Sonic Forces | PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC "The Next Generations"

[Chris Knopps]

Just now, Marcello said:

It was expected, but I'm still not happy it's boost gameplay. The hallways were very narrow. It's hard to judge, but it looked liked the slow controls will still be stiff. The graphics seem to be nice.  Hopefully, the third style is more akin to Adventure.

But Dreamcast Sonic was in the trailer.

Not a wise can of worms to open you know... Must it be opened at all...?

[BubbleButt TV]

lol Sonic Forces is trending worldwide

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I am so happy about this game. It seems better than I thought it was. It reminded me alot of the Sonic games that got me into the series and why I loved Sonic because his games are so fun to play. It was colorful fun and fast and it was my kind of Sonic game. I haven't felt hype for a Sonic game for a long time. I was screaming so loud about the gameplay footage I woke up my folks. 

Anyway; I will be getting this game and thank you for brining back Unleashed gameplay.

[The Chairman Of The Board]

4 minutes ago, Cola said:

if they put boom sonic in i will jump out a window

It's worse than that. Instead of Boom Sonic, it's going to be Pakistan Sonic Heroes McDonalds Commercial Sonic. 

[Diogenes]

2 minutes ago, -Robin- said:

The clip that we saw looked to me like a interactive cutscene.

Yeah, it's a boost game, they all look like that.

[The Chairman Of The Board]

3 minutes ago, Marcello said:

It was expected, but I'm still not happy it's boost gameplay. The hallways were very narrow. It's hard to judge, but it looked liked the slow controls will still be stiff. The graphics seem to be nice.  Hopefully, the third style is more akin to Adventure.

But Dreamcast Sonic was in the trailer.

Where?? When?? Snapshot??

[Sonikko]

The theme song sounds great, it's kinda similar to the Sonic Runners themes but I really like it. They're showing more gameplay tomorrow, did I get this right?

[Shaddy Zaphod]

At 0:20 you can see Sonic grab a white wisp. I think. They're the only ones lined up like that usually

They're doing more Colors-ness than we expected.

Anyway, game looks as good as you'd expect. It's not anything we haven't seen before, but I do believe we need to get a consistent stream of Sonic games that critics like (which, for all intents and purposes, are boost games) and repair the franchise's reputation a little before we start experimenting again.

Just now, The Chairman Of The Board said:

Where?? When?? Snapshot??

He's referring to the fact that Dreamcast Sonic and Modern Sonic are the same Sonic.

[Cyrus]

Not worried about Cement Hill Zone's linearity one bit. Remember how straight forward the first couple of levels in Generations were and how those turned out to be the most intricately designed 3D Sonic levels in years? I've got a strong feeling that this setting shown in the trailer and today's clip is what we play right after the story kicks off.

[The Chairman Of The Board]

1 minute ago, Sonikko said:

He meant Modern Sonic, which is still the same as Dreamcast Sonic

 

1 minute ago, Shaddy the guy said:

At 0:20 you can see Sonic grab a white wisp. I think. They're the only ones lined up like that usually

They're doing more Colors-ness than we expected.

Anyway, game looks as good as you'd expect. It's not anything we haven't seen before, but I do believe we need to get a consistent stream of Sonic games that critics like (which, for all intents and purposes, are boost games) and repair the franchise's reputation a little before we start experimenting again.

He's referring to the fact that Dreamcast Sonic and Modern Sonic are the same Sonic.

Oh... I meant Dreamcast graphics Sonic. They can put the light speed dash bracelet and the fire somersault ring on him. 

[Marcello]

8 minutes ago, Ratcicle King said:

Dunno if someone already posted it but

 

 

 

Nice that they're not going for another orchestral theme. I think this fits Sonic better.

5 minutes ago, The Chairman Of The Board said:

Where?? When?? Snapshot??

=P

[Chris Knopps]

Just now, Marcello said:

Nice that they're not going for an orchestral them again. I think this fits Sonic better.

=P

That's because they're finally not going for Mario again, which is also much better.

Finally got tired of humping that leg at last.

