What is a Sonic anyway? A Sonic The Hedgehog retrospective

what Sonic's deal well that's obvious as any advertisement from the 90s will tell you he's the fastest bluest most chili dog on his hedgehog in town Mario news Sonic the Hedgehog only on the 16-bit Sega Genesis system but what about his games Sonic has had a troubled development history to say the least especially in the last well depending on who you ask anywhere between the last five to 15 years while started ours genuine competition to Nintendo's platform a giant has seen a pretty substantial fall from grace and it's been a bit of a laughing stock for years now however Sonic the Hedgehog remains popular even if most of the games are if you ask me a bit rubbish despite Sega's endless attempts to bring the franchise back to its roots they've never quite managed it and that's because I don't really think anyone knows what Sonic is really about anymore a lot of people say Sonic is about speed and going into this project I was a bit skeptical of that claim it seemed a bit of a simplistic explanation and after completing way too many Sonic games I'm pleased to say that Sonic is all about speed isn't wrong per se but it's not getting the whole picture but more on that later with Sonic mania out now the latest in a long line of attempts to recapture and modernize Classic Sonic gameplay I thought it was fitting to dive into the depth of Sonic's history to find out what exactly makes him tick and then we'll see if something mania succeeds oh also I want to try a little experiment right now I want you to write down something for me it can be on paper but a notepad file or in blood on the nearest wall I don't care before you've heard anything I have to say or have had a chance to really think about it I want you to write down a description of site the Hedgehog in ten words or less the first things that come to your head now I want you to leave it okay trust me this is gonna be relevant later prior to going into this I was a casual observer of Sonic I've played bits of Sonic 1 around 1/2 of the venture 2 and Unleashed as well as all of generations so Sonic fans consider this the opinion of a relative outsider and my backside covered ok let me outline the structure of the video I'm gonna be looking at a single level from nine hand-picked sonic games some good some bad to try and pick apart what it is exactly that make Sonic's so enduringly popular I've tried to go for games to offer a pure Sonic gameplay experience without gimmicks to really get the nitty gritty of the formula as such I'll be ignoring other characters and minigames at where hogs were applicable the games I'm going to be looking at our Sonic 1 sonic 2 sonic 3 & knuckles Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 Sonic Unleashed sonic 4 Sonic Generations and Sonic lost world notable by their absence our sonic o 6 sonic boom and Sonic Colors I thought I'd address why DS aren't in the list before I get started psycho 6 is kind of a fundamentally broken game there's not much interesting I can say about it beyond the fact that given two more years of dev time it might have been a passable game but I'm not putting myself through it for the sake of some fairly banal commentary you might say talking about this game sonic boom isn't really part of the core sonic genealogy that I'm looking to analyze it's more of a third-person action puzzler so it's out to Sonic Colors on the other hand is a genuinely pretty okay game but I simply don't have the means to play it luckily it controls pretty similar to Unleashed so I don't feel like we'll lose all that much it is however significantly more linear and has a big focus on exploring individual level mechanics which do compromise it quite extensively but more and why I think that's bad later okay without further adieu on with the show up first is marble zone from Sonic 1 and I think this is probably going to be the most controversial segment of the entire video because there's really not much about Sonic 1 I actually like I think it mostly comes down to the level design I've been a bit unfair to Sonic in the past but Sonic 1 really does feel like an unfinished prototype of other better games you see Sonic unlike other similar platformer characters is highly momentum based for a hedgehog he's really heavy must be all those chili dogs what this means is that the combination of Sonic's control scheme and physics really isn't very good at handling more traditional precision based a platformer level design like you find in Super Mario Brothers marble zone unfortunately is trying to be exactly that it takes ages to get up to speed to jump over stuff and once you're going it's really hard to control momentum couple that with long segments of unavoidable standing around like these block riding bits and you've got a level that simultaneously frustrating hard to navigate and really long Sonic one is fun when you're zipping through wide open levels reacting on-the-fly to a barrage of quick fire but ultimately pretty simple platforming challenges the only level we can capture the seek spiritual ively though it's green hills oh the level they have the most time but into it during Sonic ones development and was overseen by lead designer Yuji naka naka had this to say about Sonic was development and how it shaped not only the controls of the character but also the ever enduring green hills oh he says I like fast things and I thought that would be nice to create again with a more skill to become the fast you can complete a stage games back then had no backup or saving system which meant that you had to play right from the beginning every time as a result the very first stage would be played time and time again making the player very skilled at it so we thought it would be nice if this would enable the play to complete those stages faster and that's the basis of Sonic speed we also thought this feature would help differentiate Sonic from Mario if that's the case then marble zone didn't get the memo there's no significant shortcuts you can take and a lot of falafels is unavoidable waiting around for level architecture to move look at this bit I'm waiting around so much that Sonic's Hey are you still there idle animation triggers and later levels really aren't that much better what natural and sonic team managed to do was create a highly compelling engine of one level that shows it off the rest of Sonic 1 is an exercise in frustration as it really doesn't play to the optimization or play style that intended instead presenting you with a series of more traditional obstacle courses to overcome rather than environments to navigate quickly and effectively as possible