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Sonic Colors: Ultimate - Announcement Trailer


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1 hour ago, mitsunari88 said:

Hmm.. I know most people say lives are an outdated concept these days, but in a way I can't agree fully.

I feel like it is fine for the default setting of a game to have lives, and then provide a setting for those who may need assistance. But in terms of a default setting, in the platformer genre lives add an extra stake and encourage players to make the most of their runs. If you mess up, then you just redo it with a better sense of what to come so you can have more lives by the time you get to a difficult section. Even better, if you can start over from the beginning of the level rather than the beginning of the game. Sonic Heroes did this IIRC. If you died, you just needed to try the level again rather than a whole game. 

But I know this is an unpopular opinion though and I think a lot of it is just personal bias from the type of games I play (predominantly RPGs). With games that had save points, if you die you just reload and have to redo everything you did until your last save. So it gives me a sense of thrill. 

To be clear, I am not one of those "games need to be hard because they hold your hand nowadays" people (My childhood was mostly PS1/PS2 anyways, not the hard games 80s and early 90s). I just think even kids get a kick/dopamine boost out of having some type of risk or consequences that adds some stakes to losing.  But again I know this is unpopular.

I agree with all of this, but the reality is more and more game players are taking any time wasted due to a learning curve as some kind of problem with the game. They just want to blast through the story and check it off their list.  Lives are only 'outdated' if you games from that context imo. The thing they test is consistency over long periods of play instead of seperating every challenge into it's own bubble where you can throw yourself at it as much as you like. 

Sega and Nintendo clearly don't have any plans on pushing this challenge on people anymore because they want their games to be as appealing as possible, but just because a mechanic stops being appealing to AAA developers doesn't mean its outdated or useless imo, thats nonsense. 

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At the end of the day it probably is the best course of action to just assume it isn't a playable Tails and wrack our brains trying to figure out what it could actually be. It doesn't matter how exciting the idea sounds or how much of a selling point a Tails mode would be. They're not interested for whatever reason and as far as the 3D games are concerned they haven't been for years now. 

Hopefully I'm wrong. This would be a lovely thing to be wrong about but with Sonic the most underwhelming choice is usually the safest prediction. 

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Here’s a simple thing they can do to improve the game: let us be Super Sonic AND have access to Wisps. That would be rad. 

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I'm fine with ditching lives because if you care about a challenge, the S ranks are already there to encourage not dying (although the ranking system in Colours was stupid anyway, where messing around using Wisps until you maxed out the colour bonus was more important than playing the level in a cool and swift manner).

Resetting your score to 0 is still pretty shitty for dying though so I think ideally they should make it a thing on the score screen where you see each "Tails" you've earned actively taking chunks off of your score.  That'd encourage playing well enough if you ask me.

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2 hours ago, Whatever the WhoCares said:

Here’s a simple thing they can do to improve the game: let us be Super Sonic AND have access to Wisps. That would be rad. 

Idk, I liked that in Super Sonic mode you basically played classic mode without wisps. As for Tails, it sucks but makes sense with the screenshots, anyway still fucking sucks because I got my hopes up and this is a lame feature. 

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5 hours ago, Wraith said:

I agree with all of this, but the reality is more and more game players are taking any time wasted due to a learning curve as some kind of problem with the game. They just want to blast through the story and check it off their list.  Lives are only 'outdated' if you games from that context imo. The thing they test is consistency over long periods of play instead of seperating every challenge into it's own bubble where you can throw yourself at it as much as you like.

This is a good point about lives in platformer titles and other older genres. For Colors I think a good compromise would be removing lives from the story mode, but adding them back in for the Egg Shuttle. The Egg Shuttle is already attempting to recreate part of the classic experience by boiling the game down to a sequence of levels uninterrupted by a narrative. Part of that old timey experience was that how many lives you could stockpile in a single run was one measure of how much you have improved at the game, so why not put that in the retro influenced game mode?

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just add a button in the menu that turns lives on or off. easy.

 

90% of all games ever made would be improved by a more detailed options menu.

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I'm still thinking about the Tails controversy... man I want him playable so bad, I am starting to doubt it though. Definitely not an icon, it's just weird that he has a life icon and he's not playable, it feels like being trolled at this point. Maybe I'm overreacting because of disappointment.

Anyway, still excited because Colors is a good game in my book, new features and enhancements should make this super worth it. I just want to hear more about the new features.

Edit: Although I noticed Tails' life icon does NOT replace lives, there is 1 life in the counter on the screenshots. I read the tumblr thing too, it was just speculation on a possible new feature. So...which is it?

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I think that lives are pretty dated as is. They can work, but not in the classic method of "lose this many and you're booted to a game over screen." Crash 4 shows us a pretty interesting way to utilize good performance with it's "don't die 3 times" gems.

Honestly the ranking system always seemed like a fine replacement for lives since you lose your good rank for death. Though an alternative for extra lives is getting even bigger point bonuses for accruing extra lives.

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Graphics comparison 

Def a downgrade if you ask me. Sweet Mountain looks different but I wouldn't say it looks better 😕. 60FPS tho look nice. They added motion blur but it's a bit too intense for my liking. I hope there's options for this stuff, but considering the developer behind it, I don't think there will be.

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11 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Graphics comparison 

Def a downgrade if you ask me. Sweet Mountain looks different but I wouldn't say it looks better 😕. 60FPS tho look nice. They added motion blur but it's a bit too intense for my liking. I hope there's options for this stuff, but considering the developer behind it, I don't think there will be.

Yuck, that video is WAAAAAY to compressed to even make a comparision more than "That red thing is a darker red in the new version".

