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Sonic Adventure 2 Design Thread (mirrored from Twitter)

This article was originally a Twitter thread I wrote. I am mirroring it here as I plan to revive this blog, and feel its content fits the theme.

Released for the Dreamcast in 2001, Sonic Adventure 2 remains a VERY divisive game, yet deep analysis of its design as a game is surprisingly scarce. I hope to change that. To paraphrase a friend, gamedev, & Cheesecake Factory patron, this is Sonic Adventure 2: A Design Thread.

Sonic Adventure 2 follows up 1999's Sonic Adventure, which was Sonic the Hedgehog's first proper foray into 3D platforming after skipping the Saturn. Though this thread is about Sonic Adventure 2, comparisons to its predecessor will be made to examine how things changed.Sonic Adventure was a very ambitious game. Rather than simply bring standard Sonic gameplay to 3D, the game was divided between six different characters, each with their own very unique missions and abilities, with tasks ranging from racing to treasure hunting to fishing. While its six separate stories and hub worlds showed off massive ambition, certain parts of Sonic Adventure felt relatively half-baked; Sonic's story was much longer than everyone else's, the hub worlds felt barren. and certain gameplay styles just plain weren't fun.

So SA2 downsized things a bit. The hub worlds were dropped, and while the playable character count remained at six, the types of gameplay were narrowed to three, with three of the characters being near identical to the other three, divided between just two stories.The upside to this is that, rather than every character visiting some of the same stages as it was in the first game, every stage is unique (though they still share environments and some geometry). SA2 features three gameplay styles: -Sonic/Shadow -Tails/Eggman -Knuckles/Rouge

Sonic/Shadow stages are fast-paced, linear platforming. Sonic and newcomer Shadow have to run, jump, Homing Attack, and grind to the end of stages at high speed. This is generally the most fondly-remembered part of the game.

Tails/Eggman stages see the characters piloting armed mechs through linear stages. The mechs are equipped with a lock-on shot that can target multiple enemies at once for more points - more on the scoring later, as it is the key to the whole game.

Knuckles/Rouge stages task the player with navigating open levels to find three hidden objects through the use of a "hot/cold" radar and optional hints. Their abilities to glide and climb allow them to explore in all directions easily.

The division of SA2 into essentially three different games that the player alternates between is frequently derided, and while a more focused game could indeed be a better product, I would argue that SA2 realizes all three of its styles fully, thanks to another new addition.

That new addition is the Rank system. Sonic Adventure 2 keeps a score for each stage as you play through it, and at the end of each stage a letter grade is awarded. Higher scores lead to better ranks, with A ranks being the best and E ranks being the worst. The thing is, scoring systems in both 3D platformers and console games in general were essentially a thing of the past. As games on consoles diverged from their arcade counterparts, scores became less relevant and were frequently removed all together. Super Mario 64, which codified the 3D platformer, featured no proper scoring system at all. And while the first Sonic Adventure did feature scores, there was no in-game incentive to reach for higher scores, rendering them mostly meaningless.Super Mario 64 also did something else that many 3D platformers would follow suit in: it placed a focus on collection. Gathering the game's 120 Stars put exploration and problem solving at the forefront, and games like Banjo-Kazooie and Spyro The Dragon followed similar formulas. Notably, these games did not care how you reached their goals. Time constraints were rare, and moment-to-moment performance was de-emphasized in favor of letting the player progress as they see fit. Their mechanics reinforced that freedom. SA2 went in the opposite direction.Perhaps thanks to SEGA's history with arcade games, Sonic Adventure 2 uses its scoring & ranking systems as in-game incentives to perform as well as possible. This probably bounced off many players (for valid reasons), but I'd argue it's the key to the entire game!

Scoring in Sonic Adventure 2 is based on a number of factors, some universal and some specific to the gameplay styles. Universal ways to score are: -collecting Rings (10 points) -destroying enemies (varies by enemy) -Time Bonus (awarded depending on how long the level took)

One notable scoring mechanic is the Gold Beetle, a special version of the standard Beetle enemy. There is a single Gold Beetle in every stage; it appears for a few seconds before vanishing. Destroying this is worth 1000 points, which is a hefty fraction of points on most stages! The other most important thing to remember about scoring for all characters is that if you die, when you reappear at a checkpoint your score is reset to zero, basically guaranteeing a bad rank. Therefore, step 1 to attaining good ranks is completing levels without dying at all.

Now, for specifics: Bonus points can be awarded as you play through stages, but how exactly you get them depends on the type of stage you're currently playing. 

