I liked the mission mode in Sonic Riders the most. Gave me something to do. The power characters were way better than the speed and flight characters in my opinion.
Annnd since we're on the subject of the Babylon Rogues, I'll give my quick reviews of the Sonic Riders series.
Sonic Riders - Very different from you average Kart Racer. It was VERY challenging at times. Something that pissed me off at first, but then I found it very rewarding when I beat a race. It was a very solid, if not spectacular game.
Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity - This one I hated. Apparently, Sonic Team must have got a lot of complaints about the difficulty of the first game, cuz they toned down the difficulty to painfully easy. Too bad too because some of the new gameplay mechanics would have been fun in a more challening game. The story was even dumber than the first one. Now, those birds are not only related to Genies, but are technically space aliens as well. Lovely. Also, is it ever explained what futuristic city the Riders stories take place in?
Sonic Free Riders - Actually, once you get used to the controls (and that takes awhile) it may be my favorite of the three. It has a very arcade feel and some cool levels. I like some of the music compositions this time around. Especially "I'm still a believer". The biggest problem was the controls. It's not that they were broken, but rather not intuitive at all. People tried to play it like a skateboard, when it plays more like you're on a snowboard. Like riding a real board, it takes practice and skill which takes time. That's why it demoed so bad. In the end, my 6'3 325 pound frame managed to beat the entire game and I had a blast while working up a sweat. The story itself was pretty bad and had the worst dialogue since Sonic Heroes.
Anyone planning on buying this? I've been thinking about it, but the price is pretty crazy.
How's the quality on these things overall? Anyone got some experience with them?
Anyone planning on buying this? I've been thinking about it, but the price is pretty crazy.
How's the quality on these things overall? Anyone got some experience with them?
I got a Metal Sonic. It was a bit scuffed on the bottom of the base, and the paint was a little odd in one or two spots. Also, one eye lights up much brighter than the other, which is apparently how it's supposed to be (I double-checked the images on the site). I also, as silly as this sounds, like the color on my Toys R Us deluxe figure more.
I only ever played the first Sonic Riders and I didnt think it was very fun. My friend who owned really loved it though. I still want to try Zero Gravity at some point, since I think all the systems in play in the Riders games are fairly interesting.
I was also incredibly bummed out they never took the art style of the opening and applied it to the actual game. Such a missed opportunity. The concept art in the same style looks so cool.
I never played free riders but the videos i see of it make it look kinda bunk. Theres a few killer songs on that soundtrack though that are very Naganuma-ish: Rocky Ridge Metropolis Speedway
They're by Koji Sakurai, who has had kind of an oddball career jumping between Sega and Taito projects over the years
Exactly! I used that same combo too. Sometimes I used Storm + grinder shoes for a change of characters. I also really liked the fanservice tracks Sega Carnival and Sega Illusion. I don't know which one I like better because they're both fun.
I'll probably get Zero Gravity one of these days just to see how it is. I don't know when I'll ever get Free Riders because I don't have a Kinect.
Anyone planning on buying this? I've been thinking about it, but the price is pretty crazy.
How's the quality on these things overall? Anyone got some experience with them?
I never played free riders but the videos i see of it make it look kinda bunk. Theres a few killer songs on that soundtrack though that are very Naganuma-ish: Rocky Ridge Metropolis Speedway
They're by Koji Sakurai, who has had kind of an oddball career jumping between Sega and Taito projects over the years
I haven't played Free Riders either, but I like a lot of the themes on the soundtrack. Even Free is pretty catchy. The Riders games don't have bad soundtracks, much like the platformer games.
Free Riders, at least from the GB Quick Look, doesn't seem like a very good game, though.
Jazwares released that pack under their label...and their questionable/varying quality(haven't bought since I already purchased it from F4F, but I've seen it at Toys R Us a number of times).
A bit late, but Sonic Riders was pretty fun, if a bit difficult at times.
The Babylon Rouges were also pretty cool, non-offensive characters as well, with Jet being a nice rival to Sonic that wasn't overblown like Shadow and Silver, and the SEGA cameos were cool.
