City Escape, Green Hill Zone feature
We said we would be live from London’s Eurogamer Expo this weekend and the result is we have a trio of videos showing off Sonic Generations footage coming directly from the event.
There are plenty of videos showing off full stages which have been seen by everyone, so I wanted to focus on more specific aspects of the game where player have questions. In my opinion these were elements such as rolling momentum, potential changes in level design and how the 2D sections of Modern Sonic handle (which we have not see as much of). You can find these videos below.
First, level design has changed in City Escape. Springs have been added that cause you to automatically travel through sections and, in areas where you would usually have to jump, such as over the platform when skateboarding, springs feature. Sometimes this reduces the user’s input as they watch Sonic move, but these situations are not littered throughout as they were in Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1. Green Hill Zone seemed largely identical to the Q2 demo.
Rolling momentum seems to be largely unchanged since the demo, though I am still not convinced it increases speed as it should. Levels have been designed in such as a way that rolling isn’t necessary, with speed pads on loops meaning the issue is avoided. Of course, as with the rumoured homing attack being in the 3DS version, replicating the Genesis/Megadrive era should be 1:1 given how the game is being pitched. The truth is however is that levels are fun to play so, while not desirable, the impact of not picking up speed while rolling is minimal.
Finally, Modern Sonic’s platforming: it feels solid. The chief complaint about Sonic Colours was that platforming felt too light, and when combined with the double jump meant that deaths happened unwillingly because you overshot jumps. In Generations, Sonic feels heavier and players certainly have more control. Of course, if you hold the jump button down Sonic will still jump higher.
We also have video for you, which will keep you appeased (for now).
Classic City Escape:
Modern City Escape:
Classic Green Hill:
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@ChaoticFox
Yeah I played the demo. And the distance didn’t really cause a problem or anything. It’s just I felt like they either built the stage, objects and enemies too big and had to zoom out because of it, or Sonic was built too small for the stage. lol I think it’s just because in the originals Sonic was much bigger on the screen and now he feels kinda 1/4th the size. o.o (The extremely large Mobius Strips didn’t help either. XD)
But like I said, didn’t cause a problem. It was just a nitpick, me wondering why they did it. And you’re right, it does zoom at different distances depending on the section. Kinda odd but it’s not something I gotta get used to either. (As in it doesn’t feel out of place where I gotta get used to it in order to be comfortable.) I think in most stages the distance it starts off with is fine too.
I think that goes alone with the fact that Sonic and the stage itself weren’t built proportionally right with each other. Like if it zooms out, you can see more of the stage itself, but it seems like if Sonic happened to be bigger at that distance that it’d actually look normal (well except compared to the actual sizes they chose. lol)
Image if someone complained about that tho? lol Or actually decided not to buy the game because of it. XP
To me, this demo definitely looks like an ‘easy mode’. Earlier builds showed us none of those springs, and in the later part of the classic section it showed more bottomless pits in the underground sections, which have now been paved over. As memory serves, whenever there has been an ‘hard’ mode added to a Sonic game, the very thing they removed was more tiles and springs… as well as adding more enemies for the most part, or upgrading the enemies present to ones with fewer weak spots.
From the videos, it seems gameplay and running times hold up and look genuinely fun, so my enthusiasm continues!
@Blues
X and CF are making more sense than you.
@Blues
o.o I don’t know if I even understand. What’s the problem again? ._.
Oh man looks good but noooo its that little bastard OMO CHAO…. Shadow: Okay who’s idea was it to revive him? Better yet where is that damn omo chao gun?
I’d like to point out that in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Mini Mario’s jump is so floaty that you can skip large parts of the stage simply by launching off at the right places. You can skip every single obstacle in World 6-6, normally a pretty hard stage, by simply running to the right the whole time.
Any platformer that encourages speed runs has stuff like this. Even 3-D platformers. That’s how you can 100% Banjo-Kazooie in under 3 hours, for instance, without using any glitches: There are a lot of skippable things and the game encourages you to pick the optimum path to get through a stage.