New Sonic Frontiers Cyberspace Gameplay from ShackNews

[DaBigJ]

Figured this deserves it's own thread. New news, new thread after all.

I'm gonna be real, these look extremely linear. Almost on par with Sonic Forces. The music is nice, but the overall experience feels like a disappointment compared to most of the game overall.

Also, weird physics thing at 6:36-6:37. No idea what's up with that.

[GX -The Spindash-]

It looks a bit better than Forces, but if I'm honest, I don't think this game has enough components to really play with in the same way that Forces suffered.  There's nothing in this stage, or really any of the stages I've seen footage of that make them feel distinct from any other part of the game, hub islands or cyber space. It's all very forward path, hit a spring, transition to grind rail, jump between some grind rails, do a grind rail loop for cinematic purposes, hit a spring, land on straight platform.

I gave this game the benefit of the doubt for quite a while because SEGA was showing off so little of it, mostly Kronos. I was hoping that later stuff would have some variety, but with today's footage, I just don't have a lot of optimism. I'm not going to suggest it'll be broken or that there won't be entertaining stuff in it to do, but they're pushing this like it's some big paradigm shift for the series, and it comes off looking like "What if everything we've been doing since 2008, but with fewer side walls and WAY fewer colors?"

[PC the Hedgehog]

It's mostly just levels and environments lifted wholesale from Generations, and anything else is still the same tired obstacles and objects from the past 15 years of Sonic games. I'm so, so tired of them just taking the same grind rails, springs, balloons, switches, and the like, moving them to different locations, and slapping a fresh coat of paint on them...except this time they're not even doing that, just reusing the assets from Generations levels. I'm so glad this isn't a super-major component of the game, because it's downright lazy.

[Nuggets]

Control looks better than Forces (not that that’s a high bar or even really a compliment at all) and I can even get past the bite-size nature seeing as they’re supposed to be akin to special stages. Still weird seeing superior level design from Unleashed and Gens interact with this game’s Kishimoto-isms - long stretches of terrain meant for the drift and single jumps being navigated by a Sonic that can’t drift but can double jump. It’s not perfect, but not the worst, definitely not as jarring as it could’ve been. Similarly, seeing how Modern Sonic interacts with SA2 levels actually felt more satisfying than I thought it would, an odd testament to that game’s (and Iizuka’s!) level design. It seems decent enough for what it’s going for, and if that’s the case for what I imagine will be my least favorite part of the game, that’s fine enough I guess. It’s still lazy as fuck that we’ve only seen these 4 aesthetics across 3 islands now, but hopefully that changes. 

But if what SomeCallMeJohnny said was true and it turns out that there really are just 4 aesthetics then fucking lol. Some of the laziest shit i’ve ever seen if so, a decade plus of the same assets and BS. putting green hill at sunset for the fourth time isn’t gonna be enough to distract me anymore 

[Palette]

Honestly one thing that bugs me a lot about the reuse of level designs in cyberspace is that they mostly don’t even really do a good job at disguising it. Lots of these levels have the same energy as someone recreating a level from another game in Mario Maker or something. Like if the original level had a uniquely designed object to block your path then the cyberspace equivalent will just have a generic box in there instead.

That being said if they ARE gonna reuse levels at all I’m more fine with them taking from non-boost levels since going through them with boost-like controls does sound more interesting at least, whereas with going through old boost levels again with a very similar style it’s like, what’s the point here

[GX -The Spindash-]

6 hours ago, Palette said:

Honestly one thing that bugs me a lot about the reuse of level designs in cyberspace is that they mostly don’t even really do a good job at disguising it. Lots of these levels have the same energy as someone recreating a level from another game in Mario Maker or something. Like if the original level had a uniquely designed object to block your path then the cyberspace equivalent will just have a generic box in there instead.

That being said if they ARE gonna reuse levels at all I’m more fine with them taking from non-boost levels since going through them with boost-like controls does sound more interesting at least, whereas with going through old boost levels again with a very similar style it’s like, what’s the point here

Yeah, that's where I'm at with this. I can accept that we're jumping back to Green Hill, Chemical Plant, etc... if I knew they were taking those design themes to heart, but...

Okay, I'm sure people have seen more footage of this game floating around than me. Are there any of the cyberspace levels that feel designed around the motif they're using? Does Chemical Plant draw level design inspiration or have elements unique to it being Chemical Plant? Because I'm not sure I've really seen that yet. Even the Shack News video comes off more like there are a bunch of basic level elements with Sky Sanctuary happening around it rather than taking place in Sky Sanctuary.

[Diogenes]

1 hour ago, GX Echidna said:

Does Chemical Plant draw level design inspiration or have elements unique to it being Chemical Plant?

I mean, being a stripped down remake of Gens Modern CPZ must count as drawing level design inspiration from it, right?

Some level gimmicks made it in, like the Sky Rail remake has those rising springs, and Sky Sanctuary has the spinning disk platforms and I think the teleporters, but with so many levels being straight remakes it seems like we'll mostly be experiencing them in exactly the same way we already have, which isn't interesting.