Sonic and the Fallen Star Makes Me Smile

holy sonic in the fallen star has given me something i desperately needed joy brought to us by developer star drop what we have here is a brand spanking new fan game that i had no prior knowledge of until just recently when it showed up in my feed and upon closer inspection knew i needed to play it as soon as possible after the lukewarm carnival grade flavor left by origins not to mention the perplexing absence of an official mania follow-up it was nothing short of exciting to see a completely new and original take on classic sonic free to play no less it's not quite as savage as chaos x dropping the p06 shadow update the same day as color's ultimate but it's a close second if nothing else fallen star's main takeaway for most will likely be the art direction from menus to cut scenes to in-game sprites and animations to god knows what everything is rocking a modified style it still looks like sonic but everything is just different enough to create a new vibe communicated to you right from the word go at the title [Music] don't you love it when all the pieces just come together when the people in charge know what they're doing everything about this screen is correct the way sonic stumbles into frame but immediately plays it off once he knows what's up the scrolling background floating emblem the wings light up the lettering shines even his wink bounces all set to some poppy anime rock and vibrant colors this is sonic the hedgehog in his purest form and yet not exactly as we've known him a spin has been made it's not the same character from 2 3 or mania this is fallen star sonic and they took a lot of extra measures to ensure that would stand out the wider more exaggerated super peel out the way he brings his hands up before drop dashing or throws one behind for a spin dash he does the adventure one pose when going through special rings now that just makes me happy i can really see the disappointment in his expression now while idling item boxes are at a three-quarters tilt because why not it looks cool same with the elemental shields they each take on a different shape circular fire triangular electricity and a square bubble such an odd idea yet it fits right in and the supersonic sprite that's a it's a beauty so beautiful i feel like i could defy grave oh my god the whole game is a high-energy saturated palette from start to finish with albeit some recycled elements from past titles like the frozen block from mania press garden bumpers a colors boss and the shared resemblance of hilltop with sapphire sights but more than anything i was getting some major sparkly electric gesture vibes the large blocky angular shapes that dominated that game's art style can be seen right away it's kind of crazy how similar these opening stages are especially in their blues and reds some bosses use a sound cue to telegraph attacks which is a very spark thing to do as is the true final boss core explosion there's a strikingly similar train gimmick at one point and these turbines in the finale are pretty hard to mistake for anything else but these are all referential splashes in an ocean of originality for every hilltop in fm city there's a frozen fountain raspberry river and carnival crater what is that like the greatest zone name of all time oh no i'm sorry that honor goes to casino climax how could i forget the only issue i take with the presentation is that sometimes it can be hard to discern the background from the foreground there were moments where the level would guide me in a direction and then i'd hit a wall thinking i could see the interior and go through but find out that no that's just how it looks discount districts can be pretty cluttered in the bottom route disguising crucial details like gaps and platforms that when at high speeds are hard to notice i genuinely got lost in here a couple times fell through the floor on accident struggled to get out meanwhile a truck is trying to finish what guns started this did go away once i got to bubble blossom so only the early game was affected but those initial three zones did mess with my first impressions a bit some enemies were a bit hard to see at times too like the green mushroom projectiles against a predominantly green background and this lightning badnik who was completely obscured by the hud i will destroy every last one of you other than that i thought it was a very refreshing and eye-catching aesthetic that will likely carry the game's reputation when you have details like sonic creating rainbows as he dashes across the water it's hard not to smile something a lot of fans are especially geeking out on though is the inclusion of fully animated cutscenes the story is still the typical eggman gets a thing go stop him hey we won but there are a lot of fun character interactions that you get to see in between every zone and this is where the expressiveness shines sonic has had enough i do think they overuse the bounce that happens when characters move or change poses it's a clever way to show movement but when every motion uses the same exact one it starts to cheapen the effect nitpicks aside these cutscenes are a welcome addition that no other classic game has had gameplay on the other hand is exactly what you'd expect physics are on point generally controls are tight momentum is at play everyone's favorite word all the staples are here and accounted for the only main omissions being the insta shield and any other playable characters beyond sonic and tails there are some differences though the spin dash is way stronger than before i'd say halfway to generations you won't be flying across the stage quite like you could there but the height you get off of slopes is massive you can go all the way from the bottom to the top if possible and while this doesn't break the game in any way it does undercut the super peel out a bit an ability that used to carry a slight advantage when going straight or uphill but is now more preferential if anything i do think it's a fun way of making fallen stars moveset stick out though even if it did make me obsessed with spin dashing up every slope i could find i have a problem you can also charge a drop dash after hitting a spring meaning you can curl back into a ball to protect yourself in a scenario that used to always leave you vulnerable this opportunity doesn't present itself much but there's