Game Reveal New 2D Classic Sonic Platformer Sonic Superstars Announced

[Red Hot Jack]

Posting new details here too:

- 60 fps on Switch as well

- character exclusive skills, Tails flight, Knuckles climbing and Amy's hammer.

- A new carnival zone with slot machines

- Fang boss and animation seen in the background

- A new emerald skill, the purple one which shows hidden paths and platforms, which works a bit like Knuckles sunglasses upgrade in SA2

- A total of 12 zones confirmed, like Mania but they should all be brand new

 

[Jango]

16 minutes ago, Red Hot Jack said:

Posting new details here too:

- 60 fps on Switch as well

- character exclusive skills, Tails flight, Knuckles climbing and Amy's hammer.

- A new carnival zone with slot machines

- Fang boss and animation seen in the background

- A new emerald skill, the purple one which shows hidden paths and platforms, which works a bit like Knuckles sunglasses upgrade in SA2

- A total of 12 zones confirmed, like Mania but they should all be brand new

Day zero.

[A super No.1 washedupgamer]

32 minutes ago, Red Hot Jack said:

A new carnival zone

This triggered barrel of doom flashbacks.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Given the full price of the game, 12 zones honestly ain't that great to hear imo. Replayability might be a factor, but I don't want a Crash 4 scenario where there's a obscenely short game that's been padded and filled to the brim with 'replayable' things to help justify that price.

[ZinogreVolt]

I'd rather they not try and artificially bloat the game to meet some vague metric on what 'justifies' it being 60 bucks. If it's good and well-paced but on the short side of things, I'll take the price tag on the jaw just fine.

[Jango]

Hot take, but I actually think Mania could do without 2 zones, ngl. By Hidrocity I'm already on the verge of dropping the game. Mirage Saloon picks it up again, but Oil Ocean just sinks everything back.

BTW, where's the new info from?

[mayday2592]

 

10 minutes ago, Jango said:

Hot take, but I actually think Mania could do without 2 zones, ngl. By Hidrocity I'm already on the verge of dropping the game. Mirage Saloon picks it up again, but Oil Ocean just sinks everything back.

BTW, where's the new info from?

Nintendo Direct

[ZinogreVolt]

34 minutes ago, Jango said:

Hot take, but I actually think Mania could do without 2 zones, ngl. By Hidrocity I'm already on the verge of dropping the game. Mirage Saloon picks it up again, but Oil Ocean just sinks everything back.

BTW, where's the new info from?

I think where Mania languished for me personally was the over-use of old gimmicks. It was long on top of a lot of stages not feeling particularly new to me, and it didn't have the same sort of level set pieces and spectacle that helped to drive 3K's levels. At least, it didn't feel like they were there to anywhere near the same degree. Iizuka already confirmed a desire for most stages to have those set pieces (as seen with the giant whale robot in Bridge Island Zone), so if it can deliver the goods on new level themes, I think it won't suffer from the same problem Mania did for me.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1 hour ago, ZinogreVolt said:

I'd rather they not try and artificially bloat the game to meet some vague metric on what 'justifies' it being 60 bucks. If it's good and well-paced but on the short side of things, I'll take the price tag on the jaw just fine.

I don't know, at that point, maybe just...don't be at sixty bucks, then? If there's not enough content that justifies that price point, why price it at that point, then? Especially when past games like Forces and Mania did adjust it's price point for the level of content it provided?

[JezMM]

If these are 12 really fun Zones with beautiful visuals, new ideas and motivation to come back and play them again and again for years to come, like my other favourite Sonic games, 12 of those is just fine.  If I knew how good they were going in, I would happily pay 60 bucks for S3&K or Mania.

[Wraith]

The game shouldn't be 60 dollars, but it's a Sonic game. If you wait a few weeks it'll be 40 dollars basically forever.

[ZinogreVolt]

21 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I don't know, at that point, maybe just...don't be at sixty bucks, then? If there's not enough content that justifies that price point, why price it at that point, then? Especially when past games like Forces and Mania did adjust it's price point for the level of content it provided?

It'll go on sale in like two days anyway, but I'd rather a game not be potentially restrained because of the financial whims of a publisher. So if a game has to be 60$ to reach its full potential, whatever. It's not really something that bothers me one way or the other.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

14 minutes ago, ZinogreVolt said:

It'll go on sale in like two days anyway, but I'd rather a game not be potentially restrained because of the financial whims of a publisher. So if a game has to be 60$ to reach its full potential, whatever. It's not really something that bothers me one way or the other.