flash-forward to Sonic 2 a game I enjoyed much more you'll be glad to hear I want to look at what's probably the most famous level in this game chemical palms own and with good reason it's really fun most obvious addition to Sonic 2 that fixes the problems the original had is the addition of the Spin Dash which quickly allows you to gain momentum while still sacrificing time in Sonic 1 losing momentum is pretty much a fun killer as in most of the levels it's so hard to get back up to speed that you may as well call it quits and go back to a checkpoint in Sonic 2 though sure you still miss out on shortcuts points and power-ups if you get hit or miss a jump but with the Spin Dash you can get right into the action again very quickly chemical plant zone opens strong with a lot of cool level gimmicks to mess around with and several different routes early on you can build up speed to scale this big wall if you miss it you go down and have to do this pretty simple jumping challenge to get back on the track if you succeed you get a play with these springy platforms and skip a fair amount of the level chemical plant zone is full of these little tricks you can do to shave seconds off your time many of which you won't spawn your first time around this is a common critique of Sonic games that there are certain opportunities to reach a shortcut you'll never see coming or have the opportunity to get on your first go because Sonic is going too fast I can sympathize with this I thought the same way before I started writing this video but after playing through the games I can say with confidence that a lot of the games are designed to be played through more times just like Eugene a can want it in act 2 of the zone there's this cool shortcut that lets you skip an infamous the tricky water section shaving off about 30 seconds the thing is it's pretty much impossible to spot on your first run through the level well your second playthrough will know where it is can reach it and can use it to avoid that segment when you do it feels awesome because purple water staircase of doom is easily one of the hardest bits of the game avoiding stuff like this makes you feel great and really rewards a level mastery it seems to me at least that a significant part of early Sonic was inspired by arcade style score attack gameplay getting through the game was one thing but mastery of it was another contrast this with Nintendo who steadily moved away from this philosophy while making merit games longer with more levels but with more of a focus on exploring individual mechanics within a level rather than understanding the levels themselves it's a small point but I think it explains a lot of the differences between our Mario and Sonic play that people often have trouble articulating Mario is about learning and mastering a specific level concept like how the early level of Super Mario World donut planes one is all about teaching you how to use the Cape it's a very bottom up design philosophy salt on the mechanics and level design first and layer everything else on top later sonic on the other hand has a much narrower scope of things you can do within a given level enemies a straight port to defeat traps don't require any particular understanding beyond timings and most level features like chemical bloods pipes are completely automatic and require no input from the player levels seem to be designed with a top-down perspective in mind come up with a theme and some cool features and then build a level to facilitate them because they're not really about the individual components that make them up sonic levels instead focus on this series of routes and obstacles these features present when viewed as a collective whole TLDR Mario levels of micro sonic levels are macro now on to the last of the genesis games own to look at sonic 3 sonic 3 is much the same as sonic 2 and I feel like the differences between it and its predecessor are much less pronounced the between 2 1 1 there are some changes in art design and a pretty noticeable drop in music quality but on reflection I'd say the two games are about equal the level I want to look at is the launch base zone which I'd say is a pretty middling level this is because it outlines a pretty fundamental problem with Sonic games but none of the obstacle Genesis titles managed to avoid and that Sonic's relationship with complexity usually in a platformer there's a clear relationship between level difficulty a level complexity ie how many mechanics there are and how many things you've got to do within it this is fine as the bear you are at the game the better equipped you'll be to handle more obstacles but in Sonic this relationship is different because the game is focused on keeping Sonic in constant of motion there are only so many ways you can match it up the difficulty that allow the player to keep moving and at a certain point concessions have to be made in the name of challenge so we see in launch base the penultimate zone at the game a bunch of obstacles that wouldn't be out of place in a more traditional precision platformer flamethrowers spike traps enemies guarding doorways and so on all these things call sonic travelers slowdown or deal with them before moving on they're an appropriate challenge sure that are the appositive impact on the game personally I don't really think so the thing is going slow in Sonic isn't very much fun as we found out with the original game take this little laser section for example you've got a way around for these lasers to stop before you can advance all while avoiding this spiky ball enemy the entire section would be pretty much impossible to navigate safely at anything approaching top speed there's a lot of stuff like this in launch base zone especially in act 1 this is one of the key conflicts within most Sonic games really the later levels are more difficult which means they're more mechanically complex which means less time doing what makes sonic fun now if you'll recall I said I thought this level was pretty middling mass because Sonic Team appeared to have learned for their mistakes in marble zone here they came up with another way to make the level engaging if you've ever played Sonic before you'll be familiar with the simplistic visceral pleasure that comes from zooming through one other level set pieces at top speed there are called sound effects nice visuals and even though you don't have an awful lot of agency cheering there a nice way to give your group brain and level scanning eyes a break I'm going to call these segments automatics from now on because they operate pretty much autonomously and played the level for you launch base zone is loaded with these