Team Sonic Racing - Upcoming Sonic Racing Game

[Shadowlax]

3 hours ago, GentlemanX said:

 

Basically this. See, while I'm all for obscurer characters like Jet or say Nega in something like Team Sonic Racing, I don't really expect or want them in Sonic & All-Stars Racing. Leaving beside the obvious fact that Sonic gets all of the most popular characters in because it's the most popular brand and Sega's mascot, I really had no interest in say Pudding or MeeMee or Gum. Ulala, Aiai, and Beat? No prob. But characters that only serve to give another rep to a series rather than a different ip, in a game where multiple ips is the whole idea, didn't appeal to me. And yes, they're cheaper to program for and had models on hand from Tennis, but it still felt like wasted slots even if that was the only way to add more characters. Losing other whole franchise reps like from Virtua Fighter, House of the Dead, and Billy Hatcher made that even worse. Then so many slots went to non-Sega characters like Wreck-It Ralph, Team Fortress 2, the Yogscast, and Danica Patrick. All that and 4 Sega characters were exclusive to the PC version. The only ones I cared about were Ryo's arcade cabinet, Vyse, Gilius, Joe, and AGES. Even NiGHTS I found visually unattractive given the car form. It felt like such a huge downgrade from the 2010 game. And I didn't have a problem with the transformation gimmick and thought the courses looked cool. But the roster soured me so much I never got the game. Maybe I will at some point, I've seen how much people love it, but it cratered all the excitement I had for it.

I actually sorta agree but I don't quite feel the same. While everytime I looked at the roster I went " why the hell is pudding here" I wasn't really missing too much, all I wanted was Jacky& Akira, and the bonaza brothers that said I can see how you feel differently. I also wasn't fond of the non sega characters, because I feel like they didn't really add much. 

My issue with Transformed lied more in the stages and the music selection

[Plasme]

I thoight Transformed hsd a way better roster. They had Vyse, Shinobi, and Gilius, which were great picks. And I disagree that adding Pudding, Gum and other reps from IPs waa a bad move. A main reason I liked the game so much was because it was a way to play wuth dead IPs again which I absolutely adored, such as Jet Set Radio  Space Channel 5 etc. Getting more repd from them was great. Especially since Sonic had so many reps.

[Dr. Detective]

I prefer the first All-Stars Racing. It definitely felt like it had a much more diverse roster as far as the SEGA characters were concerned. Vyse, Gulius, and Joe Musashi were all cool but they got lost in a gaggle of recolors and guests included for the sake of some kind of outside marketing. I couldn't fathom why I'd want to pick MeeMee over AiAi. What's the point?

The first one also, again, had that insane announcer. I miss him.

It also had a better way to unlock the characters. And actual music selection. And cooler All-Star moves.

Transformed did the tracks better and had a better variety of them but I feel like thats all it did better. Not to say it didn't do what it did well in the other areas of course.

 

[Blue Blood]

3 hours ago, GentlemanX said:

 

Basically this. See, while I'm all for obscurer characters like Jet or say Nega in something like Team Sonic Racing, I don't really expect or want them in Sonic & All-Stars Racing. Leaving beside the obvious fact that Sonic gets all of the most popular characters in because it's the most popular brand and Sega's mascot, I really had no interest in say Pudding or MeeMee or Gum. Ulala, Aiai, and Beat? No prob. But characters that only serve to give another rep to a series rather than a different ip, in a game where multiple ips is the whole idea, didn't appeal to me. And yes, they're cheaper to program for and had models on hand from Tennis, but it still felt like wasted slots even if that was the only way to add more characters. Losing other whole franchise reps like from Virtua Fighter, House of the Dead, and Billy Hatcher made that even worse. Then so many slots went to non-Sega characters like Wreck-It Ralph, Team Fortress 2, the Yogscast, and Danica Patrick. All that and 4 Sega characters were exclusive to the PC version. The only ones I cared about were Ryo's arcade cabinet, Vyse, Gilius, Joe, and AGES. Even NiGHTS I found visually unattractive given the car form. It felt like such a huge downgrade from the 2010 game. And I didn't have a problem with the transformation gimmick and thought the courses looked cool. But the roster soured me so much I never got the game. Maybe I will at some point, I've seen how much people love it, but it cratered all the excitement I had for it.

