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 About the Game Sonic Generations, released in 2011 was the solution to a problem that Sega had wrestled with since games transitioned into three dimensions in 1997, “How do we make Sonic work in 3D?” For years Sega struggled to recreate the magic of their 2D outings, their attempts with Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes were valiant but ultimately unfocused with problems in both control and level design. Their decision to rethink the franchise caused the disaster that was Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), trading Sonic’s campy charm for a nonsensical plot and wonky controls for unplayable ones. Forced back to the drawing board Sonic Team refocused. It was possible to make a game that captured Sonic’s speed with levels closer to that of a racing game rather than a traditional platformer, however, these were incredibly labour intensive. A player could rush through a level in a few minutes, crossing a huge distance, but no part of the course could be neglected in case the player chose to stop. Sonic Team’s solution was to create a second gameplay mode to run alongside the new “racing” style levels allowing them to create a game of reasonable length without unreasonable work requirements. Sonic Unleashed, released with the maligned Werehog in 2008. The game was another disaster. Whilst the “Racing” or “Day” stages elicited a somewhat positive response the “Night” stages focused around the Werehog were savaged. Created to be a brawler, the controls were sluggish, the combat dull and mandatory platforming sections crippled any sense of flow in the game. Again, Sega were forced to rethink. There was promise, the Day stages, especially the ones designed for the PS2 and Wii versions of the game had gained praise from some outlets. There were problems with control, but they weren’t overwhelming. The biggest issue however, remained. The stages were too resource intensive and until that problem was resolved creating a game would be impossible. Sonic Colours (2010), found a solution. Stages in the game had their assets reused for “challenges” that would be completed after the initial run through. For the first time in nearly a decade a Sonic game earned near universal praise. But ultimately there were still problems. The challenges focused strongly on platforming elements which didn’t translate well to the gameplay style and led to stages that were broken up uninvitedly. Sonic Team were close however and they knew it. Sonic Generations ironically solved the problem of Sonic in three dimensions by introducing a new gameplay element, Classic Sonic. Sega divided the game into two halves, “Modern” Sonic, reflecting the style of gameplay that had first been developed in Sonic Unleashed and “Classic” Sonic, reflecting the gameplay style from the original trilogy. The 2D stages allowed for Sonic team to leverage nostalgia for the old gameplay style to give them space to create the expansive 3D stages that were needed for Modern Sonic to work. The result was a hit. Sonic Generations is, in my opinion, a stellar game. It was received positively from critics and to this day remains an incredible high point for the franchise. The game itself has received further jolts of life from its modding community who have gone as far as to make every stage from Unleashed playable in the game. I am incredibly excited to see it played and hopefully to see a new spin on a modern Classic. About the LP I, however, will not be the focus of this LP. My co-commentator and best friend Yorkshire Tea will be in the pilot’s seat. Tea has played every 2D Sonic game, including the recent Sonic Mania, but fell off the 3D iterations of the franchise after Sonic Adventure 2. A theme of our LPs has been around examining how players react to games based on their background in gaming. Our most recent LP, XCOM 2 contrasted my relative experience with strategy games with Tea’s inexperience to see the difference in our reactions. Here we are going to see if the best offering from a franchise is enough to grab someone who has fallen away and contrast my own high opinion of the game with Tea’s fresh take. So, this run will be a blind run with yours truly acting as a co-pilot in case Tea needs a nudge in the right direction. We’ll be completing the game from start to finish, we won’t do every challenge, but I will direct Tea into trying a fairly large selection. As a bonus, after three acts we will jump back to the Modern Stages. Whilst they stand well on a first playthrough, I think they look best with practice and so we’ll contrast Tea’s first attempts with my own run throughs that I’ve painstakingly put together ahead of this LP. And with that, Tea and I are incredibly proud to bring you, Gotta Go Blind – Let’s Play Sonic Generations. Episodes            
Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 15:03 on Apr 5, 2020 |
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Jul 1, 2019 23:00
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 09:05 |
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I grew up reading StC, and it was the best. Unfortunately it had been on the decline for a fair while at the end, doing reruns of much older stories in place of a second new story each issue. I think it was better than Archie Sonic, but I'm clearly highly biased. It got a webcomic-ish continuation after the print version shut down. Which is still running, mind you (for a given definition of still running, last updated in December); I should catch up on that. Glad to be watching this from the start. Feldherren fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Jul 3, 2019 |
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Jul 3, 2019 00:29
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Jul 3, 2019 23:00
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Now that the first week is done, is there anything those reading along want Tea and I to have a look at over the next recordings or change about what we're doing? I imagine this is going to go for three weeks at the moment, with the option to extend into the Unleashed Project if people want it.