automatics and they're quite fun from the spinny platform to these boozy pipe which you might recognize for chemical plant zone when you're not waiting through mechanical events difficult parts who've been rewarded with some cool pseudo cinematic moments from the automatics the thing is as fun as automatics are they're a bit of a level design crunch in Sonic 3 short they're novel the first time around but according to Yuji naka sonic games are intended to be replayed and mastered over his series of attempts and that's hard to do when the game is constantly pressed in control away from you in an attempt to score some cheap thrills it was very tempting to say that I'd crack the sonic formula and just constantly quote knack and verbatim while typing this video up after I finished Sonic 3 after all sonic mania is trying to be just like the Genesis games anyway but I couldn't help think there was something more a play Macker ideas of pure rkd mastery only really applied to the Genesis era and I was looking for something that could unify the whole franchise I was also still curious to see if any game ever reliably cranked the really fun bits of Sonic I picked out in the genesis games I wasn't so much engaged with nakos old-school mastery but more the optimization above the levels the rewarded skillful play or similar taenia see scratching that facial cathartic edge the games I've played so far were fun but there was a lot of clunk where the shooter in polish and I feel like they only really nailed that simultaneously skillful and satisfying feeling around her third of the time before I talk about the next game a small intermission because I want to talk about rings it's pretty obvious that besides being a thing to collect brings the design to emulate Mario's classic big small health states when you're big is safe but you're small you're vulnerable so Masonic if you've got rings safe if not you run the risk of death and in both games you lose the safe state if you take damage it Mario power-ups the distributed sparsely and are intended to give you a bit of wiggle room to mess up without outright dying the punishment is reduced functionality such as regular boring jumps no fireballs and the inability to break blocks this means you're going to have to rely on your mastery of the levels mechanics to make it through rather than the ability to bypass it than many of the Paris or Forge it's Sonic though health is based around rings when you get hit all the Rings you've collected so far fly out of you and you have to pick them up again provided you know love a carriers platform what down to your last ring it's pretty easy to stop and grab a few before your invincibility window ends so far it just seems like a more fiddly less meaningful version of Mario's mushrooms right well think about it from the perspective of Yuji naka he wanted to make a game focus around arkady high scores the rewarded speed and level mastery as opposed to what mario is doing in order to not be left vulnerable when you get hit you've got to stop and collect your rings before moving on robbing your valuable momentum used to access shortcuts and get the best time crucially rings are also worth points quite a lot from in fact so getting here not only means a loss of time which translates into points but also points in the form of rings have you ever noticed that past a certain point the number of rings you drop it isn't the same as the number of range you are carrying whilst empire but one point being to conserve system memory it in overtly created a very cool risk reward system pretty unique to Sonic your first run through our level is all about collecting enough rings to protect yourself reliably from death but subsequent runs are all about minimizing your time taken to complete the level while maximizing the amount of things you can get which is a small wrinkle in the game structure but a very welcome one as we move into the 3d era it's interesting to see how Sonic games began to move away from the arcade folks design in some areas but rings remained untouched now let's make things perfectly clear I don't think Sonic Adventure 1 is a good game the cutscenes are laughable the physics is Ward line broken and the camera fights you every step of the way and that's the sonic segments which are the best bits don't even get me started on big the cap but I feel like a venture one's obvious shortcomings are understandable and that's why I want to focus on bread Mountain it's not the best zone and it's far from the worst zone but nowhere are the problems and quite clever solutions that come from Sonics transition into 3d better display than in this level Sonic Adventure is the first real 3d Sonic game and platforming of three dimensions is hard the long and short of it is that you've got an extra axis of movement to worry about so there's loads more management of your position to do Nintendo had to invent an entirely new control scheme in order make 3d platforming work allowing you to move the camera independently of movement the n64 controller is the progenitor of all modern controllers for precisely this reason that's how important of an innovation it was Sega and the Dreamcast weren't so forward-thinking and they had to rely on a camera that was mostly Abba players control which is pretty terrible this combined with Sonic's fast movement and twitchy controls makes doing any sort of precise platforming nigh impossible I've got to give Sega credit though their way around this was pretty genius the homing attack pretty much circumvent the need for precise platforming at speed because the homing attack lets you lock on to Springs enemies and level bits and bobs keeping you on track and also gives you a quick burst forward when not locked on letting you self-correct or jumps with flashy effects and just enough time delay each strike land the homing attack feels really nice to use and it's no surprise that it became a mainstay of the sonic franchise this bit we've got a band across a gap with the homing attack feels great and is a pretty cool way to maintain a feeling of momentum while still killing enemies and moving between level segments some of the better stages notably Red Mountain and speed highway managed to give some nice opportunities for shortcuts and alternate level traversal but given the 3d nature of the game this has to come with caveats alternate routes feel less organic than they used to I think it's because of the 3d environment removing a lot of the skill and knowledge based nature of them in the Genesis games you've got to be good at the game or know the level in order to get the best groups not in Sonic Adventure they're on display pretty