Sonic/Shadow stages are perhaps the hardest to describe. While you can consistently get bonuses from attacking multiple enemies in a row without touching the ground with their Homing Attack, as well as performing tricks off ramps and certain rails, other methods vary by stage.Taking different paths or rails, using certain abilities, or interacting with some objects in specific ways might give you points. While there's no one way to do it, the bonuses become pretty intuitive if you keep an eye out for chances to do cool or tricky things.

Tails/Eggman stages have the most straightforward bonuses, and the only ones the game directly tells you about; simply lock on to multiple enemies at once before firing to gain bonus points. The more enemies you lock on to, the more points you get.

Knuckles/Rouge stages have tricky bonuses; points are awarded when you collect each item depending on how quickly you did so and how few hints you used. As the items' locations are randomized each time you play a level, it could take a few restarts before you have a good run.

Knowing the sources of points and really striving for A-ranks is only required for 100% completion, but I'd argue that being aware of these systems is actually what makes Sonic Adventure 2 fun. Sonic Adventure 2 is known as a frustrating game for new players. The game doesn't do a good job of drawing focus to the bonus points, and the lives system (where it costs a life to restart a stage without returning to the menu) doesn't encourage the actions needed for A-ranks. The boss fights are another slight wrinkle; they're not ranked at all, leaving players to just go through them. Like many platformers, bosses are the least interesting part of Sonic Adventure 2. And, of course, there are a few stages or sections that are a bit annoying even when you're good at the game. SA2 definitely isn't perfect, and even if you understand the game you might still find yourself frustrated with Mad Space or Eternal Engine.

So Sonic Adventure 2 is a game with a design philosophy that goes against most of its genre, an unusual divided gameplay setup, some issues with communicating its core design, and some incredibly "early 2000's" aesthetics on top. It's no wonder many people don't like it. BUT.

That aforementioned design philosophy is EXTREMELY satisfying to play with. Mastering the stages in order to get A-ranks gives a feeling that not many platformers can give, and you can do it with some time & effort. Sonic Adventure 2 is a game where you get out what you put in.On a more general note, scoring/ranking systems are somewhat rare in console games, but they're a great way to add longevity to a game by encouraging a player to play better, rather than just completing the given content once. 

So anyway, I hope this thread gave you some stuff to think about in regards to game design, and maybe even encouraged you to give Sonic Adventure 2 a closer look. It's an odd game, but certainly an interesting one, and it's relatively unique among 3D platformers even to this day.

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Man Vs. Machine: The Feeling Of Direct Challenge

Recently, I was searching for a feeling. The feeling, specifically, of being taunted by a video game, challenged personally to beat it. The feeling that comes from a game saying, without words, that it doesn’t think I can handle it, and the feeling that comes from me eventually rising up and proving them wrong.

Now, an important thing there is “without words.” Some games will directly taunt the player in words, or make fun of them for picking easy difficulty settings. I find that tacky and immature. So, to place the source of that feeling, I explored the games I most closely associate with it, and discovered an interesting trend in the presentation of classic arcade games. Note that this particular article is based almost entirely on a personal feeling I have, so it’s possible it could end up pretty unrelatable to others.

The games I most associate with this sort of silent taunting of the player are arcade games of the 1980’s, specifically those made by companies like Atari Games and Williams. Atari Games created a number of classic arcade games, including Marble Madness, 720°, S.T.U.N. Runner, and more. Williams, meanwhile, made Robotron, Defender, Joust, and Sinistar, among others. Like many 1980’s arcade games, these games are super-challenging, designed to keep you coming back and putting in more quarters until you beat them. However, even compared to other games of the era like Namco’s Pac-Man or Nintendo’s Donkey Kong, these games feel like they’re looking down on you, like they’re telling the player directly that they’re not good enough.

While I can’t say for sure whether anyone else shares this feeling or if it’s something entirely within my own head, I thought it was at least interesting enough to write about, mostly because I discovered a trend that correlates with this feeling. You see, Namco and Nintendo’s arcade games of the era featured characters. They had a protagonist, and one or more antagonists. A conflict is set up within the world of the game, fully separate from the player. Pac-Man's conflict is "Pac-Man vs. Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde." Donkey Kong's is "Mario vs. Donkey Kong." These games by Atari Games and Williams, however, tend to feature faceless proxies for the player, and enemies that were either generic and attacked en masse, or not even “beings” at all, with a focus on beating time limits or scoring points through performing tasks.

The result of this, in my mind, is that there is no “buffer” between the challenge presented in the game world and the challenge presented to the player. While Donkey Kong is a battle between two fictional characters, Marble Madness is essentially a direct battle between the player and the game. A failure, then, is not a failure on the part of a fictional character; it’s a failure on the part of the player.

