What's wrong with Lost World?

[Milo]

I fixed your fix for you.

The Infinite Spin Dash is cheating because with it you basically can't lose speed at all, which makes it an infinite, reskinned Boost.

No, not at all The way you can't lose speed makes it similar to the boost, sure; but it is significantly less fast than the boost, and you have more steering control over its direction. You also lose speed when you jump in the air, that doesn't happen with the boost.

Also how exactly is using it cheating? It's not like you can break the game's limitations by using the move.

Edited September 18, 2015 by Gabe

[AshGreninJovan]

 

The Infinite Spin Dash is cheating because with it you basically can't lose speed at all, which makes it an infinite, reskinned Boost.

No. It's not a glitch, and it's pretty useful for Time Attack Mode.

EDIT: Also, let's not forget VS mode either.

Edited September 18, 2015 by AshGreninJovan

[Blacklightning]

You also lose speed when you jump in the air, that doesn't happen with the boost.

Not quite - it persists for longer, granted, but if you're in midair for long enough the boost cuts off on its own. It's most obvious in stages like Spagonia where there's long drops to get back onto the main pathway for some reason, and it's also the main reason why the majority of major area transitions are handled by springs and launch ramps.

But more on topic anyway, the spindash in Lost World if anything seemed underpowered to me if anything, less for the sake of raw speed and more because the level design usually isn't actually built to accomodate it. The stiff handling means you need a relatively featureless stretch of flat land to make the most of it, and even then sometimes the level designers are dicks and leave sudden gaps in the tube sections to punish it. The only time I ever remember putting it to good use is ploughing through the infinitely spawning Egg Pawns.

[Vertekins]

What's wrong with Lost World?

The parkour gimmick is never used very imaginatively and is finicky to control.

Lost World is one of those Sonic games in which a tutorial is a real must due to it's mechanics. Which are unusual for a Sonic title and unlike any other game in the series.

It's never provided.

Whatsmore, you never do get the feeling that this aspect of Sonic's abilities is used very creatively or, more importantly, is very entertaining. There's hardly ever an aspect of the level design that would facilitate the smooth and cool-looking use of parkour. And due to how finicky the controls are, using parkour to traverse perpendicular/parallel walls is far more trouble than it's worth. One section of Lava Mountain Act 3 is a particularly good example of this - I lost multiple lives on it's wire mesh wall-running section over lava that I thought "Fuck it" and took the item that spawned that allowed me to skip that part of the level.

The Wisps are the epitome of tacked-on and add nothing of value to the game.

They blight the game simply put. They aren't fun. They aren't creative. The controls prior to the patch were a fucking pain in the ass and during my first playthrough of the game I would honestly sigh in frustration whenever the game forced me to use Wisps. Their controls were incredibly unintuitive especially as I was used to the way the Wisps that returned from Colours controlled.

Case and point? Green Hover. Moving with one stick, hovering using the trigger buttons and dashing with the other stick is not intuitive especially compared to it's controls in Colours.

The Wisps even since their inception have been a seriously questionable addition to Sonic gameplay in that they so far are entirely situational, don't use any real skill to use and undermine the concept of characters other than Sonic being playable by leeching abilities they could realistically exhibit and which could be applied to entire level designs, not highly staged-looking and simplitic facets of game design.

Tails was mangled, his personality morphed into something that is an antithesis of how he really acts.

And it was so obviously for the sake of adding DRAMA! to the narrative.

Yep, doesn't matter if a well-loved character had to have his well-established sweet and humble mannerisms fucked-over if it means that there has be a scene in which Sonic's face must be dragged through the mud as it continously is throughout the game. Let's just add another scene on top of that attempts to cheaply ellicit sympathy towards Tails by having him plumb for pity as well! Because lord knows the safety of the world should take a backseat to trying to garner self worth from somebody who already acknowledges your abilities!

Seriously, fuck him in this game. Self entitled little brat.

 

[LadyBrightcynder]

Huh, I always liked the Tails plot point. I always took that as Tails being at the last straw, maybe bitter about Sonic's "nice job breaking it hero" moment getting him injured and putting the world in danger. Even sweet and humble people have a breaking point and it can come out at the worst possible time.

Maybe that's just faulty memory - I'll need to go back and play through again. I might be biased because I liked LW's stronger focus on character interaction, so take my view with a pinch of salt.

[Amomynous]

I second Verte. But I don't think "pointless drama" was the only reason for Tails' behavior...but I don't mean that in a good way.

Tails was a jerk because the writers thought Sonic deserved it.

