Quality much improved
On the closing day of the Tokyo Game Show yesterday, YouTube footage of Jun Senoue’s set – which included new music and level footage from four stages – appeared online. Today, Senoue himself has uploaded much better footage and music quality from the performance. Curiously the City Escape segment is missing, though it has not been confirmed whether this is due to the sub-par singing performance or not.
Check out the video here. Also, make sure to keep a keen eye on the website for the latest in SAGE 2011 news!
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The improved quality (particularly from Jun’s guitar) drastically changes my impression of the CP mix. Still a bit slower than I’d like, but the guitar adds a LOT to what was previously sounding like an awfully dreary mix.
Fucking LOVING the improvements to Rooftop Run. The piano is SUCH a nice touch, and those strings are even better than they were in the original <3
Maybe I'm a little slow to pick up on this, but it seems like the modern versions of the modern era stages are only receiving very minor changes to the music (most apparent in Seaside Hill), similar to the way the classic tracks for classic stages are being treated.
This makes me much more curious about some of the classic remixes for these modern stages, as they'll likely be more substantially remixed.
I just noticed a slight similarity between Rooftop Run’s new piano intro and the intro to Cee Lo Green’s “Fuck You”.
lol?
@ChaoticFox: I agree about Chemical Plant. I couldn’t hear the guitar in yesterday’s video.
You’re also right about the modern mixes being very similar. That’s the idea.
DAT CHEMICAL PLANT.
That’s all I really gotta say about it.
But I really enjoyed the other themes, too. c:
Okay, Rooftop Run is my favorite new track. Man, Unleashed had a great soundtrack.
sub par singing??? i think you meant screaming out of tune…..
The high quality shows and sounds to be a HUGE improvement for the modern remixes compared to yesterday’s video.
Jun and Tomoya, keep on rocking.
New Chemical Plant sounds good but it really doesn’t mesh well with modern Sonic’s gameplay. It’s much too slow. Seaside Hill sounds just as bland as last I heard it. While Naturally Rooftop Run sounds like 12 kinds of awesome sauce slathered all over a greatness sandwich.
That violin made me jizz with the force of 10 waterfalls. 10 WATERFALLS
Epic beginning of Chemical Plant yayyyy!
You know, I never cared for Seaside Hill’s song… It sounds like an ending credits song for Saved by the Bell…
It’s the only track from the Heroes OST I didn’t love, actually. I did like Ocean Palace’s music, though. It was a little less bland, I thought.
I was kind of hoping they’d add some flair to it, but it sounds almost exactly the same to me. Maybe I’m missing something?
Seaside Hill’s remix still sounds like a mix of the original and ocean palace IMO
FUCK SEGA, STOP MESSING UO MYY PANTS WITH THIIS EPIC SONIC SAUCE
That Rooftop Run piano intro owns the modern green hill mix =O and C-Fox is right, it does sound like cee-lo’s fuck you lol
@Darkgomugomu
…Are you feeling any sort of pain…? Any at all…?
Man the level design for this game looks like all kinds of wonky. And I think I saw some running on water portions in Seaside hill. You’ll probably fall through the floor and die if you’re not boosting. Would it be too much to ask to get rid of these bottomless pits altogether? Sonic moves much too fast for them ever to be fair.
@Blues removing the bottomless pits would make everything too easy, how else would you die without the pits? And besides from the footage of Seaside hill shown it was only small portions of running on water, it’s not like adabat with giant sections of water
@Renzy
Hopefully without the framerate issues as well. xD
@ChaoticFox I noticed the Fuck/Forget You similarity too. I even went to the extent of attempting a mash-up in Audacity, but it sorta failed.
@renzy
pitfalls aren’t the only way to add challenge to a game. How about instead of falling into nothing, you drop down to a more difficult part of the level (underwater even) with spikes and enemies. Bottomless pits need to go. In the small clips of seaside hill we’ve seen, I can see too many opportunities in which a player will boost off the edge. Because lets face it, the current design basically encourages you to be constantly boosting. Plus, when you fall into water in a 3d sonic game, sonic more or less clips through the water with hardly a splash and disappears while screaming. It feels cheap and looks lazy. Lose em.
