Your opinion on rail grinding.

[CreamyBagel]

I like rail grinding because it allows you to go fast ('Cept in Heroes where it sowed you down). Especially when there's a hoop to jump through at the end giving you those extra delicious points, nom!

[Jay Leno]

I love grinding and am glad it's still here in Lost World.

[Kat]

As most in this thread, I liked grinding best in SA2. It could actually help you gain momentum and you needed a little skill to make it work.

 

Nowadays grinding seems to have turned into a "go fast and dodge stuff" setpiece. SA2 had grinding rails in all sorts of places offering an alternate, more rewarding way of movement. (E.g. the rails in Metal Harbor that you could use to turn corners instead of simply running along, thus giving you more points (aside from making you feel like a boss ) at the risk of falling into the water).

Edited August 19, 2013 by Kat

[Zavok the SpinningSilver]

I think that rail grinding was a pretty nice edition to the series. It made him look cool, and it opened up new possibilities for gameplay. I love how it was introduced in SA2, as it could lead to different paths and was a great way to keep the flow in a run (even if I suck at trying to grind in the first place.). 

 

The Rush series and Unleashed also used the rails well to me. They served a purpose to the level design that wasn't just to get to the next part of the level, you actually did something. It was easiest to grind in Unleashed though for me, because of the tweaked switching controls.

 

If there was some sort of lovely hybrid of these two methods, I think that would be fantastic.

[Cortez]

Grind Rails that just float in the air over giant empty space are so wank. Not only does it look ridiculous it's also painfully boring to actually play, Rail Canyon and Bullet Station can suck my dick.

I know it's been said so many times in this topic already but besides Sky Rail and to a lesser extent Final Chase/ Rush SA2 generally got the concept of grinding spot on by having the rails as a part of the environment.

[Ristar]

I don´t see any problem with rail grinding, I think it´s pretty cool.

 

Actually, I enjoy rail grinding in Rail Canyon a lot. It´s my favourite part of the stage.

Edited August 19, 2013 by Ristar

[Jet Prower]

(wow, a big bump in this topic I see)

 

 

As for how I feel about grinding, it has honestly rarely bothered me, except in the games where switching or getting on could be difficult. I've played so much Unleashed before, that I rarely had a problem with it anymore. Sure, having large numbers of rails over nothingness may be a bit on the odd side, but I'm sure rails are there just to make him look cool. Cool kids grind on the rails, and look, I can do it too, is likely the mentality behind it all. So, I've just never had a problem with it and have accepted it as part of the game mechanics now. I was a bit surprised to see how many people seem to dislike them.

[Speedy]

While the rails didn't always control great in SA2 and Heroes, I liked that those games made you do something while you're on a rail, like holding your balance. In more recent games, you only have to jump and change the rails occasionally. You sit there and watch Sonic grind, then sometimes press a button. It's not really a problem for short grinding sections, but imagine a stage like Final Rush based primarily on grinding. It would get boring pretty quickly, especially if you can also home attack rails to get on them.

 

I think the rails are cool for shortcuts and upping the pace a bit. For example, in SA2 you can get through City Escape faster by grinding on rails instead of taking the stairs up or down. Once you get a hang of grinding, it can help you getting forwards more quickly. Final Rush was fun to play because you could get pretty fast on the rails and you had to aim well to hit the rails and not fall to your death. With the controls as they are now, a stage with mainly grinding parts isn't very thrilling or engaging to me. Maybe grinding is too easy now?

[Turbo the Punk]

I always saw rails since their inception as a faster way of getting through the stages, though that may have just been me as I considered the general speed of the Adventure games as slightly slower than on the Genesis titles.

 

This is another matter of opinion, but after a while rails seemed to be standard in most Sonic games simply due do the velocity and speed conveyed by these sections. Likewise with fellow member Speedy I must admit that grinding in the games has gotten easier, but it still beats the physics used in Heroes. Rail Canyon comes to mind almost instantly.

[Solkia]

Rail Canyon "grinds" my shit. Other rail sections are entirely pointless.

[Jet Prower]

Well, I've never seen the rail sections in the games as pointless, but definately the grinding of rails has gotten easier than it did at first. It doesnt take as much skill to use them, but you still need some good reflexes to change rails as needed or hit things in your way or fall off.

[Shikushi]

I love grinding, I just think it looks really cool. The gameplay when on a rail is the most complex in Adventure 2, but when I want to switch to another rail, I usually fall off, dying. That's why I prefer The grinding in Unleashed and Colo(u)rs, and even Shadow. In Sonic Generations it just seemed like it was just there, it played the same as Colo(u)rs, but it just seemed totally pointless. 

[-blank-]

I thought rail grinding was one of the coolest things ever when I first played SA2. It's just pretty damn satisfying traversing an area along them. However, I hated switching between them - most of the time I'd always overshoot and end up falling to my death. And that got worse in Heroes, good god. >_> That's why I like the way the modern games have you switch rails - just press the trigger button and bam, you switch rails. Much better than the way SA2 did it.

[Badnik Zero]

Rail grinding was cool when it was a game of skill.

 

For a while Sonic games stopped being games of skill, and that's when they began to suck it.

 

I said four years ago in this topic. Final Rush is the shiz.

 

The spike rails in Sonic Rush were cool too, in Altitude Limit.

[Somebodyelse]

Having rails in the game throughout the levels for doing tricks and getting a boost of speed is awesome, but having a level or even a section of a level that involves switching between rails has always pissed me off. It can be kind of fun if done well, but I just want freedom. Sonic games are linear enough as it is; I can't stand it when I'm forced along a set path even more so than usual! Like a lot of people are saying; they were cool in SA2, but they've become way too prominent and lost all meaning since then.

[Harley Quinn]

It was cool in SA2, then it became overused and boring when eeeerveryone could do it.

[HeroMystic]

Well, this thread started four years ago, but it's basically the same answer.

 

It was at it's best in SA2, then it got simplified from that point on. It reached a high point in Shadow the Hedgehog ironically, since it was so easy to control, but it lacked the needed balance skills from SA2.

 

Overall, unless it's SA2 I don't really care for Rail Grinding. It's just there to serve as a method to another destination, and I guess that's all it needs to do.

[Phos]

I had a post written but then things happened so rails and grinding are still pointless and no amount of pseudo physics are going to change that. I haven't personally seen any in Lost World but that game is still upholding the bold tradition of noninteractivity offered by boosters that send you into springs that send you into boosters even though the whole point of that game was supposed to be controllable speed but actually rip off SMG.

[SnipSnap]

My feet hurt and the sound was painful... NEVER DOING THAT AGAIN

[spinny]

Rail grinding...

 

To be honest, I don't even notice grindrails in any game post-Shadow. They just feel like ridiculously narrow automated walkways you can homing attack onto these days and really... I don't actually have a problem, whether they get cut from the series or not. To me, they're just... there.