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Do people still think Sonic Adventure's a good game?


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I don't see the point in making entire character campaigns optional, if only because that's just a lot of resources given to something that people aren't even going to be obligated to play in the first place.

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I'm going to echo Nep's post from the last page entirely and say that the game doesn't need to fit exactly into Sonic's formula to continue feeling like a Sonic game. It's honestly all the more fun making a game where characters fit to the boundaries of the main mechanics and then experimenting with how far that can be pushed without losing it's essence. That's the very heart of what makes an ambitious game, and I think Adventure did that for the most part very well.

Except Big, in which I ape Nep again. Big being turned into some really goofy / laid back platformer with the most basic of Sonic mechanics would be fun as-is. I like the idea of Big using his fishing rod as a grapple to swing from bars and off of enemies with, and I almost can see Big's gameplay being designed in a way that almost pastiches Billy Hatcher.

Imagine Big's moderately low running speed mixed with rolling down hills involuntarily, or using his stomach to bounce around, all while using the grapple fishpole mechanic (oh yeah, and his ability to swim and float with his floaty pack, since he is a fisher). There, we made a working little Big game that isn't bad to play. Just make his old fishing stages be mini-games a la the snowboard sections, Twinkle Circuit and Hedgehog Hammer, and there you go.

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Imagine Big's moderately low running speed mixed with rolling down hills involuntarily, or using his stomach to bounce around, all while using the grapple fishpole mechanic (oh yeah, and his ability to swim and float with his floaty pack, since he is a fisher). There, we made a working little Big game that isn't bad to play. Just make his old fishing stages be mini-games a la the snowboard sections, Twinkle Circuit and Hedgehog Hammer, and there you go.

I like the idea of him having involuntary rolling a whole bunch after he gets up to a certain speed. Perhaps his fishing pole can even be used to swing him up or reel him into higher speeds. Also, the stomach bounce is a cool idea. Just give him the Bubble Shield's bounce. <3

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I'm going to echo Nep's post from the last page entirely and say that the game doesn't need to fit exactly into Sonic's formula to continue feeling like a Sonic game. It's honestly all the more fun making a game where characters fit to the boundaries of the main mechanics and then experimenting with how far that can be pushed without losing it's essence. That's the very heart of what makes an ambitious game, and I think Adventure did that for the most part very well.

Except Big, in which I ape Nep again. Big being turned into some really goofy / laid back platformer with the most basic of Sonic mechanics would be fun as-is. I like the idea of Big using his fishing rod as a grapple to swing from bars and off of enemies with, and I almost can see Big's gameplay being designed in a way that almost pastiches Billy Hatcher.

Imagine Big's moderately low running speed mixed with rolling down hills involuntarily, or using his stomach to bounce around, all while using the grapple fishpole mechanic (oh yeah, and his ability to swim and float with his floaty pack, since he is a fisher). There, we made a working little Big game that isn't bad to play. Just make his old fishing stages be mini-games a la the snowboard sections, Twinkle Circuit and Hedgehog Hammer, and there you go.

I'm usually strongly against people who request for a Sonic Adventure remake due to the horrors of genre roulette, I quite like what you have said here though. I especially like (akin to Nepenthe) the idea of Big the Cat rolling down hills involuntarily. It resembles Sonic's gameplay whilst still keeping Big's own character. It reminds me of how expressionate Captain Toad is.

I'm not a huge fan of Gamma, but he's not to offensive and kind of gets pulled along by how good his story is.

However, I do feel you have problems when it comes to Knuckles and Amy. They are both, well, boring and especially when compared to Sonic's far more exciting stages. Yet I feel like you can't be authentic to Sonic Adventure and entirely remove the Emerald Hunting or Amy's Slow Plodding sections. What would you change here? How would you bring these stages up to par?

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You seriously can't be for real with this. I mean... Really?

It's by far the worst aspect of both Sonic Adventures and the reason why they are bad games. It is a horror.

