Sonic Forces Reviews Thread

[Sonikko]

12 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Right, so where do they go from here then? After scrapping everything I mean? 

Lost World and Rise of Lyric scrapped practically everything and Lost World ended up divisive as hell and on top of that, a lot of it's good aspects being overshadowed by bad aspects. What happens then? 

Or how about the many many people who've said at least up until Rise of Lyric's release is the fact SEGA's far too experimental and won't just nail down a proper gameplay style for 3D Sonic and won't focus on improving one over the other.

So what happens when this hypothetical next game releases and it happens to be divisive despite starting from scratch? Do we tell SEGA to scrap it all again and do something else entirely new?

Both of those games had many issues:

For starters Sonic Lost World was still designed like a boost game, mainly Sonic Colours, it shares many design choices with the former and Forces for instance.

It's a boost game, without the boost, completely focused on the 2D sections while removing the long stretches of land where you're allowed to go fast.

The 3D stages have some meat to them, but they're very basic and some just consist of a flat terrain with a couple of enemies sprinkled around.

So it was more of a "twisting" the formula rather than scrapping their design philosophy and starting from scratch. And this is an issue that has plagued the franchise since the early 3D era. It may look like the boost games are different from the Adventure games, but at their core, they're very close.

 

Boom RoL, glitches aside, was just a very generic 3D platformer that had no idea what a Sonic is and went the Jak & Dexter route. You might switch out the Sonic models in that game with a generic platformer hero and it would literally be the same thing.

That's not the way to scrap and start over. You need to go back and see what worked in the first place.

Sonic needs its Breath of the Wild. A game that goes back to the very beginning, and is built with the same design philosophy of the old games, in a modern world.

Bring back the freedom, bring back the excitement of making your own way through a stage, give me some proper 3D environment to traverse, let me roll off ramps, high into the sky and jump between stone pillars.

Let me play the damn game lol.

EDIT: I forgot to wrap up the main point of the post lol.

What I meant is... just because those "reboot" attempts weren't successful, it doesn't mean it can't be done.

The same argument is valid for 3D Sonic. Just 'cause it hasn't been done right before, it doesn't mean it can't be done.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

6 minutes ago, Josh said:

That's not up to me to decide. All I know is that taking on all these ideas and and doing them all badly probably means there needs to be a change within the staff. Not just which wacky idea or surface level tone they approach the game with or something else shallow like that.

That's a different thing to just scrapping a style completely and hoping for the best. In fact, considering Generations was a good example of the boost formula done right (even if people might dislike it, it is the best handled one in awhile). That indicates a staff change needing to occur, or the project as a whole needing to be handled better as opposed to the formula itself. I'm sure the likes of Odyssey and Breath of the Wild could've horribly wrong if it was mismanaged or had the wrong team behind them.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

3 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I'm sure the likes of Odyssey and Breath of the Wild could've horribly wrong if it was mismanaged or had the wrong team behind them.

Well,  those games also weren't really changes to the formula either. They were enhancements or revivals of game play styles their reductive franchises had worked with ( bout damn time socially especially in Mario's case).

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1 minute ago, Jovahexeon Ace Joranvexeon said:

Well,  those games also weren't really changes to the formula either. They were enhancements or revivals of game play styles their reductive franchises had worked with ( bout damn time socially especially in Mario's case).

Forces was a formula used for years before so how does this comparison not work?

[Wraith]

8 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

That's a different thing to just scrapping a style completely and hoping for the best. In fact, considering Generations was a good example of the boost formula done right (even if people might dislike it, it is the best handled one in awhile). That indicates a staff change needing to occur, or the project as a whole needing to be handled better as opposed to the formula itself. I'm sure the likes of Odyssey and Breath of the Wild could've horribly wrong if it was mismanaged or had the wrong team behind them.

