Sonic Forces demo- Green Hill (Modern Sonic gameplay)

[Meta77]

3 minutes ago, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

I don't think Sonic '06 sold that well, especially compared to previous entries. Not as poorly as Boom or Lost World but definitely not great. I forget where the accurate sales #s sit but that's my knowledge of it.

The damage from '06 has had a lasting effect on this franchise. If Forces is reviewed anywhere near that badly, this game will struggle to crack Lost World's numbers. You can bet your house on that.

 

What effect was that?Also yes 06 d

Destroyed lw in sales plus it was a console exclusive on a system no one cares for

[MegasonicZX]

12 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

The... The robots don't even have an AI...  They... Just stand there... Literally.

Oh my God, this game is the gift that keeps on giving.

Watch this literally be the new 06 on release

In the games defense, you are never going to be in these guys' face long enough for them to even finish animating the first 1/3rd of their getting ready animation so I can't blame them for just outright having them there as stationaries. Doesn't make it any less dumb (and the whole premise of enemies being that easy to take down in the first place) but I can see why the devs didn't want to bother.

[Detective Kaito]

Damn, I hope they release a demo on PS4. Being Switch only makes no sense. lol

[Swing]

You guys can not really compare Mario Odyssey with Forces. Those are two different games in style and gameplay. Same also with other 3D plattformers.  You an not compare Forces also with Crash Bandicoot, Spyro or Banjo-Kazooie. But you can compare it with other 3D-Sonics and so far all them actually had outstanding level design, music and presentation. Heck, even the mediocre Storybook series had way more interesting level ideas than Forces. And thoses games where rushed. 

[NegaMix]

9 minutes ago, cwmnopwr said:

I dunno, doesn't seem much different than Windmill Isle Act I  from Unleashed. Basic tutorial level.

 

Keep in mind that Windmill Isle was also Sonic Team's first level in their first 3D boost game.

They've made 3 boost games between then and now. I would've expected to see some improvement since then, but I'm struggling to see any.

[GuyWithThePie]

Just now, Captain Metallix said:

Keep in mind that Windmill Isle was also Sonic Team's first level in their first 3D boost game.

They've made 3 boost games between then and now. I would've expected to see some improvement since then, but I'm struggling to see any.

I mean, there definitely was improvement in Generations. But they’ve clearly regressed since then.

[NegaMix]

1 minute ago, GuyWithThePie said:

I mean, there definitely was improvement in Generations. But they’ve clearly regressed since then.

Right, I should've clarified. I meant that I'm struggling to see any improvements in Forces.

[KHCast]

2 minutes ago, GuyWithThePie said:

I mean, there definitely was improvement in Generations. But they’ve clearly regressed since then.

I'm curious if the younger demographic didn't like the levels in Gens like seaside hill and preferred more fast fast gotta go fast ones. Like if they focus tested them or some shit 

[GuyWithThePie]

3 minutes ago, KHCast said:

I'm curious if the younger demographic didn't like the levels in Gens like seaside hill and preferred more fast fast gotta go fast ones. Like if they focus tested them or some shit 

I think it's more that they sent the Generations team to work on Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, at least from what I've heard. I seriously doubt any of them are doing the level design for this game.

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

Just now, Radiant Hero Ike said:

I can say that I'm far more interested in the story than gameplay... I guess story is more important to me than gameplay in general though.

I think this is why SEGA will have to make a smart choice after this game is released. The main series Sonic games cannot cater to both gameplay purists and "I like story, don't care about the game" crowds simultaneously. 

And the truth is, if SEGA keeps releasing Sonic games where story is the focus and gameplay is...well....this......they're never going to win back the general gaming audience, or basically anyone who is not part of a specific subset of diehard Sonic fans. Every time a game is released like this that misses all the marks gameplay wise in favor of emphasizing "story", the Sonic franchise is going to get ripped to shreds by the gaming media. Because at the end of the day, this is still a videogame franchise, and the stories in this franchise are not winning any Pulitzer prizes anytime soon....

You've got to come up with a better way to appease your devianart/"I-just-care-about-story" crowd than this. In general, games like this cannot be the flagship for the company because they will continually be destroyed by critics and many big fan reviewers. And Snic games will continue to sell less until they are not justifiable projects on this scale anymore.

 

This is not what universal appeal looks like. I really thought that was the goal here, SEGA. Wow.

The 7th I going to be an interesting day, without a doubt.

[Gabz Girl]

Wow...been watching Sonic Generations’ Modern Green Hill gameplay to compare to this one and the difference is night and day. Sure it’s perhaps the weakest stage in the game, but it was only the first AND we have Chemical Plant to compare it to which was brilliant.

We have seen four stages so far for Sonic Forces and all of it looks mediocre. ALL. OF. IT. If it’s true that there are 10 stages in this game spread out over several different smaller levels, then I think we can gather now that there will be no “better” stages later on. Honestly, I’d be very surprised if that were the case. And I want to be surprised! I want this game to be really good but everything I’ve seen so far, besides the story, has been a huge disappointment for me.

