opinions I watched Johnny Vs Sonic Lost World and found myself gobsmacked by how similar his views are to mine, and he puts his thoughts into words well. I recommend it.

 

My 2 cents. You can keep them actually, I don't know why I have these cents in the first place I'm British.

[Thigolf]

 

(I somehow managed to get the Deadly Six Edition despite not pre-ordering, weird)

 

It's not surprising, honestly, the game sold awfully, so it's still in its first run.

 

Heck, the "limited" edition of S&AR Transformed is still the only one I see in stores, one year after the game's release.

[Indigo Rush]

No idea if this was ever shared, but our friend over at Sonic Zone: 0 has written a rather lengthy but fair review of Lost World (Wii U):

 

http://www.soniczone0.com/blog/index.php?id=109

 

Whatever you want to say about Sonic games since going 3D, one thing you can't accuse them of is staying the same. They are a far more varied bunch than their 2D brethren, and SEGA have constantly experimented with new ideas to not only try to capture the essence of Sonic in the third dimension, but also seeing what new gameplay mechanics can be deployed to make it more interesting. Opinions on the results have often varied, to put it mildly, and so they kept trying, diversity brought on by an endless stream of feedback. Finally, it seemed they had found something that both critical and fan reception agreed was pretty good in Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations, and peace was restored. 

Now we know how to make a 3D Sonic game, right? Well yes, but one thing all those wildly diverse Sonic games were good at was getting your hopes up. Maybe the next game will work better than the last. No? How about the next? They can always come up with new ways of making fans hopeful and thus still interested in the franchise, but it seems to me like the one thing SEGA are truly afraid of is Sonic becoming stale and same-y. 

Why else would you make the new Wii U game, Sonic Lost World, one of the most different Sonic experiences yet after finally finding a gameplay mechanic that works? Gone are the frenzied euphoric dashes through detailed environments, boost button firmly under finger. It's a game that for the most part relieves the blue blur of a lot of his speed and traditional momentum physics, and puts him in a far more simplistic, fanciful and less ordered world than he's accustomed to. Yet at the same time, it emphasises, more than any other game in the series, the technical joy of proper platforming and an ingenious variety of objects, hazards and gimmicks the likes of which have been few and far between until now. One could say it's the absolute antithesis of "boost to win" gameplay. 

With such a varied fan-base to contend with, Sonic Lost World was always going to be a game that divided opinion. Whether you're a classic purist, a modern speed freak, or someone just looking for a great technical platforming experience, whatever your first thoughts were on seeing the game in action, I would imagine they would not change much upon playing it.. But let's find out anyway... 

So we begin with the story. The opening cutscene certainly has a ring of nostalgia about it, as we find Sonic and Tails chasing Eggman across the skies on their trusty, original, Tornado, hoping to secure a last capsule full of animals. Apparently Eggman has taken an endearingly back-to-basics approach with his latest evil scheme. A scuffle sees our heroes hurtling towards a floating land called Lost Hex - and that's pretty much the only background we're given on what the hell this place is and why it's here. 

It transpires though that alongside turning Sonic's thousands of furry friends into nuts and bolts, Eggman's also acquired the subservience of the Deadly Six, a colourful cast of villains whose powers are controlled by blowing into a mystical shell. Early on, Sonic makes the mistake of relieving Eggman of this shell, causing the Deadly Six to go nuts, take control of the hoards of vintage badniks that have been shipped in straight from the 90's, and generally run amok. Queue the unlikely teaming up of Sonic and his oldest foe to foil the Six's dastardly plan of sucking up all of the energy from the planet below to make themselves ever more powerful. 

Though things start out quite cheesy, the numerous cutscenes actually begin to demonstrate some interesting character development (well, by Sonic game standards anyway) as the three main protagonists progress through the story. Eggman at one point demonstrates some surprisingly violent anger, and the whole situation actually causes some noticeable tension between Sonic and Tails. It's also quite interesting to see how Sonic, not known for his emotional displays, reacts to everything going wrong, and for once being in the wrong himself. It's not exactly Shakespeare, and the dialogue isn't as funny as Sonic Colours, but it's not bad. I felt the ending somewhat lacking and anti-climactic though. 

Now the world of Lost Hex is a curious place, and unlike any other from Sonic's world. In what is at least partially an attempt to increase the length and variety of the game by making levels easier for the developers to build, the zones are minimalistic, abstract and perhaps child-like. The ongoing theme is that, although Lost Hex is an incomplete globe of hexagons, most of the places Sonic seems to visit are above this surface, spread out across floating platforms amongst the clouds, leading to level design reminiscent of what a lot of Sonic Heroes levels turned out to be. 