There's no "hoping for the best". Nobody is saying they roll the dice or throw a dart at a board here. I'm just asking that they stop and think for a second on what people really want. What would be the best for Sonic? They need to really think hard about that question. Not just Sonic team, but Sega as a whole. This direction isn't it, and if they didn't know it making the game they know it now. 

Breath of the Wild is also literally an example of a franchise drastically changing direction after a realization that the older style was too limiting as a whole and not really capitalizing on what made the series stand out in the first place. It wasn't just down to hiring good staff. It was down to hiring a good, fresh staff with ambition and direction and an understanding of what made the series resonate. The same is true of Mario Odyssey, to an extent.

[Sonikko]

6 minutes ago, Josh said:

There's no "hoping for the best". Nobody is saying they roll the dice or throw a dart at a board here. I'm just asking that they stop and think for a second on what people really want. What would be the best for Sonic? They need to really think hard about that question. Not just Sonic team, but Sega as a whole. This direction isn't it, and if they didn't know it making the game they know it now. 

Breath of the Wild is also literally an example of a franchise drastically changing direction after a realization that the older style was too limiting as a whole and not really capitalizing on what made the series stand out in the first place. It wasn't just down to hiring good staff. It was down to hiring a good, fresh staff with ambition and direction and an understanding of what made the series resonate. The same is true of Mario Odyssey, to an extent.

I'm not sure about Breath of the Wild developers and such, but the leader was still Aonuma, so not exactly fresh staff.

Also, it's not even "what people want", 'cause there are some sides of this fanbase that are definitely too vocal but ultimately a minority (just look at how vocal the Forces fanbase is, and how poorly the game is actually selling). Sonic Team needs to stop, take a look at Sonic and think "What were the convenctions behind the original gameplay style? What did the original team want to achieve? How can we do the same thing in a modern environment?". All the things people want is extra fluff they shouldn't be focusing about.

Chao Gardens, plot, extra characters, weapons, mechas, avatars and what have you.

They need to nail the core gameplay first, then comes all the rest. I can't wait to play as Tails again in a 3D game, but I can't get that until they manage to make the core experience enjoyable and moldable enough to include him as a playable character.

[Wraith]

2 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

I'm not sure about Breath of the Wild developers and such, but the leader was still Aonuma, so not exactly fresh staff.

 

Aonuma actually took more of a hands off approach with the game. It was primarily concieved by younger staff members and old heads like Aonuma and Miyamoto just oversaw. 

 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

9 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Forces was a formula used for years before so how does this comparison not work?

 Ahh,  I thought that was in reference to the argument against changing the gameplay style. 

[knuckles20]

5 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Chao Gardens, plot, extra characters, weapons, mechas, avatars and what have you.

They need to nail the core gameplay first, then comes all the rest. I can't wait to play as Tails again in a 3D game, but I can't get that until they manage to make the core experience enjoyable and moldable enough to include him as a playable character.

Pretty sure I've heard this before. Oh yeah when Forces was revealed, when Lost World was revealed, Generations, Colors, all the way back to Unleashed. 9 years and they can't figure out one gameplay? They supposedly had it nailed for Modern Sonic in Generations so what gives?

[Sonikko]

1 minute ago, knuckles20 said:

Pretty sure I've heard this before. Oh yeah when Forces was revealed, when Lost World was revealed, Generations, Colors, all the way back to Unleashed. 9 years and they can't figure out one gameplay? They supposedly had it nailed for Modern Sonic in Generations so what gives?

Generations was a step in the right direction, not exactly the holy grail of 3D Sonic.

I don't get your point. I mean you're just proving my point that they don't really think about what they're doing. Unleashed was 9 years ago and yet, they managed to screw up what that game did good in Forces. 9 years and they still have no idea how to handle boost Sonic, let alone proper 3D Sonic.

[PKGaming]

I still can't believe the Game Grumps of all people are having a good time with this game...

[Tyranno]

The staff and membership of Sonic Team already changes from game to game as often as it does. What do you want to happen there? You do realize a change in staff all the way up to the top of people like Iizuka is going to result in making the stuff you like, like Mania, that much more unlikely to continue too, right?