@blues
Nope. The water-running segments were some of my favorite parts from Chun-nan and Adabat. They added a sense of urgency and tension that if you stopped you were gonna die. The Chun-nan DLC had a stage where it was entirely water boosting and drifting and was one of the more challening and exciting stages in the game.
I agree about the lousy effects animation though.
@Blues
I don’t think bottomless pits need to go, but I do agree it’s not the only way to die.
Tho I think quick-sand, water and lava count as “bottomless pits” at times as long as it’s “out of bounds”. Sort’ve like in games from Heroes – Unleashed. It’s not touching water that kills Sonic. Just that there’s no stage underneath is so he’s “out of bounds” and dies.
To be fair, I’d rather the pits be bottomless than be a pit with spikes at the end. Sonic 2: Mystic Cave Zone as Super Sonic with 100 or more rings comes to mind… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDabQqRykgo
@ChaoticFox
Yes you’re catching on.
There’s “Classic Remix” and “Modern Remix”.
For the most part, the “Classic Remix” is a remix of the original track while the “Modern Remix” is a sort’ve remake, completely re-recorded.
The Classic Remix will sound more like the original for the Classic stages and less like the original for the Adventure and Modern Stages (Classic City Escape being an example)
The Modern Remix will sound more like the original for the Modern Stages and less like the original for the Classic and Adventure stages. (I guess Modern City Escape is also an example since the Adventure stages will probably sound quite different from the originals as they are the “middle” or “in-between” era. lol)
@Blues
Actually the current design encourages you to boost whenever you intelligently get the chance, not continuously boost. Sonic Colors and Generations both seems to show areas encouraging you to take it slow as they are the first 2 3D games where you’re actually WARNED about upcoming bottomless pits you’re referring to. (and you gotta love the “Bottomless Pit” sign they have in Generations. X33)
@ X
You’re probably the only one who liked those. They were awful. The only thing I can think of that’s worse are those “speed sequences” from 06. Good gravy.
I realize that sonic fans are used to putting up with bad design choices and might have even grown fond of the”difficulty” said choices bring but I would love to play a Sonic game that an ordinary person could enjoy as well.
@SonicHedgehog lol xD those framerates were horrible
@Blues that would be interesting but let’s face it, hardly anything can stop modern sonic besides pit falls. And I didn’t see too many moments when you can boost off the edge in Seaside Hill since the boost pads shoots you right into springs. I actually don’t mind the bottomless pits unless the pits are EXTREMELY cheap! it just makes the level harder for me; like what X said “it adds a sence of urgency and tension”
@Blues
I would have enjoyed the water running segments more if the turning was better. Those threw me off quite a bit especially in Adabat.
@Blues
Maybe you have to not be bad at them to enjoy them. They were a balance between boosting to maintain momentum and letting off to make your turns.
Regardless, I know I’m not the only one that enjoyed them.
Idk what it is but ever since Seaside hill was announced to be in Sonic Generations and screenshots were released I’ve had a strange feeling that it’s probably goin to be my favorite stage, and seeing the footage of the stage so far I can say with most confidence that I’m in love with the level. It looks soo gorgeous!
I think Crisis City is going to be my favorite stage seeing as how creative ST can be with the stage with the Hedgehog Engine.
@Blues
I liked the water part too. It was cool, new, and heck it was just cool to see Sonic run on water for a change like in Hydrocity Zone from Sonic 3!
Perhaps they should make on-land levels less about boosting but sections where it’s available so we can still feel the speed. Then have sections where boosting can be used as an actual mechanic. And then has wide open water spaces where Sonic can boost around and HAS To. x3
@X
I suck at those segments and I still like them! XD
Running on water is cool. Immediately dying if you fail at one of the more poorly designed sections of the level is not.
X has a really good point you guys are completely missing because of your love of cinematic flourish.
Even IF pitfalls are Sonic’s only form of challenge, they should be reserved for platforming sections (ie. make this precise jump), not thrown into the boosting sections as some kind of dick move, knowing that Sonic controls like a fucking TANK when boosting over water. Unleashed even acknowledges how shitty the mechanics of this are by placing convenient boost pads and ring trails to help you “steer”, since the goddamn joystick is so fucking awful at it.
Besides, who says Sonic needs to die so much in the first place? In the classcs, dying was a pretty rare occurrence outside of boss fights and incredibly sloppy playing. They were VERY forgiving because the levels were designed in such a way that no matter how bad you were at platforming, you could usually make your way to the end or back up to the top. That was part of their charm. You could play casually and still complete the levels, or you could speed run, where your only REAL penalty was a bad time.
