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The Boost: Was It A Mistake?


Multikaris

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In a vacuum, the problem with the boost in its current state is that it overpowers almost anything else that can ever exist in Sonic's kit. You could roll or slide through things, but the boost already gives you effective invulnerability to anything not covered in spikes. You could jump on or homing attack things, but the boost gives you so much momentum in the air that just pressing one button and skipping an entire sequence is a genuine possibility. You could carefully gauge the level design and exploit it to go fast, but the boost not only instantly sets your speed past the cap with almost no drawback, it often rewards you with MORE boost fuel for doing so because depending on the game, both your obstacles and the rings around them refill it. I'm of the opinion that even in a vacuum, you can still change most of those things without completely changing the identity of boost gameplay: get rid of the omnipresent hitbox it generates, make it work as a boost of acceleration rather than an immediate "set speed to X" button, and go back to some analogue of the tricks system in Rush / Rush Adventure and make that your primary source of boost energy. Boom, fucking magic, you suddenly have reasons to use other options again.

You might notice I'm using the phrase "in a vacuum" a lot, and that's because I wanted to preface that as a reason why I hate gotchas like this:

4 hours ago, Diogenes said:

 

Boost "gameplay".

Because it's only through viewing the boost through a vacuum that one faults the boost for this - it's the level design that enables boost abuse, not the other way around. Here, I can play these kinds of games too:

That's not even just a single level playthough either - that's the entire game, with the sole exception of Hilltop Act 2. Now I'm sure there are discussions to be had about how gliding and climbing alone can (and has) broken certain kinds of levels wide open, but the fact that a self imposed challenge like this is specifically possible in Sonic 2 can be boiled largely down to one thing: the levels (quite literally in this case) are not designed around Knux's abilities, and that isn't a fault with the abilities themselves. And I believe a very similar thing is going on in many cases where the boost is perceived as dragging a game down - the level designers are not actually designing levels around Sonic's abilities. Compare and contrast, say, Sonic Rush:

Which while admittedly still isn't perfect (autoscrollers and rooms with mandatory enemies are stupid and flow breaking in any context, nevermind boost), is a damn sight more interesting than the literal straight line asphyxiating on speedboosters bullshit that we're dealing with as of Forces, and despite the boost in this state still being overpowering as shit there's a lot more decision making going on at any given time than just holding one button down and letting the game play itself.

So I guess my answer to the thread title is that it isn't a simple yes or no: there are things that can happen to swing it in either question, and the boost itself isn't conceptually wrong if Sonic Team aren't bothering to polish or take advantage of it, which is true of so many things throughout the series that I genuinely don't know where I'd start listing them. This is more down to all the talented level designers leaving than anything else, and fixing that alone would solve a lot more questions than just this one.

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Think you're on to something when talking about the level design isn't crafted with certain abilities in mind, because yea, the 2D Boost games were much smarter about the ways to limit Boost through level design that the 3D games lack. And the same is true for the non-Boost games too, as abusing Spin Dash jumping in Sonic Adventure is a key speedrun strat. 

So the real issue at hand isn't the game mechanics, but that the level design doesn't accommodate said mechanics like they do in the 2D games. And rather than design levels that better utilize and contain Sonic's abilities, Sonic Team's solution was to just to streamline the levels as much as possible to prevent any possible breakage from happening. Railroading is the perfect word. 

I can't exactly fault them for that, but its kind of a shortsighted solution that doesn't really solve the problem. But its a solution I get because they creating and releasing Sonic games at an alarming rate at one point and the time and resources needed to properly craft 3D levels on the scale needed to contain Sonic's ability to just fly through levels simply wasn't there. It was cutting corners, but for an understandable reason. 

 

To design levels that properly utilize Sonic's abilities without breaking the game would take an excessively long development cycle than what Sonic games usually go through. And that's on top of all of the shit that has to be developed and accounted for. 

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I've soured on arguments like 'the boost would work if Sonic made xyz changes' because it basically argues that if it was a different mechanic instead it would work. And I mean, of course it would, but Sonic Team's idea of a boost obviously isn't a gradual acceleration increase propped up with something nuanced like a trick system you can only milk with specific timing at specific moments in the level. Their idea of the boost isn't skill based.  Their idea of a boost is a win button. Their idea of a good level is mindlessly barrelling forward to the next setpiece with clunky 2d sections inbetween.