[Sean]

They're never going to nail Sonic's gameplay in 3D so you might as well stop hoping for "Sega getting Sonic right first before introducing additional playable characters," because I can tell you right now that after nearly a decade of Sonic-only gameplay that is probably never going to happen again.

[Milo]

1 minute ago, Tyranno said:

The staff and membership of Sonic Team already changes from game to game as often as it does. What do you want to happen there? You do realize a change in staff all the way up to the top of people like Iizuka is going to result in making the stuff you like, like Mania, that much more unlikely to continue too, right?

The Kishimoto-directed games up until Forces have a large overlap of the same designers and director (Kishimoto himself) working on them; and as far back as Unleashed the artists and programmers have also had a consistent staff. Iizuka has also been the head of Sonic Team since 2008. The changes in staff and membership haven't been as drastic as you're implying.

As for Mania, the biggest input Iizuka had to Mania was saying yes to it existing and a few mandates over the game's content, like the Phantom Ruby/Forces tie-in plot and having remixed levels alongside original levels. Outside of level design supervision, he and the rest of Sonic Team had almost nothing to do with Mania's design or its conception; Taxman is on record for stating that Mania started when he came up with a prototype (Sonic Discovery) and pitched it to Sega (there is a reason why in the game's credits, he's not only a main programmer alongside Stealth, he's also credited as the project lead).

Moreover, Iizuka giving the greenlight to Mania doesn't magically wipe away the rest of his track record which can be argued to be blatantly spotty, if not largely being misfires. Concerning games Iizuka directly produced as the Sonic Team head, we got games like Sonic 4 and Lost World around the same time we got games Colors and Generations. Concerning games Iizuka actually directed and helped designed (as head of the Sonic Team USA offshoot), we went from the first two Adventures to Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog (and even then, the Adventure games are themselves hotly contested). As a series director/overseer, we literally just got Forces riding off the heels of Mania.

This is like using Deadpool, Logan, and Wonder Woman as a basis to argue Fox and WB/DC absolutely know what they're doing with superhero films, while also ignoring films like the 2015 Fantastic Four reboot, Batman V Superman, and Suicide Squad. It's not too hard to imagine another franchise/studio director could be brought in and deliver a more consistent track record of quality games that also understand and deliver upon the expectations of the fans.

[Tyranno]

Nor does it really confirm that it'll magically fix anything.

But let's see what one of the people who actually developed Sonic Mania have to say on the matter of Iizuka and Sonic Team's greater involvement:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1430120

Quote

[1] You'd be surprised how much input SEGA and Sonic Team had on the game, but I'm not at liberty to disclose details, so we'll leave it at that.

[2] This sentence strikes me as extremely reductive and incorrect, and would have been the main topic of my thread.

I think there's a general presumption, just from the fact that many/most of the people who worked on Sonic Mania had fan game/rom hacking background, that it's as simple as throwing money at a bunch of fans and getting something good. There are two key facets here that get lost in that reduction:

A) The talent and knowledge to design a game.

The accountability and reliability to pull it off to the end.

Quote

I think that there's a lot that the industry at large can learn from the development and mere existence of Sonic Mania. However, a lot of wrong messages can and are also being sent out which are poisonous to the real lessons. What did SEGA do right, in this case? Help foster an active fan work community. Reach out to the right people at the right time, and take things one step at a time. What didn't SEGA actually do? Throw money at a bunch of fans with no due process. I don't think Mania would have existed without all the intermediary steps of first the CD remaster, then 1, then 2 with a completely original zone, and so on and so forth.