The modern games already punish you enough for not being perfect by giving you crappy rankings, they don’t have to fucking murder you for not having memorized how to play the levels to boot. Literally everyone would have more fun if these instant-death pits were replaced by small platforming sections that allowed you to make your way back up, or, better yet, another branching pathway that was merely slower than the one you fell from.
Gah, Stephan’s comment tricked me into putting X instead of Blues. You know what I meant.
Wait, I HATE those segments. DAMN YOU, BRO! YOU KEEP ON MESSING WITH MY IPHONE WHEN I’M GONE!! XD
@ChaoticFox
I don’t think anyone was missing that unless you were referring to the people who didn’t agree.
I like the run-on-water sections because it is it’s own little gameplay mechanic thrown in there where you have to boost. I guess you shouldn’t die immediately but technically you don’t. You sink for a sec and then can save yourself. But it’s similar in Oil Ocean Zone or Egg Golem (Eggman version) except you have to jump through it instead of boost. I just think the water parts with no underwater sections is one of the best opportunities for the Boost to be useful. (There can even be parts WITH underwater sections too because that’d be neat. ^^)
@ChaoticFox
I kinda agree with Emily on what she said about the water section. But to be fair, that’s really a personal preference so I guess it doesn’t matter. lol
But I agree with you on his controls. I would like it better if he was less stiff in his movements. It’s like he’s only meant to be able to move 2 directions smoothly. (2D sections = left and right and 3D sections = forward and backwards. Which are pretty much the same thing from Sonic’s POV)
They should really make “Steering” more fluid like it once was. lol
lol The last few things you were saying I kinda agree with. But I find ironic since so many ppl have been saying Sonic games are easier now than the classics. (What a load of crap imo.) At the same time I don’t really mind these things cuz I can handle and enjoy them. But improvement always has my support. ;D
They should have multiple paths with seperate difficulties. XD
Actually a rumor was going around that Generations would have a difficulty setting that might change up the stage a bit. (The differences in the more recent vids of Classic City Escape stage come to mind). I don’t know if this is just a rumor or if it’s true and I’m just late. XP
Haha.
“boost to win”
“augh I’m boosting but I’m not winning!”
My girlfriend can get through those sections with no problem and the most high-action video game encounter she’s used to is a Pokemon battle. What are you guys doing it to make it so difficult?
I think I may have died once or twice the first time going through Chun-nan, but after that I can’t remember the last time I fell through. The controls do suck for boosting no matter on water or land, though. No one can argue that.
@Blues and ChaoticFox
“I can see too many opportunities in which a player will boost off the edge. Because lets face it, the current design basically encourages you to be constantly boosting. Plus, when you fall into water in a 3D Sonic game, Sonic will clip through the water with hardly a single splash and disappear while screaming. It looks cheap and it feels lazy.”
Agreed. I’ve always thought bottomless pits were a nuisance in the modern games especially Unleashed (ie. Dragon Road, Cool Edge, and Jungle Joyride) and yes, even Colors (ex. Aquarium Park). Bottomless pits are getting old. REAL fast.
“Literally everyone would have more fun if these instant-death pits were replaced by small platforming sections that allowed you to make your way back up, or, better yet, another branching pathway that was merely slower than the one you fell from.”
Exactly. Not only would the lack of bottomless pits be great for the level designers to give some nice platforming but it can add more depth to that particular zone and can be more forgiving incase the player has an accidental death.
@Stephan That’s the weird part, after this game was announced, it happened on a regular basis, so i just got used to it
I love the argument that if you complain about a certain design element being unfair, you must just suck.
Not counting boss stages, this is the level themes. so random lol:
Tropical Plains/Mountains lol
Factory
Temple/Ruins
Highway in the midst of a city filled with sky scrapers
Inside a modern city looking like Francisco
Beach
City ruined in fire and lava
A European themed capital
An Alien Planet!
I made them sound interesting lol!
@Blues
We had some friends over this weekend and we were playing Sonic and this one girl spent honest to God 7 minutes going around the same loop around the tree in Mazuri. And she started complaining about how it was so unfair. But it wasn’t unfair. She just sucked.
