Serephim

yeah, adventure 1&2's physics engine was shady as hell. Grinding in SA2 was the only real, WORKING "momentum based physics" that 3D sonic has ever seen.

I don't even think it was a cash-in. It was...just...bad. Really, sonic 06 was so incredibly bad, across the entire spectrum, that if Sonic Team had actually held a meeting and decided to make "the worst sonic game ever", it wouldn't have been as shitty as Sonic 06 was. The things that made Sonic 06 bad were deep rooting, and I think so lowly of Sonic Team as of late, that I honestly doubt they could make it that bad on purpose if they tried. They'd probably fuck that up too, and it'd be the best sonic game ever.

i'm still waiting for the point where games can be "physics driven" and not look like they were animated during 1995. And with enemies that don't aggro every set piece in the game to make it crumble. Aside from that, Everstar actually has an intriguing charm to it. I'm highly skeptical of them actually hitting that goal though.

The only consistently likable character in sonic, regardless of the terrible writing or gameplay, has indeed been Eggman. Maybe it's because he's the only character they haven't tried to add depth to.

in other news, played some for glory on someones 3DS. Managed to go 10-0 with Lucina before i stopped, some of them without losing any lives. I had some really bad laggy matches, especially against JP players, but generally it wasn't all that bad in comparison to other fighters. But WHOOO boy online smash players are scrubby. Ignoring people who are just bad, the main tactic i've come across from competent people seems to be almost exclusively dodgeroll >> projectile spam, or bait attack >> dodgeroll >> dash special. But there do seem to be fairly practical ways of overcoming it. I've come to find that grabbing has been buffed nearly as much as roll/shield. It's fast enough to catch people who spam evasion, punish dash moves, and shit all over people who are too liberal with counter moves. And while side blast zones basically don't exist in smash 4, Star KOs are far more reliable when it comes to finishing off an opponent. Lucina's up-throw seems to achieve a killspark around 175-180% damage, which really isn't all that hard to achieve anymore, and grab attacks only become more effective at higher %s. Also, a few things I came across about this game: A bit of a double-edged sword of a mechanic, but one i can definitely get behind either way because it counteracts the thing I hated most about Brawl. Although stale moves work generally the same they did in Brawl, this seems to counteract it enough to make it not even noticeable, or at least not hinder me from getting a KO just because i'm winning. And another thing, edgehogging is gone from smash4, but players only get a single ledgegrab before they lose all edge invinciblity. Knockback on this game has you on the ledge alot, so this is another likable change for me for keeping momentum and discouraging camp tactics. Rolls are still disgustingly annoyingly good, but at least getting people off the ground and into tumble is more rewarding now. Overall, For Glory mode would have really benefited from some platforms.

Under Night in-birth

Sigh...that video was terrible. He made no points whatsoever, it's just typical whining from people who know nothing about competitive play in videogames. The guy compared Melee to a TAS to make his point, how can anyone take him seriously. BTW, what is this "metagame" you people keep referring to, as if it's somehow something exclusive for Melee? "Meta" refers to the collection of general knowledge about the game (that is naturally gained by people playing) that points the playerbase towards tactics that are generally more optimal. Nobody has to "TRY" to make a meta, it will naturally happen, even if the game sucks and doesn't want to have one, as evidenced by brawl. This seems to be the go-to argument about Melee's gameplay, and i find it silly because not only is it completely unfounded and nonsensical, even if it wasn't, it wouldn't make a bit of difference in regards to brawl or smash 4. The mistake was, in sakurai's eyes, the true skill ceiling of the game, which comes with the upside downside of players who invest time in the game being able to get a clear edge over those who don't. Sakurai's "fix" to this was simply design Brawl in a way where players are mechanically not allowed to have a significant edge over the opponent. 1) L-cancelling is hard-coded into the game. It has specific conditions, inputs, clearly defined effects, and was a balance improvement to Z-cancelling from 64, which replaced landing lag animations with the normal one. In Melee, the same effect was changed and instead of canceling the animation, it cuts the lag time in half. In brawl, it was removed entirely, royally nerfing the shit out of every heavy character in the game, except the newcomers who were balanced around the removal. 2) Wavedashing is not a glitch, it's just a consequence of the engine's physics. It does not turn the player into a god of melee -- it's only used competitively as a spacing tool unless you're using Luigi or something. And BTW, the term came from Tekken. It's not a smash brothers technique. But hey lets all call Melee a mistake. It's not like Smash 64 had way more hitstun, throws that KO'd, completely viable shieldbreaker and 0%-to-Death combos, 4 frame Z-cancelling and limited defensive options. It's not like Melee addressed any of those issues or anything. Completely random design! Brawl did so much for the series, suck it brawl haters