If there's something I'd like to say in closing, recruiting fans really, REALLY isn't new, although it's probably groundbreaking for a Japanese IP, even if Sonic has been bigger in the west vs Japan for a long time now. CS, DotA, TF2, LoL, these are all franchises that either were mods at one point of time, or designed by people who were mod makers in the case of LoL/Guinsoo. Black Mesa started out as a hobbyist project. Tower Defense, MOBAs, survival FPS as entire genres generally all started as fan undertakings which latched on to a more widespread appeal. A lot of current AAA talent started out in the Doom/Quake/Unreal modding communities. Think about the opposite here for a second. If people who ended up working on games weren't fan of games (or specific franchises) and fans of tinkering with games and game creation to begin with, what even is the alternative? Great devs don't magically fall out of the sky. In other words, fans and professionals aren't mutually exclusive categorizations. 

The part I bolded is especially true. A lot of what happened with Mania is because of the relationship and successful series of cooperation that came beforehand. When you upend the teatable, and replace all the people involved, ESPECIALLY in regards to a process that is already outside the norm for a Japanese company, you run the risk of dissolving those connections and professional relationships as well. You want a shake up, it's going to affect all facets of this brand, and it's not guaranteed to have the results you want. Even putting Whitehead in Iizuka's place isn't guaranteed to get the results people want, because now his role has completely changed and he has to deal with a new set of challenges, including, but not limited to, the fact he's now an executive in a company that deals with tradition and friction between its various branches.

That's all I'm trying to say. This is a so much more loaded and complex issue than people are making it, and the problem is these are the voices people want Sega to be listening to. You say it's "not too hard to imagine a scenario where another producer does better" but that's just it - people imagine things without putting much thought into it.

[AdventChild]

Well, in a bit of a twist, it's back on Amazon's Top 100 VGs at #87 on the list (with Mario + Rabbids gone way up into the Top 50 at #49). But let's not kid ourselves as it's still low on the list and somewhat not surprising knowing with Christmas around the corner it'll have some spike in sales. And with releases like Skyrim for the Switch and Star Wars Battlefront 2 and other upcoming games, it won't be long til it sees way out of the list yet again.

https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-video-games/zgbs/videogames#5

[Meta77]

20 hours ago, PKGaming said:

I still can't believe the Game Grumps of all people are having a good time with this game...

I mean it's cause people have different taste. My fav takeaway are people like grumps and jim people who usually don't care for sonic are actually just doing that. Having fun with the game and not flipping every table in a house they can find to complain.  But yea game grumps is a surprise.  I'm waiting to see how aqua road goes. That was the only stage in the entire game to give me issues

[KHCast]

 

has this review been posted? 

One thing that really made me raise an eyebrow was him saying this was more Gens than Colors, when almost everyone else has said the opposite. Level design and control wise this is more colors. Generations would imply more thought out decently paced levels with more to do in them.

Also im not getting this "it's a step in the right direction" praise I've seen tons of reviewers on YouTube bring up. Personally I think this only shows it's going backwards 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

1 hour ago, AdventChild said:

Star Wars Battlefront 2

 Now that's highly debatable given EA's shenanigans.

[Jar Jar Analysis 1138]

1 hour ago, KHCast said:

 

has this review been posted? 

One thing that really made me raise an eyebrow was him saying this was more Gens than Colors, when almost everyone else has said the opposite. Level design and control wise this is more colors. Generations would imply more thought out decently paced levels with more to do in them.

Also im not getting this "it's a step in the right direction" praise I've seen tons of reviewers on YouTube bring up. Personally I think this only shows it's going backwards 

 

20 hours ago, Tyranno said:

Nor does it really confirm that it'll magically fix anything.

But let's see what one of the people who actually developed Sonic Mania have to say on the matter of Iizuka and Sonic Team's greater involvement:

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1430120

The part I bolded is especially true. A lot of what happened with Mania is because of the relationship and successful series of cooperation that came beforehand. When you upend the teatable, and replace all the people involved, ESPECIALLY in regards to a process that is already outside the norm for a Japanese company, you run the risk of dissolving those connections and professional relationships as well. You want a shake up, it's going to affect all facets of this brand, and it's not guaranteed to have the results you want. Even putting Whitehead in Iizuka's place isn't guaranteed to get the results people want, because now his role has completely changed and he has to deal with a new set of challenges, including, but not limited to, the fact he's now an executive in a company that deals with tradition and friction between its various branches.

