Sonic Lost World Bad?????

[Wraith]

Nah not really. I just wanted to talk about the game's expressive character animation and artstyle and other stuff.
 

Quote

When he speaks, there is a phrase that Mr. Miyamoto always mentions that speaks directly to the very nature of the Zelda series. The phrase is, ‘Zelda is a game that values reality over realism.’ In the art world, realism is a movement to faithfully replicate the real world to whatever extent possible. Reality is not mimicking the real world, but rather making players feel like what they are experiencing is real. 

Trails follow Sonic when he moves and his feet turning into that classic figure eight wheel express sonic's sheer speed and power through careful exaggeration. The little flourishes to Sonic's movement make it that much more satisfying to watch him run around. It's at least a little more interesting to look at than the blue energy barrier they started throwing on post SA2. 

When he charges a spin attack he reigns himself in, kicking up dust before lurching forward. Learning how to sell Sonic's speed in ways that are more cost effective than running past as many buildings as possible is something I'm interested in, so this game's take on Sonic is uniquely  cool in at least one regard. 



I don't think tripling back entirely to the old badik Designs was necessary but I don't think it's just a black and white case of Sonic trying to mine old visuals for the nostalgic factor. Enemy design in Sonic has legitimately never been more expressive or distinct than this game, and in this case where the goal was to portray a wider range of enemy behaviors it makes sense to wheel these guys out. I would rather more new designs even if we're gonna go with badniks again but if that wasn't on the cards this is the next best option. 

Most of them just have their standard aggressive look going on but I've always liked how geeked Egg Pawn looks to go get Sonic knowing that he's going to be used to wipe the green checkered floors like always. I'm not really sure what's going on with this generation's crab meat but he just looks confused. 

I'll always prefer these guys over the more uniform robots in some of the other 3D entries. Sometimes they could get plenty expressive but in modern Sonic especially there's not much room in the gameplay for them to have a wider range of expression and behavior like they do here.

Due to my bitterness about how the game turned out it was hard for me to accept the spherewalking mechanics wrapped in classic imagery as much other than pandering to what critics liked, but you have to ask yourself why Mario Galaxy took up this approach in the first place. It was obviously extremely successful there, so it couldn't have been completely worthless for Sonic to try it.

Mario Sunshine was well received but Nintendo wanted to mitigate frustration from players who would steer Mario's twitchy ass off of ledges and the unreliable camera. Thus, restricting Mario to small challenges on small landmasses became the wave. More binary movement for Mario topped things off by making it much harder for him to build up any inertia that would make him too fast for players to control properly. Many would argue it was a simplification of the complex movement and structures Mario had to navigate before, but the reviews don't lie: A lot of people took to this new formula with the frustration gone overnight. 

 

Now consider how problems like a hard to wrangle character and an unreliable camera are things that have plagued 3D Sonic to far deeper extremes than it ever has Mario and it made sense to at least try it. Might be a simplification compared to getting the freedom to run around in wide open spaces but let's face it: You can't get that much more simple than the boost button anyway.

In a game that can be as complex as Sonic it's also good to embrace an art direction that provides clarity. One thing it does do that the other Sonic games really don't is set a hard line between what on the screen is intractable and what isn't. Something Mario games have always done very well and Sonic games haven't. In Sonic Lost World, Sonic can not only touch everything you see on the screen but he can mess around with it in some form. He kicks up grass and runs through bushes and climbs trees. He can bounce off clouds and ice skate. Even a flat wall is now suddenly something you can make some kind of decision with thanks to the parkour mechanic. The background window dressing is treated as just that: Something so far away that it's barely even worth thinking about. It kind of tries to emulate 2D games in that way where you implicitly understand what the play area and the background is without much thought. It definitely 'looks like a Mario game' but it might just be because it makes sense for a platformer to look this way.

I prefer the more detailed look for the games myself but even then I sometimes find myself bummed out by limitations like invisible walls that block off something that could have been an exciting discovery, an alternate path, or a shortcut. That's not even getting into the later games where anything that wasn't placed directly in the three lanes in front of Sonic might as well have not been there. Sonic Lost World is honest in a way younger me would have appreciated.

I feel like the shortcomings of this game and it's artstyle have been well discussed and will probably be discussed below so I'll just briefly touch on them here. I think the game could have gone further to feel more concrete like the classics do and I think the lack of unique level tropes hurts it a lot. Even other games like Monkey Ball that also take place in a Fuck Void of nonsense actually leverage that and get a lot more whimsical like a theme park, a washing machine, or the inside of a whale. Even with that in mind there's usually a (strange) explanation as to how they got there and how where they are connects to where they're going so it feels just a bit more tangible. I liked Silent Forest a little more than the others because of the dense set of trees surrounding the whole thing, instead of just accepting the Fuck Void. 

The reason I ended up writing this though is that I'm interested in these sorts of stylistic techniques. Lower quality assets could be leveraged along with expressive animation, smart lighting tricks, and putting just the right detail in the right places to make a world that feels real no matter what it looks like. It might be smart for the Sonic series to keep looking into this sort of stuff. The outcome might be worth the inevitable awkward phase spent feeling around. 