I think the issue behind this becomes a little more clear when you take note of what Sonic's failings supposedly are, if you're mainly observing Sonic it's not really clear; it seems like the issue is that Sonic is reckless and Sonic rightly sets out to fix the mess of his own accord, only for Sonic's apparent character development to not be resolved. Instead Tails accuses him of "trusting Eggman" out of the blue, Sonic apologising for that is treated as the resolution.

That's because Sonic wasn't supposed to learn about his recklessness, because Sonic's perspective was the wrong perspective.

Sonic's supposed failing was that he didn't listen to Tails, Tails's anger didn't come out of the blue because it all started when Sonic chose to smack a thing out of Eggman's hands without Tails' say-so. Not neccisarily because Tails held a grudge, infact I'd say it had little to do with Tails and more to do with this idea that Sonic needs someone smarter to boss him around.

Maybe Tails could have explained that he feels he could stop Eggman's machine all by himself, and there being a conflict because Sonic is skeptical (perhaps because Tails admits he doesn't actually know how, at least without observing it first). So there's a conflict of where Tails actually explains his position and he has a reason to feel Sonic wrongly disbelieves him, but Sonic isn't treated wrong just for having a different opinion.

Oh and having Sonic's recklessness adressed would be nice.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 19, 2015 by Amomynous

[Soniman]

2 years later and I still think it's a mostly okay, highly experimental game. I still really enjoy it. Is it better then Colors or Gens? No. But it's not terrible 

[LadyBrightcynder]

I second Verte. But I don't think "pointless drama" was the only reason for Tails' behavior...but I don't mean that in a good way.

Tails was a jerk because the writers thought Sonic deserved it.

I think the issue behind this becomes a little more clear when you take note of what Sonic's failings supposedly are, if you're mainly observing Sonic it's not really clear; it seems like the issue is that Sonic is reckless and Sonic rightly sets out to fix the mess of his own accord, only for Sonic's apparent character development to not be resolved. Instead Tails accuses him of "trusting Eggman" out of the blue, Sonic apologising for that is treated as the resolution.

That's because Sonic wasn't supposed to learn about his recklessness, because Sonic's perspective was the wrong perspective.

Sonic's supposed failing was that he didn't listen to Tails, Tails's anger didn't come out of the blue because it all started when Sonic chose to smack a thing out of Eggman's hands without Tails' say-so. Not neccisarily because Tails held a grudge, infact I'd say it had little to do with Tails and more to do with this idea that Sonic needs someone smarter to boss him around.

Maybe Tails could have explained that he feels he could stop Eggman's machine all by himself, and there being a conflict because Sonic is skeptical (perhaps because Tails admits he doesn't actually know how, at least without observing it first). So there's a conflict of where Tails actually explains his position and he has a reason to feel Sonic wrongly disbelieves him, but Sonic isn't treated wrong just for having a different opinion.

Oh and having Sonic's recklessness adressed would be nice.

Yeah, that makes sense. It could've been done a lot better. I guess I overlooked how flawed the conflict was >.>''

[FriendBot]

 

Tails was mangled, his personality morphed into something that is an antithesis of how he really acts.

And it was so obviously for the sake of adding DRAMA! to the narrative.

Yep, doesn't matter if a well-loved character had to have his well-established sweet and humble mannerisms fucked-over if it means that there has be a scene in which Sonic's face must be dragged through the mud as it continously is throughout the game. Let's just add another scene on top of that attempts to cheaply ellicit sympathy towards Tails by having him plumb for pity as well! Because lord knows the safety of the world should take a backseat to trying to garner self worth from somebody who already acknowledges your abilities!

Seriously, fuck him in this game. Self entitled little brat.

Sweet hot sauce Christmas cake, overreacting much?

Like I get that Tails wasn't exactly portrayed that well in the game but "mangled...antithesis"?!

That's a severe overreaction.

Like I can see where Pontaff were going with this but for the rest of the game, it was very awkward.

First off, an more snarky Tails can be done well. I mean in Sonic Boom, Tails was a bit more snarky and I don't see anyone clamoring how they "ruined" Tails. So it's obvious that the execution is flawed.

So one of the major problems in Lost World's story is that it's very disjointed and lacks any sense of flow, each cutscene works individually but putting it together shows how weak the overall story was. Tails seems to be a popular example of this flaw, Tails' outburst comes out of nowhere based on the previous cutscenes since both Sonic and Tails half-heartedly but still agreed on Eggman helping them out, so Tails questioning why they need Eggman comes out of nowhere.