As is now very much the norm, the game's zones divide themselves fairly evenly between 2D and 3D portions - some are entirely one or the other, others mix and match at certain points. In both dimensions though, many platforms and chunks of ground tend to employ the use of gravity in ways that will be extremely familiar to anyone who's played Mario Galaxy 1 or 2, and the comparisons are hard to ignore when you see Sonic running around huge spheres with their own gravity field. Other examples are more Sonic-ified, such as long looping cylindrical structures that only Sonic's speed could traverse quickly, and the 2D camera will often twist with Sonic as curved walls become floors while you walk across them. I suppose it's a shame that they've had to borrow so heavily from another, very popular game that's very well known for using this effect - It's almost a little embarrassing actually. If you can get Sonic to dash across these structures then it's at least interesting to see what he can do with them that Mario can't. 

I say if you can get Sonic to dash because the other key aspect that will immediately grab you about Lost World is that it's easily the slowest Sonic game in recent memory. This is very deliberate and represents the recent realisation that some people aren't crazy about Sonic simply running everywhere very very quickly. There are still bursts of speed, but these are quite rare, and instead this game caters much more to the cerebral Sonic player, with all manner of platform-hopping layouts and trials in timing and precision to encounter. 

To accommodate this, the engine needed to change, and it changed drastically - most notably that Sonic now has two gears - walking and running, with the latter only accessed by holding the right trigger. Of course objects like speed zippers and springs will send you off as quickly as they ever did, and the left trigger unleashes the spin dash, though this is more useful for climbing long curved walls than injecting a prolonged period of acceleration. The truth is, unless the game wants you to move particularly quickly, you won't, and there will be times that you'll really want Sonic to get a move on, even while holding the run button down tightly. 

I admit, it may be a difficult adjustment to make initially, and one that I do worry slightly contradicts the child-friendly aesthetics of the game, perhaps being too complicated for the young ones. On top of that, you have a wide range of moves at your disposal. Although A, B and Y buttons are all jump, they perform differently when pressed again in the air. Without a homing target around, A and B double jump, while Y performs a bounce. With an enemy nearby, the B button turns into the homing attack (which can now chain multiple targets with one press), while pressing Y gets you a new kick attack, which sends the badnik flying. It's a nice idea that employs a bit more strategy, as some badniks require one or the other to defeat, or both in a certain order. My only gripe is that it's rarely obvious, visually, which badniks need which attack until you've found out the hard way, as the wrong method can result in ring loss. 

One of the more difficult moves to master though is the wall run. Jump up to a wall while holding L and Sonic will attempt to run up it until he loses all momentum or can grab on to the ledge at the top and hoist himself up. It takes a little practise to jump between adjacent walls while in 2D, allowing you to keep on going when done correctly, but doing the same in 3D is something I'm yet to master. 

It all takes some getting used to, particularly the reduced speed and more prescribed sense of momentum, but after a while it sort of all makes sense, and I began to find that jumping Sonic from one platform to another feels more accurate and reliable than it's ever really been, particularly in the third dimension. Just last night I managed, first time, to retrieve a red star ring by carefully jumping across a couple of very small platforms, requiring the momentum from different running speeds. In pretty much any other 3D Sonic game this would have been challenging at best, and almost impossible at worst. Without different gears, we've been slipping off of narrow pathways or over-shooting jumps and dashes for years now, but thanks to the new system, it was rarely a problem for me. 

Not only that, but considering factors such as the gear that you should approach a jump in, whether you should employ the double jump in mid-air, or if you'll just about make it with the wall run or clinging onto the edge.. it all adds a slightly more strategic element to basic platform hopping that's relatively new to the series. Overall, with one notable exception that I will get to in a minute, I would say that technically this is a very solid title, with little in the way of bugs or control issues. Most types of movement feel sturdy and precise. 

The game offers seven levels, each split into four zones (notice they've gone with the Sonic CD school of confusingly referring to what are normally acts as zones, and what are traditionally zones as unnamed clusters of stages). An eighth is unlocked upon completion, plus more zones appear at certain points, the criteria for which remain unknown to me at this moment. Everything is accessible by plotting Sonic round a top-down map made of hexagons, with zones, bonuses and other items appearing on certain panels. We'll cover all that later. 