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It's by far the worst aspect of both Sonic Adventures and the reason why they are bad games. It is a horror.

Yes. You seem pretty damn keen on this. But what is it that is such a horror? Is it that, god forbid, you can play something that isn't Sonic himself. Oh, how terrible! I'm sure that's right up there with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I'm sure it's up there with Superman 64. I'm sure that's right up there with Big Rigs. No, let's not get into the technicalities here, playing something that isn't Sonic is the anti-Christ that consumes babies, so fuck it all then. Nevermind how people ALL throughout this thread pointed out how the other characters in Sonic Adventure, aside from Big, don't play too dissimilar from Sonic himself. Nevermind how others still have pointed out how other games deviate from the core gameplay every once in a while to mix things up. No, the inappropriately labeled "genre roulette" is the most terrible thing since the Holocaust.

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Yes. You seem pretty damn keen on this. But what is it that is such a horror? Is it that, god forbid, you can play something that isn't Sonic himself. Oh, how terrible! I'm sure that's right up there with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I'm sure it's up there with Superman 64. I'm sure that's right up there with Big Rigs. No, let's not get into the technicalities here, playing something that isn't Sonic is the anti-Christ that consumes babies, so fuck it all then. Nevermind how people ALL throughout this thread pointed out how the other characters in Sonic Adventure, aside from Big, don't play too dissimilar from Sonic himself. Nevermind how others still have pointed out how other games deviate from the core gameplay every once in a while to mix things up. No, the inappropriately labeled "genre roulette" is the most terrible thing since the Holocaust.

I think you are overreacting a tad.

No, Genre Roulette in Sonic Adventure isn't the Holocaust, but it's a poor design choice and significantly dampens the game. Saying that Gamma plays like Sonic is dishonest, and Knuckles and Amy, whilst having the same physics as Sonic, play very differently because their levels and concepts are so atrocious. It's not that they don't play like Sonic so therefore I must hate them, it's that they are either mediocre or poor concepts executed terribly. It's really not a shocking statement. It's why it's in vogue now for fans (including on here) to criticise Sonic Adventure 2, because only 1/3rd of the game has Sonic in it and the rest of it is shoddy. For some reason Sonic Adventure 1 gets a pass, despite 1/6th of the game only having Sonic in it and the other 1/4th being just as bad as Sonic Adventure 2's non Sonic stages. That's another story for another time though. 

I actually like Sonic's stages in Sonic Adventure (shock and horror) but I'm not going to pretend genre roulette wasn't a terrible idea and wasn't horribly executed.

Edited by LindseyWalker
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure people are talking about the objectives and styles of play that are greatly different from Sonic, not the idea of playing as other characters themselves. That's been long established that I don't see how anyone could misinterpret that.

Treasure hunting, for example, has a completely different objective and mechanics to accommodate this, as does Mech Shooting. They may have similar controls, but they are still far removed from each other that people call them different genres.

Edited by ChaosSupremeSonic
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Nevermind how people ALL throughout this thread pointed out how the other characters in Sonic Adventure, aside from Big, don't play too dissimilar from Sonic himself.

 They do, though, no matter how many people say it.

The underlying physics and controls are similar, but their goals, level designs, and abilities are tuned to wildly different aims, producing vastly different kinds of gameplay. There are arguably more similarities between SA Sonic and the boost gameplay than there are between the various characters in SA.

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I'm usually strongly against people who request for a Sonic Adventure remake due to the horrors of genre roulette, I quite like what you have said here though. I especially like (akin to Nepenthe) the idea of Big the Cat rolling down hills involuntarily. It resembles Sonic's gameplay whilst still keeping Big's own character. It reminds me of how expressionate Captain Toad is.

I'm not a huge fan of Gamma, but he's not to offensive and kind of gets pulled along by how good his story is.