a lot of potential for it elemental shields have been slightly modified bubble is the same but electric and fire have sort of traded places electric now performs a downwards dash instead of a double jump acting more like a speed booster and fire gives you a triple jump each one's sending you higher it feels kind of like the burst whisp so it's not like we have these crazy new powers but i think the new distinctions are pretty fun as good as the physics are though it had its moments ceilings in particular have some weird properties oh i guess we're just up here now my super transformation got redacted by a frozen block i'm not even mad that's just impressive sometimes the game tries to put its fist into a cheerio and something has to give this vine is supposed to uncurl in front of you so it can be ran across but it doesn't quite make the timing causing you to fall through and there was some awkward geometry that looked like it was maybe swept under the rug as far as glitches are concerned though that was about the extent of it nothing else took me out of it what where fallen star really becomes a different beast though is in its level design this is a fast game so fast it breaks it wants you to run as much as you can and watch the fireworks tons of loops roads and zone specific gimmicks that push you forward in some extravagant way it reminded me a lot of advance 2 where platforming took a back seat to the life-shortening adrenaline boost although i'd say the blend is a bit more even here with a stronger inclusion of verticality i mean look how long it takes me to fall down here this really is advanced too but there's no denying that it's a pretty automated game and i would say that's its biggest flaw when too many stages incorporate the same fast running bits the flame starts to waver resulting in a more simplified take on classic sonic now to its credit the game is paced incredibly well as a result nearly every act clocks in between two and three minutes with a finale ramping it up to four and five there's no section that i dread upon replaying nor does it ever drag on or end premature and this is the dual sided nature of putting the focus on speed on one hand you lose those deeper mechanisms and freedom of experimentation but on the other you get a horizon line of consistency if anything i felt like the levels got better the further into the game i got more interactive mechanics you could say the only thing that did nag at me a bit was the periodic zigzag structure you could be running to the right at full speed and then smack into a dead end that forces you to turn around and go top left only to immediately turn back around and go right again these interactions felt somewhat random in their occurrence and it became hard to intuit when the game was going to suddenly have me change gears it was very stop and start the upside to this forced verticality though is that it can lend itself to a decent amount of exploration so it pleases me to say that there are fun item grabs in every act bouncing on capsules is just as satisfying as ever unfortunately in an attempt to modernize the formula they have removed one of my favorite collectibles the extra life now i can make a whole video on this topic but keeping in the context of sonic removing them causes a chain reaction of accessory devaluation the reason to gather a large sum of rings in any of the past games was that reaching 100 granted an extra life a sweet succulent this made shields more vital as they could protect you from losing your stash too soon hard to reach areas could house a one-up as a reward for making it and overall it was a symbol of your game knowledge you could only get a big number if you didn't die too much and knew where to find them even if it wasn't hard per se it showed your experience these relationships are completely gone now why go out of your way to grab any more than a single ring if there's no benefit yeah we've still got the high score so getting a bunch means something but the other games also had that in fact getting a certain number of points would give you an extra life or a continue so even on that front fallen star doesn't compete and so ultimately i'm left with less reasons and less valuable reasons for me to explore in this game compared to the others making it a downgrade in that capacity if you don't want to have game overs that's fine but when adapting a character born from one of the arcade juggernauts you're gonna have to replace it with something of equal value to justify the complementary mechanics that stay behind or the easiest solution include a retro mode where you can choose to have lives on or off now in all fairness fallen star is such an easy game that adding lives back in wouldn't change a whole lot i'd appreciate it for tying the features back together and giving me a decent reward for exploring but the difficulty would be virtually the same you're on autopilot for a good chunk of it bottomless pits have been removed entirely there's no getting crushed drowning is practically non-existent and you still play as a character who can indefinitely pick his lifeline back up after taking damage doesn't mean those classic sonic gotcha moments don't happen but you're not required to learn from many mistakes oddly enough the special stages don't have any sort of retry function like origins a surprise considering the overtly forgiving nature of everything else even though you can just quit the stage reload it and go find the same giant ring but while we're on the subject these were actually pretty neat they're like a fusion of manias and the halfpipe they're completely linear but you have the orbs that raise your speed and rings extending the timer mines will slow you down and falling will end it right there get used to that there's an exhilaration to be had here for sure and pulling it off in style feels great there are however some balancing issues time was never a concern there was not a single moment where i thought i was gonna run out rings are everywhere starting time is high and courses aren't very long this makes risky plays like bouncing on a ring box over a pit borderline pointless to take as the reward is nothing i can't already get from hanging back and playing it safe getting a course out was the only real threat to my success and even then i found i was able to stay to the right and avoid most