[Celestia]

The weirdest thing about the enemies is that this game is definitely more in the vein of Colours and Lost World, games that (to varying degrees...) gave me more trouble with enemies compared to the likes of Unleashed/Generations. And even compared to the latter the A.I. is either even slower or, apparently, just not there.

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

13 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

What effect was that?Also yes 06 d

Destroyed lw in sales plus it was a console exclusive on a system no one cares for

What effect was that? You've got to be kidding. 

Sonic has become a joke of a franchise that continually sells less games every year and does not generate excitement in the general gaming community anymore outside of the ironic variety, and even the most diehard fans don't trust the brand uniformly anymore.

If Forces is reviewed anything like that (which, even though this game doesn't look too good, would shock me) you may very well witness the end of Modern Sonic. Because most gaming consumers don't open their wallets high in anticipation of crap.

[McGroose]

I had a bad feeling about this level based on what we saw from the Japanese Preview we saw a couple of days ago. Holy shit, even as someone who defended the level design in previous levels, I cannot deny that this is the pinnacle of awful level design in Sonic. There is no level design, it's a straight line. People exaggerated that Unleashed was Boost to Win and they may have been partially right for Apatos, but here it seems like all you have to do is use a single button. Sega, what the fuck are you doing?

What world am I in where I think that the Avatar and Classic will be more fun to play than Modern? At least those two have... you know... level design?

[Milo]

56 minutes ago, Dejimon11 said:

I think @Yeow can posted multiple times that 06 really didn't sell as well as most ppl made it out to be

I have and I once again will.

For people who actually want to do their research with credible / official sources, instead of grabbing numbers from VGChartz or pointing to the Greatest (Family) Hits label on certain Xbox 360 copies of the game, you can see that Sega's 2007 fiscal year reports show Sonic 2006 (360 only, PS3 version was delayed into January 2007) sold 550K in its first quarter in North America and Europe, and only made an additional 320K the following quarter (both PS3 and 360, also NA and EU). That's only 870K in total--all of Sonic Team's other mainline games from that generation (Unleashed, Colors, Generations) sold significantly better. If it eventually crawled past one million, it did it certainly too late for it to show up in later IR reports from the company.

Even if it was commercially successful, citing that as some sort of positive element or defense for the game is ignoring the elephant in the room that Sega made a point of wanting nothing more to do with the game after it was critically lambasted. Part of Sega's then-initiative of delisting Sonic games with poor reviews: new copies of the game were recalled, it was taken off the Xbox 360's XBLA, and it was never released on the PS3's PlayStation Store. Unleashed had a polarizing reception and yet you can still buy it on the PS3's PSN and the 360's XBLA. You have to actively hunt for used copies to play Sonic 2006 (they aren't exactly hard to find, but it's pretty obvious as to why that's the case).

[Gabz Girl]

@Yeow Thanks for that breakdown on Sonic 06 sales! I didn’t know about this actually, I thought it sold decently but obviously it wasn’t good enough for Sega, especially with the terrible reviews. I completely forgot about copies of the game being recalled too!

[KHCast]

10 minutes ago, GuyWithThePie said:

I think it's more that they sent the Generations team to work on Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, at least from what I've heard. I seriously doubt any of them are doing the level design for this game.

That's true, but they also said recently that they were really trying to appeal to younger demographics. So I wouldn't be shocked if younger players simply didn't like the way Gens was built level design wise 

[Sonikko]

13 minutes ago, Giant Dad said:

In the games defense, you are never going to be in these guys' face long enough for them to even finish animating the first 1/3rd of their getting ready animation so I can't blame them for just outright having them there as stationaries. Doesn't make it any less dumb (and the whole premise of enemies being that easy to take down in the first place) but I can see why the devs didn't want to bother.

Yes, exactly.

I was waiting for someone to say that because this, this is a pretty important point.

This is exactly what is wrong with their design.

Let's start from the very beginning.

The classic games:

Momentum based platformers, extensive multiple routes, replayability.

Adventure 1:

"Hey how do we translate that to 3D?" "Uhm let's try bringing the same design mentality to 3D and see if it works"

Windy Valley Beta happens.

"Uhm that's very cool but we can't make a whole game like that, the console isn't powerful enough and building it would require too much time with our strict budget, let's cut some corners"

Windy Valley becomes the most automated and linear stage in the game.

"Yes this is more like it, let's do it like this, and then we'll figure it out later, we'll improve on the formula.

Adventure 2:

"Uh people don't seem to care that our games are linear, since it's easier to build them that way let's make them even more linear, there's no point in expanding level design if people don't care"

Heroes:

"Hey guys uhmm why do we even have physics?" "Oh man that's actually a good point, let's automate more stuff"

06:

"But guys if people like watching Sonic being bounced around so much why don't we make more of that? No need for actual gameplay, amirite?"