I feel like it's worth mentioning that the idea of "slots" is bullcrap. I know you acknowledged this, but way back at the time Steve Lycett of Sumo said that because the scale of ASRT was so much greater than ASR and even SST that having clone characters was the only way to increase the roster size. If there was no Gum, Pudding or MeeMee then there wouldn't have been alternatives. He also went as far as to say that Billy Hatcher was absent because they couldn't make vehicle designs for him that they were satisfied with. Danica Patrick was only added to the game as part of a sponsorship deal, which likely helped a bit with the budget ala SOAP in SA2 (although we don't know the actual extent of either deal). I'm not going to say that losing all the various franchise reps was a good thing, and not even Sonic survived the cull entirely with Big getting cut, but it was a necessity. They needed to use characters who could share skeletons and animations.

Also NiGHTS and Reala being their own vehicles was most sensible thing considering its actually a major part of series. It's the same reason that OpaOpa didn't have a vehicle in ASR.

[Red Hot Jack]

I also preferred the ASR roster because it had Billy Hatcher, Big, Opa-Opa, Bonanza Bros, the couple from House of the Dead, Akira & Jacky, Ryo Hazuki etc. Transformed had a better stage list.

As for now, I'll take what I have but, to me The Chaotix are more important than the likes of Chao and Big the meme, so I blame them and obviously who made this roster. Silver and Blaze could have easily fit into Team Rose more. But think of it from a story standpoint: these teams just don't work, what can Omochao and Big add to the story? Nothing, no characters interactions, do Vector, Blaze and Silver have any dynamic together? Nope, they don't compared to Vector, Espio and Charmy. Obviously they wanted to add the most popular Silver and Blaze, then put them into Team Rose with Amy, I mean, they are friends with her, plus I can see Silver and Blaze together again and there is their interrupted friendship from 06, But I doubt they are going to touch that. So yep, at first I was okay with the Chao and Big, but now I don't really see the point of them if they really wanted to prioritize characters, it's like they add a bias for Big, which makes me think Aaron and Steve Lycett had a say in the roster.

[Jango]

You guys are expecting too much from the story.. again. Remember Forces and to an extend Mania.

Not trying to be a buzz kill, but c'mon. 

[Red Hot Jack]

Also, I'm very surprised: where are Marine, Gardon and Norman? Everyone loves them and they are the stars of recent games. They would work well as a team. No seriously, a lot of people were expecting them.

[Marco9966]

6 minutes ago, Silent Jack said:

Also, I'm very surprised: where are Marine, Gardon and Norman? Everyone loves them and they are the stars of recent games. They would work well as a team. No seriously, a lot of people were expecting them.

100% !! They left Norman!! They left Gardon!!

Why would they choose obscure characters like Big or Vector instead of these??

#BRINGBACKNORMAN

[GentlemanX]

6 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

Also NiGHTS and Reala being their own vehicles was most sensible thing considering its actually a major part of series. It's the same reason that OpaOpa didn't have a vehicle in ASR.

I totally get why they had NiGHTS and Reala as cars. I just don't think the car forms are visually attractive and it's not how I wanted to play as them. It's totally a personal preference thing and I understand why others would not only be okay with it but actually prefer it.

And I'm aware of the constraints on the game mentioned in the rest of your post. I just find those to be major negatives for me, even if they were unavoidable to put more focus on other parts of the game.

[Sonic Fan J]

Back online again and have to say that the new "team" was not what I was expecting, but considering it was predicted by a number of users here I shouldn't be surprised (comically though Vector is still teamed up with an overly serious purple colored character and a flying character that many find annoying).

