Sonic the hedgehog 4 - previews, interviews, and impressions topic

[Lady Soniko]

or Dissident's deep hatred for Episode 2 as if it's done something personal to him like stepped on his cat's tail or swatted his dog on the nose with a rolled up newspaper...

[Voyant]

So has this topic boiled down to "lol Dimps suck, Sonic Team are bettur"?

I think Sonic best puts it in Colors.

http://youtu.be/6dnSy8PY_Pc?t=58s

Edited April 26, 2012 by Double

[azoo]

E1 Story: Sonic and Eggman. The end. (Unless you visit the website, which says very little more)

EM Story: Metal Sonic is brought back to life in Mad Gear, and gets a powerup in Lost Labyrinth.

E2 Story: Little Planet is back, Metal fights Sonic once more (though the hows and whys of this aren't important) and Eggman takes over Little Planet in a way with no relation to Little Planet's story from CD. Tails exists again. There's a bit of story going on with Sonic and Tails destroying the oil rigs Eggman set up in the desert too. You don't see it happen though.

S3K Story: Sonic and Tails collected all the Emeralds and escape the Death Egg. Eggman and the Death Egg crashed on Angel Island, making it fall into the ocean. He then fooled Knuckles into helping him. Knuckles meets Sonic, steals the Emeralds and then keeps getting in his way. Sonic and Tails get the Emeralds back as the travel the island. Eggman unsuccessfully relaunches the Death Egg. Sonic and Tails get warped to Hidden Palace where they restore the new Super and Master Emeralds. Sonic and Knuckles fight, and then Knuckles realises Eggman's the bad guy when he steals the ME from him to power the Death Egg. Knuckles helps Sonic and Tails get to newly launched Death Egg and save the day before leaving Angel Island. After all of that, a stray Egg Robo attacks Knuckles and he must stop him. Egg Robo has the ME (um, how/when exactly?) and is keeping it in Sky Sanctuary. Metal Sonic (whatever you want to call him, I don't really care) then destroys Egg Robo and uses the ME to super charge himself. Knuckles wins in the end and saves the day. Also, the stages in S3K tell a story with their transitional cutscenes, subtly changed backgrounds (no Death Egg in Knuckles' Launch Base) and lack of water both in the layouts and in the backgrounds of Knuckles story.

Okay okay wait wait wait...

Isn't the game not even done yet? There's at least a whole other episode left to do.. right? I mean it should be obvious that this is gonna be a success, so might as well put money on that.

Also Sky Fortress was pretty rad.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Azukara

[Blue Blood]

Okay okay wait wait wait...

Isn't the game not even done yet? There's at least a whole other episode left to do.. right? I mean it should be obvious that this is gonna be a success, so might as well put money on that.

I was just saying it like it is. Not a single opinion there or anything. There's no cliffhanger ending (that we know of) in E2 either. The stories are there to compare, and it doesn't change the fact that E1 has like no story at all.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Blue Blood

[Indigo Rush]

I was just saying it like it is. Not a single opinion there or anything. There's no cliffhanger ending (that we know of) in E2 either. The stories are there to compare, and it doesn't change the fact that E1 has like no story at all.

Eggman and Metal Sonic being stranded on the Death Egg mk.II which is still encased around the Little Planet isn't a cliffhanger? :/

Edited April 26, 2012 by Indigo Rush

[Blue Blood]

Eggman and Metal Sonic being stranded on the Death Egg mk.II which is still encased around the Little Planet isn't a cliffhanger? :/

No. We're missing an ending to Episode 2 at the moment. The music files include "Mixed62_EP2_CutScene9a_Mixed1221_wav" which is played during the cutscene after the Final Boss, and "Mixed63_EP2_CutScene9c_1210_wav" which goes unused at the moment. Its way too difficult to explain sounds, so Skype?