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I'm sorry, but no. It's noticeable enough. It would've been better if they just made the game widescreen, sharper and 60fps. I'm willing to bet all this bloom, darker colors and motion blur is working to mask some technical issues. Apparently the game wasn't even in a playable state around september 2020. How hard is to port a fucking Wii game to a system 4 times stronger? lol This is all really fishy, I know for sure I ain't getting this right way, if ever.

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I mean yerp, I can't lie that comparison does highlight some exceptionally significant differences. For a start Starlight carnivals background details are far less sharper, I'm assuming thats because of motion blur. Tropical resorts transparent neon floor seems to be missing a texture layer entirely, the lighting is just awful, I don't know why Tropical resort looks so much darker. The sequence when Sonic is going through the tunnel on the grind rail, the lighting is so dark you literally can't see any of the extra detail inside compared to the original. I'll still give this the benefit of the doubt as its still technically in development and everything could still balance out in the end. Still like some of the extra features being added overall, so fingers crossed the graphical issues will be sorted. Its staggering for a game called Sonic Colours, the re-release actually for the most part seems to feature less colour! 

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I'd say it's inaccurate simply because the screenshots look noticeably different from the announcement video. 

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3 hours ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

I'd say it's inaccurate simply because the screenshots look noticeably different from the announcement video. 

The differences I noticed in the screenshots while not %100 ideal are WAY more tolerable than that blurry garish nightmare in the video. I think someone just severely messed with it in post to make it look more "next gen" then it actually was 

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15 hours ago, Jack-al said:

Edit: Although I noticed Tails' life icon does NOT replace lives, there is 1 life in the counter on the screenshots. I read the tumblr thing too, it was just speculation on a possible new feature. So...which is it?

The concept is the number would go up rather than down - if the "Tails saves you and you have infinite lives" thing is correct, the Tails icon represents how many times you have died, with the goal for serious players to have that number always be on 0.  I think several games out there that have ditched the lives system have a "death counter" that goes up instead of down like this.

So in the screenshot, the player has died once on that level before the screenshot was taken.

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From what I understood the "Tails Save" thing sounded to me more like hotspot checkpoints. 

So you have the normal checkpoints like in the original game but with Tails, if you fall into a pit between checkpoints, he'll put you back at the nearest safe spot before the pit, instead of you going all the way back to the previous checkpoint immediately. You get X number of Tails saves and if you run out THEN you go back to the previous normal checkpoint you passed through, at which point your Tails counter would refill to whatever the default amount is.

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I'm a bit disappointed that Tails seems to not be playable then, but at the same time this new feature seems interesting.

It does not save you from being killed by hazards, it only saves you from bottomless pits, making them less annoying. Well, the ideal practice would be to make some lower routes instead of pits, but since the game is a port of an already existing game, this sounds like a decent compromise for a quality of life feature.

Especially if lives are removed, being stopped by a bottomless pit makes little sense now... Sonic was originally designed so that you could still continue playing even if you get hit, and this new feature kinda fits that concept.

If it influences the rank (meaning that the number of uses has to be 0 if you want to get an S) and it leaves you with no rings after saving you, I think it would be balanced too and it would not remove all the challenge.

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Could be set up like Crash 4 where theres new clear bonus's every level maybe? Clearing the act obtaining a certain amount of rings, clear the act dieing under a specified amount of times, collect all red rings and beat Metal Sonics time trail, then all that unlocks a skin. Would make sense. Debatable as to how much challenge that would add in colours but would be fun all the same.

The screenshots do look a lot better than the trailer also, seems a bit crazy that they've potentially used 2 different builds of the game in their promotional material thus far.

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Probably not that crazy. It's likely the trailer was just made a while ago and they didn't have the time, resources or care to make a new one.

Or they intentionally bumped up the contrast and bloom with post-processing effects to try and make the game look nicer when its visuals weren't finished yet.

Either way, what we're seeing is subject to change, and I hope some of the visual issues get sorted out. Game'll probably be fine anyway, but it's better for modders' job to be adding to the game, not fixing it.

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https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v2dAlx

So Brian Connelly posted some stuff he's done for Sonic Colors Ultimate. Has some footage from the game and it includes some interesting stuff.

Also debunks Tails being playable and might confirm the so-called "Tails Save" thing that was leaked I think? Don't know much about it, only that it was mentioned in some places.

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15 minutes ago, Bobnik said:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/v2dAlx

So Brian Connely posted some stuff he's done for Sonic Colors Ultimate. Has some footage from the game and it includes some interesting stuff.

Also debunks Tails being playable and might confirm the so-called "Tails Save" thing that was leaked I think? Don't know much about it, only that it was mentioned in some places.

Great find! Thank you!

Can't embed the videos here (or I guess I don't know how to do so), but they're easily downloadable. I've backed them all up and will put them on YouTube.

Tails life icon displayed here, along with a Tails' collectable under a platform on the left and a new gold coin collectable. Also Sonic has the Jade Ghost Wisp in his inventory.

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It might be a pre-release thing, but it's a shame to see those candy chutes in the background of Sweet Mountain are still just an animated flat texture.  It looked fine on a non-HD TV on the Wii, but looks really bad here.  Suggests there won't be any increase on polygon count in the game (hard to tell on Sonic at the moment, his model was always very nice in Colours on the Wii anyway).

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The playable Tails dream seems pretty firmly dead, too bad.

Kinda surprised they added a whole new collectable, but I guess they (understandably) decided Colors was a bit short and they're padding it out a bit further. The counter for them on the map screen is just a straight number, no x/y like with S-ranks and red rings, so I'm guessing they're used to buy the customization options. Hopefully they don't go too far with how many you need and expect you to grind for them.

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