The argument of whether it is too difficult is up for discussion, but it doesn’t change the fact that if you were good at it you wouldn’t have found it so difficult to get through.
I never had a problem with the water running sections, I thought they were simple to understand. The point of the segment is to keep you running by giving you incentive not to stop. It’s like complaining about the wall chasing you in Act 2 of Hydrocity. Yes, if you stop you will die. That’s the point.
People complaining about pitfalls should just go, u r part of the problem games are too easy these days.
@Emily
The differences between this and something like Oil Ocean are:
a) You can only stay alive for as long as there is boost in your meter, whereas in Oil Ocean you can jump indefinitely.
b) Running into certain objects/obstacles/enemies means instant-death – there is no recovery period, no matter how many rings you have or how much boost is in your meter.
If Sonic Team decided to stop making water an instant out-of-bounds zone and rather added additional level space beneath it, the boost would still be just as useful, as it could be used in the same way it was in Sonic 3 or Sonic Colors: running on top of the water = faster route to the end. This way, rather than immediately dying if you were to fail at this section (which is often highly likely due to the stiff and unresponsive controls), you would simply sink down to the bottom where you would be forced to make a slow, time-consuming crawl back to the top (with that added threat of drowning). This way, if you were to die, you’d feel a lot more responsible, as you wouldn’t have shitty controls to blame for your death.
@X
it doesn’t change the fact that if you were good at it you wouldn’t have found it so difficult to get through.
Lacking an understanding of the concept of difficulty aren’t we? What makes something difficult is the amount of time and effort it takes to GET good at it. And, in this particular case, “getting good” just means learning to compensate for a poor controls and disproportionately demanding level design.
The running water sections are simple to understand, but the sheer shitfuckery of the controls makes it hard to use that understanding to your advantage. I don’t think anybody is having trouble grasping “run fast to not die”. What makes it difficult are the placement and timing of the obstacles you have to avoid, despite the fact that your character is about as responsive as a bucket of molasses.
As I said before, Sonic Team ACKNOWLEDGES how shitty these controls are and attempts to use boost pads and ring trails to “steer” you toward the extremely narrow “correct” paths, but even this doesn’t work so well, as the ring dash in Unleashed’s 3D sections functions according to some of the most inconsistent programming in the entire series. Seriously, it almost NEVER works the way it’s supposed to. I can’t even count how many times I’ve tried to ring-dash that curve in Shamar only to be thrown off the edge after collecting only two rings. Not because I missed the dash connection, but because it simply refused to work.
One of your only options for correcting your rocket-like trajectory is letting go of boost for a moment before pressing it again, but doing dramatically reduces your available boost, so you’d better hope you’re lucky enough to point your molasses-tank toward the next easy-to-miss trail of rings lest you run out and die.
And again, this brings us back to my point about pointless punishment of the player. What fun is there to be had in dying? Sonic games used to be VERY forgiving, and that didn’t make them less fun. Speed-running a stage to perfection is just as fun whether you avoided instant-death pitfalls or merely gaps down to slower passages. More level = more fun for everyone.
Also fix the physics, then this wouldn’t even be an issue
@Foxboy
Yes they should. I don’t know that I really hear a lot of people saying the modern games are easier than the classics – just that adding modern abilities to classic gameplay makes it even EASIER.
I wouldn’t mind if Generations had a “hard mode” or something like that. Yay replay value! It’d also make me feel a lot better about some of the stupid changes that were made to City Escape if I knew it was some kind of “easy mode”
@chaotic fox
couldn’t have put it better myself. Good design and challenge comes from presenting the player with a situation/objective and giving them reasonable opportunities to succeed, even on their first play through. With the water running segments in Unleashed, you more or less HAVE to die before even realizing that you aren’t allowed to stop boosting and the objectives aren’t clear because you can’t see where it is you’re heading towards before it’s too late. On a 2d plane this isn’t so much of a problem because you can see where you are going more precisely, that’s why Hydrocity works so well and this doesn’t. Plus the wall in hydrocity even allows the player to even make a couple of mistakes. Running on water may look “cool” but it’s these kinds of decisions that make sonic unapproachable for newcomers and keep the franchise mired in the 6/10 range.
I’ll take the criticism “the game is a bit on the easy side” to “the game is poorly designed” any day.