FTR, "CutScene9" refers to the events after the Death Egg. It's got the cutscene, credits cutscene and "try again" screen. It's also the only one to come in more than one flavour

For those avoiding spoilers, basically there's reason to believe to that there's a cutscene missing from the Beta8 build of E2.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Blue Blood

[Sami]

So has this topic boiled down to "lol Dimps suck, Sonic Team are bettur"?

It wouldn't happen so often if it wasn't true.

Colors Bosses were atrocious though....both in design and execution...only good one was the Final. Dimps boss designed completely destroys colors Bosses.

Again, different team. I personally thought the bosses were fine on their own (though I obviously didn't like the blatant recycling), but it's an unrelated argument anyway.

Generations?

Death Egg Robo

4 hits.

Short but sweet > Sonic 4

Metal Sonic

Barely a threat in anyway shape or form absolutely no tension. Its fun to play sure...but it makes Metal look like a Pussy.

1. This is what matters.

2. Metal Sonic putting all of his energy into an attack and puckering out for a few seconds (a sign of weakness) > Metal Sonic just staring you dead in the eye while he floats like a dumbass with absolutely no defenses (a sign of sheer idiocy)

Shadow

I like this boss for the sae that you can just blast off and run around, but the way you take him out is rather weak and unimaginative. Great set up though.

I'd argue that all of the bosses in Rush were weak and unimaginative, along with every Sonic 4 boss that isn't ODZ's or the final boss.

TIME EATER

The fuck happened?

****

Can't argue that. I'm a bit forgiving because it still isn't as bad as some other 3D Super Sonic bosses though, in my opinion.

CaAlso they didn't just make Rush bosses. Some of their Sonic Advance 1/2/3 bosses fights surpass the Classics in a lot of aspects.

I can't believe I'm actually defending Dimps...my brain hurts

I only ever played the first Advance game and stopped because all it did was make me want to play the classics.

Well since you want to go there, I'll see you back in a year with the inevitable "I changed my mind again."

Huh?

[Sean]

For record, I did have more fun with Oil Desert's boss than any single boss in Generations.

So I am almost done with the game, and while I still don't like it, I don't think it's terrible or anything. My biggest issue is still the automated level design, and for some reason episode 2 introduces a new problem: bosses take forever. So if episode 1 is shitty, then ep2 is just about mediocre and it's still not worth a purchase in my eyes, but very little about the game is offensive to me. If anything, I'm actually mildly disappointed that it couldn't have been better, because I really was considering picking up this game at a reduced price someday.

But yeah. Other than the level design and the sometimes-atrocious soundtrack, everything else does feel improved from the first game. The physics are actually decent this time and I wish they were used in a game better than this, because episode 2 provides very little opportunity to take advantage of them whatsoever.

[Nintendoga]

It is a beta, they probably didn't include that cutscene till a later version of the game, just like how textures are missing in SC and what not.

Anyways, just gonna squeeze through and say something about the bosses of Episode 2.

I agree with Dissident, they really just suck for the most part.

SC is not a threat at all, does not challenge the player in anyway. It looks cool, but the only way to die from it is to either

A. hit the tentacles too many times (which most people will never hit at all during the boss,)

Or B. Put the controller down and do nothing as the boss prepares it's final attack.

WP is my favorite, though mainly cause of me loving running battles. Putting away my likes for this boss, it consists of multiple cheap attacks, (Blue lightning, Homing Attack that destroys the bridge with no time to react the first time, etc.)

OD is apparently the best boss in the game, though I'm not really seeing it. I mean yeah it's creative and unique, but the thing is the boss just takes too long, and is boring for me. I guess I can see why people like it though, it really is the only thing in this game that's deserving of the title, "Boss". Well this and the final boss I guess.