[BubbleButt TV]

4 minutes ago, Ratcicle King said:

Dunno if someone already posted it but

 

I'm listening to this and I really don't want there to be vocals slapped over this. It sounds great the way it is, vocals are just gonna turn it into a cheese-fest.

[KHCast]

2 minutes ago, Cyrus said:

Not worried about Cement Hill Zone's linearity one bit. Remember how straight forward the first couple of levels in Generations were and how those turned out to be the most intricately designed 3D Sonic levels in years? I've got a strong feeling that this setting shown in the trailer and today's clip is what we play right after the story kicks off.

But why wouldn't they show off modern sonic in a more interesting gameplay section to calm people's worries? Plus, Generations still suffered from linearity in later stages 

[Diogenes]

2 minutes ago, Cyrus said:

Not worried about Cement Hill Zone's linearity one bit. Remember how straight forward the first couple of levels in Generations were and how those turned out to be the most intricately designed 3D Sonic levels in years?

No, I remember how they opened up the tiniest fraction and people started praising them to hell and back. What we've seen is the same thing you do 95% of the time in Unleashed Day and Gens Modern.

[Scar]

6 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Yeah, it's a boost game, they all look like that.

Oh c'mon now....Planet Wisp and Crisis City in Generations were way too annoyingly designed to simply be interactive cutscenes.

[DarkRula]

I was expecting what we saw, and dang it is pretty.

That theme is also rockin'!

Full thoughts soon.

[Carbo]

7 minutes ago, Dr. Chaotix said:

I'm surprised there's some people who are surprised the boost gameplay came back actually. I thought the trailer made that pretty clear. I know someone's going to get mad at me for saying it looked like a trailer for Generations 2 but... it did. 

Back at Comic Con they made it clear it wasn't going to be Generations 2, which implied a new style of game play, and well... I guess technically they ended up being right. It's not "Generations 2" in that it's not revisiting old levels and it has apparently one more play style - but systematically everything else is based as if it were a follow up, which is where some of the disappointment stems from.

As for the topic of them going back to a formula that works, well, that's about the best thing you can say about it - it works. We've had three games with it but I wouldn't say it's a formula that's particularly deep or rewarding to experience. This trailer in particular exhibited some of the formula's worst tendencies of zero-effort boosting corridors. We're likely to see something better tomorrow, but it doesn't particularly fill me with confidence starting off.

Another problem with the formula is a fact that's endemic to Sonic which is that there needs to be huge levels to accommodate moving fast. The boost formula enables reductive level design, and they become overly long stretches of detail that the player doesn't get enough time to appreciate, nor do they give them a lot of things to do. But a lot of man hours go into those stages regardless because you're always moving at a fast pace and they need to feel like they're something. It's why they pepper a bunch of distractions like in Sonic Adventure and Generations with set pieces like the orcas, helicopters etc., because there's not something actually interesting to experience through play, so instead they need to be visually interesting. With Generations, presumably Sonic Team worked on it ever since Unleashed - and 2-3 years of development yielded a game that was only about 2 hours long, and that's even accounting for all the filler work.

Sonic games these days are more about making the player feel fast rather than allowing them to be fast. It makes them fun for a playthrough but also rather fleeting and ephemeral, which is a shame when Sonic games used to be a lot more.

[Dr. Detective]

I dunno. When it comes to gameplay I've got a middling reaction. I don't really care what Sonic plays like so long as it's fun really. And I still find the way he played in Colors and Generations to be rather enjoyable. Colors significantly less so because of the 80% 2-D situation it had going on there but Generations is a game I go back to often. Although, it's never to play the Classic levels which I'm also going to probably not like as much. And I'm not too optimistic about whatever this third thing is. I don't expect it to be Modern Tails jumping into the fray. We've got an Eagle Wisp on standby for that apparently... 

I'm not disappointed by what was shown. More disappointed I wasn't given confirmation of something other than what I had already perceived it to be I guess.

I don't mind them taking one gameplay thing and sticking to it. As long as it's working it should be fine. That's generally why people don't mind the constant reusing of how Classic Sonic plays in recent years I guess. But new flavoring might have been beneficial too. 

Those other characters would have been great for that actually. 