 

[DryLagoon]

Power wise I'm somewhere in the middle. I agree that the figure 8 and dust cloud work well. I also liked the blue aura from the Adventure games. Now with the movie we have the glowing eyes and lighting effects as an option too. I wonder if there's some way they could combine these traits that would work? The reason why I liked the auras is it gave each character a color too. Amy having pink, Shadow having this light orange color, etc. But there are other ways to make the characters feel different through animation too like Shadow's skating animations compared to Sonic's running.

[Plasme]

I think Sonic Lost World handled badniks perfectly and did so better than any game in the entire series. Yes, I think it did so better than even Mania.

You had classics returning who we had not seen in a long time, such as 

But also new ones, who totally fit into the established aesthetic

If anything, this is where I want to see Sonic badniks go in future games. It felt less like nostalgia-baiting and more like going back to the pre-established tropes of Sonic and building upon them. It was better than Sonic Heroes even, because when you fought the tarantula, it felt like it could belong in an environment such as Mushroom Hill. It wasn't just an 'enemy' like Egg Pawns.

 It was a real take on going back to Sonic's roots.

[DabigRG]

Lost World is indeed art. It's just a bit of a shame people were more concerned with the nostalgic level aesthetics, the imbalanced story, and the trial and error gameplay to acknowledge what it did do that was neat.

6 minutes ago, Plasme said:

I think Sonic Lost World handled badniks perfectly and did so better than any game in the entire series. Yes, I think it did so better than even Mania.

You had classics returning who we had not seen in a long time, such as 

But also new ones, who totally fit into the established aesthetic

If anything, this is where I want to see Sonic badniks go in future games. It felt less like nostalgia-baiting and more like going back to the pre-established tropes of Sonic and building upon them. It was better than Sonic Heroes even, because when you fought the tarantula, it felt like it could belong in an environment such as Mushroom Hill. It wasn't just an 'enemy' like Egg Pawns.

 It was a real take on going back to Sonic's roots.

The ants are from CD or Chaotix, if I remember right

[Plasme]

2 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Lost World is indeed art. It's just a bit of a shame people were more concerned with the nostalgic level aesthetics, the imbalanced story, and the trial and error gameplay to acknowledge what it did do that was neat.

The ants are from CD or Chaotix, if I remember right

Fair enough, but you get what I mean!

[McGroose]

The badniks in SLW were most welcome after all we've been getting for the past dozen or so games, not counting Sonic 4, has been nothing but Eggpawns of varying designs. Then Forces introduces the absolutely worst Eggman robot design in the games ever, dissapointing.

I really like how SLW handled the diversity of the badnik's resistance to attacks. Some are alot easier to damage than others, instead of it just being a single homing attack needed to kill it. Some needed the kick, some needed multiple attacks, some needed to be hit in certain directions. We haven't had that in a while. Really nice. 

[Iko]

Indeed, Lost World went through a new direction compared to the other Modern games, and this new direction has its strong points and weak points.

I always thought that Lost World has a lot of potential, but I didn't like the actual game that much for how little it uses that potential. Levels (when not 2D) are all built on spheres and tubes, the game rarely tries to do more with the formula... it's a nice concept, but I would have liked it to be expanded more.

Simplicistic visuals are cool, and as also a Kirby fan, I'm totally ok with games that look that way... but fo some reason, probably the void you talk about, the visuals in this game still feel a bit too bland to be enjoyable.

It's the usual "unused potential" every Sonic game has, the difference is that after all, Lost World is also a solid game, while most of the other 3D sonics usually aren't.

Aside of that, it's ok to lower the frustration for casual players and all, but I didn't like how "rigid" the gameplay of this game was... Sonic is usually about messing with physics, while in this game everything was so fixed that you can't mess much outside of what the developers intended. This is why, despite the inferiority in basically everything and all the glitches and level design issues that adds compared to the HD version, I prefered the 3DS version, because it controls way more naturally and closer to a regular Sonic game, and in some levels it even gives the player more freedom to explore with Parkour. The 3DS version is still a flawed game though, I'm just very tolerant to technical and design issues when even just one aspect of a game is fun to mess around with.

I'm much more interested in seeing an evolution of the Lost World game design formula than another evolution of Boost gameplay, Parkour especially has a lot of potential IMO.

[StaticMania]

1 hour ago, McGroose said:

...not counting Sonic 4...

Egg Pawns were only in...Colours and Generations.

[CrownSlayer’s Shadow]

I honestly, when it comes to Badnik designs, Lost Worlds isn’t exactly my taste.

I was more a fan of Generations and even Sonic 4’s more mechanized designs for badniks that looked like they pieced together and looked like they were both toys and lethal weapons at the same time.

That, and I just love detail when it comes to machines and robots. The more sophisticated a Motobug or Crabmeat looks, the more I see the juxtaposition with Eggman’s silliness for design and danger with ordinance combined.