SF sucks. It's shit, horrible, disgusting, revolting, and an insult to not only this game, but Sonic games in general. The boss's 5 worst points are

1. Hitbox is too tiny

2. Almost impossible to hit him if you dodge his attacks, since the momentum doesn't allow you to go back and hit him

3. Almost impossible to hit him if you don't dodge his lasers, and try to recover before he rushes off screen

4. The constant lasers are annoying, especially the part when he tries to copy Advance 3's final boss, only makes it worse

5. That last fucking attack, which is so annoying if you get pushed back even a little, cause then you have to start the whole damn thing over, AGAIN.

As for final boss

The Metal Sonic and Eggman fight is a cool concept, but the way they have Eggman do absolute shit, and make it impossible to dodge Metal's attack, is unfair, cheap, and lame.

The Stardust Speedway thing is the same as the original, only with slightly less crappy level design.

The final boss looks cool, and unique, but it is not challenging whatsoever once you get his attacks down. Episode 1 had a hard final boss, and this one seems like both a step up and down in Quality. Up because it's unique, but down because it really isn't hard.

That's like what, 2 out of the many bosses of this game that are good. I'm not good at math, but when I see a good thing outnumbered by bad things, "That's no good!"

Edited April 26, 2012 by Nintendoga

[Blue Blood]

EDIT: Whoops. Managed to accidentally lose a post here. May as well delete.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Blue Blood

[Sami]

For the record, I wouldn't really call the game terrible either. Just criminally mediocre; and that's why I absolutely hate it.

It's not that it could be better, it's that it should be. The game's called Sonic 4 yet still has less content than Sonic 3&K (a two-part game vs. a two-part game, before any of you guys try and argue against this), behaves nothing like the classics, and is following up on some absolutely horrendous efforts by Dimps. I'd be more accepting of Sonic 4: Episode 2 if it came out in 2007 or earlier; but it didn't. Sonic Colors had tons of love and effort put into it, while Colors DS was a shoddy knock-off. Sonic 4: Episode 1 was a fucking lie that I'm still extremely bitter about (they delayed the game promising improvements, kept it shrouded in secret for months on end while continuously promising improvements, and then revealed about a week or two before release that they had barely made any improvements at all), and Sonic Generations 3DS (or what I lovingly call SANIK JENURASHUNS: CHEAP IMITATION EDITION) was yet another shoddy knock-off that paled in comparison to the real game. Dimps hasn't put anything good out in years, and I'm sick of them, to be frank.

This is the third time Dimps has tried getting the classic gameplay right. The third time. And they're still so far off the mark that it's depressing. I'd be more forgiving if it was their first time and they didn't know any better, but it isn't. We completely spelled out every flaw in Episode 1. They then listened to that and gave us JENURASHUNS, which was almost as far-off as Episode 1. We completely dissected every single problem for them yet again, and they still messed it up! How many games is it going to take for them to finally learn? I don't know, nor do I care. I want them out.

Another thing that would make me a bit more forgiving would be if the gameplay was really fun in its own right, but I can't even say that. I can say that I legitimately enjoyed Acts 2 and 3 of Sylvania Castle, Act 2 of Sky Fortress, and the Oil Desert and final bosses, but literally every other part of the game was either boring or frustrating to me. It just isn't fun to play.

So to make things simple:

Things Episode 2 did right -

• The physics are far improved this time.
  
• Sylvania Castle Act 2's level design.
  
• Sylvania Castle Act 3's level design.
  
• Sky Fortress Act 2's level design (it's got boosters and pits and isn't classic in the slightest, but I still found it fun to play in its own right.
  
• The visuals, including art design for enemies, bosses, and levels.
  
• Oil Desert Zone's boss.
  
• The final boss.
  
• Music actually sounds like Genesis music now.
  
• *Ahem*
  

  
  There's actually something else I like about EPII: The way the little animals behave is 1,000,000x cuter than ever before. I watched a Pocky (rabbit) just kinda act like a rabbit instead of bouncing off like the old games. Instead it stopped, looked around, bounced around a bit, and looked around a bit, all feral like. It was really cute. The same for the Flicky birds, which kind of flew towards the screen. The animals behave differently and that's definitely a nice touch.
  

