So at this point you might be thinking there's no hope. Sonic R is actually a really interesting example because it's half platformer half racer. The reception for this was generally that "it's a bit weird." so accelerate was put on a button, despite half the characters being on-foot. They wanted to make a Sonic racing game, but obviously Sonic would race on foot, but his competitors could be in cars, and we're a racing game after all. Take Sonic R as an example - they had an interesting design dilemma. The brain lets you get away with one but not the other.
There's some real disconnect that can be felt when you play a creature as opposed to a creature controlling the machine. It doesn't feel natural in a platformer setting. This solves this exact problem.īut it's not very organic. And how do they solve this problem? For racing games the translation from vehicle controls to game controls is a pretty fluid and natural one - replace a pedal with a trigger and the analog stick just controls the steering. Think about other games that go fast - you'll think of racing games. Now taking a step back and looking at these, what could be the consistent underlying problem? To me, SatSR gives one answer - forcing the player to hold up to move forward limits their lateral movement, as you have to remove that input to turn left or right sharply, meaning dodging obstacles in 3D becomes clunky and uncomfortable. They're fun, they're pretty, but they're not 2D Sonic made 3D. But they're mixed in with easier to control 2D bits, and the aforementioned "I just hit a boostpad so my input is meaningless" problem. But they don't even pretend to try and solve 'the Sonic question.' They're fun because they're a thrill - the camera pulls in and you rocket past beautiful environments at lightning speed - they mix in the dodging from SatSR with the true 3D of SA, to great effect - you can have real fun playing these games. So I think the most fun 3D the Sonic games have got are the Sonic Unleashed daytime, Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations modern levels. You can get the speed aspect, but its artificial - if Sonic hits something, he continues going forward anyway, just a bit slower. No real choice, very linear levels, you don't even need a button input to go forward, it just happens - you, the player, just concentrate on dodging left and right. So they tried to solve this problem the most head-on in Sonic and the Secret Rings. Which is arguably worse than 'just pushing up.' And the bits that go really fast? It's very easy to come to a complete standstill. What you end up with is a game where you can spend a significant amount of time giving no input at all. Hey, these boost pads let us get the kind of speed we always wanted, let's dot them about the level too. So let's add in boostpads to help him out. But now he looks really slow when he goes around loops. So when he goes around loops, we pull the camera out. They tried to make a 3D Sonic as described, where you push forwards and there's enemies and spikes and loops - just like classic Sonic but in 3D! But it didn't work. You can almost see the entire dev cycle in the levels. I'm a big Sonic fan and find the Adventure games fun, but when I go back and play them now they really wear their flaws on their sleeves. We can start with Sonic Adventure, which tried but fell flat. It's pretty clear to me that the Sonic games themselves have not assuming by 'the 3D Sonic question' you mean something along the lines of 'a momentum based platformer in which the objective and most fun way to play is by gaining speed whilst dodging obstacles and using this speed to interact with the environment in interesting ways while doing so.' AKA the classic 2D Sonic games, but in 3D.
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