 

 

[Sean]

Tails hasn't been a good character since Colors (I almost said Unleashed, but he honestly wasn't much of one to begin with). Lost World just takes him to the most logical extreme

Tails used to be my favorite character up until Sega started pretending that he had none of Sonic's abilities. SLW makes him into an asshole and he's now my most hated one.

[FriendBot]

I'd argue Tails hasn't really done anything interesting past Adventure 2 in the main series, outside of Boom.

Like in the Adventure games, Tails was very tactical and was being part of the action. Ever since he just there for me, so yeah it's been a while since Tails' appearance felt meaningful to me again until Boom came. 

[Nepenthe]

A lot of LW's problems have to do with bad framing and trite moral exploration. Sonic is considered morally wrong for jumping to a conclusion that nonetheless had a benevolent end goal (just because the Deadly Six are bad doesn't mean it's okay for Eggman to subjugate them like that. What happened is actually the Six's moral failure, but Sonic takes their heat because fuck Sonic). Tails ignores the fact that Sonic was just as opposed to the team-up with Eggman as he was and levies a random accusation of being undermined by Sonic's trust in Eggman, when all Sonic ultimately did was stop an unnecessary fight before it began- a fight Tails started. Tails is never called out or punished for his wrong behavior and is allowed to have everything go his way, getting out of the story unscathed and thus being condoned for his random insecurity. Eggman is never called on the fact that he's enslaving a race and is thus a piece of shit. Instead he's praised for being deep for keeping up his ploy and saving Tails for some reason, and he built a jetpack despite the fact that there's no way in Hell he could've foreseen its use in that specific scenario. It's all pretty fucking amateur writing.

[FriendBot]

So at the end, Pontaff dun goofed yet again but this time, they tried to do more but instead fucked up a lot more. Also I found it weird how Lost World's story was trying to be more serious but whenever you get back to the Map, it's all cheerful. 

It's quite some mood whiplash strangely so Pontaff tried to make a more serious story for a game that's being pretty cartoony, arguably too cartoony. 

[Nepenthe]

I complained about the story points not always matching the aesthetics when the first cut scene came out during the marketing phase. But that's less on Pontaff and more on the art designers deciding not to play with the coloring of their scenes for whatever reason. The scene where The Six take over would have better play with me if they at least desaturated the colors some, which isn't all that hard of a feat to do.

[FriendBot]

That is true, I mean the cutscene that plays before Sky Road Zone 4, the level that has the same assets of Desert Ruins and it looks much more grim and darker in lighting. So they could've tweak the lighting but I guess they didn't bother?

The more I think about games like Colors and Lost World and compare those to Unleashed and Generations. The more I realize how low-budget Colors and Lost World was, in terms of presentation and level design is a step down from Gens and especially Unleashed. 

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I don't think theres anything wrong with this game. Yeah the gameplays very confusing but you can figure it out. Also Sonic was awesome!

[Milo]

I don't see how the words in bold have to do with anything really?

Pretty sure what he meant by that was that Sonniku's positives / praises for the game were really vague and don't actually explain why she liked the game. The "we didn't find glitches" comparison bit is how he's comparing her praise of Lost World simply being that she found Sonic "being awesome" in the game; to how people's defense for Sonic 06 / Rise of Lyric amounts to nothing more than them claiming their experience of playing the game weren't as buggy as they notoriously are for everyone else.

Edited September 22, 2015 by Gabe

[Milo]

So yeah, still don't understand the comparison. Sure, she was vague about it but that doesn't mean her thoughts should be compared to those who don't find 06/RoL all that buggy.

I'm not talking about the actual thoughts being compared, it's how those thoughts are used to describe the game that are being compared (I think).

A playthrough that doesn't encounter glitches is the reason given as to why some people like Sonic 06 / Rise of Lyric. Sonic being awesome in the game is the reason Sonniku gave as to why she likes Lost World. From this context both responses are framed in, both reasons can be described as not really meaningful as to what can be explained as a particular positive point for both titles. To better explain it, you could --theoretically-- say either of the two reasons (glitch-free playthrough; or Sonic being awesome) to explain why you like any other existing Sonic game.

Edited September 22, 2015 by Gabe

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I said that because Sonic made the game what it was. He was funny and caring and made missions have more meaning. also the gameplay actually helped his skills to and it was always fun to do. 

[Dejimon11]

Looking back I found some other problems with the game

*You can only have one save file-Meanwhile Sonic Unleashed wii, Colors and from what Ive been told the storybook games like you create multiple save file. So what the heck happened here?

*You can't re watch cutscenes-Seriously that has got to me one of the most baffling design choice Ive seen the franchise in years. Almost every 3D game allows you to do that so why not this? As much crap I give RoL I'm willing to admit that it's the one thing they got right. Hell you can watch the cutscenes in the 3D version of Lost World so what the hell?