  
  Things Episode 2 did wrong -
  • Music really shouldn't sound like Genesis music at all (it's incredibly jarring considering literally everything else is more "modern" than "classic" anyway. Why make the gameplay and visuals as non-retro as possible, only to hold back the music from being as good as it can be?), and the actual themes themselves are poorly written and unmemorable half the time. Getting Jun to write retro-style music all on his own is about as stellar an idea as getting him to conduct a chamber orchestra while Ohtani rocks out on the guitar.
    
  • Level design is bland and uninspired a majority of the time. There's an overabundance of boosters and bottomless pits in almost every level, and it keeps the game from being at all fun.
    
  • Special stages are once again ripped directly from a previous game; something that a game called "Sonic 4 really shouldn't do, considering Sonic 2, 3&K, and CD all had unique special stages, and they control rather poorly, making the later ones more of a hassle than they should be (this was a problem in Sonic 2 as well; I love how one of the few things they're really faithful to is one of the flaws).
    
  • Less content than Sonic 3 & Knuckles. Again.
    
  • The new physics are barely even noticeable because the level design doesn't allow you to use them.
    
  • The team attacks are absolutely broken.
    

  It seems like everything the game does right is negated by a stupid mistake that wouldn't have happened if they actually tried to make Sonic 4 be, you know, Sonic 4. I'd much rather they just work on some other pointless side-series so that I can ignore it in peace.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Dissident

[Indigo Rush]

There's actually something else I like about EPII: The way the little animals behave is 1,000,000x cuter than ever before. I watched a Pocky (rabbit) just kinda act like a rabbit instead of bouncing off like the old games. Instead it stopped, looked around, bounced around a bit, and looked around a bit, all feral like. It was really cute. The same for the Flicky birds, which kind of flew towards the screen. The animals behave differently and that's definitely a nice touch.

EDIT: More organized:

I'm gonna start keeping track of what each animal does. Haha, this is fun!

Pocky (the rabbit) hops around and stops to check its surroundings while wiggling its nose.

Flicky (the bird) floats around a bit and then flies either off to the side or towards the screen.

Picky (the pig) runs off really quickly and trips over itself, gets back up, and continues the process.

Cucky (the chicken) will run and try to fly until he runs into a wall, and he'll start going the other way.

Pecky (the penguin) will waddle around and start sliding on his belly.

That's all of 'em!

Edited April 26, 2012 by Indigo Rush

[Blue Blood]

On a completely unrelated note, have a summary of Sylvania Castle and the physics. It's quite long, and I'll do the other stages when I can be bothered. No real spoilers here, just detailed info that may spoil the levels if you intend to play them without watching videos.

The stage starts out with a little cutscene, that doesn't offer squat in terms of story on it's own. If you play Episode Metal though, you do get the idea that they're flying on from Splash Hill. You don't have a clue why they're going here though without reading the story in the manual (which is actually included this time around). It's where the tie between the episodes starts.

It's hard to describe Sylvania Castle's motif. Right away you're hit with the thought "Aquatic Ruin rehash", though you soon realise it's more of an homage. While the two are very similar in both visuals and certain design choices, SCZ has more than enough to stand out as it's own thing. There's the new Zoomer Badnik and some rather interesting gimmicks in the second and third acts. And unlike any of the zones in E1, the three acts here blend together and feel like part of the same stage. Good stuff overall, I would just rather it wasn't an homage to any stage. Wasn't that one of the big complaints about E1?

Act 1, "A New Frontier", is about entertaining as the opening cutscene, and essentially acts as a tutorial stage without being quite as basic Generations' GHZ2. There's a few secret routes here and there that you won't notice right away, but these routes all have an overuse of springs and boosters in common. Quite a let down that that criticism hasn't been addressed at all. On the flip side, there's not nearly as homing attack chains here as there were in any E1 stage. (More on how that continues to improve later.) There's a number of small pools you run over which can lead to very short underwater routes if you mess up. Splash Hill could have done with something like that considering it's name. The main gimmick here is the blue wheels which are a lot more forced than they were originally in Marble Garden. It feels very cheap. As a whole it not really bad or anything, just rather boring and filled with automation. The music too doesn't add to the experience. It's rather unfitting.