I find it curious that the trend of games that lacked characters and presented a direct challenge seemed to apply to western-made games, while Japanese-made games were more willing to embrace mascot characters. Perhaps it has to do with the background of designers at those companies; Shigeru Miyamoto was an artist before he became a game designer, after all. Or maybe it’s simply a cultural difference; on the internet you can find that tons of Japanese towns and cities have their own mascot characters. That sort of personalization may have just shown through in their games.

A special note should be made of Williams’s game Sinistar. That game defined an antagonist character, but no protagonist character. The titular Sinistar, then, faces the player directly, despite being a fictional character like Donkey Kong. Perhaps that difference is why its tendency to directly taunt the player feels more fitting; its booming voice shouting “RUN, COWARD” feels less like an out-of-place fourth wall break and more of the logical conclusion of its design.

Nowadays, nearly every single-player game has some sort of character to it. Game needs a protagonist, game needs an antagonist. A few specific genres, like puzzle games and rhythm games, can get away with not having those, but for the most part "character games" won. This isn't necessarily bad, I don't think; games in the style of Atari Games’s and Williams’s works tend to come off as antagonistic to players. A focus on “character” is a way to avoid that, and so nowadays games are by and large more friendly and accessible to more people. Which is good! But for everything gained, there is something lost, and that level of "direct player challenge" is considered passé in the modern era, which I think is a shame. I think there is much to be found in dead trends, and those who design games would do well to understand the types of feelings that certain deprecated design decisions could invoke in players.

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The Case For Special Inputs

In the quest to simplify fighting games for newcomers, there's a lot of talk about what purpose special inputs (quarter circles, charge motions, etc.) serve. Various fighting games have even gone out of their way to remove these, such as Cardboard Robot Games’s Pocket Rumble and Sirlin Games’s Fantasy Strike, as well as the universally acclaimed Super Smash Bros. series, which prides itself on its simple controls. None of these games are wrong for doing this, of course; it’s commendable to attempt to make fighters easier to get into, and one common stumbling block for newcomers is performing special moves when you want them. However, there are certain design benefits that come from these inputs that tend to be brushed aside in discussions on the subject, and I wanted to bring them to light in order to allow for a more well-rounded perspective on the issue.

More Moves, Less Buttons

The first benefit is a simple one: relegating special moves to motions allows a character to have more moves without adding more buttons to the control scheme. The Street Fighter series uses 6 attack buttons, which tends to be the maximum amount that most fighters will utilize. There are three consecutive strengths of punches, and then the same for kicks. Punches and kicks can all be performed while standing, crouching, or jumping. That means that each character has 18 different moves available to them BEFORE the addition of special moves. A variety of normal attacks is crucial to traditional 2D fighters because they allow characters to respond to many situations with the minimum effort (pressing a single button). Motions allow the addition of 3-6 special moves per character with no extra buttons added to the control scheme or removal of normal attacks. In addition, this allows for variations on special moves to exist. For example, Ryu’s Hadoken, when activated with Heavy Punch, throws a faster fireball than when it is activated with Light Punch. Both speeds have their own uses, and the ability to throw fireballs that travel at different speeds is a subtle yet hugely important part of Ryu’s game plan. There are other ways to add more moves to the same amount of buttons, of course, but those have their own downsides.

Muscle Memory

While the joystick/d-pad motions needed to perform fighting game moves will take practice at first, the act of practicing them and learning what they do for each character will, paradoxically, make it easier to learn a character. Imagine, for example, a fighting game where special moves are performed with a combination of two buttons. Light Punch and Medium Punch performs a special move, as does Heavy Punch and Heavy Kick. On the surface, these combinations are easier to perform than, say, a quarter-circle motion. However, a problem arises: in your hands, these two-button combinations don’t feel meaningfully different from each other. Remembering that this two-button combination creates a fireball while that one creates an unsafe reversal move is an extra mental step, and while muscle memory can eventually take over, I think it would be harder to do so. Most fighting games, when they use simultaneous button presses, use them for universal mechanics, and even then sometimes a game can overuse them; this is a problem that occurred with the Persona 4 Arena games, which have many universal mechanics set to a large variety of two-button combinations.

Opportunity Cost

Special inputs add a slight extra limitation to performing moves in a fighting game. On a basic level, special moves cannot be performed instantly due to these inputs; even one as quick as a quarter circle requires a few extra frames to perform, which adds a tiny bit of extra commitment to the move. What’s more, various motions add another layer of risk to them depending on what they are. The classic Shoryuken motion, which is forward, down, diagonal down-forward + punch, requires you to press forward directions in a game where holding backwards causes you to block. This means you have to give up on blocking for a split second in order to perform one. Since the Shoryuken is invincible, it can be a good way to defend yourself against an aggressive opponent and turn the tides, but your timing must be perfect if you want to escape a pressure situation, which means that commonly a player might prefer to block just to avoid the risk, even though it holds risks of its own.