And sure, maybe you could argue that the level design is the actual problem but that doesn't exist in a vacuum either. They intentionally design games about barrelling forward mindlessly, with enemies and rings placed to keep the boost gauge full for the whole level. They very much are designed around the boost: they're just designing the levels around their own version of the boost where the point is to make the player feel cool and powerful with the least amount of input. That whole bit where the levels don't demand anything from the player is intentional. It's not an oversight that was impossible to account for in the same way sloppily pasting Knuckles into levels that aren't designed to box him in is.

 

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To answer the topic, no.

It was a very deliberate and backed mechanic that had years of build up that not only addressed a number of wants ST had going into Unleashed, but also accomplished its intended purpose on both a mechanical and critical level for years afterwards. As to the question of whether it's a "problem", well that's something that's been asked for well over a decade now across the community that you'll receive answers across the board for. A question I'm not even going to begin to tackle again here as I feel like I've typed out dozens of pages countering the very same criticisms of it posted on this thread alone and I want to get back to playing Forbidden West tonight lol.

Like others have said here, the boost was always just a move. A means to get Sonic to what he is advertised to be, speedy. Though, while it is a base move that is far from specific to this series, the level design for these games have catered heavily to it in most of the mainline games it's in. Leading to a call for its head specifically as a fix to a section of the fanbase's "problem".

Honestly, from what I've seen, the real criticism on the boost only surfaced post Generations. A time where, by and large, the games and fanbase was in a generally positive state. We had finally gotten a solid footing after years of shit so people were rightfully looking towards where to go/ improve upon. Some took this as a chance to voice their desire for more adventure and classic mechanics to be introduced into future games. ST, instead being who they are, decided instead to not use Gens as a jumping off point for the next title but instead making something completely different. Enter LW.

We all know how the tale goes from there so I won't go on with it. Though, this has all led up to the current situation where we had our most recent mainline title (recent as in like 5 years ago but hey) be a boost game made by a ST that barely consisted of anyone who actually worked on the previous boost games, leading to a flop. Forces is what many detractors of the boost claimed the boost to be back with Generations. This has, of course, looked to have led ST into another new experiment with Frontiers.

We still don't know much about Frontiers at all (even if it incorporates the boost or not) but, from what we do know right now, it is a shift from Forces by way of being an open-world styled game. So while I can continue on wishing that they'd make another game like Unleashed or Generations, I know that isn't coming at this point. I doubt the boost, in an iteration as we currently know it, is coming back (now this could age horribly in like a month once we see actually gameplay of Frontiers but oh well hey future me my b lol). Will that automatically create a game that's fucking amazing? Of course not; not in a vacuum at the very least. Though, the same could be said about the boost and its "problems" to begin with.

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Nah, the Boost games are generally a lot of fun, just a different kind of fun from some other Sonic games. They're a really interesting take on how to convey Sonic's overwhelming speed to the player, and learning the ins and outs of levels to slowly chip away at your time is very gratifying in an arcade game sort of way. You'd also be hard pressed to find other platformers that match the sheer scope and polish of the levels found in Unleashed and Generations. They do have to make some concessions here and there, but I would say that the Boost game period for Sonic (assuming Forces truly was the last of it) was a worthwhile, if decidedly imperfect endeavor.

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There are a handful of things I think have improved in the Boost era, and most have been explained well in this video.  Sonic's speed had always been a big focus of the series' marketing, but many times it was more of a break from gameplay than part of it.  With the Boost games, whatever else you might say of them, it must be allowed that Sonic's speed is more interactive and more of the gameplay happens while you're going fast (though not all of it, due to those forced 2D sections).  The addition of power-sliding and strafing definitely helps you get more control of Sonic, and having an acceleration button lessens the misfire that happens when you need to push a joystick forward to move, since it's easy to push a joystick slightly to the right or left instead of just straight forward, and at that speed, it can be enough to throw Sonic off a cliff.  On a cosmetic level, building boost into Sonic also is arguably less demeaning to the character than covering the level with dash panels, which creates the impression that without them, Sonic wouldn't be able to be Sonic.  So credit where due.