Unleashed:

"People liked the mach speed sections and Secret Rings more than standard gameplay, let's make that just to the extreme. We aren't going to need physics or any meaningful enemy AI 'cause Sonic is gonna move so fast that people won't even notice. YOLO"

Colours:

"Seems like people liked the day stages of Unleashed, let's make those except not really. It's gonna be slow and clunky! Also, let's strip out those awful slope physics we reintroduced for some reason, whotf thought we needed them?"

Generations:

"Hey guys, this one oughta be good, this is the 20th anniversary, you hear me? Don't fuck this up." 

"But including Classic Sonic is gonna be hard with this shit physics engine we've got now, what do we do?"
"Well make it work somehow, be sure to include slope physics, but automate the ramps 'cause nobody cares anyway"

Lost World:
"Looks like people have some issues with classic Sonic and physics, let's just get rid of those and justify it with planetoids gimmicks 8)"

Forces:

"People want the boost back 'cause LW was a miss. Let's make it even more automated, people didn't mind Lost World not having physics so that's not an issue, no need to bring them back.

Oh and get rid of the enemies AI, nobody stops in front of them to check if they have any lol."

And this long rant is to say that their design goes on by subtraction.

They keep stripping away features with each game they put out.

Each game has been progressively worse.

And we kept supporting them.

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

Modern Sonic has been a lot better than this.

This Sonic Team has been better than this.

Either they reeeeeeally, reeeeally don't give a crap about traditional Sonic gameplay anymore and have adopted a modified design approach or philosophy (might be possible) or they've stopped caring completely and are burned out with Sonic. I'm not sure what to think yet.

[Meta77]

3 minutes ago, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

What effect was that? You've got to be kidding. 

Sonic has become a joke of a franchise that continually sells less games every year and does not generate excitement in the general gaming community anymore outside of the ironic variety, and even the most diehard fans don't trust the brand uniformly anymore.

If Forces is reviewed anything like that (which, even though this game doesn't look too good, would shock me) you may very well witness the end of Modern Sonic. Because most gaming consumers don't open their wallets high in anticipation of crap.

General gaming. Hmm most have hated on sonic for years wht appease to them? Most games are meanr to appeal to fans first not the cod player down the street. 06 didn't and it sold well though it was a mess.  Saying this will end modern sonic is nearly as funny as people saying Nintendo was doomed for not launching a smash bros game with switch. Or how the nes  classic would never sale. It all depends on marketing. boom was a mess but spawned a popular tv show from it. If anything I'm certain this game will do fine. I have friends that never have touched sonic in years wanting it just to dress up a oc

[Multikaris]

4 minutes ago, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

Modern Sonic has been a lot better than this.

This Sonic Team has been better than this.

Either they reeeeeeally, reeeeally don't give a crap about traditional Sonic gameplay anymore and have adopted a modified design approach or philosophy (might be possible) or they've stopped caring completely and are burned out with Sonic. I'm not sure what to think yet.

The Adventure-like tonal elements indicate the latter. They sandwich a ridiculous amount of Adventure stuff into what was once clearly Generations 2.

[Badnik Mechanic]

So how much of my preview still stands?

Anyway... can someone test something for me?

 

It seems that the S-Tubes are still automated... So I have an experiment for you to try.

Go through one then stop.

Now... try to go back up it. All the way and out.

Do you get forced back down or can you escape out of the top of It?

[Sonikko]

3 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

General gaming. Hmm most have hated on sonic for years wht appease to them? Most games are meanr to appeal to fans first not the cod player down the street. 06 didn't and it sold well though it was a mess.  Saying this will end modern sonic is nearly as funny as people saying Nintendo was doomed for not launching a smash bros game with switch. Or how the nes  classic would never sale. It all depends on marketing. boom was a mess but spawned a popular tv show from it. If anything I'm certain this game will do fine. I have friends that never have touched sonic in years wanting it just to dress up a oc

You're dead wrong lol.

The Sonic fanbase is not enough to support Sonic games, and if they look like shit they won't sell.

Lost World sold 800k copies or am I wrong?

How much did the Boom games sell again? 300k combined?

Eh.

They need the general public, and if they're not here for the game, then it's not good.

[Bobnik]

2 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

So how much of my preview still stands?

Anyway... can someone test something for me?

 

It seems that the S-Tubes are still automated... So I have an experiment for you to try.

Go through one then stop.

Now... try to go back up it. All the way and out.

Do you get forced back down or can you escape out of the top of It?

I don't think you even can go back to the tube cuz the sand slide pushes you out of the 2D section.

[RLS Legacy]

This cannot be real.

There are blocky chunks of the stage missing during the 2D slope section.

For fuck's sake, Sonic Team. HOW did no-one notice this?

EDIT: this is taken from a Twitter video. It looks worse in motion. https://twitter.com/CyclonX_/status/923219462593105921/video/1 (skip to 0:30)