Another motion with opportunity cost associated with it is the “charge” motion, where a player must hold either back or down for a certain number of frames before pressing the opposite direction and an attack button to unleash the move. The classic example of this is Guile’s Sonic Boom, a projectile thrown by holding back for a little over a second, and then pressing forward and punch. Guile can’t throw this projectile as often as Ryu can throw his Hadoken, nor can he throw it while walking forward. However, Guile’s Sonic Boom, in other ways, is way better than Ryu’s Hadoken. The Sonic Boom has much shorter startup (it comes out faster), much shorter recovery (he’s vulnerable for way shorter after throwing it), and travels at much more varied speeds (the Light Punch version is very slow and the Heavy Punch version is very fast). If Guile could throw his Sonic Boom freely, these properties would make it overpowered (as shown by the 3DS version of Super Street Fighter 4, which had a simplified input mode that allowed you to activate specials with touch screen icons), but the charge motion gives it a limitation that informs the very core of Guile’s play style, turning him into the specific type of patient, defensive character that players know him as.

Looking Forward

Special inputs are not entirely necessary for fighting games, but they’re also not meaningless. They serve many purposes in fighting game design. Anyone looking to remove special inputs from a fighting game cannot expect to succeed by just mapping the same moves to single-button commands; the entire design has to be informed by the decision, and the designer must be aware that the things in this essay are lost when switching to another control scheme. Hopefully this essay sheds a little light on the purpose fighting game inputs serve in the modern era, and designers can be informed enough to decide whether their game needs them or not.

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Quick heads-up

I deleted a previous article due to it promoting an event run by someone I now wish not to promote. My apologies.

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Sonic Forces Follow-Up: What If Luminous Forest Was Longer?

Perhaps the most disappointing of Sonic Forces’s flaws is its short level length, because you’ll find yourself having fun with the mechanics but then the level will just abruptly end before you’re fully satisfied with them. With this article, I’d like to focus on a specific level, the Modern Sonic stage “Luminous Forest,” and examine why it feels unsatisfying and what I think could be done to rectify it. Sorry in advance for all the Sonic articles; Sonic is a series near and dear to me, and examining both the positives and negatives of its best and worst games are part of what drove me to game design in the first place. I promise I’ll move to other topics more often very soon.

Luminous Forest opens with a short 3D section; however, it’s essentially just several seconds of holding boost while you plow through enemies with no variation, so I didn’t bother taking any footage of it. After this part, you transition into the stage’s 2D section. The main concept of this section is platforms that rotate around each other in groups of 2 or 4. This section also has three layers, depending on if you make certain early jumps in time, with the segments having trickier platforming the lower you go. This is a common design tactic in 2D Sonic; either reacting at high speeds or knowing what’s coming and making an early jump can make your life easier later by putting you on an easier path. Here, we see the upper path:

Luminous Forest Upper Path

This path requires a jump right at the beginning of the section, and then another one in the middle of a string of enemies. If you make these two jumps, you’re rewarded with the fastest, easiest path. You can simply boost and jump and ignore the spinning platforms entirely. If you miss the second jump, however, you end up here:

Luminous Forest Middle Path

As you can see, here you have to take things a little more carefully. The rotating platforms are now something you have to take note of. However, it’s not quite pure platforming, because you can skip certain jumps with proper use of the Homing Attack. Some people complain that this makes these games too simple, but I think it feels good to land, and you can’t always utilize it so easily, so I’d keep it around.

If you don’t even make the FIRST jump, then you’re put here:

Luminous Forest Lower Path

Down here you have to make all the jumps between the rotating platforms, with few Homing Attack targets to help you. Your penalty for not reacting the first time is the toughest path.

You’ll also notice that falling from the upper paths puts you on the lower ones rather than damaging or killing you. This is another 2D Sonic mainstay.

After this 2D section, you’re brought into a 3D section that has you rushing down half-pipes full of enemies, rings, and boost capsules:

Luminous Forest Half-Pipes

This section gets flak for being “boost-to-win,” and to be fair, it mostly is. However, it does have a little bit of depth that might not be clear on your first time, which is a pair of shortcuts reached by using the Homing Attack on some of the bee enemies:

Luminous Forest Shortcuts

Besides this, there are also small sets of thorns in the half-pipes that ostensibly you have to avoid… but they’re generally so far to the side that you can’t hit them unless you’re really messing around. And then, after that, what’s next…? Well, nothing really. There’s a quick time event sequence where Sonic fights a big snake and then the level ends.