obviously there's also the fact that 3d platforming is pretty difficult to do precisely and that's without taking adventure ones gently controls into account Sega's solution to this is to have nearly all alternate routes accessible through homing attack paths or be controlled primarily through automatics these zip lines in particular rub me the wrong way sure they're flashy but they're just of hours on interactive the sonic gets there's no skill in using one of these it's just meaningless padding same with set-piece bits of level design like this race away from rising lava and this spiral section of rocket launch pad which are a bit of a sonic trope they're fun to look at but they've ripped control away from the player a bit too often compromising the original vision of an optimizable score attack platformer but this is likely why the game focuses on automatics pieces because they show off what the system is capable of and a pretty engaging your first time through though upon analysis and subsequent playthroughs I can't help feeling that they're little more than fluff with all that said I thought few of the levels in Sonic Adventure were fun Emerald Coast was okay speed highway was probably the highlight and Red Mountain was pretty good too all of them prioritize set pieces of automatics way more than the Genesis games and that's because Sonic Adventure one was clearly designed to show off the graphical capabilities of the Dreamcast yeah that sounds way to say but it's only in these three that I could really see the same bits of Sonic design that I liked from the Genesis game shining through that's not to say the automatics aren't fun they are but on their own they're only really engaging when you don't expect them and they're inherently railroading nature isn't immediately apparent if there's a way to give you something more to do beyond get motion sickness during them I'd be less critical I think the over the use of automatics is because Sega was started to move away from having short declare ball games and was falling more in line with traditional gaming for the proper story and a much lengthier playtime this meant automatics were that much more appealing as the design is now only intended for players to see each one a handful of times rather than over and over again meaning they're diminishing returns wasn't much of a problem you can see the beginnings of this more traditional game structure with adventure 1 but it's fairly obviously tacked on with the other characters controlling even worse the story being nonsensically stretched between the six characters and all of them using the same levels of Sonic for the most part this design didn't really mature until Sonic Adventure 2 but before that I just want to talk quickly about the Lightspeed - its nobility you get fairly early on that lets you zoom along lines of rings you might recognize it from some of the more recent Sonic games in Sonic Adventure it is awful you've got a way around charging up for ages and even when they hit an upgrade to make you go faster it still takes too long this totally removes the possibility of using it as an interesting platform mechanic as any segment where you've got to use it is either confined to the overworld or a portion of the level where you've got to come to a complete halt and charge it up in orders a user this coupled with the fact that it's pretty unreliable and the targeting Department makes it just terrible to use Sonic Adventure 2 is mostly a refinement of a venture ones formula with the downside you've got to play through the other characters and their levels in order to get to the sonic ones Sega you sneaky bastards there are some adjustments though the camera is on the whole a lot better and the controls have been tightened up significantly a noticeable adjustment has been made to my watch the spies like to be - to make it fire off instantly this opens it up into being used for some really cool shortcuts and optimization for moments as well as set pieces like this one the both-reward' level knowledge and feel really nice to use unfortunately I think while Sonic Adventure 2 is the better game in a lot of regards it controls better the levels are much more consistently fun I run into significantly fewer bugs and glitches it also expands upon some of adventure ones negative design choices I want to look at pyramid cave probably one of the weakest levels in the game I think it suffers because it exemplifies the worst of the switch from 2d to 3d first off the level is pretty much completely a straight line there's almost no deviation from the set path here and it shows upon returning to the level I took almost exactly the same path as I did the first time second is the overall eyes and automatics rail grinding bits and loop-the-loops are cool but not when they're pretty much all there is to a level the final sonic and shadow stages oh by the way in half the game you play a Sonic's edgy alter ego shadow in particular of these weird gimmick stages that feel completely out of place Sonic's is all about rail grinding and shadows is all about these gravity altering cylinders shadow stage is much better as at least allows some flexibility but both feel like cluttered messes I think automatics in the adventure games also contribute to a lack of spatial cohesion with their levels in the Genesis games you couldn't really tell where you were in particular because the resolution was so small but there was always a sense of advancement and overarching progression to each zone grounded by the frigid structure of left to right this is especially evident in Sonic 3 when the transition between acts is pretty seamless in the adventure games however you're being thrown around so much that it's hard to get a sense of where you are relative to anything else in the level that leads to loved ones feeling disorienting and difficult to gauge the popping really doesn't help finally I need to mention the inclusion of these weird little mini muscles why anyone thought it'll be a good idea to put puzzles in a Sonic game is a question that I'll never find the answer to there's this puzzle in labyrinth zone which does nothing but grind the place of an already slow level to a halt and this one in pyramid cave is the same it starts off with a simple find key place key tutorial which again totally guts any sense of momentum you have it doesn't help the mechanics surrounding this us are very lazily implemented and don't feel natural at all because Sonic's walk cycle there this is all for the puzzle to return once with equally disastrous results before disappearing from the game entirely it might sound like I'm getting overly angry about this