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Jul 5, 2019 23:01
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I like Nat showing off the stages, because I played the heck out of them and while I fully get a first-time playthrough it was difficult not to cringe every time the momentum stuttered since that's just so much reflex. I think I actually got near the top of the leaderboards on City Escape Modern back when this came out. But other than that I like it so far.
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Jul 5, 2019 23:57
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How come Classic Sonic can't talk, yet Classic Tails can? 
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Jul 6, 2019 00:00
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Jul 8, 2019 23:02
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I remember the exact point I started believing that Sonic Generations would actually be great, and it was when the classic City Escape music leaked, and it was this unbelievably corny but also completely earnest techno remix that heavily sampled That Genesis Sonic Snare Drum Hit Sound and also set a verse to the tune of Endless Mine for absolutely no reason. I don't know how the hell those Cash Cash guys wound up working on Sonic but I'm glad they did and sad they stopped. Also, the whole game looks really good (especially running on PC at a nice high framerate) but City Escape is the first level that briefly shows you some of the unbelievably good downhill vistas that the Hedgehog Engine is very adept at rendering for some reason. I don't know exactly what they changed between Unleashed and Generations but somehow Unleashed was even better at it, and I still maintain that one particular scene from Unleashed that Generations is going to liberally recreate later is some of the best graphics I've ever seen in video games. Shortfuse & Tekno 4ever.
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Jul 9, 2019 00:22
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Fedule posted:Shortfuse & Tekno 4ever. A person of class and taste.
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Jul 9, 2019 08:28
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Jul 10, 2019 23:16
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Yeah so the issue you had the first time was that he missed some Meteors and did not catch up. After that the jumping was slowing Tea down.
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Jul 11, 2019 05:01
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Apologies for putting this up late!
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Jul 13, 2019 09:58
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There's something wonderfully meta about running Sonic so fast that he crashes the game.
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Jul 13, 2019 10:04
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adding a Tea-says-WHAT section to these videos is an excellent move
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Jul 13, 2019 10:20
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Fish Noise posted:adding a Tea-says-WHAT section to these videos is an excellent move It's my favourite part for sure. I wasn't expecting him to be quite so stunned!
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Jul 13, 2019 11:11
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Black Robe posted:There's something wonderfully meta about running Sonic so fast that he crashes the game. Doctor Eggman's deadly speed traps!
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Jul 13, 2019 15:37
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What I find interesting about City Escape is that there's no real route choices. Once you learn to avoid jumps and take that big one at the end of the boarding segment (and avoid hitting the rail on the way, that messed up a lot of my runs finding the right way to do that) it's just optimization and cutting corners. I loaded up the game and it looks like my time back in the day was 2:38. I was quite proud of that at the time, now it's not even on the top 500 or however much the leaderboard records. That's the only course I put any real effort into.
Bruceski fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jul 13, 2019 |
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Jul 13, 2019 16:06
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Jul 15, 2019 23:01
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Oh come on, that's only half the reasons Sonic 06 was terrible. Yes the gameplay was bad, the story was bad, and the mach speed sections were bad. Also the level geometry was bad and you could just clip through the floor or have a vehicle blow up for no reason. And finally the game was terribly optimized; a 1-hour speedrun has 20 minutes of load screens, and it's much worse for casual play. Do a side mission? It loads the whole map for the shot of a guy telling you the objective, then RE-LOADS the whole map for actual gameplay. Die? You need to go through both load screens again. Not short screens either, it's 30-60 seconds for each one.
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Jul 15, 2019 23:30
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Something I really appreciate about Generations is how they had different composers working on each of the three eras, lending each one its own personality on top of what was already in the original tracks. In the Genesis era, the classic tracks are more or less direct reads of the originals done up in a nice soundfont with some occasional backing additions, while the modern tracks are mostly straight arrangements of those handled by Jun Senuoe (but not doing his usual guitar schtick). In the Dreamcast era, the modern tracks are faithful recreations of the originals by Jun Senuoe (absolutely doing his usual guitar schtick) (they even rerecorded the vocals for City Escape with Tony Harnell and Ted Poley) while the classic tracks are basically Cash Cash remixes that heavily sample Genesis Sonic staples (again, That One Sonic Snare Drum Hit). For the Modern era, all of the tracks are surprisingly interpretively arranged by Tomoya Ohtani (for my money the best composer working on Sonic right now) and accordingly feature pianos, drum machines and entire string sections, with the classic tracks being more upbeat and bouncy and the modern tracks being more sweeping (Crisis City and Rooftop Run are incredible salvage jobs of mediocre source material and it's impressive how original they sound despite recognisably being adaptations. Crisis City is like the same three riffs over and over again on top of the amen break and somehow they just made that work. Unbelievable). ...And of course, into this mix is thrown a whole pile of extras when it comes to the challenge acts and extra music, which are mostly Jun Senuoe and Cash Cash having a blast and occasionally inviting Richard Jacques.