There's no denying that this time they've certainly opted for very generic level themes across the seven main clusters of zones - green hills, desert, beach, snowy, lava - you can't get much more route 1 platformer than that. However, as advertised early on during promotion, the zones in each level diversify greatly, sometimes into what would normally be thought of as completely different, and more specific level themes. Desert Ruins Zone 3, which gains an extra letter 's' and becomes a ludicrous food-based world, and Frozen Factory's casino level are still the best examples of this. After seeing that Desert Ruins has at least three totally different themes within it, I was curious about whether every other level would match this too. Sadly it doesn't quite work out like that, with some themes reappearing within different levels - the whole of level 6 for example is a total cop out, with no great discernible theme of its own other than simply more clouds. Despite this though, the new philosophy on level creation checks out, as we have at least a dozen completely different types of location in this game, plus many small permeations, compared to the usual maximum of only nine. 

Although the highly generic central themes become more specific, I can't deny that this particular visual direction is not for me. The simplistic style and cartoon-like look to the trees, mountains and clouds is far more Mario than Sonic, and it struggles to gel with anything we've seen before in the series, which has traditionally favoured occasionally fanciful ideas but always within a certain realistic aesthetic framework. Much of the game lacks that slightly more serious tone Sonic has always had over Mario, and forgets its normally quite active pursuit of seeking out whole new ideas for themes and locations (see Sonic Colours for excellent examples). I rarely felt the wonder and excitement upon first arriving at a brand new level that I normally look forward to more than anything else in a new Sonic game, simply because I'd pretty much seen everything done a million times before, not just in Sonic but many other generic platformers before it. 

It doesn't help that most levels, at least their initial zones anyway, are simply an arrangement of various blocks strewn across the sky, with no sort of detailed structure holding them together. You definitely get the impression that the developers saw Mario Galaxy and said "let's make a Sonic game just like that" - my most optimistic thoughts are that this was only supposed to be a starting point of inspiration, but just ended up borrowing way too heavily from it. Some zones, such as Tropical Coast 2 - which has Sonic luring giant watermelons and pineapples across spherical planetoids into equally large fruit juicer blades - could be put straight into one of the Galaxy games with absolutely no adjustment whatsoever. 

However, when you're chased by huge tropical fruits rather than boulders or killer whales, you have to admit, you're in a world with slightly further boundaries of what's possible. Things can happen that don't normally happen and luckily, along with Mario's unfortunate aesthetics come by far his best attribute, and the one aspect I have always wanted Sonic to be inspired by - the sheer variety of level content and gimmicks. When Sonic runs at ridiculous speeds, there's only so much variety one can encounter in that type of gameplay. When he trots around at a slower pace within a wackier, more abstract and colourful world however, the perfect storm is created to make this one of the most inventive and imaginative Sonic games around, and I'm thrilled that they've actually taken as much advantage of such an opportunity as I would have liked. 

Sonic spends the entirety of Frozen Factory Zone 2 inside a giant snowball that you must roll around between narrow walkways, sticking collected rings on the outside surface. A later zone mimics Sky Chase but without the plane, as Sonic glides side-scrolling across a windy sky strewn with obstacles, while in others you must hide from the search lights of a large mechanical owl, or dodge huge purple sand creatures with massive jaws. New ideas to Sonic are explored; in one zone, running outside of one edge of the screen will have you reappear on the other, and elsewhere, Sonic and his surroundings are cast in a black silhouette until you pull Sandopolis style light switches. There's more familiar ideas too, such as levels entirely consisting of grinding, albeit with the twist of controlling your speed by hopping to different coloured rails, and of course the classic pinball table segment is here too. Refreshingly, the amount of generic objects across all levels, normally red coloured and consisting of speed devices or pulleys etc, and which frequently plague modern Sonic games, are kept to a bare minimum here. In their place are much more level-specific features and obstacles, which may be no more complicated than a sheep that you bounce off of, or a flower bud that opens up as a larger platform when hit. It all adds up though and by the end you really feel like you've covered a lot of different ground in the game. 

The Wisps - little aliens in item boxes that give Sonic new super powers - are also part of this attempt at mixing up the gameplay a bit, though unfortunately they represent the one main area that I feel is technically flawed to a significant degree. Luckily they don't quite appear often enough to totally ruin the game, though when they do, use of them is quite often essential. The problem stems mostly from their use with the gamepad, which I felt seemed only to be used for the sake of it more than anything else - some require you to stop what you're doing, look down and drag your finger around the screen, others have you looking at your TV but tilting the controller, and others don't seem to require any special feature of the pad at all. I dreaded having to use them really, they're just inconsistent, disorientating and quite often really don't work very well at all. I still don't quite know how to fully control the Rhythm Wisp, and as for the Laser, well this little bastard raised alarm bells when I saw him in previews both at Summer of Sonic and Eurogamer, and I also saw countless people wondering how the hell it works and what it's even really for. That was perfect user testing that should have made them rethink things a bit, but of course it hasn't at all. 