Not that the aesthetics in Lost World is a betrayal of that, just that I like to see machines with a more mechanized edge to them.

As far as the other aesthetics go, honestly not my cup of tea but not enough for me to complain about. It’s so-so to me.

 

[King Scoopa Koopa]

Lost World had a lot going for it, but I wish they'd stuck with it to refine it a bit more into something truly remarkable.

[McGroose]

6 hours ago, StaticMania said:

Egg Pawns were only in...Colours and Generations.

"Past dozen games or so", not counting obvious spinoff titles like racing and sports.

Meaning Heroes, Shadow, Sonic Rush, Sonic Rivals 1 & 2, & Unleashed (just a black reskin of an egg pawn). Oh ya and they were also in... Colors and Generations.

Also IDK why you quoted me saying Only Sonic 4 to say that when I mentioned that cause Sonic 4 was the only real time for a while ever since Heroes  where we actually started getting the unique badnik designs until Colors came a little later and made it more common.

[StaticMania]

2 minutes ago, McGroose said:

Unleashed

Egg Fighters & Egg Pawns look nothing alike...

But other than that, thanks for the clarification.

[McGroose]

1 minute ago, StaticMania said:

Egg Fighters & Egg Pawns look nothing alike...

But other than that, thanks for the clarification.

Ehhh idk they look pretty alike to me. Same body shape, long arms, meant to resemble Eggman, etc.

I guess they're kinda different in design besides the obvious coloration difference but they really are just a variation of Eggpawn tbh. Even the Egg pawn things in Forces look similar to those two in body shape.

[DabigRG]

11 hours ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

Lost World had a lot going for it, but I wish they'd stuck with it to refine it a bit more into something truly remarkable.

Really makes one wonder what Sonic Team had slated for their next game had that went over better, especially if that rumor about Forces is true.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

7 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Really makes one wonder what Sonic Team had slated for their next game had that went over better, especially if that rumor about Forces is true.

Which rumor? I seem to recall there were a few.

[DabigRG]

6 minutes ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

Which rumor? I seem to recall there were a few.

That the game started as a spin-off around the Avatar system before having the Boost and Classic shoehorned in to make it the anniversary game.

[King Scoopa Koopa]

Ah, I hadn't heard that one! The way I heard it, third character was supposed to be Boom Sonic (hence the wrist grappler), and the bad reception to the Boom games made them rethink that.

[DabigRG]

4 hours ago, KingScoopaKoopa said:

Ah, I hadn't heard that one! The way I heard it, third character was supposed to be Boom Sonic (hence the wrist grappler), and the bad reception to the Boom games made them rethink that.

I remember that as well. That the Mega Death Egg resembles Lyric and you unlock Boom Sonic clothing by beating him adds to that.

[A Peep]

So about the art design, I do like how Lost World has more bouncy animations for sonic. The bounce emphasises well how, while heroic, energetic he is. However, the badnik design feels a bit too simplified and... friendly? In the original games, the presence of badniks felt slightly intimidating. Take Sonic CD for an example, as clownish as Eggman was, there was a chance of him taking over Little Planet, turning the utopias into placing where these robots took over any living thing in the zone. While this theme was pulled back in the Adventure games, more in SA2 than SA1, it still remained and saw a mini-renaissance in Colours. However in Lost World, it just feels like the badniks are there to be enemies with no meaning. My big criticism is with the aesthetic. Everything looks over-saturated and just feels like video game levels. In the genesis games, all 4 of them established their lands and made you care about them, you care seeing South Island, progressively getting more mechanical, you care trying to make a good future in CD, you care about Angel Island being set on fire and the ruins of Marble Garden crumble in 3&K. This trope continued throughout the 3D games, for example, ridding the world of Dark Gaia monsters and getting the world back to its former glory, stopping the eclipse cannon from destroying the world, even if it meant a sacrifice and unchaining the planets and setting the wisps free from Eggman’s amusement park. However in Lost World, you don’t care about any of the levels because either way, they’ll just be cylinders and spheres in the sky. It doesn’t really help that the story cares less about the lost hex than the player does either.

[PC the Hedgehog]

Lost World didn't have much going for it, but it had, IMHO, the best aesthetics of a 3D Sonic game to date. The classic badniks and sound effects were great. The best aspect, though, was the look of the levels. They were fun, vibrant, cartoony, and bouncy, the best representation of "classic" Sonic levels in 3D, I think.

[Kuzu]

While I like this artstyle in a vacuum for it's expressiveness and easy to follow visuals as you said, I think the biggest sticking points is Sonic himself.

 

The top is the Lost World model, and the bottom is the Generations model; so they did slightly alter Sonic's design, likely to fit into the aesthetic. The problem is that he's still pretty recognizably Modern Sonic, and that style simply clashes with Lost World's Aesthetic. 

 

The Motobug here does not look like it belongs to the same series. IF they were committed to this artstyle, then they needed to change Sonic's design as well to fit in. Ironically, this where Classic Sonic's chubbier and cuter proportions would have blended wonderfully. 

This looks actually looks like it fits with that motobug above.