What did they do wrong? Really, both sides of the argument are fair, but the argument itself is Sakurai's fault. He made a conscious decision to rip the game from one direction into a drastically different one, and, unsurprisingly, it pisses off a lot of people invested in the series. This game is still addressing those changes today, in fact Melee seems to have had more influence over most of Smash 4's changes than Brawl did.

I came prepared, get rekt im only long winded when i actually care

1) it was going to be bad 2) it didn't try not to be bad 3) it was bad

Yeah about Fox, thats why I didn't just say he sucks, because it feels like i dont know the character anymore. I'm just a bit sad they didn't replace it with anything else, like maybe shift some of those speedy mechanics into SideB or something. Fox and C.Falcon have lost the most out of the shift in movement physics. Falco's shine was removed in brawl but he still has a speedy launch in his Dtilt and his aerials are still good. So he still kind of retains the core of his melee playstyle, which was to just get you in the air. I was actually a bit peeved by link's Dair because now it no longer KOs over land, and In my matches I kept expecting it to happen but only got a bounce. It's still good though because its full frame, so maybe some gimmicks can arise there. He gained 2 finishers, which is significant in a game with rampant stale move reduction and comical blast zones. And about Ness' reflector, thats just BS, unless you can pick up doc's pills. I was talking with someone who was complaining about him too. Apparently they removed the sleeper function on his yoyo altogether, something i really dont understand. Why would you do that.

Okay this time I got some time to get some REAL playtime in, with the actual game. Gwinnett Brawl in duluth, georgia, there was a day 1ish tournament and about 25ish competitors. Jumped into the SSB4 pools just because the guys I came with all entered into Under Night In Birth pools (which ive never played), they didn't have Blazblue (what i came for) and I dont like Marvel or SF4. By the time the place was closing though, I got multiple dozens of regular matches in, got to try out everyone I wanted to, get acquainted with the physics more. --------------- I can surprisingly say, my opinion of the game is a sum of mostly positive things, with some things I don't quite understand and some things i find quite concerning balance wise. Here's a better recap of the game thus far from my experience, sereph wall of text go As for character impressions

Well, combos were never really "easy" to pull off, but with hitstun canceling came the end of followups and moves that confirm into finishing blows. You really don't need to try and alter my opinion of the game, I'll eventually get enough playtime in myself. But ive seen plenty 1v1s from the final build of the game, overall it still resembles brawl a bit too much for my liking. Mainly, the emphasis placed on fishing for hits at high damage, lack of abilities that combo into finishers, and blast zone/knockback scaling that STILL result in 1v1s where people get smash attacked and smacked around at 150% near ledges for like 3 minutes without dying until someone gets that lucky shot in. Just observing, it still feels like the game gives no reward for momentum, and is still heavily tilted in order to avoid ever giving someone an actual lead. Edit: See, this shit right here, from 5:04 onward. Like, really? Clean hits, floats right on back