but it just screams padding or at least a gross misunderstanding of what memorizing a level means I can understand why this feature exists it's supposed to be a part of the level to optimize sure if you've memorized the level you can do the puzzle faster but the reward for doing it really shouldn't be the fact that you can start playing the game properly again and if you're going to include the mechanic at least dedicate yourself to it rather than using it precisely once all right time to calm down the rest of our venture - is much the same a lot of it is quite linear and relies too heavily on automatics but the bear levels despite this are really fun most notably City escape metal harbor and white jungle have this nice sense of speed and cathartic fun that the 3d games do so well mixed in with a bit of the optimisation Abul stuff of the Genesis games again we see this conflict of complexity versus fun coming up the harder levels and the adventure games are broadly speaking the worst ones and that comes about because once again the easiest way to make a level difficult is to pack it full of things a misdirect a player's way to get around them which unfortunately takes away a large part while is enjoying about the game and the earlier levels it's a shame that this synergy of ideas is way out of whack in both of the adventure games on one hand you've got points and skilled challenges that reward knowledge at the mechanics and the option to replay slightly altered versions of the levels which speaks to the original design but on the other end you've got a lot of set pieces style over substance level designs only intended to be played once a lot of clearly defined non-organic pathways like trails of enemies and rings from attack a light - B - respectively a lot of these things dilute the original Genesis vision but as I mentioned before aren't completely bad at this point I kind of considered these two forces to be fundamentally incompatible the conflict between the two is surely to blame for why some against pimp and recently right Wow no because Sonic Unleashed is absolutely fantastic it's such a massive return to form which I could never ever recommend because 90% of the game is a terrible god of war club a good thing we have access to the Sonic Unleashed generations mod which lets you get to the good bits without having to traipse through all the where Hulk segments going to write this segment um you kind of stumped because there's just so much the Sonic Unleashed does right so better start with the basics Sonic Unleashed actually isn't 3d for the most part yeah I know it contains lightly 3d Sonic but the moments in which you actually have full 3d control over your movement of really rare in this level we're looking at today junk or joyride there's only one little tiny segment that gives you 100% control and even then if you're doing it correctly you'll spend most of it in a homing attack chain 3d was a pretty much mandatory moon for platformers to stay relevant back in the day but it never quite worked for Sonic the adventure games absolutely nailed automatics light speeding and homing attacking but none of these things we need required you to move in 3d on your own when you're left to your own devices things quickly deteriorated in Sonic Unleashed however the camera is constantly shifting to provide you with a fixed 2d perspective that focuses your movement in only two axes at a time look at this segment at the beginning of jungle joyride we start off forward-facing then we switch to side on then back to forwards again these changing perspectives keep the highly spectacle based stuff from the ship to 3d graphics but remove the mess that was the adventure games control scheme another addition to the formula is the boost which I initially wasn't a fan of as it somewhat removes the momentum based nature of Sonic when you can instantly get up to top speed what's the point of momentum I later came to the conclusion that it wasn't a replacement for Sonic's momentum based design it was a substitute for the spin - I like to spin bashes design but with the increasing cinematic focus of the 3d games Sonic Team needed a way to keep the play in constant motion the Genesis games were a little more tactical you picked when to use the spin Nashville opportunity during moments of downtime though of course they often went overboard with it whereas the more modern games give you downtime by putting you in an automatic segment for a few seconds allowing you to maintain that sense of speed constantly ultimately it's personal preference which one of these you prefer and I can understand the case for both as for the boost systems actual effects I quite liked it as a neat risk reward system you go faster during boost we're filling it as you collect rings it can sidestep as well as do a cool drifting move but you're turning circle it's much wider and you've got less time to react to stuff balancing speed and reaching shortcuts with not dying is a pretty cool part of Sonic as far as I've found and it's made a pretty solid transition into Unleashed I especially like the idea of trying to maintain your Street for as long as possible by constantly collecting rings I also think that Sonic Team have finally found the balance between automatics and more organic segments in Unleashed the game rapidly switches between them are quite fluidly helped by the addition of boost maintaining or speed during automatic segments also automatics are often used to give you a look at what's coming up or an alternate route you missed and there are a lot of them this is a really welcome change from adventures drawn out with zero gameplay automatics in Unleashed you're at least given something to do which is a big step up if I could make some criticism of Unleashed I think these segments in Jungle draw right where you've got a boost across the water remove a lot of the strategic depth of the boost mechanic by making it mandatory plus they don't really control very well and lead to some unfair feeling deaths also and this is gonna sound hypocritical unleash feels a bit busy at times there's so much to keep an eye on especially in the later levels but it was pretty exhausting to run through the level multiple times in the earlier Sonic games there was a sense that speed while encouraged was optional whereas in Unleashed if you're not holding down the boost as much as you can and keeping an eye out for every possible shortcut that you feel sluggish and like you're not playing the game properly overall Unleashed is a really really good game but I'd highly recommend against playing it in its released form instead download the generations on at least a