What a ripoff, huh?

But why, exactly, does it feel like a ripoff? Well, Luminous Forest as a stage introduces two main concepts. The first is the rotating platforms, and the second is the half-pipes. However, the stage does not expand on the concepts at all. It throws each of them at you once and then ends the stage, without leaving you feeling like you got the chance to really get to know and master them. My solution to Luminous Forest’s length problem, then, is to add another more intricate section based around each mechanic.

The second 2D section is simpler to imagine, so we’ll start there. What we want is essentially the first section, but “more”: more challenging, more use of the platforms. We could keep it to 3 layers like the original, though. In our theoretical extension, in order to make things more difficult, the upper path would have the difficulty of the middle path in the first section: require some platforming, but allow you to use the Homing Attack in the right spots to facilitate your flow. The middle path, then, would have the difficulty of the first section’s lower path; you have to make some real jumps. Finally, the lowest path would have the hardest sets of jumps; because you missed the jumps to reach the higher paths, or messed up while on them, you have the trickiest configurations of rotating platforms to deal with.

Now, what to do about those half-pipes? The easy answer would be to add more of those thorns to dodge using Sonic’s Quick Step, but they don’t show up too well visually, plus it would just feel like a cheap addition of difficulty, rather than complexity. To find our solution, we look to another Sonic Forces level, the Avatar’s stage Aqua Road:

Aqua Road paths

Here, the Avatar sees a similar half-pipe setup, but filled with water. However, the main interesting thing to note here is the fact that the pipe splits into three; the three slides then wrap and wind around each other. This variation might be the key to making a more satisfying Luminous Forest. Rather than simply a straight shot to the end, there are now decisions to make. Perhaps make the side pipes more challenging to enter, but put more rings, less hazards, or maybe a Red Ring on one or both of them. We can also use the idea of using enemies to access shortcuts to connect the different pipes later on; rather than having a path of enemies to a completely unconnected shortcut (though one of those might be good as well), you can use them to transition between paths in order to take the shortest route. This would be a great way to expand on the stage’s core concept in a way that feels satisfying.

Now, the best way to arrange these two new parts (and the QTE section) is up for debate. I want to keep the snake QTE because it’s a nice setpiece and it also sets the stage for the boss battle that follows it up. Assuming the sections before the snake QTE that already exist are left as-is, you could either have the first half-pipe section transition into the second 2D section, the second half-pipe section, or the QTE. One possibility I like would be to have it transition into the second 2D section, then put in the QTE, and then finish off with the second half-pipe run. The more I think about this, the more I feel like it’s my favorite pacing-wise, but you could also leave the QTE at the end, have the first half-pipe transition into the second, and finish off with the second 2D section into the QTE. You could also simply alternate again: 2D > 3D > 2D > 3D > QTE. I mostly prefer the 2D > 3D > 2D > QTE > 3D because it ends on a fast-paced high note while also using the QTE to make it seem less like simple alternation.

Hopefully this little write-up helps illuminate why Sonic Forces’s levels can feel so unsatisfying and the kinds of changes that would be necessary to make them better. This is also my first article with accompanying videos, so I hope that works out too. Thanks for reading, and once again I promise to move away from the topic of Sonic soon.

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Sonic Forces Review: Chains of Future Past

Ah, Sonic Forces. To many, it’s the OTHER Sonic game to come out this year. A few previous articles have mentioned my history with the series, and I promised a review of this game, so without further ado, here goes.

Sonic Forces is an odd little game, in that it seems it was made to please all types of Sonic fans. The core of the gameplay of both Modern Sonic and your custom character (more on that later) is the tried-and-true racing-platfomer-hybrid first used in 3D Sonic by Sonic Unleashed and then adapted into Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. However, it also features levels starring Classic Sonic similarly to Generations, and it has a few levels based on Genesis Sonic zones (though with more changes to their aesthetics than Generations; more on that later). It also features an attempt at a more serious (some would say “edgy”) story, similar to that of the Sonic Adventure games, and a create-a-character feature sure to appeal to the series’s more imaginative fans. The premise of the main plot is even similar to the SatAM show and the early Archie comics. Unfortunately, it would be a lie to say that all these discrete elements come together strongly. Still, despite its flaws, there’s a lot of fun to be had in Sonic Forces. Hopefully this lengthy write-up gives you a better idea of the game’s pros and cons.