However, none of that is enough to excuse just how obscenely overpowered the Boost itself is.  Part of what had given Sonic games their depth is that even if Sonic didn't have many moves, there was a well-conceived set of strengths and weaknesses for all of them.  Running let Sonic accelerate but left him open to damage.  Jumping let him damage things but hindered acceleration and often required Sonic to slow down if he used it to attack grounded targets.  Rolling on the ground was also an attack, great for hitting grounded targets, and granted enormous acceleration when doing it downhill but rapidly decelerated if done on level ground, and even more when doing it uphill.  Spin dash gave a lot of acceleration but required Sonic to stop first.  While naturally a lot of those got undermined to some degree in the series' move to 3D, it was when Boost became the standard for 3D Sonic games that most of Sonic's original moves either ceased to exist or might as well have--and the big reason this is so is because Boost not only grants speed but also offensive capabilities, and it's only real weakness, requiring a meter to be filled, is hardly a weakness when it's so easy to fill it.

I observed in another thread that the big reason Boost didn't completely break things in the game it debuted in, Sonic Rush, is that was made in the era when Sonic games still let enemies have HP.  While that was always a contentious design choice, especially when defeating enemies was required to open up the level, in retrospect enemies having HP was the one thing that kept Boost from replacing so many other Sonic moves, as when it couldn't kill every enemy in one hit, you couldn't just boost through enemies to recharge your boost.  You still had to use other moves in Sonic Rush and often they were the better choice.  While many would applaud their decision to make enemies go down in one hit again, Sonic Team didn't account for that when retaining the boost, and more specifically, retaining the Boost's ability to be recharged by defeating enemies, because now they're left with an overpowered attack that instantly recharges itself just by being used.

Not that defeating enemies is the only aspect of Sonic gameplay, but Boost also breaks what had been another big aspect: Meaningful terrain.  Again, Sonic's original moveset had a give and take, and knowing what move matched what sort of terrain had been a key part of gaining and maintaining speed, so levels were designed to be full of places you could exploit this; rushing downward, around an inverted arc that transfers the momentum upward.  But because Boost gives you all of that speed instantly, there isn't anymore reason to design levels with these intricacies.  As with the move's offensive capabilities, this wouldn't be as big an issue if the damn Boost gauge wasn't so ridiculously easy to charge, but it is, so it is.  Going downhill has little benefit, going uphill has little challenge, so might as well not have many downhill or uphill segments; just design levels where Sonic moves straightforward.

So while maybe Boost in itself wasn't a mistake, making it so overpowered that it made so much of what Sonic had been obsolete definitely was.  It forced them to scramble to add new sorts of challenges to their level designs, and with questionable results.  I've been a severe critic of Boost Sonic almost ever since I've been a member of this forum, so one might think I couldn't even decide what I hate most about Boost Sonic games, but in fact, it's clear: I hate those "strafe to avoid lasers" segments more than anything else in Boost Sonic games, by a wide margin, and unfortunately those accursed things won't leave.  They keep resurfacing in Boost games, they last way too long every time they do, and all of them are almost exactly alike.

Unfortunately, though, I'm not sure how many different sorts of challenges are really viable while boosting.  I was able to praise the convenience added to Sonic's controls in the Boost games, but if the fangame Sonic Omens is anything to go by, this only goes so far and Boost is just an unmanageable headache in any game that requires more exploration and turning.

So all things considered, it really feels like Boost Sonic is creatively bankrupt at this point.  They could certainly bring it back to the level of nuance it was in Sonic Generations, but I wouldn't count on them going much further, and would expect them to keep falling back on the same few tropes that other Boost games have already made me sick of.

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Sonic was always marketed as the super fast kind of character, and I imagine that being able to finally demonstrate that with ease, pleasing accompanying visuals and execution simplicity in Unleashed played a bit in the decision making of its re-introduction. Toning it down after having pressed the pedal to the floor for a decade may be seen as a presentation risk. That image/association is so ingrained in the last decade new fans/people's mind that I can kinda understand why they've held on to making the game about just that for so long.