I kind of want to play it now, but I think I sold it.
Jazwares released that pack under their label...and their questionable/varying quality(haven't bought since I already purchased it from F4F, but I've seen it at Toys R Us a number of times).
One more "Heh, good enough" for Riders. ZG pissed me off at first because of this, but gameplay-wise it's not bad. I still want to get my hands on the full version of Free Riders, but I enjoyed the demo.
Also here's a post I just made in the Generations thread
I may as well ask this here. How does Sonic Adventure compare to the second one? I have some money left on my PSN and i'm considering picking it up. I beat Sonic Adventure 2 years ago and loved it but that one isn't up on the store. Are the two games similar?
Dunno if I've seen Ron Lim's art on the Sonic comic, but I agree about his art in other series (he was the artist on Cable and Deadpool and some issues of Hercules).
Looking forward to seeing what the upcoming Sonic Universe arc's gonna be like.
I may as well ask this here. How does Sonic Adventure compare to the second one? I have some money left on my PSN and i'm considering picking it up. I beat Sonic Adventure 2 years ago and loved it but that one isn't up on the store. Are the two games similar?
There are six different stories to playthrough, including Big the Cat's episode where you fucking fish. Other than that, the rest of the characters play pretty similarly with their own movesets. There are also Adventure Fields that act as hub areas between stages. They're pretty small and non-confusing.
I personally love it in every way better than SA2, except for maybe the visuals. The music is fantastic, the stage themes are nice and varied, and the plot is innoffensive with some good-ol' innocent cheesiness to it. The PSN/XBLA port is baffaling however in that it has no widescreen support with bars on the sides of the screen. That and Big the Cat are this game's lowpoints. Give the demo a try, and that should give you a good idea of what to expect.
I may as well ask this here. How does Sonic Adventure compare to the second one? I have some money left on my PSN and i'm considering picking it up. I beat Sonic Adventure 2 years ago and loved it but that one isn't up on the store. Are the two games similar?
It's a bit of a mixed bag; you either love it or hate it.
It was the first game with the Adventure fields that were so maligned in 2K6 and Unleashed, although they're much smaller than 2K6's and far less spartan. I kind of liked these, but a lot of people didn't for one reason or another, hence why they were excised in SA2.
It has a good six different play styles to SA2's three, although better in some regards (you can hunt for the emerald shards in Knuckles' gameplay in any order, unlike in SA2) - however, one of those is the much-maligned fishing gameplay with Big the Cat, whose campaign is simultaneously mercifully short (4 stages, compared to Tails'/Knux's/Gamma's 5, Sonic's 10, and Amy's 3) and yet too long. What gets me is that when I first played this game in 1999/2000, the controls felt spot-on, but going back to it via the PSN port, it feels almost as loose and difficult to control as 2K6 did, where subtly changing your angle is remarkably hard - not sure if it was always like that and a decade of Nintendo platformers since then has changed my tastes, or if the ports are just weaker all around - I'm going to assume the former. It doesn't control especially differently from SA2, though, so if you could handle that, then you can handle this.
The plot's okay. It was the first to do the whole "Eggman unleashes an ancient monster in a bid to rule the world!" thing that the sequels took and rammed so far into the ground that they hit the mantle and created a new volcano. It's remarkably upbeat, even considering that the CG intro and final story depict
a completely decimated and flooded city, presumably with countless casualties
. The dialog is incredibly corny, however ("I was on a snooze cruise, I guess"), and the acting leaves a lot to be desired ("Look out! You're going to crash! Ah!"), but hell, I enjoy it.
The Chao Garden isn't remotely as well thought-out as it was in the sequel. I'm not 100% sure how well the DX revision amended it, but Mystic Ruins' garden had a sheer cliff you could potentially throw your chao off of to their deaths. Also, Egg Carrier's was surrounded by a giant pool of water that was incredibly deep - naturally, chao that couldn't swim liked to toss themselves into it, but you couldn't grab them to save them from drowning because they were several feet above you. I think DX shallowed that pool considerably, but I don't know. Also, the PSN port removed the button that always acted as "pick up" (Y on the DC controller; the corresponding Triangle button does nothing in the port); this means you have to rely on the horribly-overloaded "action" button to choose "pick up" over "start spin-dashing, sending tons of light orbs out as you charge up your Light Dash, with each orb hurting anything it touches - including chao" or similar (yeah, the attack functions don't deactivate in the gardens - smart design!).