Any sort of in-game help is quite minimal in general, and this is particularly missed when it comes to the Wisps, where it's needed most. After getting the Hover Wisp I could see a long line of rings that - I know from Sonic Colours - I should be able to light dash across, but it didn't seem to be explained anywhere how I could make this happen or anything about said maneuver whatsoever. Sadly, as I found out first hand during an interview with Takashi Iizuka himself, Wisp power-ups are here to stay as a regular feature in Sonic games. Though they were a little intrusive in Sonic Colours, they were at least handled very well. Unless they can return to that degree of quality, and preferably ditch their use of any interaction method that isn't a button or a thumbstick, then I don't look forward to their return at all. 

Lost World has a very traditional and rather casual approach to bosses. For the first time in absolutely ages (I'm talking Sonic Advance, maybe Sonic Advance 3 at the latest), most bosses can be found at the ends of levels, rather than in dedicated boss arenas. They're quite frequent (every other zone in fact), but because more is at stake if you lose, you'll find they're usually quite straightforward, and also small scale compared to the massive bosses Sonic usually has to fight nowadays. Despite their frequency, they're not too repetitive and I wouldn't mind replaying them afterwards as part of the levels. And let's be honest, how often do you normally choose to play boss levels again, for fun? Later on, you also seem to quietly learn a technique to increase the strength of your homing attack, to deal with bosses more quickly too. 

Each boss is of course one of the Deadly Six, patrolling a level each, and unfortunately you tend to be able to somehow hear their thoughts as you get closer to meeting them, throughout their zones. Some of the characters offer mildly amusing voice overs, such as the girl or the emo fella (I've no idea what their names are - I'm not sure it's important really), but others, such as the first one, who is irritatingly mental, kind of ruin the experience quite a lot. And it's always annoying when you keep dying on a particular bit and have to hear the same piece over and over. They're not a patch on Eggman's hilarious tannoy announcements from Colours. 

Speaking of dying, prepare to do rather a lot of it as this game is no pushover. You'll regularly be falling into pits or finding ingenious new ways for Sonic to kick the bucket instantly that you would swear, ordinarily, would just cause ring loss. Though this is not without frustration, it rarely feels unfair as the controls are so tight this time around, you've really no one to blame but yourself, and it's certainly no worse than anything Mario regularly dishes up. Also, they've finally implemented a very simple idea I've been suggesting for ages - don't restart the music upon each death. It's surprisingly effective at reducing frustration. Extra lives are few and far between too, especially as the ever useful 100 ring bonus life is curiously absent. Replaying Desert Ruin Zone 2 is your best bet, which can give at least five extra lives relatively easily. 

Though Game Overs will be plentiful, there is a very curious and surprising addition that makes up for the lack of lives. Should you return to the same checkpoint a certain number of times or get down to your last chance, an item box with a wing symbol appears nearby, which simply teleports you to the next checkpoint. For me, the jury's still very much out on whether this is a good idea or not. On the one hand it's saved me a lot of bother in having to deal with particularly frustrating sections, but on the other I did feel that I kind of cheated a little bit, and there are still portions of levels I've yet to defeat because of it. If you could gather enough lives, you're theoretically guaranteed to have most of the game beaten for you. Then again, inputing up, down, left, right, A and start into Sonic 1 has the same effect and is a heck of a lot quicker too. 

The game feels fairly substantial in size, not so much in the amount of levels but their duration, as most of them are satisfyingly lengthy - especially if you keep dying in them. I still managed to beat the game over a weekend though, including long gaps of time where I actually went outside too, so I still don't know if it's as long a game as it could be, which is a shame, given their devotion to making level creation a more efficient process. There's the usual amount of extra stuff to do afterwards, including red star rings, time trials, unlockable hidden zones and even an Omochao-lead feature that offers three little side missions at a time, just like mobile games do. Unfortunately though, other than pretty much just the very first zone, multiple routes in the levels is not a strong point in this game, from what I've found so far at least, so if you're hoping for some further exploration afterwards then you're unlikely to have much luck. 

Lastly, the game is accompanied by a very good, and varied soundtrack, bringing the stages to life as they always do. It's possibly not the best, as there are few that I would say are absolute instant classics, but there are no real disasters either. Favourites include Windy Hill 1, Desert Ruins 1 and 2, Tropical Coast 3 (a beautiful piano piece) and the very Sonic-y and melodic Sky Road Zone 1 to name a few. I'm desperately looking for a full rip to tide me over til the OST is released next month! 