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Jul 16, 2019 01:57
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Jul 17, 2019 23:07
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Okay, so, Planet Wisp. Actually, no, gently caress it, Generations stage choice generally. Generations has this problem where it needs to distil an entire Sonic game down to a single memorable stage. A lot of the time, this ends up being an early stage. We've got the obligatory Green Hill but okay fine this was a pretty justified use of Green Hill. We've got Chemical Plant, the second stage from Sonic 2 but we couldn't have Green Hill and Emerald Hill. Sky Sanctuary is a standout and a bold choice (and a good one), I would have guessed they'd have gone with Ice Cap but, uh, that would require Sega to acknowledge some longstanding rights problems. In the Dreamcast era we have Speed Highway (from the middle of Sonic Adventure) followed by the first stage of SA2 and the first stage of Heroes. City Escape is a great choice despite its intro stage syndrome because it is so emblematic of SA2, but Seaside Hill is just kind of nonsense, because it's just so aesthetically similar to Green Hill and it's not even a very memorable stage from Heroes (like, come on, Grand Metropolis? Hang Castle? Egg Fleet?). Then we have Crisis City, an early stage from '06, and Rooftop Run from right in the middle of Generations. We are at this point four for eight on Very Early Stages. This brings us to Sonic Colours. The whole point of Sonic Colours was that you're fooling around this orbital theme park that's chained to and exploiting Planet Wisp (in an effective return to the anti-industrialist roots of the series), and all the stages have this set-in-space aesthetic. It was honestly really cool and sort of the first and only time an Actual Sonic Game has really felt like it had a Setting. Then it sort of really low key revolutionarily put the obligatory Green Hill-pining stage at the end of the game, which made getting there feel a bit more special, and it was notable for being so unlike every other stage in both looks and composition. All of which makes putting Planet Wisp in Generations really weird... right? The irony is it's not even really the most distinctive or memorable stage in Colours in and of itself (that would be Starlight Carnival or Asteroid Coaster for my money) because most of what made it special was contextual; it's the last stage, but it's designed to call to mind the beginning of a Sonic game. And yeah, the other problem Planet Wisp has in Generations is that it is Too drat Long. I don't understand why they keep doing this. A Sonic stage should never take more than four minutes on a reasonably fast run. Stages taking too long was a defining problem in '06 and the bad half of Unleashed (the time trial time for Eggmanland is forty five mother loving minutes) but somehow, every game, someone gets the idea of having a marathon-length final stage. Even Sonic Mania. Oh, and they messed up the music. I'll go to bat for Tomoya Ohtani until the end of days but I have no idea what he thought he was doing killing the sustain on the opening piano riff. It's so jarring. I hate it. I don't think Planet Wisp is a bad stage fundamentally, there's just too much of it, it's thematically weird, and they messed up the music. It's the one very big misstep in Generations... okay, fine, the first of two. We'll get to the other in due time.
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Jul 18, 2019 01:01
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Bruceski posted:Oh come on, that's only half the reasons Sonic 06 was terrible. Yes the gameplay was bad, the story was bad, and the mach speed sections were bad. Also the level geometry was bad and you could just clip through the floor or have a vehicle blow up for no reason. And finally the game was terribly optimized; a 1-hour speedrun has 20 minutes of load screens, and it's much worse for casual play.
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Jul 18, 2019 02:45
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NGDBSS posted:By now we've had, what, three or four LPs of Sonic 2006 on SA? Each one, by accident, showed off different glitches. It is a fractally flawed game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChZLoHXGgWE&t=3778s not just LPs.
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Jul 18, 2019 05:00
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This is so on point that it makes me mad that I didn't see the subversion of Planet Wisp in Colours.
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Jul 19, 2019 14:41
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Jul 20, 2019 00:54
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Silver is Trunks. He is also not an Edgelord, more of a dork.
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Jul 20, 2019 05:30
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Jul 23, 2019 08:21
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Is there a name for Tea's condition? Boostitis?
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Jul 23, 2019 09:21
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Coming up: the most memorable part of Generations.
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Jul 23, 2019 20:30
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And with that we're done! We've opted not to continue into the Unleashed project, mainly to save me what's probably going to be upwards of 27 hours speedrunning for 30 minutes of content. A big thanks as ever goes to Bifauxnen, our beautiful artist who makes all the titles for us. We'll be set to return on August 26th with Shadow of the Colossus (2016) Blind! A link will go up here when it goes live, so look forward to that! Thanks very much for watching and we hope to see you on the other side!
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Jul 25, 2019 00:04
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Thanks for the LP guys, it was fun as always.
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Jul 25, 2019 07:50
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That boss is horrid. There's no indication that you're making progress or doing the wrong thing.
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Jul 25, 2019 15:12
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 09:05 |
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Tails posted:He collects how many? Where does he put all those gold rings?
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Jul 26, 2019 21:32
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