However, I do feel you have problems when it comes to Knuckles and Amy. They are both, well, boring and especially when compared to Sonic's far more exciting stages. Yet I feel like you can't be authentic to Sonic Adventure and entirely remove the Emerald Hunting or Amy's Slow Plodding sections. What would you change here? How would you bring these stages up to par?

For Amy, I'd make her a bit faster and make a few areas where there's more emphasis on her using her hammer-vault move to platform, possibly as a means to escape from Zero. On that note, I'd probably make it so that less areas are explicitly her being chased by him, and moreso like Generations' City Escape Classic stage where he's kind of coming in and out of the play area and maybe making more of a mess in the level layout.

For Knuckles, I'd say he isn't stuck so much in one little area of a map and moreso that he travels across the whole stage. Basically, you start off in one area and have to find the emerald shard, then after you find it, Knuckles senses where the next one is from afar, and you continue throughout the main direction of the level until you get to another area where Knuckles knows it's close by (thus when the radar starts to beep). You do that for three shards or so, with the last one leading towards the end of a stage (like it maybe leads to an alternate route in the regular stage) and there you go.

You see, that's my thing. I don't see why Sega feels the need to do such drastically different things with the game design for other characters, and I don't see why fans think the answer is to make everyone's gameplay verbatim to Sonic's. Why not reach a middle ground where the game uses the same general game mechanics (momentum, jump control, speed, slopes / loops, springs, rings, something remotely A-to-B) and tries to see how far they can push it?

Edited by Azoo
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For Amy, I'd make her a bit faster and make a few areas where there's more emphasis on her using her hammer-vault move to platform, possibly as a means to escape from Zero. On that note, I'd probably make it so that less areas are explicitly her being chased by him, and moreso like Generations' City Escape Classic stage where he's kind of coming in and out of the play area and maybe making more of a mess in the level layout.

For Knuckles, I'd say he isn't stuck so much in one little area of a map and moreso that he travels across the whole stage. Basically, you start off in one area and have to find the emerald shard, then after you find it, Knuckles senses where the next one is from afar, and you continue throughout the main direction of the level until you get to another area where Knuckles knows it's close by (thus when the radar starts to beep). You do that for three shards or so, with the last one leading towards the end of a stage (like it maybe leads to an alternate route in the regular stage) and there you go.

You see, that's my thing. I don't see why Sega feels the need to do such drastically different things with the game design for other characters, and I don't see why fans think the answer is to make everyone's gameplay verbatim to Sonic's. Why not reach a middle ground where the game uses the same general game mechanics (momentum, jump control, speed, slopes / loops, springs, rings, something remotely A-to-B) and tries to see how far they can push it?

Really nice ideas! I agree that people freak out a bit when Sonic Team tries to do unconventional Sonic gameplay, but I think the reason why is because they almost always fail when they try. Sonic Team just fell to pieces during the 3D transition.

I would really like to see a more competent developer give Sonic a try. Just imagine what Nintendo could do with Sonic, would probably be like this, ballsy but guarantee-able. 

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If it were me I'd honestly completely overhaul the way Amy plays. She plays similarly enough to Sonic as is, but she's way too clunky and doesn't have enough obstacles that take advantage of her abilities, I think. Give her some stuff to swing off of with her hammer or some crazy jumps to make with  the Hammer jump.  Make her a more acrobatic version of Sonic.

And give her more levels and expand her story a little bit too pls

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Yeah, I'm pretty sure people are talking about the objectives and styles of play that are greatly different from Sonic, not the idea of playing as other characters themselves. That's been long established that I don't see how anyone could misinterpret that.

Treasure hunting, for example, has a completely different objective and mechanics to accommodate this, as does Mech Shooting. They may have similar controls, but they are still far removed from each other that people call them different genres.

So, wait, you're telling me that games can't have different objectives?

...

Oh my God.

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So, wait, you're telling me that games can't have different objectives?

...

Oh my God.