Gameplay

Sonic Forces features four gameplay styles that the player is shuffled between across its various stages (30 main stages/boss fights, plus 13 or 14 short secret levels that are entirely 2D platform challenges based on singular level gimmicks). Unlike other Sonic games that feature multiple gameplay styles, however, three of the four styles control relatively similarly with a single core mechanic differentiating them (or, in the case of “tag team,” not differentiating them).

Let’s start with Modern Sonic. Modern Sonic, in terms of abilities, is most similar to his Colors incarnation, featuring a double jump and a boost that is only filled by either collecting Wisp Capsules or destroying enemies. His levels swap between 3D and 2D smoothly. Unlike Colors, he can perform the Quick Step (a short shift to the left or the right) at any point with the shoulder buttons, though like Colors, a few context-sensitive sections have him do this with a push of the joystick to the left or right as well. He also has the stomp and slide moves. Strangely, his drift ability is completely absent, which you may miss in a few parts of Metropolitan Highway, but generally won’t worry about otherwise. Like the previous games of this style, Sonic takes turns kind of wider than you’d expect from most 3D platformer characters, but it’s managing his momentum and movement in that way that makes this style unique and interesting. Set aside the assumptions put in place by Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot, and you’ll be well on your way to mastering the game and blazing across the land.

Now, the custom character. You can choose your character’s gender, animal species, a few different head styles, eyes (shape and color), colors, voice, and victory pose. These options are relatively basic, which fits because Sonic characters don’t have much body variety anyway. Each species also has a special ability, but these are generally minor (wolf attracts nearby rings, rabbit has longer invincibility when hit, bird has a small double jump, etc.) You can still make some goofy looking faces with the right eyes, but the real meat of the customization is in clothing. Doing just about anything in the game will unlock more and more clothing pieces, from shirts to pants to jackets to capes to hats to glasses to shoes to kneepads to monocles to masks and more. There’s tons of this stuff and you can make some ridiculous creations. It’s actually one of the most fun things in the game.

The custom character’s basic controls are basically identical to Modern Sonic, though they lack a double jump unless you make a bird. Notably, however, they lack the boost, meaning that, though you still get moving at good speeds, you won’t quite be running over everything in your path. The custom character’s main form of attack outside of homing attacks is your equipped Wispon (Wisp weapon). Each of these serves two purposes: a regular attack that you can do at any time, and a special ability that you can perform when you pick up the corresponding Wisp. There are a variety of attacks and abilities, but they’re not all created equal by a long shot. For example, the Burst Wispon gives you a flamethrower that you can hold to torch enemies in front of you. This is one of the best ones due to not affecting your movement; you can run and jump freely while spraying fire, so you don’t lose momentum. Comparatively, the Lightning Wispon is an electric whip that forces you to either stop or move forward awkwardly while swinging (though its arc is pretty wide), and the Cube Wispon forces you to stop completely and attack twice to actually destroy enemies since its first swing traps them in cubes. (Destroying cubed enemies gives you extra rings, though, so at least it can get you more points than other Wispons.) Generally, you’ll find yourself annoyed by Wispons that stop your movement. One notable Wispon is the Drill, which gives you a powerful, super-fast charging attack that you keep your momentum from afterwards. It’s perfect for speedrunning.

The Wispon abilities that are activated from the item also vary. Burst lets you do a series of jumps until its meter runs out, Lightning allows you to dash along trails of rings and enemies, Drill grinds you across the ground and up walls, Asteroid makes you invincible for a period of time, etc. Some of these are good for finding alternate paths and hidden Red Rings throughout levels, while others are mostly utilities for making your life easier. Custom character levels are usually similar in layout and feel to Modern Sonic ones, apart from the changes made to make Wispons relevant.

Classic Sonic is the third character, and easily the worst. His levels are fully 2D, and on a basic level, he works like he would in Mania, right down to him having his Drop Dash. However, he just feels WRONG. Jump momentum is screwy, momentum when not rolling doesn’t work right, and he just generally feels like a brick with Sonic’s moves. Even without Sonic Mania’s release this year, he’d seem kind of off; with it, he’s just embarrassing. That said, his levels are designed competently apart from his final level, Iron Fortress, which is a giant pain in the ass, thanks to a forced autoscrolling section full of death pits. Classic Sonic is absolutely the worst part of Forces, and hopefully SEGA decides to re-hire the Mania team to appeal to Sonic nostalgia rather than trying and failing to make this sloppy gameplay style work. (Forces was in development before Mania, so it was likely too late to cut him out by time Mania started, so I give a slight pass in that sense.)