Over-simplified: this Marble Garden gimmick is back and no longer any fun in Act 1

When I started raving about having fun with E2 the other day, it was SC2, "Sunken Ruins", that set me off. It's got a lot fewer springs and boosters than you'd expect from S4, so just to top that off it's actually a pretty awesome stage in it's own way. The gimmicks include Marble Gardens 'Relief' that shoots arrows or water jets, flip platforms and rising water. And also unlike the first act it has extended underwater areas. It's all really good fun. You're also introduced to Tails' swimming ability here, and this is arguably the level when it's best used. There's not really much to say other than that. It checks all the boxes like multiple routes, recognisable layout and actually being fun. The final stretch of SCZ2 even changes this visually as well, with it all being up close against the castle walls. It's just so the water rising doesn't look weird really, but even so it provides a great sense of progression. Couple all this with the killer music, and you can't help but hope that the rest of the game is this good. It's not up to the standard I'd want from Sonic 4, but at this rate I'd be willing to call it a good game. All is really needs it speed booster removal and some physics acknowledgement to make it stella. It was such a pleasant surprise to find a stage like this in Sonic 4.

Genuinely good! The water rising section at the end of Act 2 is a suitable end of stage challenge.

... and for a short while you think it might actually be a good game! In Act 3, "Moonlit Realm", you're shown a gorgeous bright night sky and although there's no moon about, you can see the Death Egg being built around Little Planet in the background. Before you get to all this you've first got to get out of the water to even see the sky. It's only a short little underwater jog from where you start, and the section does it's job well to feel fresh and really bring to your attention to the new background. Again it lets you know you've progressed. So on from visuals, you're almost instantly introduced to this acts main gimmicks- platforms you can use the HA on to push or rotate, other floating platforms that slowly tilt from side to side, pillar you have to hit three times to knock down and different pillars that you can run on top of or knock down like a row of dominoes. Nothing ground breaking here, but just like with Act 2 the gimmicks are fun enough and don't really intrude on the gameplay. If anything, this is where the interesting HA chains start to come into play. Some of the platforms will be arranged in such a way you use them as stepping stone or to make a make-shift wall jump. And if you fall down for whatever reason afterwards, well you play it differently to get back up as the target will have changed. Very good stuff. Moonlit Realm is more platform orientated than the acts before, although it's far from being the snoozefest Lost Labyrinth was. It's really just another very good stage all things considered. Only, it has a trademark Dimps ending. There's a bridge of platforms spinning towards and away from the camera. You can probably guess that this area is suspended over a pit as well. So time it right or die. Its not dissimilar to the end of Casino Street 2, only more forgiving.

The homing attack without Bubbles?! You've got to bounce your way up these platforms in a simple, yet surprisingly fresh homing attack puzzle.

So with three acts in tow, one being meh and the others being pretty good within the confines of Sonic 4, you'll have noticed that even with the improved level design the physics changes from E1 don't make much difference. Yes they're better, but they still aren't really all that good. And this only really gets more noticeable as the game goes on so I'll get it out of the way now; you can't stand on walls, but you can moonwalk; you keep momentum when you let go of left/right, but because of the way that gravity ISN'T handled in this engine there's a limit on everything, including how high you can go off a ramp; rolling still doesn't work very well even when influenced by left/right. All this results in gameplay that's a got a fair bit more flow to it than E1 and yet it still fails to feel like a Classic game or work properly. The level design very soon takes a turn for the worse as well, so that all of E2's potential saving graces are lost. Okay, the visuals remain pretty at least.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Blue Blood

[TheOcelot]

Does it take eight hits to defeat most of the bosses in Ep2?