My excitement levels for this game were admittedly not as high as they have been for pretty much every other major Sonic game in history, and its good and bad points were pretty much exactly what I expected them to be. I probably won't be playing the levels over and over again all that much either. However, I come away from this game generally very satisfied, and feeling that they've done a good job. What it lacks in a less than impressive or interesting art direction, and a philosophy that borrows too heavily from another series, rather than a unique look of its own, it makes up for in its great use of ideas and level specific features, and a highly precise and technical platforming experience. 

I suppose the question of whether or not you'll enjoy Sonic Lost World is entirely down to your own preferences in Sonic gameplay, and whether it's the cerebral attention to detail you seek, or whether you're more interested in the visceral thrill of a speed sensation. I suppose I'm lucky in that I appreciate both, and in my opinion there's plenty of room for slower, more considered experiences like this. They each have their advantages over the other though. A platform-heavy Sonic game is more free to experiment with interesting ideas, creating a richer first play through that lasts a bit longer too. However, once you've beaten it, it becomes less fun to return to on a regular basis to play again. The opposite is true of a Sonic adventure that you simply blast through. It has less room for variety but the intense thrill of getting a perfect, record-breaking run through a level, without slowing down or getting hit, is all the incentive you need to play over and over again. The visceral pleasure just gets more and more intense compared to your initial play through, which is liable to be clumsy and less satisfying. 

Vexingly, Lost World actually has everything it needs to combine the two experiences quite well, because the couple of occasions in the game in which Sonic builds up a prolonged burst of speed are really enjoyable. A well implemented system to switch seamlessly from a conservative platformer to a thrilling dash, in which Sonic runs by himself and invites you to dodge obstacles, is already in place in this game as if it featured as frequently as every other stage. The honeycomb zone from Desert Ruin is the obvious example, but there's also a series of great runs in Sky Road Zone 1 that have you darting across the surface of those long tube structures, chaining enemies, jumping daringly over gaps and dodging massive Caterkillers erupting from the ground, and it's brilliant! 

Though this game itself is not at all perfect, the ideas it brings to the table are enough to make me wonder; maybe we hadn't necessarily reached the ideal way of doing 3D Sonic. Perhaps there are still new ways of looking at things that aren't necessarily better, but different. Perhaps they can be combined more evenly to create a game that not only makes for a very rewarding first play, but is also one that keeps you yearning for just one more go again, over and over. At first I was sceptical as to why they would want to fix what isn't broken and take a whole new path in developing a game so different from what has proved successful - but now I understand a little better. It's not just for the sake of keeping Sonic from going stale, the thinking man's Sonic game was getting overlooked, but now the sides have become more even, and whole new avenues can be explored. This game, in a way, needed to exist as it does, and I genuinely look forward to seeing where it takes us from here.

 

 

Certainly one of the fairer and more detailed reviews I've read of the game. It makes me want to give Lost World another chance, or at the very least, to appreciate it more despite it's flaws. Sonic Lost World certainly isn't perfect, but I think it could do with more accolades for trying to think outside of the mindset of the proverbial traditional Sonic game.

 

When I get the chance to play it in full on the Wii U, you'll bet I'll be here to give my concise review as well.

[Dizcrybe]

That's the second most positive review of Lost World I've ever seen.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Lost World is comparable to a surf and/or a rollercoaster. Somedays you'll see utmost positivity for it, somedays utter detestment of it, and of course the majority springs, curves, shoots, loops, quivers, and does the most jazz in between, mixed and whatnot.

 

SPeaking of which, I should probably crank out my thoughts into review sometime as well.

[JCWithTheRojoTee]

My 100% completely honest opinion of Sonic Lost World is that it is a great, fun game and that it continues the fun, addicting gameplay started in Sonic Colors. The graphics are amazing, the worlds lush and full of detail, the music (as always) is really well composed and catchy and the gameplay is fast paced and fun, and doesn't feel rushed. Some downfalls, though, are that I do feel that the game has a little TOO much in common with Super Mario Galaxy. It still has just enough to call it a Sonic game, but the is isn't too far from becoming a Mario game with Sonic characters, something that Sonic Colors didn't have a problem with. Even the music has an arguably more Mario-like flair to it (which isn't necessarily a bad thing). It's a good game, but I just hope that Sonic doesn't start to lose his identity with each new game. Sonic Lost World still has just enough to call it a Sonic game, but it doesn't feel like a Sonic game in some aspects. I think if they stick to the formula from Colors, more or less, and keep away from too much Nintendo/Mario influence, Sonic will finally be on top in his own right for the modern generation and fans will finally be able to reach a consensus on the Sonic series being back "On top".

[JAiRO]

The graphics are amazing, the worlds lush and full of detail.

 

It's FPS is great, but the worlds are anything but detailed. The art style is simplistic, and that's okay. Otherwise I agree with you.