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New Sonic Forces Zone revealed: Casino Forest


Graystripe2000

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2 hours ago, Sean said:

I expected Sega would remember the backlash against Sonic 4's faux-retro-sounding music and stick to a more modern electronic style like Generations' act 1 music had, or even go full Tee Lopes-style a la Mania.

I expected Sega would remember the backlash against Lost World and '06 and not bring back their directors. 1.0

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If Nakamura is the reason the characters are allowed to talk again and the game is allowed to have a plot, then I'm actually glad he's around. If not then whatever.

However, if he's also the reason the level design isn't making you guys happy then it's clear something needs to be done.

I'm starting to realize that seeing you guys consistently unhappy is making me unhappy too, despite being generally "Okay" with what I'm seeing. 

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"Plot"and "Level design" are two things that aren't actually related at all so it's funny how Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces are doing some kind of seesaw type shit with those two things. 

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I don't disagree, but those moments are more the exception than the rule when it comes to Sonic. It's not like the newer DKC games or anything where the levels always lead into eachother. Sonic 3, Sonic Adventure and Sonic Unleashed are the only games I can think of that are obsessed with inter-connectivity to that degree.Heroes, Shadow, Mania etc just kind of toss you somewhere else. 

It's much harder to put a game together focusing on the former so I don't even really blame them for letting this slip sometimes.

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1 hour ago, Josh said:

I don't disagree, but those moments are more the exception than the rule when it comes to Sonic. It's not like the newer DKC games or anything where the levels always lead into eachother. Sonic 3, Sonic Adventure and Sonic Unleashed are the only games I can think of that are obsessed with inter-connectivity to that degree.Heroes, Shadow, Mania etc just kind of toss you somewhere else. 

It's much harder to put a game together focusing on the former so I don't even really blame them for letting this slip sometimes.

Sure, it doesn't have to be the rule. 

Someone like me, who's obsessed with that kind of cool shit, can't help but want to see it more often though.

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On 9/30/2017 at 8:43 PM, Dr. Detective Mike said:

My ultimate dream is to see the plot and level design work in harmony with one another again. Not really in just a way where the levels you visit are dictated by what needs to happen next in the story but in a way where the level is designed to make it seem like you're progressing through an area.

Adabat in Sonic Unleashed is one of my favorite level examples of that kind of feeling. Where you start on a path full of several wooden walkways by a shoreline then as you go through the level you end up in the middle of a forest, through some ruins that make it more clear you're getting closer to the temple, then you end up at a large waterfall that's clearly deep within the forest that suddenly makes it more obvious you're at the specific spot where the temple is. Really made me feel like I was actually traveling somewhere as I went through the level as opposed to something that just kind of looks the same but with reused assets strung about the place. 

My favorite sequence where this is in full effect is actually the end of Sonic Unleashed. You start off in Eggmanland, making your whole way through it and traversing through what are obviously different sections and parts of the place, going from the outside of it to a more enclosed space outside of it, to inside of it, to DEEP inside of it, and eventually reaching the entrance to the temple. Then the cutscene starts and ends at the same place where you ended up at the end of the level before the Egg Dragoon bursts through and sends you down the long shaft.

The boss battle starts with you STILL falling down that shaft, Eggman breaks it apart with his drill and you fall through the floor, suddenly at the center of the Earth where you beat the boss. The CGI cutscene starts with you now at the center of the Earth because that's the story the gameplay told you had actually happened and Dark Gaia shows up and you finish off the game exactly where it spat you out at.

I love shit like that. 

Not every game takes it's time to do shit like that. In Lost World, I remember being extremely confused by how the ending's gameplay and story were supposed to compliment each other. You start up the cutscene with them in an area after Lava Mountain that you clearly weren't when you beat Giant Zavok only for Eggman's giant mustache robot to show up. Then when the cutscene ends and the gameplay part comes back and starts with... Sonic being shot out of a cannon? And then suddenly he's on this long runway where ... I guess the robot got in front of him and now the two are fighting that way? Did Sonic do the Goku thing of "Hey, let's go fight over here" or something? And Eggman just said "Yeah. Sure why not?" And then when Eggman is beaten in the same way he lost in Colors, he's suddenly ... next to Sonic and Tails again in the same area back in the cutscene? In Colors it actually made more sense. His Eggmobile was sent shooting off in the distance, so when the cutscene started he was nowhere near Sonic and got sucked into the wormhole. I don't understand how Eggman suddenly ended up back there except now he's got no robot.

Usually stuff like this would be fixed by just setting up them arriving at the area they were going to fight in, within the cutscene that preceded it. Heroes did that. Shadow's game did that. And that's fine. It's not as impressive as what Unleashed pulled off but it works for the most part.

I want to be impressed by how much care is put into how the gameplay flows into story-telling again though. That's the truly magical shit right there.