mob that I'll put a link to in the description good thing generations is also really awesome but before I get to talk about that we've got to talk about Sonic 4 Sonic 4 is it's I don't know it feels like a fan game and that is not a compliment remember that 10 word description of Sonic you wrote earlier give it a look it's probably pretty simplistic right but seeing as Sonic has a few pretty memorable features I'm sure you managed to give it a decent goer describing the broad strokes of what Sonic is what you've got written down is probably closer to the sonic port design breeze than you'd think the game manages to contain all the things that Sonic games have rings spend gnashing optional routes even metal sonic makes an appearance but despite this the game misses so much of the nuance that makes all these elements work I'm only going to be talking about Sonic 4 episode 2 here because the other half of the game basically barely works and Sonic 4 episode 2 is much better put together so for fences sake I won't be bringing up the easy target that is episode 1 if you want a brief summary it feels pretty much the same role thus like 1 an unfinished prototype for the second game in the series which gives it a much-needed tiling up let's look at white park zone it's got all the ingredients of a good Sonic game alternate routes check nice momentum based physics they're a bit unresponsive but so with the Genesis game so check a bit of automatic spectacle check arou optimizable skill based platforming you betcha but there's also a bunch of stuff that just feels wrong in its inclusion look at Sonic and running at top speed I'm not sure if it's just how weird lanky 3d sonic looks doing the cute 2d chair sits on its leg spinning thing but your top speed in Sonic 4 feels super low the cathartic rush that pretty much every Sonic game has got right is gone you move super slowly at Sonic 4 there's also the bizarre inclusion of the homing attack now I've gone on about how much it went a long way to watts fixing with platforming and 3d Sonic games but its inclusion in Sonic 4 feels very arbitrary did they put it in simply because it was in the other recent Sonic games the inclusion of the homing attack here feels more than a bit contrived the snow Eggman which exists purely as things to lock onto all these enemies here with the Genesis era sonic jump not have sufficed is the homing attack really necessary 2d sonic game played was never really designed to facilitate the homing attack and it shows now the actual usage of the homing attack is fun and it's as satisfying as ever to use but it bugs me that there was no real reason to include it beyond the kitchen sink design aesthetic sonic 4 seems to have that said the little forward - you do when not locked on is quite nice and helps balance out some of the Jacke physics there are several more examples of needless inclusion of things like these snowboarding bits you know because there were snowboard bits and the adventure games they really don't add anything to the game I'm not even doing anything here although that could be on a Mars - Adventure 1 snowboarding there however the most notable arbitrary inclusion of a mechanic is the Sonic and Tails combo moves it's a neat idea that justifies Tallis's presence but not only do they kill any sense of momentum therein needless gimmick that's um Judy forced upon the player distracting from an otherwise serviceable game there's this move when you roll up into a ball and zoom around like a big spin - you've got to do it to get through this snow batch but look at it what am I doing here going forwards and jumping there's no unique or interesting bits of this mechanic besides the fact that I've forced to use it I keep coming back to this thought about a lot of the stuff in Sonic 4 why is this here for all the weird terrible stuff in the Sonic games so far from marble zones block jumping to the weird puzzles and adventure - I can see why they were included even if they were horribly implemented but in Sonic 4 so much of the game is fat in need of trimming that it sabotages the bits of the game that are good that said in an alternate universe where important fiddly to use it didn't stop you dead in your tracks and didn't make you confuse every blank wall for a potential shortcut the tales flight move might have been quite cool the ability to sacrifice horizontal speed for some vertical movement would have been a nice extra mechanical option like the spin - unfortunately the devas of Sonic 4 seemed to have added it purely on the basis that Sonic games with - in the name usually contained tails and tails can fly not for any interesting chemical reasons that's all I can really say on Sonic 4 it's trying so hard to be all dove Sonic that it ends up forgetting what made site good I think had I not been doing this project I'd have a much harder time figuring out what exactly sabotage is Sonic 4 episode 2 at least isn't a bad game by any means it's just pretty mediocre of forgettable all because it idolizes Sonic so much that it ends up hurting the end result I was terrified to go back to generations after this with my newfound knowledge of Sonic games when I realize he actually sucks after all this time after all it's also a throwback on Marsh to Sonic with a bunch of it's taken from previous games hell no it rules if anything I think it's better now this is the game where it all comes together great classic Sonic levels great modern sonic levels and a team that finally gets the chance to prove they know their stuff about how to make a Sonic game without being bogged down by gimmicks or shoddy Hardware all the things that I've pointed out that make Sonic games good are on display here there's cool cinematic bits appropriate use of automatics complex levels with a load of alternate routes and a proper on marsh to the Sonic legacy unlike the retread that was Sonic for generations gives us references to the Sonic games of yesteryear but tightened up with the refocus design aesthetic that really lets it shine I'll be using the remastered version of City escape the first and best level of Sonic Adventure 2 footage and a few examples but I want to use my time regenerations to talk more broadly about what I've learned about Sonic's seeing as generations is in itself an exploration of Sonic's history I've seen people across the gaming space saying various things to the effect of the old Sonic games were never good they were frustrating for first time players the levels are too complex and dense and had shallow mechanics compared to Mario on the other side of the fence we've got people saying the newest Sonic games are never going to be good they're too