The fourth type of stage isn’t technically a new character; rather, it is Tag Team stages, where you control both Modern Sonic and your custom character at the same time. Controlling two characters at once is done very simply, as you are essentially controlling one character with both sets of abilities. There are the least of these stages compared to other characters. One notable thing about them is that there are very few 2D sections, with only one that lasts more than a few seconds. They also feature a “Double Boost” mechanic, where at certain pre-determined points you’re asked to mash a button, and after a few seconds, Sonic and your custom character rocket forward for a certain amount of time, running over enemies and gathering rings. It’s basically just a scripted sequence where you can rack up points, but it’s amusing to see your own creation as Sonic’s new best friend as the game’s cheesy vocal theme plays and you run over tons of enemies.

Notably, the game no longer has lives; you are instead awarded a bigger score bonus at the end of levels for dying less. Since previous 3D Sonic games already hurt your ranks for dying mid-level, having to spend lives to restart at checkpoints or retry levels would be a waste anyway. I’m not one to say that lives should be completely eliminated from games (and in fact I think Sonic Mania was better for having them, despite some complaints I’ve heard), but in this case they wouldn’t add to the experience in any meaningful way.

Level Design

Though level design is technically part of gameplay, it’s important enough in Sonic especially to need its own section. Since Modern Sonic, custom character, and Tag Team levels mostly hit the same design beats, I can talk about their design relatively interchangeably.

With pre-release footage, people were worried that levels were too short and too linear, with little to no shortcuts or things to do beyond blasting forward for a little bit. I can confirm, however, that the levels showcased pre-release are generally some of the least interesting, for whatever reason. Many of the levels have cool shortcuts and paths taken through either well timed jumps, sidesteps, homing attacks, or Wispon ability usage. Like previous Sonic games in this style, there’s more platforming in 2D than 3D, but generally rocketing your way through these levels, optimizing your performance, and finding the paths to take to collect all the Red Rings (there are five hidden in each level) is a lot of fun, with a single consistent caveat.

Many of the levels in Sonic Forces feel too short. This is less of a criticism of the actual time spent in each level, and more of a criticism of their pacing. Each level, consistently, feels sort of like two thirds of a level; each one seems like it should have a third section that brings together all the mechanics and layout techniques the level introduced and fully bring them to their conclusion. Instead, each time you get to where you think you’re about to reach that, the level ends instead. The thing that makes this especially sad is that what’s there tends to be a LOT of fun. You’ll be ripping through cool, interesting landscapes and you’ll wish you could do it more than you end up doing. As much fun as I ended up having with this game, I couldn’t help but feel a little short-changed from time to time.

Classic Sonic’s level design generally feels like a simplification of design you’d find in Sonic the Hedgehog 2; there’s nothing super special about it but it’s not bad either, apart from the aforementioned Iron Fortress. You’ll be more bothered by his actual control than with the levels.

The game also has its share of boss fights for each character, which range from “inoffensive” to “moderately fun,” though they’re never the best part of the game. The custom character probably has the best time with them, because using the Wispons to attack is more fun than homing attacking repeatedly, and some of them you can really speed up the fights with the right abilities. Unlike some other 3D Sonic games, they never really get frustrating, so I guess that’s a plus.

Graphics

Sonic Forces looks pretty nice. It varies by level, however. Forces’s take on Green Hill wasn’t quite as nice as Generations’s; it used more simple geometric shapes and less interesting foliage. Some of the other levels are much nicer looking, such as the Mystic Forest, Death Egg, Metropolis, and Empire Fortress stages. Many of the levels also have tons of action in the backgrounds, including giant robots, bombing runs, and in the case of the Empire Fortress stages, an all-out war. The lighting looks pretty nice, and the game runs at a rock-solid 60 frames per second on the PS4 version that I played. It won’t necessarily wow you, but it’s a game that looks pretty good.

Sound and Music

The game’s voice acting is cartoony and goofy, like you’d expect from a game about talking animals. Most of the levels have dialogue during them that advances the plot and describes action. There is an option to turn off all the in-level dialogue, which is useful when you’re replaying stages.

The music is pretty good, though not quite the series’s best. Each character has their own musical style in their levels. Modern Sonic generally has a mixture of guitars and synths in his levels. The compositions are cool, fast-paced, and sometimes kind of dramatic, but the lead synth in a lot of them isn’t quite idea. I still like a lot of the music, but I can understand it bothering you. The custom character has music characterized mostly by synths, other electronic instruments, and vocals. The lyrics are kinda cheesy, with the songs being about destiny, winning the fight, and other goofy things. You might find yourself singing along if you don’t take yourself seriously. Classic Sonic music actually uses Sega Genesis-styled instruments, though strangely enough it doesn’t sound like the kind you’d hear in a Genesis Sonic game. I can’t quite place the game I would hear these sounds in, though. A few are catchy and fun, but the others are pretty forgettable. Tag team stages have music similar to the custom character’s stages, but without lyrics (with the exception of one stage that reprises the game’s main hard rock vocal theme). They’re generally pretty forgettable.