Liked ----------------- + Increasing the amount of enemies was the best move for this game, and I think it's a trend you should keep up. This kind of game can't carry itself off platforming alone, it would get very boring very fast (which is why I didn't like the sewer stage). + I'm guessing its just because you increased the amount of enemies, but the game is more challenging now. The broken checkpoints had alot to do with this, but it's making me think you should remove most checkpoints if they aren't act or miniboss markers. Adds to the combat emphasis, and puts more value into keeping yourself alive with good spacing. + Because combat has a greater presence in this build, it made the items feel even sweeter than before. The difference between normal spark and powerup spark is now very apparent, and it feels awesome. Concerns ------------------------ - Same issue with the powerups -- you still have not yet achieved a decent balance when it comes to obtaining powerups and maintaining them. I'm starting to believe it isn't a very good idea to have obtaining all the items like Sonic monitor boxes. I would recommend treating some of them like that, but the other half in a more Kirby-esque fashion, where you can defeat enemies and obtain their weapons. - It is still WAAAAYYY too easy to lose an equipped weapon. Half the time I lose them and obtain them back faster than i can realize i ever lost them, and the other half of the time, they bounce once and fall off the screen, also faster than i can react. If it's technically too difficult to make them bounce correctly, maybe you could try a different approach? (I'm guessing you got this concept from Kirby, but in Kirby games, it's way easier to re-obtain your weapons, and there is almost never a room in a Kirby game without an easy way to obtain a different one. In spark, by comparison, items are almost rare, they're very easy to miss and lose.) - Also, still, nothing is more annoying than overwriting powerups. It's a pretty outdated problem, and this game would really benefit from some sort of flexible system to circumvent it. Super Mario World is a good example. Losing your cape because you touched a fire flower was no longer an issue because you can just swap them out after the fact if you didn't want to switch, and keep them both. Kirby Superstar was another. Since the game has some areas that require certain powers, it lets you store your current power as a partner character, essentially letting you keep 2 and switch back if you want to use a specific one. Neutral suggestions -------------------------------- * Some more responsive input feedback may improve the feel of combat even more. What I mean is, Spark's basic combo seems to have alot of delay between hits, so it feels unresponsive at times. It's fine to have some drawback to using it, but you should maybe pile those frames into cooldown and not the cancel themselves. * The Electric Bat could really use a 3rd finishing combo swing, something that feels powerful. Since spark's basic combo is kind of slow with a strong 3rd hit, there's a bit of a void there when you use the bat and there isn't one at all. * Charge time on the chargeshot should be a bit faster, it would feel so much better if it was. Especially the weak chargeshot. With the inclusion of dash, and spark having alot of abilities, the chargeshot feels a bit outclassed by pretty much everything else. Which isn't a bad thing, because it's a long-range, safe attack. But since it's used as a double jump, having the weak one be more responsive would really be good. ------------------------------------------------------------ Overall, the game feels noticeably much more engaging than before. You still need to address how you're handling powerups. They're all really neat and fun to use, but it feels like an integral part of Spark that you're approaching like a side-feature or gimmick.

My issues with Brawl popped up after I realized that I could apply knowledge and skill gained in other fighters to Melee, but not to Brawl. There was just no concept of mastery in Brawl....Melee's mechanics allowed a character to be more than just their smash attacks and recovery moves. True combos helped movesets be more than just ways to avoid stale move reduction. Tighter movement physics let you translate your thoughts into gameplay much more fluidly. In brawl, lack of true hitstun combos force you to take every character's moveset completely at face value -- either an attack is good when hits them alone, or it's mostly useless. Floaty and restrictive physics remove fluid input from the game. Because hitstun combos are gone, the concept of pressure is basically removed, aggressiveness just becomes risky, punishes are more like wrist slaps. There was barely anything emergent about brawl as a videogame. There are alot of things I wanted Smash 4 to do to move away from that aspect of brawl, to give it that sense of emergence back. But by building itself off Brawl's base, it just seems mechanically impossible that it will happen, because brawl intentionally designed itself that way.

As well designed a game League of Legends is, its a pity how dreadfully shallow its ranking system is. League has the most toxic competitive community ive ever seen before in a videogame.

Being a balanced, competitive game isn't really a subjective opinion, it's a matter of design principles. The difference between PM and Brawl are like night and day but to the layman there really isn't much difference...which is the reason Brawl's design is so disgusting to me. It has nothing to do with being 'like melee'. It's all about just being a well-designed game. To put it somewhat simply...Melee built upon the mechanics of 64 and fleshed them out. Brawl took what Melee built, and hacked it to pieces. Project M just takes brawl and puts everything it removed back together again. I never noticed until I started playing real fighting games. But the moment I did and went back to smash bros, the difference between Melee and Brawl became very, very hard to ignore. Melee had the capacity to recognize and address certain mechanics. Brawl deliberately removed them from the game. The difference between Brawl and PM/Melee to me is like the difference between Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 4 to alot of you around here. At face value, nothing is different, and to someone who's just sampling the game, it's a "promising return to form". But to anyone who knows better it's a damn joke. You can't just 'enjoy the overall experience', because you know it could be (and at some point was) better than it is, and it just feels a bit empty.