simplistic they over prioritize stupid edgy stories and 3d Sonic games are impossible to control I think a lot of these complaints are pretty valid for some of the bad games but that got me thinking back to my notes on all the games so far Sonic seems to fail when it's at either of the design extremes I've pointed out so far here let me show you in looking at Sonic games two common design themes have emerged organic an automatic automatic stuff is cinematic Sonic lots of flash and color but not much in the way of actual player agency we can see this and a lot of the Dreamcast games organic stuff is all about complex levels to reward mastery but often compromise the pure fun of handling Sonic for all but the most well first is who can deal with the highly dense later levels I spent a long time thinking these factors for conflicting forces one a holdover from the bike on Genesis era when things were much more hardcore and games weren't polished and another a part of the 2000s trend of cinematic games that take control away from the player to show off their fancy new 3d rendered graphics the thing is I think they're actually now opposite ends of a spectrum on the far or thematic end you've got the adventure games and on the opposite organic side we've got the Genesis games which games are in the middle you asked unleashed in generations the Sonic games I think that consistently the best by taking the best bits of both ends of the spectrum the flare of automatics and a deep level mastery of organics generations manages to appeal to both the bombastic action fun parts of my brain and the more complex decision-making parts at the same time it makes classic sonic more cinematic and modern sonic more organic there's this ongoing theme of a big G you and truck chasing you in classic Sonic's version of City escape it helps to add some awesome tension and pressure to the level that's really fun modern sonic steak on the snowboarding bit from a venture to has had a bunch of cool alternate paths and routes at it accessible by pulling off tricks and jumps that's a much needed replayability and depths than the start of the level I think the real appeal of Sonic is when skill and spectacle can work together in harmony engaging all parts of your brain at once prior to generations and to a lesser extent unleashed I think the closest game to reach this point is Sonic 3 but they're slightly clunky jess's controls hold it back from really link you get into that immersive flow state that the more automatic games do so well a big part of a sonic formula is that it's not really tied down to one particular control ski but modern and classic sonic handled very differently and practice between them is pretty subjective but the feel and skill set required are the same between both I think that's why sonic has such a strong nostalgic hold in the first place you can transpose simple but skill based arcade platforming with a focus on spectacle and to a lot of different control schemes quite easily that means that when the sonic formula is done badly by bringing those two factors out of balance it feels like a perversion of whichever side game your most attached to but when the formula is executed well you feel quite a whole unit the game is actually very different contrast that with Mario the controls of each Mario game bar some one-off additions like flood have been pretty much the same forever but each Mario game has a different take on the formula it's interesting to think about how Mario and Sonic who were cynically pitted together as opposites for marketing purposes are actually very different after all under the hood before I get into the penultimate game on the list here's a few thoughts I had all playing through the old games the generations reminded me of one thing I've noticed about early Sonic games is that Springs have collision you can bump into them and have to jump on top of them in order to get bounced you but it's generations they trigger when you walk over them it's a small way of getting a really nice sense of flow water levels suck there's not a single good water level even the water bits of chemical plants are suck I think is to do with how slow would clunky water physics actively harm of the skill-based organic side of Sonic as well as the speedy cinematic side it's really weird seeing Knuckles as an antagonist after seeing him turned into this there are no words just pictures just like the novel I'm writing mmm the plots there but the characters are all over the place I think I actually prefer goofy sonic boom version he's got a weird charm to it the facial animations in Sonic Adventure the Chao garden is a wonderful respite from the terrible erosion of knuckles levels I'd happily play a mobile poll of this it really sucks that Sonic Unleashed was ruined but we're home pins I think this game when Sonic oh six really cemented Sonic as being bad in the public eye and whilst these games both sucked on the whole it's a shame that unleashed date on bits went so underappreciated in the press this fight with Metal Sonic is awful look with literally incapable of interacting with each other for half the fight and I've got nothing to do in the meantime in fact most sonic bosses are weird scripted nonsense that feels like it's totally from a different game I wonder if I should've played Sonic Harris or this project it's not a proper Sonic game by my estimations but its inclusion in her generations makes me reconsider if this level is anything to go by though I'm glad I missed it I actually really like the design of Crysis City these cool worm monsters are pretty mean to I forget what the backstory is to this place though I think it's some sort of apocalyptic future I don't I really like the letter rankings that later games give you there a nice barometer of your skill and give you a very clear goal to pursue on your future attempts now onto the penultimate game on the list the game you've all been waiting for Sonic last word it's terrible it's awful I hate it Sonic lost world is an affront to the sonic formula I've spent Wow 8,000 words figuring out it squanders both skill and spectacle the form this horrible gelatinous mess of a game that's trying really really hard to be Super Mario Galaxy everything wrong with this game can be shown in just the first world so I'll use all of that as lost world has smaller Mario Galaxy star levels instead of bigger acts like most of the games sonic lost wealth has so many moves it hugely over complicates things it's got parkour to different speeds of running and whis pounds for colors on top of all the regular 3d Sonic bells and whistles it's too much to do all at once and none of it