@ChaoticFox
“What makes something difficult is the amount of time and effort it takes to GET good at it”
I’m sorry dude, but what?
What makes something difficult is that it is /hard to do/.
I am not contesting that Unleashed’s controls are not shit. This is a common sentiment.
What I’m saying is that the controls running over water are no less responsive than any other time. I find turning over water no less cumbersome than turning over land. And that if you are having that hard a time conserving your boost and making it through, then it is probably not an issue with the water-running sections you’re having but with the entire game.
And just because a game is poorly designed doesn’t mean that people can’t be both good and bad it it. Do I only enjoy Unleashed because somehow I am better at compensating for bad controls more than the common man? Okay? I’ll take it, I guess.
There is no fun to be had in dying. But it’s the threat of losing a life that makes a game exciting. Did everyone forget about Prince of Persia ’08 and how that game was panned? Likewise, why was Super Meat Boy so much fun? If every time you hit a saw blade, Meat Boy just bounced off and blinked for a second the game would have been no where near as fun or successful. What if every time you walked into a boss room in Megaman you knew three shots to the torso would bring him him down?
Dying isn’t fun, but trying to stay alive is.
Where’s the fun in that?
…that last line was left in from another sentence. Ignore that.
Anyway, adding branching paths under the water is a good idea. But unless something big changes with Sonic Team’s linear level mindset I’m not gonna.. hold my breath. hurrr.
@X
Nothing is hard to do anymore once you master it. Doing the same thing over and over diminishes its difficulty. What you were saying is “it’s not hard, you’re just not good”. While it’s true that some people adapt to things more quickly than others, that doesn’t make the thing not difficult in and of itself.
What I’m saying is that the controls running over water are no less responsive than any other time.
But the level design in those sections is 100% more demanding. It doesn’t MATTER if the controls are unresponsive on land because you’re not expected to have pitch-perfect reaction to things (well, in some areas you are, but that’s another discussion entirely).
When you run into a wall, you just keep going… that game has a lot of face-grinding / crashing through objects, etc, but the levels are designed to funnel that boost in the proper direction to compensate for your lack of control. Not so on the water, where the only thing channeling your direction are a couple of sparsely placed boost pads and ill-conceived ring trails. Ironically, the water areas are the most wide-open spaces in the game, despite having the narrowest “proper” paths… it’s easy to get off course trying to avoid an obstacle, leaving you with little options/opportunity to correct your trajectory.
On land, the sloppy controls generally don’t change much, so long as you know when to jump. On the water, the SLIGHTEST failure as a result of these sloppy controls usually means instant death. Run into virtually ANYTHING and you’re instantly killed, or thrust into the wrong direction with little to no opportunity for recovery. Even if you want to argue that it’s not ridiculously “hard”, it’s disproportionately challenging compared to the rest of the game and REEKS of poor level design and unpolished mechanics.
Meat Boy is a poor example because the penalty for death is drastically reduced by the quickness of your recovery. You don’t have to watch an extended death animation or wait for the level to re-load, and you have an infinite number of tries. It’s also a game with ultra-precise controls, leaving you with no one to blame but yourself for your own death. It should also be noted that the entire game is roughly that difficult. There aren’t a lot of super easy sections interrupted by random jumps in difficulty.
Repeatedly dying in a Sonic game due to sloppy controls and bad level design is a lot more punishing and a lot less fun. It doesn’t give you the same feeling of “ooh, this is hard, I have to pass this” and the subsequent feeling of accomplishment once you do – it just makes you think “fuck, this level is stupid, I can’t wait til it’s over and I can get back to the fun parts”
Trying to stay alive is fun, but when you’re fighting against the controls of the game itself, rather than, say, a challenging enemy, that ISN’T fun.
@ChaoticFox
Like, I can empathize with how someone would feel if they were having that much difficulty with the segments. It’s just hard for me to be on the same page when I never had any issue dealing with them I guess.
From my perspective I just think the solution would be to fix the control issues rather than remove the perils.
That kind of contradicts your last comment where you said that underwater branching paths were a good idea.
I just say “why not?”. It doesn’t hurt anybody, it doesn’t take away the challenge (penalty = bad time/score/rank rather than death), and it adds to the amount of depth in the level. Win/win/win.
Save the player-killing challenges for direct confrontation, like tougher enemies/boss fights.