 

I think Colors has the absolute worst case of this. The cutscene near the end where Eggman's Interstellar Amusement Park starts falling apart, the ground starts shaking, etc. leads to Terminal Velocity Act 1, where Sonic is running down the elevator shaft. After that's over, we get another cutscene where Sonic and Tails are about to board the elevator before they're stopped by Eggman. What? Wasn't Sonic running down the elevator shaft just a few seconds ago? Anyways, Sonic shoves Tails in the elevator, which leads to the final boss, which I think takes place on a giant ring orbiting the elevator or something. After that, we see a cutscene where the black hole starts sucking everything up. It catches up to Sonic, which leads to Terminal Velocity Act 2. What happened here? It's not like this is a mistake they didn't catch before release, because the cutscene after the final boss shows the black hole right behind Sonic, so it's not like we could order it as Final Boss > Terminal Velocity Act 1 > Terminal Velocity Act 2. Terminal Velocity Act 1 has no reason to exist other than being another level. In fact, why not just merge the two acts? Terminal Velocity Act 2 is hardly a level to begin with, they could've just done Terminal Velocity Act 1 but with the black hole following him.

Ugh, this is all so confusing... At least the DS version made sense. In that version, Terminal Velocity leads straight to the final boss.

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18 minutes ago, GuyWithThePie said:

I think Colors has the absolute worst case of this. The cutscene near the end where Eggman's Interstellar Amusement Park starts falling apart, the ground starts shaking, etc. leads to Terminal Velocity Act 1, where Sonic is running down the elevator shaft. After that's over, we get another cutscene where Sonic and Tails are about to board the elevator before they're stopped by Eggman. What? Wasn't Sonic running down the elevator shaft just a few seconds ago? Anyways, Sonic shoves Tails in the elevator, which leads to the final boss, which I think takes place on a giant ring orbiting the elevator or something. After that, we see a cutscene where the black hole starts sucking everything up. It catches up to Sonic, which leads to Terminal Velocity Act 2. What happened here? It's not like this is a mistake they didn't catch before release, because the cutscene after the final boss shows the black hole right behind Sonic, so it's not like we could order it as Final Boss > Terminal Velocity Act 1 > Terminal Velocity Act 2. Terminal Velocity Act 1 has no reason to exist other than being another level. In fact, why not just merge the two acts? Terminal Velocity Act 2 is hardly a level to begin with, they could've just done Terminal Velocity Act 1 but with the black hole following him.

Ugh, this is all so confusing... At least the DS version made sense. In that version, Terminal Velocity leads straight to the final boss.

Hey Terminal Velocity was one of the best zones in modern Sonic don't diss my Terminal Velocity. 

From what I remember (I haven't played Sonic Colours in quite a while), the reason Sonic goes down the shaft is to get to the elevator. Tails probably took another way since he can't speed down like Sonic did.

They get to the elevator, Eggman appears, Sonic shoves Tails inside of the elevator which drops Tails back to Earth, Sonic deals with Eggman and tries to speed back to Earth since the elevator is gone and considering there's a giant black hole forming in the Tropical Resort, the entire amusement park's power must be gone. He fails, and would have died if the Wisps weren't there.

And Terminal Velocity Act 2 is more of an interactive cutscene than a level. I felt it was meant to show the fact that Sonic can't outrun a Black Hole. 

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27 minutes ago, Hard-Boiled Wisp said:

From what I remember (I haven't played Sonic Colours in quite a while), the reason Sonic goes down the shaft is to get to the elevator. Tails probably took another way since he can't speed down like Sonic did.

But how? The shaft has only one way, and that's down. The cutscene that follows Terminal Velocity Act 1 even shows Sonic and Tails running side by side to the elevator, implying that it takes place directly after the previous cutscene and that they ran there together.

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It's certainly not perfect in Colors but I'll give it some credit. There was at least an attempt to have the gameplay flow into the sequence of events happening a little bit there at the end. It is a little confusing trying to place where everything is a bit but I do have some admiration for that little bit at the end of Act 2 where Sonic isn't able to escape and gets caught by the black hole. It's always great when a level remembers and acknowledges that you're running through it for an actual reason. It's not something the game did a whole lot but one does learn to take what they can get.

Sort of.

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6 hours ago, GuyWithThePie said:

But how? The shaft has only one way, and that's down. The cutscene that follows Terminal Velocity Act 1 even shows Sonic and Tails running side by side to the elevator, implying that it takes place directly after the previous cutscene and that they ran there together.

maxresdefault.jpg

Looking at this stage select thingamajig, here's what I get from the game and cutscenes.

Act 1 is Sonic going down to the ring where the elevator must be.

He meets with Tails who gets there (somehow), meets with Eggman, shoves Tails into the elevator and fights Eggman on that ring that is shown in the second green circle. 