In short, is it worth playing? Well... I think so, but it hasn't aged especially well at all. I think I liked it better than SA2, despite the latter game being considerably more polished.
He's kind of established at this point; unless you completely gut his gameplay and alter his look, he's not going to get much more different from Sonic than he already is.
I was actually referring (indirectly) to how 06 handled Shadow. That is what I had in mind. Take that and make it not shit. As a character... that gets a little trickier. Even though he has gone through his whole... thing and come out on the other side, it doesn't feel like we were left with a solid or "complete" character. It kinda feels like that for Sonic and Knuckles as well (but without the personal resolution). It's like they're half character, half salesman.
Honestly though, I think I'm putting too much thought into how they were used in Generations.
I think it's safe to say that Gamma's storyline in Sonic Adventure was one of the greatest stories ever told in a Sonic game. Sega did a nice job putting us in the role of one of Robotnik's robots in this game with the gameplay alone, but giving him a nice redemption story was a really great move.
Yeah, it's was pretty painful. While the Darius-style level progression actually is a pretty awesome idea, the various goals you had to do were decidedly... not.
I recall this one mission where you escort Maria around the Space Colony ARK looking for and destroying Artificial Chaos-es (hell if I can remember why). Only problem is that they hid one behind a wall, and left very little indication that you could slide under it unless you just happened to be looking at the right angle at the right spot to notice, "hey, there's a secret passage here". So I spent well over an hour on that one stage, going through it over and over and over, poring over every nook and cranny that I could to find that damn fourth last Artificial Chaos, with absolutely no radar or indication as to where the missing one was.
I think that about sums up my experiences with Shadow - buggy, frustrating, and all-around poorly-designed. Hell, I barely found the music memorable, either - I can name and enjoy tunes from even most of the worst of the series, but beyond "I Am" and the 2K6 version of "All Hail Shadow", I can't remember a single Shadow tune.
Still, like I said, the branching paths thing was pretty nifty. It'd be awesome if they had a game where every stage had multiple goals (as in goal posts, not as in "SLAUGHTER EVERY POLKA-DOTTED BADNIK WITHIN TEN MINUTES"), and depending on which goal post you hit, your next stage would vary accordingly.
I always remember the music for Westopolis(the first stage)...and while rediscovering the soundtrack for Shadow, I was also reminded of the remix for one of the GUN robot bosses I enjoyed previously.
As much as I agree Shadow was a bad game, it had some interesting ideas, but of course execution is the key factor and it wasn't done well.
Also, I found the whole Shadow POSSIBLY being a robot clone thing poorly done, ESPECIALLY when the whole thing was explained as radio dialogue during the final boss battle which would totally be missed if the fight was finished before the 8-9 minute mark.
Posted in the Sonic 4 Ep. 2 thread, but might as well drop it off here as well while it's front page'd. I tried to fix up the look of Sonic 4, I think it came out nicely:
You should probably edit in the original shot for comparison. Also, I'd leave off that HUD, it's a little too basic. Or just find a good Genesis sprite sheet and copy the HUD from there.
I actually tried that first, but it didn't really look right. I don't mind the basic look, it's a lot classier than what was there, imo. Edit: On second thought, the original hud doesn't really suck, it's just really in the way.
Huh. I thought it would've sold a little more on PC given the price/sales for it.
Also, they know that Sonic sells better on Nintendo systems based on a 4gamer interview. It's just that Colours and Generations were developed at the same time. Of course Colours sold more; the series is more popular on Nintendo systems. And Mario and Sonic is probably going to have more sales when the Olympics roll around.
I do have to wonder if Sonic 2006 just turned people off from buying Sonic games on HD systems no matter what, though.