Was at Anime Weekend Atlanta, finally got to play the demo on a 3DS and a few matches between people. It's brawl 1.5, at least this demo was. I hear the final version gets some changes but ive only played the demo. The game is pretty hard to control decently on a 3DS. The 3DS slide control stick simply does not give you the same range of motion as an analog. I seriously wanted to just play on the D-Pad because of how foreign it felt. The game runs wicked smooth, but plays as if it's in slow motion because of how floaty the jumps are. It looks nice in motion on the 3DS at least. Combos exist, but in a way that doesn't really make much sense to me. Tilt combos are extremely easy to pull off, but it seems like the vast majority of moves intentionally knock the opponent so far away that you aren't able to follow up, and since the aerial physics are similar to Brawl, this basically just resets you and your opponent. The majority of grabs are unable to be followed up. Meteor Smashing an opponent onto the ground safely launches them AWAY from the ground for a free reset. So basically once Tilts are no longer possible due to knockback, the game feels like a match of slow-mo tag again. So you can royally combo the shit out of someone at low damage, but once you hit around 50%, you're basically fishing for a KO move that will reach the blast zone. If anything stood out to me in terms of changes, it would be how efficient the shield and roll is now. I've gotten clear roll reads and still failed to achieve a punish because of how fast it is. Fastfalling feels better but the game is still extremely floaty, and with the defensive options buffed so hard and the movement options still nerfed from Melee with nothing new to replace or augment anything, i'm afraid this game might end up being a campfest again. Just like in Brawl, i just see no logical benefit to playing proactive or aggressive in this game. Going from PM to Smash3DS, the lack of solid maneuverability just feels offputting. Finally, i witnessed a 4-player local match with the demo. The players were literally standing in a circle around eachother, and the game what appeared to be having latency issues. Someone had to tell me they were playing locally. I have no clue how to take this. Could have just been the high amount of interference around.

Im sure everyone cleared this up by now. But I doubt they'll be making use of it anymore, the architect left ST, started luminous at square, and apparently jumped ship again. (Probably why Square has been military silent on anything next-gen for literally an entire year.) Lost World seems to go for a completely different visual style, and clearly isn't making use of the technique. Generations used the hedgehog engine to a less effect, which is understandable considering the difference in budget. But the environments still looked amazing at a decent framerate.

......no words for this If Link's up+B is anything like it was in brawl while grounded, then it's been nerfed to uselessness and is unsafe always I really wonder if Namco Bandai was used as anything more than slave workers at this point. There's no visible influence in balancing, clone etiquette, graphics or netcode.

The Hedgehog Engine was an internal Sega thing, i doubt the Sonic Boom team would have access to it. And about the details surrounding the hedgehog engine in the first place, I doubt even Sega will be using it anymore. I agree about the werehog combat vs. this combat. The werehog combat was decent in its own right, everything worked the way it was supposed to and Sonic had interactive abilities and different combo paths when it came to how he controlled. This game...Viewing it as a sonic game, the speed sections look very Sonic 06 Mach-ish. Viewing it as an action game, it looks chocked full of PSX/N64 era decisions. The game's animation isn't BAD, it's just applied in way that seems to suggest the creators haven't played an action game recently. Kind of reminds me of the difference between DMC4 and DmC: Devil May Cry. The physics and animation just has no regard for kinesthetics. I'm not even playing the game and it just feels dreadful.

am i the only one who questions why they even make 3D gameplay if they make you play the boring zoomed out wannabe good platformer 2D sections for half of every level Also, the attacking animations look really jerky, dont convey weight or motion very well, and every action has these terrible trail effects tacked on that just makes it look even worse. Like, indie unity engine beta build worse.

how else is anyone supposed to enjoy sonic these days

The fact that the 3DS version is even a thing really leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I think it's already a longshot to assume Nintendo would ever release a real rebalancing patch for smash brothers (it being a "party game" and all), but keeping them synced with the 3DS just makes it even less likely. I looked at most of the custom moves, and was disappointed with most of them. Alot of those concepts could have been used to allow some cool things to happen, but meh. When news of the custom moves came up, I immediately ran over to Link and Samus. Thoroughly disappointed at the wasted potential.

It'll probably be great fun for a few months, then after a while, me and my group of friends are going to start talking mad shit to each other and end up running first-to-five's again. And at that point, if the game feels anything like brawl, its going to get really old, really fast. I mean, here's to hoping the game isn't going to be like that. But from the information provided from people who've been putting playtime in, it's probably going to be that way for me anyway.