Act 2, Eggman is finished, but Sonic still needs to get out of there, so he keeps going down but the black hole gets to him.

The only thing I will give you, is that I have no fucking clue how Tails gets there, if he took another route or not. But either way, I'm taking this way too seriously because Terminal Velocity was fucking great and I loved it even if it was Straight Line Zone. 

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People keep talking about modern Sonic games being "story-driven" but like... I feel like the Heroes/Shadow/2k6 plots were convoluted, but not actually good. The characters talked a lot more, but it was mostly inane chatter and exposition, not meaningful characterization with any sort of depth or development. 

The Unleashed/Colors/Generations/Lost World era didn't have good storytelling either, but I feel like at least they gave us a little more levity, and really did a good job writing Eggman in particular. Writing for the heroes was hit or miss; Sometimes they did a good job, and sometimes you ended up with stuff like whiny Lost World Tails.

Either way, I feel like at best, you get amusing little scenes that tie the levels together that might give your favorite characters a bit of spotlight or memorable lines or whatever. But if you're expecting genuinely good storytelling or - hell - even continuity at all in the Sonic series, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Not only do I think it won't happen, but I'll go a step farther and say it's never happened. Games are perfectly capable of having engaging writing and engrossing stories, but Sonic Team has yet to pull off anything even close to that in my opinion.

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Nothing about Heroes was convo, please don't lump it with the dumptrucks: Shadow and Sonic Nex gen. Remain accurate when generalizing.

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33 minutes ago, Dr. Mechano said:

People keep talking about modern Sonic games being "story-driven" but like... I feel like the Heroes/Shadow/2k6 plots were convoluted, but not actually good. The characters talked a lot more, but it was mostly inane chatter and exposition, not meaningful characterization with any sort of depth or development. 

The Unleashed/Colors/Generations/Lost World era didn't have good storytelling either, but I feel like at least they gave us a little more levity, and really did a good job writing Eggman in particular. Writing for the heroes was hit or miss; Sometimes they did a good job, and sometimes you ended up with stuff like whiny Lost World Tails.

Either way, I feel like at best, you get amusing little scenes that tie the levels together that might give your favorite characters a bit of spotlight or memorable lines or whatever. But if you're expecting genuinely good storytelling or - hell - even continuity at all in the Sonic series, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Not only do I think it won't happen, but I'll go a step farther and say it's never happened. Games are perfectly capable of having engaging writing and engrossing stories, but Sonic Team has yet to pull off anything even close to that in my opinion.

Heroes was convoluted? The only part that I agree was out of place was the whole WOWSHADOWISAROBOT?!?!? part from Team Dark, but everything else, it felt like a saturday morning cartoon. 

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33 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Nothing about Heroes was convo, please don't lump it with the dumptrucks: Shadow and Sonic Nex gen. Remain accurate when generalizing.

Disagree. The stuff about Shadow being simultaneously a clone and a robot (two words used to describe him in the same scene) was unnecessary and bad. Shadow being given amnesia just to make this plot thread work (and conveniently make him sad again, since with Shadow, angst sells) was also unnecessary and bad. This is conflict for the sake of conflict, not to develop a character or actually further the story in any meaningful way.

I feel like Metal Sonic's motivations were really ill-defined and contradictory too. He both claims that Sonic is his copy, but also that if he'll be able to become "the real Sonic" by defeating him? And also he wants to make a robot kingdom, I guess.

I grant you, Heroes was far less egregious than its two successors, but it still threw a bunch of nonsense at the wall and called it storytelling.

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- How did Metal Sonic get the ability to transform?

- Why did Metal Sonic go rogue?

- How did Shadow survive the end of SA2, and why is nobody that fussed? Seriously, Rouge just comes to the conclusion that he doesn't remember anything, whilst Team Sonic just go straight into battle with him.

- Why was Sonic pictured with Froggy and Chocola in a random newspaper?

-Who the hell even are Chocola and Froggy and do they have any actual relevance to the plot?

For a story supposedly so simple and relatively minimalist in presentation, Heroes was very confusing and convoluted.

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22 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

- How did Metal Sonic get the ability to transform?

- Why did Metal Sonic go rogue?

- How did Shadow survive the end of SA2, and why is nobody that fussed? Seriously, Rouge just comes to the conclusion that he doesn't remember anything, whilst Team Sonic just go straight into battle with him.

- Why was Sonic pictured with Froggy and Chocola in a random newspaper?

-Who the hell even are Chocola and Froggy and do they have any actual relevance to the plot?

For a story supposedly so simple and relatively minimalist in presentation, Heroes was very confusing and convoluted.

Shadow and Sonic 2006 are story driven from the jump, so it becomes fairly obvious when certain things about their plots don't make sense. Heroes' story in terms of importance is pushed so far into the background, its lack of details in its narrative doesn't even cross your mind at first; it's only when you actually stop and think about it that you realize its narrative elements don't add up.