feels nice to use they even managed to screw up the homing attack remember how in every previous Sonic game the homing attack was designed around feeding Chii are still carrying you forwards in this not only of the visual effects really weak they instead changed it from a missile attack this piddly little bounce that stops you dead in your tracks the knock-on is also really spotty especially when it comes to targeting enemies in 3d space which reminds me did you think controlling sonic Calliope and the adventure games was a bit tricky well sonic lost world ups the speed and then put you on Mario Galaxy star planetoids that constantly disorient you with changing gravity the physics of the game is weird in other areas too look at this bit where I have to change direction on these narrow platforms changing direction actually slows me down I have no idea why it happens but it also happens with the new double jump over all Lost Worlds on top of being unfinished terribly written and utterly derivative and that's saying a lot for a franchise that parts into let go of Green Hill Zone it manages to be even more obtusely designed than Sonic 1 everything in moss world is a fight with the controls and the level dislike nothing here feels intuitive and that sucks because sonic can't keep rehashing the same stuff forever I really don't want to dwell on loss well because there's very little I can say in its favor and anything more I can say about it will probably come across as petulant whining instead I highly recommend watching Greg Zyliss review of the game he picks up on a lot of the same stuff I've pointed out and more all with some fantastic animations rather than end the video on this downer let's talk about Sonic mania I mean what hasn't already been said about this game it's bombastic fun a wonderful lamashtu Sega and the sonic fandom even more so go Sonic Generations all while managing to create some really tight well-designed levels and bosses mania is probably more automatic focus than many classic Sonic players were like but it definitely exists right there in the sweet spot with unleashed and generations as fun as mania is it does get me thinking about the sonic formula and what it means for the future of the franchise sonic has a very narrow sweet spot a really fun gameplay and it's pretty unique in that regard innovation in Sonic often does more harm than good and the only game that exists in the sweet spot without being a throwback nostalgia game is Unleashed which only got there through almost a decade of figuring out 3d if that wasn't hard enough Sega seemed to have forgotten what makes on in the first place the more I hear about sonic forces the less enthused I am the cold steel the headshake portions of the game look stilted and linear and the modern and classic sonic levels look much better but it's more of the same stuff we've already seen in generations if Sonic can't find ways to keep its awesome formula intact while still offering new experiences no amount of retro revivals is gonna save it it's not all bad news though if there's one thing that manias stellar reviews prove it's that people out there still know the ins and outs of Sonic's level design and are capable of improving upon even the sacred count Genesis games sonic mania is the true successor to the Sonic 4 title and manages to surpass all of its predecessors by walking the delicate tightrope of balancing high-skilled gameplay with spectacle and catharsis as for me I might not start out or Sonic fan but I think I am one now over the course of writing this I've gotten stuck into a lot of sonic design discussions that would have bored me to tears a few weeks ago on top of that I think getting to grips with Sonic designers help me pick apart other platformers too and my design instincts are definitely better off of the experience sonic has had a rough road to 2017 but I think things are finally looking up for the blue blur but until they even give us mania quality consistently I'm not ready to call sonic saved quite yet so who's hype for marry Odyssey hey what's up it's me your boy the architect I'm just doing one of these little post a video chats because they seem like a cool idea to keep you folks up to date first of all sorry for the wait time in this episode but I think it's pretty understandable given that it was four times the length of any previous video there are some things I change given the chance I somehow didn't mention Sonic's remarkably consistent music quality you can probably hear some of that in the background and a few other small things but overall I think the video turned out pretty well you can probably expect the regular scheduled to resume of a video every one and a bit weeks although I might go over some a short next time on the list I've got enemy design of the New Mexican games and dialogue trees and RPGs so it's either a boat strike if antsy we'd give me a heads up in the comments and I'll be honest there's something new went wrong and he comes along to distract me I will almost certainly end up doing that instead so no promises special thank you to all the people on the GMT Kay discord that unwittingly helped me write this script you hopefully know who you are and the even bigger thanks to you for watching this video all the way through I'm dumb spite you did it to be honest very surprised indeed so yeah I've gotta go but yeah thanks like comment subscribe all that junk and I will see you around bye [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Adam Millard - The Architect of Games

Views: 299,181

Rating: 4.8180928 out of 5

Keywords: Architect of games, Video essay, Video Games, Game Design, Sonic, Sonic Mania, who even reads these, Gaming, Platformers

Id: LqlnVjeXGf0

Length: 47min 9sec (2829 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/gametray]

Wow, I really liked this. You did a good job staying on cohesive topics throughout the video, and keeping them relatively separate from your opinions/biases (a rare sight nowadays on YouTube). You kept it at an analysis quality similar to Mark Brown's videos.

Something I'm surprised you didn't talk about was the shields in the Genesis games; they pretty much act as an added layer of protection, à la Mario's power-ups. And in Sonic 3, they did a good job in keeping the player moving as well as adding other benefits -- you know all of this.
Flame had a dash & fire immunity, water had a bounce & let you breathe underwater, and lightning (my fave) gave you a double jump & sucked in nearby rings.

The addition of those gave Sonic 3 more organically diverse game-play options, which made the replay value really stand out to me (as much as I love 2).