I don't really see where this line of reasoning comes from to be honest. Mania certainly wasn't constrained by the fact it was a 'budget' game, with the zone tropes being more of a stylistic decision on their part (and the new zones being a suggestion from SEGA themselves iirc), Crash N. Sane Trilogy, or Spyro Reignited weren't constrained by being a 'budget' game either, being pretty hefty remakes of three games a pop. 

If it was using a 60 dollar price tag to justify full potential, surely it could manage a longer run time and zone count than a six year old game released for a forth of the price.

[Red Hot Jack]

If it's out in November, it will go in sale immediately due to Black Friday and Christmas sales, wait for those.

And to be honest, the main game will probably be short anyway, I expect longevity to be increased in optional ways easily, with slightly different character campaigns, we know they have different transition animations, some exclusive acts, etc. If I want I'll play online battle race mode, the tokens will probably be used to buy costumes or extra stuff, I also hope for fun extra modes honestly, that's my main "replayability" source.

The story can be short but sweet but please I don't want my time with the game to end with 5 hours.

[Wraith]

No matter what they do a proper classic sonic game is going to trend shorter. They're all dense games that provide quality over quantity with the real playtime coming from replays. If you don't like that sort of thing then it'll be better to wait for a sale.

The 3D games show what happens when you try to stretch out the initial runtime: padding. I'd rather them avoid that for this game if they cqn help it. Even just hearing that this game had 12 zones gave me pause because I can't see Arzest maintaining quality for that long. Sonic Mania barely managed it.

[ZinogreVolt]

14 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I don't really see where this line of reasoning comes from to be honest. Mania certainly wasn't constrained by the fact it was a 'budget' game, with the zone tropes being more of a stylistic decision on their part (and the new zones being a suggestion from SEGA themselves iirc), Crash N. Sane Trilogy, or Spyro Reignited weren't constrained by being a 'budget' game either, being pretty hefty remakes of three games a pop. 

If it was using a 60 dollar price tag to justify full potential, surely it could manage a longer run time and zone count than a six year old game released for a forth of the price.

Mania didn't need a bigger budget because it primarily used sprite artwork. 3D games are more expensive to make for a variety of reasons. I also disagree that something with the arcade-y format of Classic Sonic would benefit at all from being bigger than it already is. 12 zones are plenty, unless they want to do something different with the format.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

15 minutes ago, ZinogreVolt said:

Mania didn't need a bigger budget because it primarily used sprite artwork. 3D games are more expensive to make for a variety of reasons. I also disagree that something with the arcade-y format of Classic Sonic would benefit at all from being bigger than it already is. 12 zones are plenty, unless they want to do something different with the format.

Nothing about Superstars' visual style that we've seen so far screams "requires full price" kind of budget to me, and there's been other games that have had similar, or better graphical styles and visuals for a smaller price.

As for if you think 12 zones is enough or not for a Classic Sonic game is kinda irrelevant. 5, maybe 6-7 if we're very generous hours playtime for a full price game is not remotely good at all and if this is what they were going with, it should've at least been 40 IMO. Unless there's a metric ton of extra modes and extras in here, I fail to see how it justifies it's price tag even remotely. Other platforming games, even as far back as 2012 have ensured they had heaps of levels and content to justify their full price tag, I don't see why this should be the exception if they're hell-bent on a sixty dollar price.

[Blue Blood]

3 hours ago, Jango said:

Hot take, but I actually think Mania could do without 2 zones, ngl. By Hidrocity I'm already on the verge of dropping the game. Mirage Saloon picks it up again, but Oil Ocean just sinks everything back.

BTW, where's the new info from?

I actually don't entirely disagree. Where Mania falters for me is with its pacing. Almost every act ends with an arduous or boring boss fight, which absolutely kills whatever stride you've got going. You can spend a significant portion of your play time in Mania just sitting around and waiting for your opportunity to fight the boss. The stretch from SSZ2 to HCZ to MSZ1 is full of so much standing around and just barley count as gameplay. And then whilst I personally think that the final four zones of Mania are great, OOZ, LRZ, MMZ and TMZ all feel like they're the endgame. It's a bit much for an entire third of the game to feel like it's building up to the climax. 

I'm not so concerned about Superstars falling into the same trap though. Mania was something of a victim of its stage choices. And the boss design in Superstars looks like it might be less restrictive than Mania (not that we've a lot to go on yet). And with the theme multiplayer gimmick, I'm tempted to say that the games overall difficulty will be lowered. We'll see though. 12 zones sounds like the right number to me. No more, no less. 