I do not think that it was a mistake, but I'm happy to see that people are starting to see that it was always an unsustainable kind of game to develop.

I had my share of fun with it, but I'd be happy to hear that it's gone in its current implementation in 3D games.

 

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5 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Sometimes I've kind of realized with gaming in general is that perception matters more than reality. It doesn't really matter if Adventure or Boost are good or not, people just need to THINK its good and that already goes along way. Of course actually being good games definitely helps too. Part of the reason Mania became so popular isn't just because the game was good, but because it's modelled after a period of time where the Sonic series was considered universally good across the board. Being a great game was just the icing on the cake. 

If you want to see an example of what happens when such a game isn't good, try the GBA port of Sonic 1.

But it's true that conceptually, 2D Sonic games provide an advantage to developers simply because there's a more unanimous standard for what 2D Sonic games are expected to be to be considered good.  In 3D, there's always been a lot more debate.  There are some aspects of the 3D games that are almost unanimously hated, like Big's fishing, and in cases when that happens it's fairly easy to make people happier just by not having them next time, but without things that conversely, everyone considers flawless, there isn't anything definitive to shoot for as ideal for 3D Sonic.  Sonic Colors may have been the critical darling the series desperately needed, but it's hard to call that the moment they finally figured it out when in fact, most of the game is actually 2D. 

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42 minutes ago, FlameStream said:

Sonic was always marketed as the super fast kind of character, and I imagine that being able to finally demonstrate that with ease, pleasing accompanying visuals and execution simplicity in Unleashed played a bit in the decision making of its re-introduction. Toning it down after having pressed the pedal to the floor for a decade may be seen as a presentation risk. That image/association is so ingrained in the last decade new fans/people's mind that I can kinda understand why they've held on to making the game about just that for so long.

While gameplay about going fast inarguably fits Sonic, a lot of the Boost gameplay is also eerily similar to the sort of thing you could play in casual, portable, and often free auto-runners like Subway Surfers or Miraculous Ladybug.  Another thing Sonic was often marketed around was his standout uniqueness, and for the longest time, it was true; even at the brand's low point in 06, it could still be said that there was no other series like it.  But there are numerous games that are about running in a straight line while strafing, jumping and ducking to avoid obstacles.

Also, while speed has obviously been a big part of Sonic's pitch, I don't remember much publicity that had him charging straight through enemies and obstacles without any nuance.  Again and again, I find myself thinking the almost perfect model for how Sonic should work in 3D isn't even any gameplay Sonic Team ever developed; it's the Sonic CD intro video.  Sonic in that is incredibly nimble, but he's not invincible to the point that he can just ignore everything in his path; rather, Sonic weaves through it.  Instead of just ignoring his environment, Sonic uses it to his advantage, and toward the end when he does break through a clump of earth, it's not just a show of Sonic being impervious to it; he looks up to the falling debris, opens his mouth in shock as he stops to think, and then chooses his spin as the optimal way to break through it. 

You don't get that sort of clever subtlety in boost gameplay.  What's really sad is that being able to master both your own physical abilities and the terrain, as you see Sonic doing in that video, is incredibly rewarding and fun, but the problem is it takes work.  Work for the developers to program in tight physics that enable it, and work for the players to react quickly, know the lay of the land, etc.  So it feels, in general, like Sonic Team just stopped trying.  They'd rather make simplified, idiot-proof Sonic games where gratification is instant, even if that gratification is so much less altogether.

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I think my biggest gripe with boost gameplay is how pathetically pointless all of the enemies become

I can remember all of the enemies in Adventure 1 & 2 but barely any from Unleashed (the daytime stages) and Colors, despite the fact that I've probably put more time into the latter two games

they should've experimented with bigger enemies that can't be immediately destroyed, maybe have one who steals your boost energy or something. They never really did this.

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I've had fun with the boost in both Unleashed and Generations, sure. I love going back to those games and feeling like an unstoppable demon, demolishing everything in my path as I watch the enemies I ram into bounce along the screen and explode. It's a good power fantasy and it IS fun, to be certain, when it's done right.