For the most part though I guess I agree that it just feels weird as a team of any kind. Frankly I think Blaze and Silver would have been better off teamed up with Amy as it would call back to 06 (I know, I know...), be able to take advantage of Amy and Silver's roles in the Resistance, and Amy's similarities and contrasts with Cream would have resulted in some interesting interactions with Blaze. Of course though it still wouldn't be  helping Vector out any if Big and the chaos are a must have for this game.

[Skull Leader]

4 hours ago, Sonic Fan J said:

Back online again and have to say that the new "team" was not what I was expecting, but considering it was predicted by a number of users here I shouldn't be surprised (comically though Vector is still teamed up with an overly serious purple colored character and a flying character that many find annoying).

For the most part though I guess I agree that it just feels weird as a team of any kind. Frankly I think Blaze and Silver would have been better off teamed up with Amy as it would call back to 06 (I know, I know...), be able to take advantage of Amy and Silver's roles in the Resistance, and Amy's similarities and contrasts with Cream would have resulted in some interesting interactions with Blaze. Of course though it still wouldn't be  helping Vector out any if Big and the chaos are a must have for this game.

Haha, I haven't thought of Blaze and Silver like that. At least Blaze's a bit similar to Espio in that they're the serious types.

Hope the custom team options is real, since even with this cast, there's plenty of room to create your own teams, for which I have plenty of ideas.

Still, it's funny how with the other teams they try different things (even if it means leaving some really obvious choices out, like Espio), while Sonic's and Shadow's are left intact. Kind off reeks like a bit of favoritism IMO.

The cover of the game is something I still don't really like, since it leaves out the other characters that could help make it feel more lively in favor of only featuring the vanilla trio + Shadow (funny how his tem mates are not featured).

[Dr. Detective]

15 hours ago, Jango said:

You guys are expecting too much from the story.. again. Remember Forces and to an extend Mania.

Not trying to be a buzz kill, but c'mon. 

I'm still calling it. The story is just going to be a bunch of talking heads banging on about a fun time at the race-track. They won't even have animated cutscenes.

I called "Team Vector" and who was on it. I want to see if I can go 2 for 2. 

[Gabz Girl]

On 8/17/2018 at 12:05 PM, Jango said:

You guys are expecting too much from the story.. again. Remember Forces and to an extend Mania.

Not trying to be a buzz kill, but c'mon. 

Yeah, and I’m totally expecting it to be a bunch of stiff character portraits with text and voice a la Sonic Free Riders. -__- I miss the fun cartoony cutscenes from the first two Riders games. 

As for Team Vector, that’s a very random team up and I really want to know how it happened! Glad Blaze is back though.

[Kazhnuz]

On 8/17/2018 at 12:17 PM, Silent Jack said:

Also, I'm very surprised: where are Marine, Gardon and Norman? Everyone loves them and they are the stars of recent games. They would work well as a team. No seriously, a lot of people were expecting them.

Really ? I never seen anybody really talk about Norman or Gardon or even remembering that first one. xD (Marine a bit more)

[Scape]

Yeah, I can't say I wouldn't have preferred Silver and Blaze being with Amy instead of Vector.

Silver and Amy seemed to get along well in Forces, and it'd be nice to see how Blaze would interact with Amy now that the writers are finally moving away from the dumbshit Sonic drama.

[Dr. Detective]

Hey guys, I think I may have stumbled upon something that may actually explain why some of our grievances with this game exist as well as why it's not structured like the other All-Stars Racing games. Now, I'm only assuming none of you saw this since I haven't seen anyone talking about it but I found a video interview with Lead Designer of this game, Richard Acheriki that was done on NintendoWorldReport.com. There's a part in the interview where he says that not only is he new to Sumo and hasn't worked on the past titles but the same is true for most of the team working on this game. They have contact with the people who worked on the previous titles for reference sake but the majority of their team is new.

The point where he says this is at 4:57 in the video.

Again, I don't know if this is old news to you all or not. I haven't seen or heard this interview before now and I saw a lot of people wondering why things were so different, often stating that they speculated it was because it was just low-budget or interference from Sonic Team/SEGA. That might still be the case, but I feel this might have something to do with it as well. 

