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Devil's Advocate: Sonic Unleashed is MUCH better then Sonic Adventure


Hazuki Heartwood

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Marble Zone makes it obvious that you can't go fast through it, stuff doesn't pop out at you out of nowhere.

I found the terrain areas where you get onto the grass after exiting the dungeon areas to be misleading. As it gives the illusion that you should go fast, and when you do, your punished. A lot of times the design doesn't go in sync with how someone should play thru the levels.

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The first straightaway in Windmill Isle has that aforementioned bump in the road that'll trip Sonic if you don't hop over it, practically unseen when gunning it, boost or no boost. Following the first pit and the next straightaway where you're told to boost, it eventually leads to the obstacles you have to slide under that you'll most likely run smack dab into. The small pit that must be traversed using the two platforms has a spike bed that becomes unavoidable when you homing attack after being launched in the air, simply because you lack the air boost to shoot far enough ahead. Rails have spikeballs and end abruptly. There's a series of spikebeds right at the end. And I'm sure JezMM covered anymore I may have missed.

I hate to sound so critical like this, but this comes off like a listing of newb traps. The things that have to be slid under would more likely perplex a new player than really be seen as a challenge until they learn to slid under them.

I won't argue that, although I don't really utilize these games' non-linearity anyways. I figure that the main goal of the game is to finish each level successfully within the egregious time limit, and that's what I commit myself to doing. Sure, I could explore, and it's nice to have that option, but I have absolutely no desire to. Now, Unleashed's linearity isn't an outright negative, but merely plays to the advantage of exemplifying it's twitchy nature and emphasis on performance optimization which, to me, is fun. The fallibility and liveliness of the grandiose environments coupled with the theatricality and satisfaction of overcoming obstacles and finding shortcuts smoothly at top speed is very thrilling; A hell of a lot more fun than speedrunning the classics.

Although I might have used it myself in the past (I can't remember), I don't think exploration is really the right word for it. They allow the player to make a choice (And I just realized that Uncharted not having something similar is why I hate it so much), and they make the world seem more like a more believable place. By that I mean when you're playing a level with strictly sequential level design , going from the beginning to the end takes you through every location that exists within that level.

And Sonic CD is the only game out of the classics that paid much attention to speed running. Those famous bouncing shortcuts through Emerald Hill Zone were intentional, but I don't know of much past that.

I don't know; Speed in itself is inherently a very dangerous concept. The faster you go, the greater the chance you'll screw up and the greater the potential of destruction. Now that speed has the dual purpose of being both rewarding and a necessary tool for maneuvering, there should naturally be risks in using it unwisely. Of course, how well the boost was implemented in Unleashed is very arguable, but I don't find the overall philosophy to be a bad one at all.

Most of Sonic 3K keeps speed feeling pretty safe, one thing or another will usually slow you down before you get to dangerous places. And I just imagined Hirokazu Yasuhara being bad at RTS's because he would make his defenses to predictable in their design and fun to exploit. Being in 3D should make this even easier because you can see where you're going.

Edited by Phos
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