What? Nobody's saying that. The problem is a sum of several parts, not a fixation on one. Different objectives can still fly at a stretch - Azoo made a pretty good point of Knux above, at that - but several characters are so different in goal and playstyle that they have basically nothing to do with Sonic anymore. It's not asking much to have an overarching focus on platforming, speed and point-to-point navigation to unify every character and playstyle in the game at the most basic level. I mean for christ's sake, there are plenty of other games out there I can play for third person fishing, and all of them will do it infinitely better than a Sonic game ever can.

With due respect, maybe you should stop cherry picking small segments of posts and take the whole thing into account, because it's clear you're not seeing the full picture otherwise.

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Is it ok that I actually like this game more then super mario 64, or do I have a serious problem?

Edited by Baraksha
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Your only problem is the spelling of "serious" in that sentence.

Like whatever games you want, bruh. I'll say I think Adventure controls better, and hell, I certainly prefer Sonic's gameplay as a whole over SM64's.

Edited by Shaddy
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So, wait, you're telling me that games can't have different objectives?

...

Oh my God.

Was that actually said anywhere in what you quoted, or nah?

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Was that actually said anywhere in what you quoted, or nah?

That's the implication that was made, and the insinuation that everyone plays so drastically different from each other to the point where they're like they're different games altogether. And honestly, that's retarded. That really is.

If I were to jump in a tank in Battlefield, am I all of a sudden playing a different game, because of it? No. Does jumping in a jet make it a flight simulator, and magically transports me into a different game? No. Does Battlefield all of a sudden become "horrifying", because, my God, I am something other than a dude shooting at other dudes? No.

How about golden prodigy platformer god Mario, huh? Remember how in Mario Galaxy where you had to roll around a ball in an obstacle course? Or how about in Mario Sunshine, with the Blooper Surfing? Or how about any time when you use a powerup to solve a puzzle?

Why is it that doing this stuff is OK in ANY OTHER FRANCHISE except for Sonic, huh? Why is Sonic this special magical exception to this?

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All you're doing is showing you don't really get the point everyone is talking about. Battlefield, for one, is a massive war game, which is completely different to calling it a different game for taking to a tank or going on foot, because the entire objective of the game is to either kill the enemy team or capture the checkpoints of the map to win using the tools at your disposal. Things like tanks and jets complement, if not augment the way you play that game, especially given its competitive metagame that requires some cointer to the things you and your enemies would do in multiplayer.

Mario, being a platformer would be a better comparison, but the mechanics aren't so drastically different whenever you roll on a ball or surf on a blooper.

 Sonic, like Mario, is a platformer, and a fast pace one to boot. His games have the objective of getting from point A to B as fast as possible, and tossing gameplay that runs counter to this is the problem people are having. Mech shooting and Treasure Hunting simply being around isn't the problem, it's them not fitting in this general mold of what the gameplay's selling point is and taking up a lot more room to be more and being somewhat required by the player to unlock the whole game than being just a side game. Mech shooting, at least in SA2, is slow and cumbersome, and Treasure Hunting is tedious in both Adventure games as you have to find all three Emerald pieces in order to advance, which is even more of a bother when they're hidden in really difficult to find places and (especially in SA2's case, as SA1 would flat out point you to the general location) the game's hints want you to have some idea of the level design, which might be frustrating to someone just getting into the game and there's no in-game map. And Amy's gameplay was really downright slow.

These things can actually work - heck, we technically had treasure hunting since S3&K if finding the warp rings hidden in the levels were any indicator. But unlike how it was done there as a side option that wasn't forced on you to progress to the whole part of the game (and before you say it, no S3&K didn't require you to go to the Doomsday Zone, that's for those who wanted to put in the extra work to get the emeralds), the way the Adventures did them puts the at a different end rather than having them complement the base gameplay, hence the reason why people call it "genre roulette." And Unleashed is just another exemplar of this, if not more so at times.