[Plasme]

10 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Hey guys, I think I may have stumbled upon something that may actually explain why some of our grievances with this game exist as well as why it's not structured like the other All-Stars Racing games.

I presented this to the forum a couple of months ago. Another interesting bit from his career is that he's mostly worked on mobile games before, which explains why the UI and presentation looks quite mobile-esque.

[Badnik Mechanic]

On the subject of the current team.

All past Sonic games from Sumo were done by the Sheffield team, even the handhelds.

Pretty sure this one is being done by the Nottingham team.

 

But even if it was done by the Sheffield team, it's not the same team that was there when ASRT was being made, I know a lot of key figures have moved on, but even down to the QA team, it looks really different to the team that was there during the ASRT days.

[Mr Loopone]

The roster seems more of a Sonic Team/Sega decision rather than Sumo picking and choosing which Sonic characters to have, probably explains the character decisions. For some reason Vector's car reminds me of this.

As for the game itself, it looks like it tries to be like the first two but something seems off looking at the footage just can't put my finger to it and don't mean the team talk either. Then again will this game get a higher score than All-Star Fruit Racing as in its competitor?

55 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

On the subject of the current team.

All past Sonic games from Sumo were done by the Sheffield team, even the handhelds.

Pretty sure this one is being done by the Nottingham team.

 

But even if it was done by the Sheffield team, it's not the same team that was there when ASRT was being made, I know a lot of key figures have moved on, but even down to the QA team, it looks really different to the team that was there during the ASRT days.

Oh never knew that they had a Nottingham team, thought it is just Sheffield and their art studio in India. (looks it up and also finds out that they have studios in Newcastle and bought The Chinese Room too, also restructured since the Foundation 9 days) Not the same Sumo indeed and imagine that the people that were there during the Gremlin/Infogrames Sheffield House/early Sumo days are all retired.

So if it is done in Nottingham, then it is their first ever game. When a studio does a game for the first time, it is always unproven especially considered the reputation that the studio as a whole had when it comes to the Sega titles. Since it opened in 2016, then this game would have been in development for 2 years max but probably even less than that. It is a bit of a concern since it is pretty much a new team lacking in experience just using a well known name. That sounds pretty familiar doesn't it?

[Dr. Detective]

3 hours ago, Mayor D said:

On the subject of the current team.

All past Sonic games from Sumo were done by the Sheffield team, even the handhelds.

Pretty sure this one is being done by the Nottingham team.

 

But even if it was done by the Sheffield team, it's not the same team that was there when ASRT was being made, I know a lot of key figures have moved on, but even down to the QA team, it looks really different to the team that was there during the ASRT days.

It is being done by the Nottingham team. It's mentioned in that video as well. They're almost all new.

[RedFox99]

Hopefully the game can do well enough to warrant some substantial DLC later on.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Just a heads up.

The Jet the Hawk pre-order bonus rumour I've seen some people talk about... It's a hoax.

[LukA8]

I've seen that "leak", it literally said "Pre-order now and unlock a Jet as a playable character"... Very well done!

Are Sega not releasing a trailer for Gamescom? Do they really have so little to show off at this time? I mean there's the Ice Mountain demo, but this is almost starting to smell like delay.

[Bobnik]

4 hours ago, LukA8 said:

I've seen that "leak", it literally said "Pre-order now and unlock a Jet as a playable character"... Very well done!

Are Sega not releasing a trailer for Gamescom? Do they really have so little to show off at this time? I mean there's the Ice Mountain demo, but this is almost starting to smell like delay.

Gamescom technically starts tomorrow, but I wouldn't really expect a new trailer for the game.

Also I smell moreso a Forces situation than a delay and the game itself might actually not have much content, but that's just me tho...

[DabigRG]

On 8/16/2018 at 6:34 PM, Iko said:

Because let's be honest, in a kart game spin-off, the biggest selling point is the fanservice, especially when the gameplay itself has nothing original to offer. When fanservice is missing, I can just play any other kart racer instead... maybe the original S&SASR.

 

That is pretty much what makes the way this game is designed both somewhat baffling and disappointing.