However, I do land on the position that says it probably wasn't worth completely giving up what the Adventure style was going for as a result of it's FULL incorporation as the only way to play Modern Sonic. I can't tell you how often I've gone back to those old games and said to myself how much of a shame it is that Modern Sonic can no longer use the electric shield, or the regular green shield, or a non-broken light-speed dash that isn't so scarce it might as well not be in the game. I don't even really recall many of the enemies that we face off against. As far as Forces is concerned, I recall the new full white and egg looking Egg Pawns and the purple robot Ostriches that run away from you and do nothing else. Also, this isn't even going into the versatility that the other playable characters could have taken advantage of in the older style of 3D play but that's a conversation I don't need to go into again. 

The mach speed zones in 06 had the right idea honestly. I'd really rather just play Sonic normally and then have a small boost section to play as a neat bonus stage of some sort. Not only would it not deprive me of what I miss about the old way I played Sonic but it would sufficiently provide Sonic with his own unique thing that separates him from the other playable characters. Concerns about the others being fun to play being a threat because it would mean Sonic wasn't "special" enough were surprisingly rampant back in the day. It remains a ridiculous thing to care about since, no matter what, there's always going to be people who just like playing as Sonic the most but I digress.

Was the boost a mistake? Maybe not at the time it came along but I do definitely feel it was a mistake to lean on it for as long as they did. I'd like to have the prior engagement with the 3D space I loved as a kid back in my Sonic games now. I like Unleashed and Generations but those games are still going to exist if the boost goes away for future titles. I can play them whenever I want. I don't need anymore and if they're not going to do anything significant that changes or improves upon it then I don't think the Sonic series needs it either. Because at this point it's done worse than stagnate. It's serving as an excuse to be lazy if Forces is any indication. 

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They did realize how unsustainable the boost was and made an effort to move away from it with Lost World. 

But the backlash and vitriol that game caught basically ensured that they would retreat back to their "safe space". 

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23 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

But the backlash and vitriol that game caught basically ensured that they would retreat back to their "safe space". 

See, and this is what is so frustrating about this fucking series. Good ideas are left on the floor because of how reactionary developers and fans are. 

I'm not saying Lost World was a perfect game, but they essentially killed it before it even had a chance to develop into something better and because Sega lost so much money backing a doomed console on the Wii U and with Sonic Boom, they fell back on the safest bet imaginable with another Boost game but with none of the things that actually made the earlier Boost games worthwhile. It's a combination of Sega mismanaging as usual and just plain bad luck that Lost World was never given the chance. 

But the fandom desire to return to the days of Sonic Adventure kind of mirrors the Nintendo fandom's desire to return to the Mario 64 collect a thon style after they had gone down a similar linear and streamlined path in the Galaxy games and...whatever the fuck the 3D Land/World games were. And Sega tend to be pretty late to the punch on these things, but I kind of expect to get some return to the Adventure style at some point, whether its a new game or a remake of the older games. But its kind of hard to have faith in them given how inconsistent Sega tends to be when it comes to quality control with Sonic. 

That's why part of me feels like Frontiers is going to be a test of a new engine they're going to move forward with for the foreseeable future. Soooo, whatever Frontiers should give us an idea of the future of Sonic. But I think its pretty clear that we're moving away from Boost as the primary style of play and moving back to something that isn't as all encompassing. 

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yeah I defintely feel like Sonic Team have a lot of unfinished business with Lost World and I hope Frontiers explores the parkour thing again

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it seems like they are going to try it again

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

But the fandom desire to return to the days of Sonic Adventure kind of mirrors the Nintendo fandom's desire to return to the Mario 64 collect a thon style after they had gone down a similar linear and streamlined path in the Galaxy games and...whatever the fuck the 3D Land/World games were.

yep I really hope Frontiers is Sonic Team's own take on Mario Odyssey's gameplay going back to 64/Sunshine style

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30 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

See, and this is what is so frustrating about this fucking series. Good ideas are left on the floor because of how reactionary developers and fans are. 