That's all I'm trying to say. This is a so much more loaded and complex issue than people are making it, and the problem is these are the voices people want Sega to be listening to. You say it's "not too hard to imagine a scenario where another producer does better" but that's just it - people imagine things without putting much thought into it.

Saw that post a while ago. I've made similar statements and fully agree with him.

Fans can point out the simple flaws within the Sega company yet without being able to provide the necessary intricacies of how to absolve the issues. Not to say criticism can't be applied(it always should) though not many of us understands how to run a business or the industry itself without proper experience. Talk the talk but can ya walk the walk?

[KHCast]

Are we really pulling the "let's see you do better" card as a argument? I don't need to be a cook to tell someone the sanwhich is shit. I mean fair throwing Christian in Iizukas place probably won't magically fix everything, but doesn't mean we have to put up with Iizuka and his/ST's misdirections

[Jar Jar Analysis 1138]

21 minutes ago, KHCast said:

Are we really pulling the "let's see you do better" card as a argument? I don't need to be a cook to tell someone the sanwhich is shit

I didn't say that(although I wouldn't mind seeing someone in the fanbase like Taxman reach towards the top).

I said, due to not knowing the intricacies within the business industry, it's harder to provide certain alternatives because of the lack of knowledge. Unless you've been in the industry/experienced it(or has done extensive research to where you understand everything about that particular world) a lot of the comments or suggestions aren't really worth much. I'm using the overall, not to specific people.

 

Quote

 

I don't need to be a cook to tell someone the sanwhich is shit

 

 

Depends on what you like.

 

Further more; Making sandwiches or any source of food is a common action within Society even people who lack proper resources(poor) can make it. 

 

Creating thesis's on how to make your business model/management improved? I don't see much of that anywhere except for a few.

[KHCast]

5 minutes ago, Jar Jar Analysis 1138 said:

Further more; Making sandwiches or any source of food is a common action within Society even people who lack proper resources(poor) can make it. 

Okay since you're grasping and taking fbis very literally, missing the point, here's a bother example. A house repair man is hired to fix the roof. Instead of fixing the roof, the just nails some planks over the hole and calls it a day. You criticize his work and tell him to do better. He then tells you "I'm a professional, let's see you do better." And says instead of simply complaining, maybe give the professional constructive criticism and says to also compliment what he did well if you wanna see better changes next time.

[Jar Jar Analysis 1138]

9 minutes ago, KHCast said:

fbis

The hell is a fbis...

 

9 minutes ago, KHCast said:

Okay since you're grasping and taking fbis very literally, missing the point, here's a bother example. A house repair man is hired to fix the roof. Instead of fixing the roof, the just nails some planks over the hole and calls it a day. You criticize his work and tell him to do better. He then tells you "I'm a professional, let's see you do better." And says instead of simply complaining, maybe give the professional constructive criticism and says to also compliment what he did well if you wanna see better changes next time.

Bruv, this isn't some defense of Forces nor talking about the said product, Forces.

You either have experience in the business industry and/or having a clear understanding of it or you don't. I'm in the latter, so I am not trying to insult others. . All I was saying is what Falk was basically describing just in my own way. Simple as that

Just look at his comments.

 

[NintendoSoul]

So despite taking 4 years the development was rushed, and it shows. Using newbies to design sonic levels was never going to end well, the shoe-horning of Classic Sonic reeks of having leftover assets from Generations to use, you don't fight all the major clones in a proper boss fight, what boss fights there are end up disappointing, where is Blaze?, etc.

The best thing about Forces is the Avatar and their customization. That ended up being a cool feature.

Thank goodness Sonic Mania was released this year.