hazards letting me focus on the big jumps not that i needed to do that very often because special stages one through five were all really easy fun but fully conquered on my first try it was six and seven that took my lunch money for a couple semesters mainly attributed to this trick ring and six that would send me straight into the pit yeah up yours apparently these were a lot harder at launch and have since been patched but i think meeting somewhere in the middle would be optimal for some reason the score is absent from here too the most arcady part of the game and you don't even get points yet the text in emerald progress is still at the top of the screen leaving a big chunk of empty space at the bottom as if it were still there it's weird overall i thought these special stages were great just maybe one final draft away from reaching their max potential i really wish you could replay them in the level select i think every game should do that the other facet in which you'll see some competent challenge are the boss fights three to be specific generally speaking these battles are all pretty easy some more than others he really did not try here but considering the lacks demeanor of the whole adventure this is an understandable outcome most of them are at the very least pretty creative to help redeem their simplicity a high speed chase with a beetle and shades dodging bombs to get up on a train and hit the detonator the colors ask one where you run around a giant circle or falling down a fiery chasm picking the right moment to strike these were all fun set pieces the only easy fight that really bothered me was metal sonic he is not a threat in any way and it's kind of pathetic for such a legendary character maybe next time he can i don't know if he's coming back from that in an attempt to keep some bosses from being steamrolled however periods of invulnerability and phases of hanging out of range have been added to prolong the fights so you can't just spam the eight hits and call it a day this is certainly one way to counter the ring system's brute forcing capabilities and there are some fun ideas like knocking eggman's fist back at him requiring you to actually study the fight somewhat but it also means there's a lot of time spent waiting around for attacks to happen once you know how it all works you're at the mercy of the boss to say okay now you can hit me or they spend a gratuitous amount of time off screen giving you very little to chew on the submarine comes to mind an overly long attack cycle where he's completely invulnerable a deceptively strict hitbox wavy patterns that make him hard to hit and posing zero threat to you whatsoever as you stand on the air bubble and wait for him to swim over please end then we have those fights that are actually pretty solid but they're too ambitious for their own good thunder turbine's miniboss is genuinely smart you have to draw its attack onto the open electricity to make it go wild then lure the boss into it to reveal its weak point the problem is that the visual and audio cues are so weak i had no idea the boss was the one changing the current nor that that was what caused the reaction i just thought i got lucky with my jumps or like many of the other fights had to wait it out it's a good boss it just needed some stronger feedback among them all though three stood out as legitimately tough encounters that required above bare minimum problem solving to beat the dragonfly wrecking ball something out of a nightmare is so hard to hit without also getting hit yourself just when you think you've outsmarted him he's like yeah i'm gonna throw the ball it's unabashedly hectic and kind of annoying on the slopes but i respect it it's the sort of irritating that makes you want to figure out how to not be miserable the final boss was another case of what the heck do i do since the arena is so wide it's very possible that he'll be off screen when his head is flashing aka the only time he's vulnerable so if you miss that queue you'll be left in a state of confusion until further notice also he can just grab you if you're next to him when his attack starts he even has a combo where he hits you then drags you away from your ring so you can't get them back what a legend this got me killed a few times not something i can say for any of the other bosses a little confusing like i said but fun to master this is the kind of waiting in between phases i'm okay with because i'm dodging for my life and then finally if you collected all the chaos emeralds you get to fight the true final boss equipped with an entirely new super transformation nova sonic and it looks amazing it's similar to egg reverie in that you fly around a void but the control is more unruly in comparison rings don't magnetize to you getting hit makes you lose some and the boss takes 26 hits as indicated by its chest health bar yeah this required my full attention to not run out of rings a very suitable challenge to finish with although once you discover the ideal tactic of repeatedly ramming him into a corner then dodging the teleport it becomes a rather one-dimensional fight and with how the machine jitters back and forth when i'm down the middle it makes me wonder how intentional that was also every boss can still hurt you even after they die which probably shouldn't happen regardless it was a climactic fight ending the game on a very good note with a chill blissful song during the credits the soundtrack as a whole was a treat for the ears i love how sonic's musical legacy is so revered that even the non-profit fan games have to have not good but great music holly taylor knocked it out here very freedom planet in its tone loads of creativity roll the jukebox [Music] so [Music] [Music] i so [Music] so [Music] all in all sonic and the fallen star might not blow you away but if you're not wearing a smile by the end of it i'm sorry beautiful art and music consistent gameplay that could easily be mistaken for an official product the team should be proud of what they've done and i leave you with that thank you guys so much for watching and as always don't forget to check out the next episode whenever i post it which will probably be soon all right see ya

Channel: bickuribox12

Views: 279,922

Keywords: sonic the hedgehog, game, review, fan game

Id: vUaq3bjO9E8

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2022