I'm not saying Lost World was a perfect game, but they essentially killed it before it even had a chance to develop into something better and because Sega lost so much money backing a doomed console on the Wii U and with Sonic Boom, they fell back on the safest bet imaginable with another Boost game but with none of the things that actually made the earlier Boost games worthwhile. It's a combination of Sega mismanaging as usual and just plain bad luck that Lost World was never given the chance.

Agreed.  This company, as I said last night, seems to be averse to any gameplay idea that requires hard work to come into its own, so it would rather scrap ideas and lean back on what isn't "broken", but has long-since ceased to be impressive.

30 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

But the fandom desire to return to the days of Sonic Adventure kind of mirrors the Nintendo fandom's desire to return to the Mario 64 collect a thon style after they had gone down a similar linear and streamlined path in the Galaxy games and...whatever the fuck the 3D Land/World games were.

3D Land/World were Nintendo taking advantage of finally having the technology to do a Point-A-to-Point-B, retro-styled Mario platformer in 3D; something they didn't in the N64 era.  Super Mario 64's success made it one of the most influential games of its era, but underneath it all it represented a departure of what the Super Mario series had been originally, as a game organized along the linear lines of its 2D predecessors would take up too much space.  It was an easier time to translate that sort of linear structure to 3D on the Playstation, as it used CDs and they could hold a lot more data, but the N64 stuck with cartridges, so something had to give.  The resulting game still managed to be good, but it gave Nintendo unfinished business so it's understandable they would make some games that were more like 2D but in 3D.

It's surely a sign of how old a series is that there's a subset of nostalgic gamers who see Super Mario 64 as the example of what Mario had been.  But I'm old enough to remember the original Super Mario Bros, and I don't see the collectathon as the model of what Mario should be, since the formula was copied into the ground and frankly, I feel other series did it better than Super Mario 64 did.

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2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

See, and this is what is so frustrating about this fucking series. Good ideas are left on the floor because of how reactionary developers and fans are. 

I'm not saying Lost World was a perfect game, but they essentially killed it before it even had a chance to develop into something better and because Sega lost so much money backing a doomed console on the Wii U and with Sonic Boom, they fell back on the safest bet imaginable with another Boost game but with none of the things that actually made the earlier Boost games worthwhile. It's a combination of Sega mismanaging as usual and just plain bad luck that Lost World was never given the chance.

Lost World wasn't a good game so the it's not like the backlash wasn't warranted. It'd be unfair to expect Sonic Team to get everything right about a new gameplay style the first time but I think it's fair to expect them to get enough right that the game is actually worth playing. Lost World wasn't that.

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29 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Lost World wasn't a good game so the it's not like the backlash wasn't warranted. It'd be unfair to expect Sonic Team to get everything right about a new gameplay style the first time but I think it's fair to expect them to get enough right that the game is actually worth playing. Lost World wasn't that.

Parkour isn’t a bad idea for Sonic.  Unlike things like fishing and mech-shooting and the Werehog, which are fated to be assailed with queries as to why they’re in a Sonic game, parkour is a perfectly fitting extension of how Sonic is known for moving.

The problem is that doing that well required abilities to program good physics, which it seems Sonic Team just forgot post-Genesis.  As you said earlier, almost every game from Adventure onward was made with a lessened focus on Sonic’s innate abilities to move around; dash pads and then Boost became more and more crutches to keep the worsened physics from mattering, so by the time they decided to break with the Boost it was no longer as simple as just not having it; a better set of mechanics was needed to compensate, and they weren’t up to the challenge of developing it.
 

Naturally, that’s caused a big worry about Sonic Frontiers...

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with Frontiers I'm hoping they've totally gone back to the drawing board to re-work Sonic's movement because I just can't imagine a scenario where Sonic has literally no momentum or physics in an open world game. Even Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey have momentum and physics.

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8 minutes ago, BubbleButt TV said:

with Frontiers I'm hoping they've totally gone back to the drawing board to re-work Sonic's movement because I just can't imagine a scenario where Sonic has literally no momentum or physics in an open world game. Even Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey have momentum and physics.

I personally hope they outsource that part of the development.  SEGA has the money to hire the best, and many other developers have more talent than modern Sonic Team in that regard.