[frokenok3]

Does it take eight hits to defeat most of the bosses in Ep2?

I think all of them take 8 hits. Don't quote me on this though.

[JezMM]

Does it take eight hits to defeat most of the bosses in Ep2?

More or less, but there's usually a half minute between each opportunity to hit.

[Solid SOAP]

More or less, but there's usually a half minute between each opportunity to hit.

Really? Holy fuck, that sounds so annoying. At the very least, does this mean most fight can take up to 4+ minutes each? That's quite a while for a Sonic boss.

[JezMM]

Really? Holy fuck, that sounds so annoying. At the very least, does this mean most fight can take up to 4+ minutes each? That's quite a while for a Sonic boss.

Basically yeah. You can speedrun them in about 2-3 minutes if you're perfect, and Super Sonic does double damage so even shorter if you play as him. Sky Fortress isn't quite so long between hits but I think it takes a lot more.

[Blue Blood]

Basically yeah. You can speedrun them in about 2-3 minutes if you're perfect, and Super Sonic does double damage so even shorter if you play as him. Sky Fortress isn't quite so long between hits but I think it takes a lot more.

I don't think SKy Fortress takes more hits, you can just land several null hits on him. In every window of opportunity you get to strike, you can hit him once or twice extra if you know what you're doing. But these hits won't count towards defeating him. You could do the same with the pinch mode boss in Splash Hill and throughout much of the E1 Final Boss.

[Solid SOAP]

How's Super Sonic in this? In Episode 1 controlling him was so weird, due to the stiff controls he just felt so janky and awkward. Is he more fun to play as in this or no?

[Blue Blood]

How's Super Sonic in this? In Episode 1 controlling him was so weird, due to the stiff controls he just felt so janky and awkward. Is he more fun to play as in this or no?

Super Sonic has Episode 1 physics, and I'm not even kidding (it's not unreasonable to expect that to change between this beta and the final build however). Performing any tag action will turn Sonic un-Super again. Quite lame.

[JezMM]

I don't think SKy Fortress takes more hits, you can just land several null hits on him. In every window of opportunity you get to strike, you can hit him once or twice extra if you know what you're doing. But these hits won't count towards defeating him. You could do the same with the pinch mode boss in Splash Hill and throughout much of the E1 Final Boss.

Oh really? It felt longer even without the extra null hits (I've only done it once or twice by accident). Like, 6 on his first phase, 4 on his second, then the final hit during the pinch mode attack. I haven't played it in a few days though. (Even though I never logged out, steam sneakily removed access to it when I wasn't looking at some point, and even though I know you can launch it from the .exe I just felt "meh I'll hold off now til the full version").

Edited April 26, 2012 by JezMM

[Blue Blood]

Oh really? It felt longer even without the extra null hits (I've only done it once or twice by accident). Like, 6 on his first phase, 4 on his second, then the final hit during the pinch mode attack.

Maybe you're right. I'd go check, but it's simply not fun.

[Jeffhog]

Performing any tag action will turn Sonic un-Super again. Quite lame.

To be honest, I find this quite awesome.

I've always wanted to be able to cancel Super transformation and conserve rings accordingly. Hell, it's kind of a smarter way to play Sonic, when you think about it, only becoming Super when you absolutely need to then just turn back again to save rings instead of just having to wait for them to deplete.

[Blue Blood]

To be honest, I find this quite awesome.

I've always wanted to be able to cancel Super transformation and conserve rings accordingly. Hell, it's kind of a smarter way to play Sonic, when you think about it, only becoming Super when you absolutely need to then just turn back again to save rings instead of just having to wait for them to deplete.

You never absolutely need to be Super Sonic- he's a special bonus. A detransform button is able to be abused as it is, but having it happen in-synch with the mandatory combo moves really bites.

Also, just tested the SKy Fortress boss. 4 hits in the first phase, 3 in the second and 1 for the final phase.

Edited April 26, 2012 by Blue Blood