Heroes is hard to follow like Shadow and Sonic 2006, but for the complete opposite reason. :v

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23 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

- How did Metal Sonic get the ability to transform?

- Why did Metal Sonic go rogue?

-Who the hell even are Chocola and Froggy and do they have any actual relevance to the plot?

I can't answer the other questions, but these, I can think of something. This is all speculation but it's plausible.

Considering Metal Sonic is shown to have a level of sentience, a sentient robot going rogue against his creator's wishes isn't something unheard of in fiction. And considering he's a robot, once he went rogue he probably upgraded himself with Eggman's resources which gave him the power to go all T-1000 purple goop and shapeshift. 

As for Chocola and Froggy, Froggy ate a Chaos Emerald and part of Chaos' liquid form in Sonic Adventure, he probably had remnants of the Emerald's power and Chaos. Chocola is a Chao, which are related to Chaos (Chaos was a mutated Chao if that part is still canon). They both had relation to Chaos, which Eggman says that Metal Sonic "combined your data with the power of Chaos and is super strong, WE CAN'T DEFEAT HIM, AAAH IF ONLY WE HAD THE SEVEN CHAOS EMERALDS." 

EDIT: Hell I just remembered, in Team Rose's ending, goop Metal Sonic frees Chocola and Froggy and says "Chaos data has been copied" so yeah. 

Hell, considering Metal Sonic can shapeshift into Eggman, him shapeshifting into Sonic to frame him isn't out of reach. 

The Shadow bit, yeah I have no clue. 

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6 minutes ago, Hard-Boiled Wisp said:

I can't answer the other questions, but these, I can think of something. This is all speculation but it's plausible.

*vague speculation based on two past games detailing key points the story that aren't even slightly touched upon in Heroes*

I wasn't legitimately asking for any explanations because the fans have settled on those same ones for years. But I'm glad you took the bait and explained everything that Heroes doesn't tell the player and by doing so proved my point about it being convoluted.

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Just now, Blue Blood said:

I wasn't legitimately asking for any explanations because the fans have settled on those same ones for years. But I'm glad you took the bait and explained everything that Heroes doesn't tell the player and by doing so proved my point about it being convoluted.

VAA4VF7.gif

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Alrighty, please keep this topic about Casino Forest and talk about the convolution of Sonic game stories elsewhere.

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1 hour ago, Dr. Mechano said:

People keep talking about modern Sonic games being "story-driven" but like... I feel like the Heroes/Shadow/2k6 plots were convoluted, but not actually good. The characters talked a lot more, but it was mostly inane chatter and exposition, not meaningful characterization with any sort of depth or development. 

The Unleashed/Colors/Generations/Lost World era didn't have good storytelling either, but I feel like at least they gave us a little more levity, and really did a good job writing Eggman in particular. Writing for the heroes was hit or miss; Sometimes they did a good job, and sometimes you ended up with stuff like whiny Lost World Tails.

Either way, I feel like at best, you get amusing little scenes that tie the levels together that might give your favorite characters a bit of spotlight or memorable lines or whatever. But if you're expecting genuinely good storytelling or - hell - even continuity at all in the Sonic series, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. Not only do I think it won't happen, but I'll go a step farther and say it's never happened. Games are perfectly capable of having engaging writing and engrossing stories, but Sonic Team has yet to pull off anything even close to that in my opinion.

Whether or not you liked the story doesn't have to do with whether it was story driven or not. The Dreamcast Era games were more story driven than their modern counterparts. SA2 especially likes to set it's levels up with individual scenarios and goals.

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Just now, Blue Blood said:

- How did Metal Sonic get the ability to transform?

- Why did Metal Sonic go rogue?

- How did Shadow survive the end of SA2, and why is nobody that fussed? Seriously, Rouge just comes to the conclusion that he doesn't remember anything, whilst Team Sonic just go straight into battle with him.

- Why was Sonic pictured with Froggy and Chocola in a random newspaper?

-Who the hell even are Chocola and Froggy and do they have any actual relevance to the plot?

For a story supposedly so simple and relatively minimalist in presentation, Heroes was very confusing and convoluted.

Well he did copy the abilities of Sonic, Shadow and Chaos

Shadow is pretty durable. Yeah I don't why they didn't tell Shadow about his past either

That probably wasn't Sonic. It was probably Metal. Since he has the power to shape shift as shown during the cutscenes. He probably shape shifted into Sonic to steal Chocola and Froggy. 

Chocola is a friend of Cream and Cheese. Froggy was in SA1 who had some of Chaos power thats why Metal took him to get the data of Chaos

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58 minutes ago, Sean said:

Alrighty, please keep this topic about Casino Forest and talk about the convolution of Sonic game stories elsewhere.

Legit didn't even realise this was the Casino Forest thread.

Stage is still bland. 

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