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1 hour ago, Wraith said:

Lost World wasn't a good game so the it's not like the backlash wasn't warranted. It'd be unfair to expect Sonic Team to get everything right about a new gameplay style the first time but I think it's fair to expect them to get enough right that the game is actually worth playing. Lost World wasn't that.

Oh I'm not saying Lost World didn't deserve to be scrutinized, it did because the game definitely isn't good. I'm specifically criticizing the "throw the baby out with the bathwater" method, where it was basically a one and done project to never be returned to again. Given how unpopular Lost World tends to be, maybe it was the right call in the end, but we'll never really know how Lost World could have developed further and that's the part I find frustrating. 

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14 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Oh I'm not saying Lost World didn't deserve to be scrutinized, it did because the game definitely isn't good. I'm specifically criticizing the "throw the baby out with the bathwater" method, where it was basically a one and done project to never be returned to again. Given how unpopular Lost World tends to be, maybe it was the right call in the end, but we'll never really know how Lost World could have developed further and that's the part I find frustrating. 

It's a shame, because I think on a pure mechanical level, Lost World was Sonic Team's attempt to break from the boost gameplay to something more sustainable,, but it just fumbled for a multitude of reasons. 

I respect the attempt at least even if the execution left a lot to be desired.  

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honestly i'm fine with them using the boost in frontiers as long as it isn't broken to the point of making it an exploit

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On 5/30/2022 at 1:36 AM, Strickerx5 said:

To answer the topic, no.

It was a very deliberate and backed mechanic that had years of build up that not only addressed a number of wants ST had going into Unleashed, but also accomplished its intended purpose on both a mechanical and critical level for years afterwards. As to the question of whether it's a "problem", well that's something that's been asked for well over a decade now across the community that you'll receive answers across the board for. A question I'm not even going to begin to tackle again here as I feel like I've typed out dozens of pages countering the very same criticisms of it posted on this thread alone and I want to get back to playing Forbidden West tonight lol.

Like others have said here, the boost was always just a move. A means to get Sonic to what he is advertised to be, speedy. Though, while it is a base move that is far from specific to this series, the level design for these games have catered heavily to it in most of the mainline games it's in. Leading to a call for its head specifically as a fix to a section of the fanbase's "problem".

Honestly, from what I've seen, the real criticism on the boost only surfaced post Generations. A time where, by and large, the games and fanbase was in a generally positive state. We had finally gotten a solid footing after years of shit so people were rightfully looking towards where to go/ improve upon. Some took this as a chance to voice their desire for more adventure and classic mechanics to be introduced into future games. ST, instead being who they are, decided instead to not use Gens as a jumping off point for the next title but instead making something completely different. Enter LW.

We all know how the tale goes from there so I won't go on with it. Though, this has all led up to the current situation where we had our most recent mainline title (recent as in like 5 years ago but hey) be a boost game made by a ST that barely consisted of anyone who actually worked on the previous boost games, leading to a flop. Forces is what many detractors of the boost claimed the boost to be back with Generations. This has, of course, looked to have led ST into another new experiment with Frontiers.

We still don't know much about Frontiers at all (even if it incorporates the boost or not) but, from what we do know right now, it is a shift from Forces by way of being an open-world styled game. So while I can continue on wishing that they'd make another game like Unleashed or Generations, I know that isn't coming at this point. I doubt the boost, in an iteration as we currently know it, is coming back (now this could age horribly in like a month once we see actually gameplay of Frontiers but oh well hey future me my b lol). Will that automatically create a game that's fucking amazing? Of course not; not in a vacuum at the very least. Though, the same could be said about the boost and its "problems" to begin with.

Well, it does, but it seems to have been neutered to only help Sonic accelerate a bit more this time around, from what I've seen. 

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59 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

Well, it does, but it seems to have been neutered to only help Sonic accelerate a bit more this time around, from what I've seen. 

 

Hard to say. Ignoring some of the whispers we've gotten from leaks, we do have confirmation that Sonic can level up. So there is still the possibility we are looking at a LV 1 boost here.

 

Even the homeing attack looks noticeably tamer (no contrails) so there is the possibility that we are being shown weaker versions of where some of these moves might end up.  We might not know for sure until we get a peek at the level up skill tree.

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