£50 to £60 for the amount of time and enjoyment I expect to get out of Superstars as a 12-zone Sonic game is a reasonable ask. And it seems like it's going to be a genuinely really, really good game too. I feel like I've overpaid for a game when I don't want to invest much time in playing it or when it feels sloppy/lazy.

[ZinogreVolt]

5 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Nothing about Superstars' visual style that we've seen so far screams "requires full price" kind of budget to me, and there's been other games that have had similar, or better graphical styles and visuals for a smaller price.

As for if you think 12 zones is enough or not for a Classic Sonic game is kinda irrelevant. 5, maybe 6-7 if we're very generous hours playtime for a full price game is not remotely good at all and if this is what they were going with, it should've at least been 40 IMO. Unless there's a metric ton of extra modes and extras in here, I fail to see how it justifies it's price tag even remotely. Other platforming games, even as far back as 2012 have ensured they had heaps of levels and content to justify their price tag, I don't see why this should be the exception if they're hell-bent on a sixty dollar price.

I'll agree to disagree by saying that I believe length and potential playtime are a poor metric to judge a game's price or value by, for a variety of reasons. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

12 minutes ago, ZinogreVolt said:

I'll agree to disagree by saying that I believe length and potential playtime are a poor metric to judge a game's price or value by, for a variety of reasons. 

I'll agree to disagree as well, but I am going to make a final response, as you've done so in your post.

Length and playtime are just as a important a metric as any other aspect of a game, gameplay included. A great premium game being finished within a matter of a few hours or a single play session is a valid complaint, and has been one that's hit the series before, even on games I love like Generations, especially when the competition for around the same price point will be the likes of Spider-Man 2, Super Mario Bros: Wonder, and if we wanna include it - Tears of the Kingdom, all of which will almost definitely offer far more than 5 hours of gameplay for that price. Not everyone can drop 60 dollars on the fly, how much a game offers for that price point is very much a critical aspect that shouldn't just be shrugged off.

Again, I paid £15 for Pizza Tower earlier this year, which might be a indie game with a simpler art-style - but has just as complex level design, and replayability as a good Sonic game, and was able to nab ten hours out of the first run of that game. Resident Evil 4 Remake after a first run is very, very arcade-like, and based upon improvement and whittling time down, yet it's campaign on a first run can easily last out to 13-16 hours.

And replayability might be a good metric for some, but one I deem just as flawed. Crash 4 by the time I was finished and 105% with it got me 65 hours of gameplay, and I'd say only about five-six of those hours were actual content worth playing through, and not filler that was thrown in to force multiple playthroughs in order to justify being able to grab that 60 dollar price point, and that's become one of the most infamous aspects of that game since launch. 

[Jango]

Oy, I didn't knew we got new footage, nice. And damn, the Switch took a hit on the graphics. They're not even that amazing to justify such downgrade, but it's probably because of the co-op (I heard there will be split-screen).

[Ryannumber1gamer]

7 minutes ago, Jango said:

Oy, I didn't knew we got new footage, nice. And damn, the Switch took a hit on the graphics. They're not even that amazing to justify such downgrade, but it's probably because of the co-op (I heard there will be split-screen).

There's only local co-op, so either it's split screen or it's...not gonna be ideal to say the least.

[Jango]

1 minute ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

2 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

There's only local co-op, so either it's split screen or it's...not gonna be ideal to say the least.

 

The LEGO games have an interesting method of spliting the screen in co-op mode, but then again, those games are slow xD

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1 minute ago, Jango said:

The LEGO games have an interesting method of spliting the screen in co-op mode, but then again, those games are slow xD

LEGO's split screen wouldn't be ideal IMO. Even with them being slower-paced, how the split moves around the screen can be pretty disorienting, and in a game like Sonic, it could easily lead to major slip ups IMO.

[Salamander]

Re: The discussion on pricing above, I think there's a simple truth that people are overlooking: Huge publishers working with popular franchises command great interest and demand without necessarily having to expend proportionate effort.  Indie developers, on the other hand, have no such guarantees and have to price low in order to overcome purchasers' initial caution.  It may be the case that Sonic Superstars is priced too high, we can't say for sure yet; but we might just as reasonably say that a lot of indie games are priced at lower than their worth.

(Also take into account the marketability of art styles.  I gather there is considerable reason to believe that 3D graphics have greater mass market appeal than 2D graphics; so that's another barrier for a lot of indie devs to overcome, and conversely the reason why all those retro franchises are in 3D now.)