Sonic Nexus Demo Released

Debuts to Preliminary Rave Reviews; Some Glitches

In the midst of an ongoing debate regarding the desire of the Nexus team to take its time on an update to the game we brought you yesterday–primarily between myself and game director Slingerland–you’ll find nowhere from him or the rest of his staff the grand announcement made elsewhere in the Sonic community prominently just a few hours ago–that the “Labor Day Demo” has been released to the public, one day after Labor Day.  (We thank Nos is Lethal and Huepow00 for pointing us to this information.)

Indeed, the release, while only two acts, is significant, and a test of how the Retro Sonic engine can be utilized, so says the Nexus development blog:

You can play two acts of Sunset Shore and that’s about it. However, the level is sprawling with branching paths, so it warrants a few playthroughs for you to see everything. Nexus truly illustrates what a person can do in the brand new Retro-Sonic interface, so we hope it is a clear too you indication that this summer was a long, time-consuming process on making a brand new iteration of the engine. We also felt that we should take our time in creating our ideal product, as a hasty release definitely will piss people off (see: ProSonic). It was time well spent.

The new demo also has a new animated introduction with it, which you can see below.

The Nexus team also took the time to announce a time attack contest based on the new build.  Those interested can post video responses to this sample run in order to be considered for a $15 Amazon.com Gift Card.  The contest ends September 30th.

Thus far, almost all fans who have played the new Nexus thought the demo was worth the wait–although there are some glitches, including several layer holes.  A couple problems with running the game at certain resolutions have also reported problems, though that is a pretty non-discriminatory issue with SFGs still.

Senior SFGHQ forum member Kain had taken a look at most every title from SAGE 2008, and with that in mind, he offered these thoughts about Nexus:

The parabolic zip-line maintaining momentum made it an absolute ace of a gimmick, even if it’s the slightest bit of an eyesore. I’m surprised you got so many gimmicks in in between the last time I saw this mid-SAGE and now. Obviously y’all have been putting a very good amount of work into it. There’s a nice big array of badniks who all have nice design and implementation (though the rolling one did look weird as it went up/down steep slopes and went straight through spikes). There were places that the badniks cluttered up the space, but it was by no means haphazard (they weren’t plopped right in the middle of a nice-speed section, for example) and fitting for the Sonic CD grassy level design.

The design is likewise wonderful. A quick obligatory example of the first thing I noticed is how every time on the first drop (the three-hole one), the most naturally thing for some who’s pressing right to win (and what happened to me all the time) was to successfully jump over the first one, not have enough height to make it over the slightly-higher second platform and fall onto an incline which, with your downward speed, will send you flying backwards into a badnik who’ll get you if you don’t jump/roll quick. Just extremely well-thought-out consequences and rewards for speed and platforming with not a bottomless pit to be found. The paths will intelligently and seamlessly transition in between sections of speed and sections of platforming whenever you’re met with a strategic spring or gimmick. Even with the GHZ first-level limitations, direction, transition, flow, and gimmicks are all put together to make this not only technically impressive, but enjoyable as well.

Of course, we have Ryan Bloom on the TSSZ News staff, ready to get his game on with the new Sonic Nexus.  You can expect his review shortly.  And rest assured, we will offer developments on Nexus, including the tiem attack winner at the end of the month, once we get new information.