Edited by ChaosSupremeSonic
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And you're still doing fast paced platforming in almost every gameplay style in Sonic Adventure. So no, you really don't have a point. You're not radically switching genres, and you're not playing entirely different games. The most radical departure, aside from Big, is Treasure Hunting. Which still has you going fast and platforming.

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And you're still doing fast paced platforming in almost every gameplay style in Sonic Adventure. So no, you really don't have a point. You're not radically switching genres, and you're not playing entirely different games. The most radical departure, aside from Big, is Treasure Hunting. Which still has you going fast and platforming.

Isn't the important part how they were recieved though?  People don't remember every character being fast-paced platforming, they remember "why wasn't this like Sonic's gameplay", the shooting, the fishing, the slow bits.  They clearly fucked up somewhere for the game to have the reception it does.  No-one's gonna read a post like this and go "oh actually I guess they did have fast-paced platforming technically" and suddenly find them to be pretty much the same gameplay as Sonic when they didn't while playing.  Like CSS said, these things can work in theory but they didn't in SA1.

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Sigh. The fact that this thread even exists..........

If Nintendo released nothing but badly-reviewed Mario games every year, for ten years, would the world still call Mario Galaxy a 9/10 classic by the end? Context controls perception of content.

 

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I think the point shdowhunt is trying to make is that he disagrees with the degree to which people are labeling some of the other gameplay elements as "alien," as do I. Knuckles, Gamma, and Amy aren't what I would consider a complete departure from the base mechanics of an action-platformer and thus unacceptable or not enjoyable. They could stand to use some tweaks in movement and in Amy's case be faster, but this is a different argument than the one people are inherently making when they say "Why can't they play like Sonic?" which is that, well, everyone should just play like Sonic and any kind of character or goal differentiation is unacceptable.

Sigh. The fact that this thread even exists..........

If Nintendo released nothing but badly-reviewed Mario games every year, for ten years, would the world still call Mario Galaxy a 9/10 classic by the end? Context controls perception of content.

Do people still call S3&K a good game?

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That's the implication that was made, and the insinuation that everyone plays so drastically different from each other to the point where they're like they're different games altogether. And honestly, that's retarded. That really is.

If I were to jump in a tank in Battlefield, am I all of a sudden playing a different game, because of it? No. Does jumping in a jet make it a flight simulator, and magically transports me into a different game? No. Does Battlefield all of a sudden become "horrifying", because, my God, I am something other than a dude shooting at other dudes? No.

How about golden prodigy platformer god Mario, huh? Remember how in Mario Galaxy where you had to roll around a ball in an obstacle course? Or how about in Mario Sunshine, with the Blooper Surfing? Or how about any time when you use a powerup to solve a puzzle?

Why is it that doing this stuff is OK in ANY OTHER FRANCHISE except for Sonic, huh? Why is Sonic this special magical exception to this?

Remember when an entire third of Galaxy was dedicated to balancing on a ball, and another third to surfing? I sure don't. You can't honestly compare the occasional gimmick level to characters whose gameplay takes up large fractions of the game.

And no one's giving Mario huge props for stuff like the ball rolling levels. Shit, practically everyone hated Galaxy's manta surfing levels. But Galaxy had the good sense for them to only make up two missions out of 120, rather than literally 1/3 of the game.

And you're still doing fast paced platforming in almost every gameplay style in Sonic Adventure.

No, you aren't. Big is slow as fuck and basically has no platforming and what little there is is certainly not the focus of his levels. Amy's gameplay is platforming, but she's very slow by default, there's basically nowhere for her to put slope physics to use to gain speed, and she's often sidetracked by minor puzzles. Gamma can sometimes move at a decent pace, but his gameplay is very stop-and-go due to the combo system. And Knuckles barely ever gets up to a run due to his nonlinear levels, hot-and-cold gameplay, and the emphasis on climbing and gliding.

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