See Mario doesn't have to worry about this shit because all he has to do is run and jump and the level design takes care of the rest. But for Sonic, how the fucker runs plays into such a big part of it, which gives us Classic running, Adventure running, Generations running, and even Lost World run-button running. 

[Scar]

5 minutes ago, Cyrus said:

Not worried about Cement Hill Zone's linearity one bit. Remember how straight forward the first couple of levels in Generations were and how those turned out to be the most intricately designed 3D Sonic levels in years? I've got a strong feeling that this setting shown in the trailer and today's clip is what we play right after the story kicks off.

The most intricately designed 3D Sonic level in existence is still Eggmanland in Unleashed HD. That level was fucking gigantic and the opening 3D are remains to this day the best designed 3D Sonic level ever imo...it was just ruined by Unleashed's poor controls.

[LunarEdge]

personally upset that this is using the same (if not roughly the same) gameplay style of Generations. I know it "works" for the most part but I'm personally tired of it. Guess I'll be skipping over this one unless they reveal something a bit more that'll interest me. Hopefully I have the music to look forward too

[Cyrus]

3 hours ago, KHCast said:

But why wouldn't they show off modern sonic in a more interesting gameplay section to calm people's worries?

To not be too spoilery for now and only show the level in which the trailer takes place in. We're still in the vague stages of the game's marketing.

3 hours ago, Diogenes said:

No, I remember how they opened up the tiniest fraction and people started praising them to hell and back. What we've seen is the same thing you do 95% of the time in Unleashed Day and Gens Modern.

I'm sorry that your copy of Generations glitched out after the Death Egg Robot fight but you know you can buy a new one for pretty cheap now, right? I haven't been able to play it since about October of last year, but 95% of the levels in Gens were platform and alternate route heavy though and had a good balance of platforming and speed if memory serves correctly, they were basically the Sonic Adventure levels only with moments of boosting along a narrow pathway.

[FriendBot]

So Sonic Forces, suffice to say I like more about it than I dislike. Not the biggest Boost fan but it makes sense why they did that, they needed to go back what worked before the misstep of Lost World and the shitshow of Boom. So while I'm not super big on Boost, I can live with it. 3 gameplay styles? Classic, Modern and I'm guess the new character will be the third gameplay style, hoping it's gonna be more like a mix of Adventure/Parkour?

The theme song is dope and it's gonna be a vocal theme? Damn, it's really going back to the Adventure/Unleashed days, ain't it? Hedgehog Engine 2 is pretty neat and the visuals do look great, this could easily be just as good, if not better, than Unleashed since I still believe Unleashed is one of the best looking Sonic games to date. 

Wisps are back? Eh, Colors is was fine with it but liked them better in the DS version tbh. Lost World? Pretty piss-poor execution but again, like the handheld version implementation of them more. So whatever, I can live.

The story is something I'm curious about, seems like the city and some Green Hill stage are in that stage so could it be possible that Forces is going to implement this 2 worlds that we learned about from the Sonic Bible a few years back? If Pontac/Graff are doing the story, hope they really do a good one and if it's someone else, I hope the same.

So far, I'm digging Forces. Some things I'm not all hyped for but I know this is going to be a good game, probably not great but good.

[Diogenes]

5 minutes ago, Dr. Chaotix said:

See Mario doesn't have to worry about this shit because all he has to do is run and jump and the level design takes care of the rest.

I don't really agree with that, I think a lot of work goes into how Mario moves. It's just that they got it mostly right in 3D the first time, while Sonic never has.

5 minutes ago, Scar said:

The most intricately designed 3D Sonic level in existence is still Eggmanland in Unleashed HD. That level was fucking gigantic and the opening 3D are remains to this day the best designed 3D Sonic level ever imo...it was just ruined by Unleashed's poor controls.

Rails and narrow platforms over pits aren't my idea of good Sonic level design.

[CottonCandy]

Um, it looks exactly like generations..well from a gameplay standpoint. It's only a couple of seconds of gameplay, so I'll be fair on it.

As of now, I don't know what to feel about this one. It's looks like a rehash. ( I know, I know, only a couple seconds of gameplay ) The music's great though..