*You can't listen to the soundtrack-Yeah yeah not everybody likes this games soundtrack but I like it. My reasoning applies to my last problems and it's a giant step backwards compared to what you could do in generations. 

*You can't play as the friends- This isn't really my issue with lost world but how the franchise as a whole has been ha doing it how long has it been since we've got to play with tails, knuckles or whoever? Nobody hates the friends everybody just hated the fact that they had different play styles and the time when they played similar you were forced to do multiple playthroughs in order to get to the last story. Every time I look at the wisp I can't stop but think that their sole purpose besides being a power-up is giving sonic the abilities that his friends have so they won't be playable. That's just me.

[Kaze no Klonoa]

Honestly, Sonic Lost World was alright. It didn't seem bad but it certainly could had been more. What may had been interesting ideas kinda made Lost World a pretty clumsy game to play. In general, stuff like tiered speeds, parkour, and double jump were all great ideas to implement but just were poorly done. Lost World's speed wasn't the problem at all (since that was something a lot of people complained about), but with how sticky Sonic is with walls and how slow you are really going in maps that basically are as straight forward as me saying "Straight forward". Sonic really has not much momentum in this game. You hold the run trigger and he'll start running at the running speed. The amount of control you have in the air just feel awkward. The Multi-Lock in homing attack sounds cool but you really have no reason to do it since it's both really annoying to lock on enemies and makes bosses an absolute cake walk.

The Level-Design is honestly the worst part of this game. The levels are cheap, way too linear in that the main direction is to just go all the way forward.

Don't get me wrong, all the ideas here are great, but they just all got executed poorly. Lost World could had been something more but it seemed like they didn't spend enough time with making these mechanics refined.  But you know, Sonic Team will probably consider the idea no longer doable and try to make some new ridiculous gameplay scheme.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

To me the gameplay reminded me of Sonic 3D and Sonic Labyrnth. Sonic has extra cool ablities and its awesome but the angles and the gameplay was hard to figure out. also it was too slow. 

[Kaze no Klonoa]

To me the gameplay reminded me of Sonic 3D and Sonic Labyrnth. Sonic has extra cool ablities and its awesome but the angles and the gameplay was hard to figure out. also it was too slow. 

I think I'd be ok with it being slower had it not been the problem that the levels are so linear. The levels are dragged out and for the most part you really are just running straight forward til you jump around in springs, or cannons, or whatever happens.

I wish the cool abilities were implemented better though, because they're really rad, just not fun to use because of how poorly implemented they are.

[Nepenthe]

Cleaned up the topic some. Let's not moralize and say racist things about people's posts about a video game.

[Weh]

As someone who 100%ed Lost World on Wii U, I think that the game had a lot of wasted potential. I don't agree with the majority in thinking that it was completely bad, because it's not, but it definitely missed the mark in a lot of ways. I love the idea of the parkour system, but its implementation was shaky. I loved that the Wisps returned, but all of the new ones they introduced add absolutely nothing to the gameplay (I still don't understand the point of Rhythm). The run button is incredibly anti-Sonic, going against what I feel is one of the most important parts of Sonic's gameplay: speed is supposed to be earned. Speed is the reward for playing well. With a run button, you can just go fast on the fly with no effort required (and it's not even that fast, either). The spin dash alleviates this problem a bit, as I think it's a fun challenge trying to maintain your spindash without stopping for as long as you can, but it still doesn't feel very Sonic-y. The boss fights were also disappointing. All of them were incredibly easy, and lacked any kind of creativity or pizzazz.

The biggest problem with the game though, imo, is the level themes. They couldn't have copied Mario any harder if they tried! Grassland, desert, beach, poison jungle, snow, sky, lava. One of the things I always liked about Sonic over Mario is how creative the level themes were. Even going back just to colors, the level themes were more creative. I can't even describe each of them with one word like I can Lost Worlds'. Theme park, food, ancient Chinese architecture-inspired aquarium, space roller coaster, space station... All very unique kinds of levels! But Lost Worlds' levels are just so generic looking, littered with tons of flat colors and blocky level design. They don't look bad, sure, but I'll be damned if they aren't incredibly bland, and for me it really detracted from the experience.

All that said, although I will defend parts of the Wii U version of Lost World, I own the 3DS version and couldn't even make it halfway through the game. All of the problems I have with the Wii U version apply here ten-fold. The levels were too long, the controls are generally clunky, the motion controls were some of the worst I've ever had to deal with, and the special stages were... Well, the less said about those the better (wonderful music, though).