Story

I can’t tell if Sonic Forces is taking itself seriously or if it’s being tongue-in-cheek about the series’s previous brushes with serious storytelling, but either way it’s pretty hilarious. Hearing goofy cartoon animals talk about the seriousness of war never stops being funny, whether intentionally or not. The story is always cheesy, going from an overly edgy cheesiness at the beginning to a more wholesome cheesiness near the end, where speeches about the power of friendship walk right out of your favorite anime into the dialogue. One notable bit of contrast is that, even in the serious parts of the story early on, Sonic himself is never particularly serious. He’s always chattering away and making wisecracks, which actually ends up being very entertaining due to everything else around him. If you only let yourself enjoy things that are legitimately good, you’ll probably be irritated, but anyone who can let themselves go and laugh at a B-movie atmosphere will have a lot of fun watching the cutscenes.

Replay Value

The game’s main story clocks in at only 4-ish hours over its 30 main stages/boss fights, but it doesn’t seem like it should really be any longer. It’s not particularly difficult to beat, either. There’s a good amount of replay value: like previous 3D Sonic games, you’re ranked on your score at the end of levels, so getting S ranks on every stage is one way to get a good amount of time from the game. Each stage also has five Red Rings to find, giving you a reason to revisit levels and find all the different paths. Once you’ve collected all the Red Rings in a stage, a set of Number Rings will appear, which have to be collected in order from 5 to 1 descending. And once you’ve collected all of those, a set of Silver Moon Rings will appear in a level, which must all be collected in a short period of time. Red Rings are the only of these collectibles that unlock extra levels; the others are purely for satisfaction, avatar items, and Trophies/Achievements. The extra levels aren’t particularly meaty; they’re purely 2D platforming challenges with either Modern Sonic or the custom character that are focused around singular gimmicks that don’t appear in the rest of the game. They’re fun enough, I guess, but they don’t really take advantage of what makes this kind of Sonic game special. Finally, the game has leaderboards for level times, though unsurprisingly they seem to be hacked to hell and back on the PC version. Since getting the best times in levels takes a lot of clever optimization, it can be a lot of fun to do your absolute best. If you’re not driven to better yourself, though, then Sonic Forces loses a lot of appeal, as a single playthrough will be over pretty quickly.

Conclusion

At its best, Sonic Forces is a fast-paced, fun action platformer where you’ll be blazing through cool environments and feeling the flow as you nail all your homing attacks, boosts, Wispon moves, quick steps, and slides. At its worst, you’ll be wondering why Sonic Team bothered to bring back Classic Sonic at all. Sonic Forces also doesn’t have much to offer in the way of exploration, nor is its main story all that long, so if you don’t like optimizing your performance then you’ll find yourself uninterested pretty quickly. Still, if you like the feeling of nailing every movement, Sonic Forces is a lot of fun, even if the levels feel like they should be a bit more fleshed out. If you already dislike the boost gameplay from Unleashed, Colors, and Generations, Forces won’t change your mind. If you enjoyed those games, or if you just have an open mind, most of this game can be a solid piece of entertainment. Plus, there’s a special joy that comes from dressing your cartoon animal up in completely ridiculous outfits. As a budget title (launching at $40), there’s a good amount of fun to be had in Sonic Forces, despite its issues. Hopefully Sonic Team takes the right lessons from this game and sticks to the fast-paced boost gameplay they’ve been building on and look to the future while leaving the imitations and celebrations of the series’s early days to the fine folks who made Sonic Mania.

Buy if:

you already like “Boost Sonic”

you enjoy optimizing your performance in short, action-packed challenges

you can stomach a couple of irritating bits

you enjoy chuckling at goofy, cheesy writing

Avoid if:

you’re looking for a solid Classic Sonic experience

you prefer longer games or exploration in your platformers

you’re not used to adjusting to controls that feel different from the genre standard

cheesy things irritate you

[keegames]

Kirby Super Star Is A Perfect Game

What is a perfect video game? It’s a video game that is designed to be everything it needs to be and nothing it doesn’t. Control, mechanics, area design, graphics, and sound all come together to form a cohesive experience that inspires the exact feelings the developer is searching for. Nothing feels unnecessary, or like a waste of time. The pacing is expertly tuned to make sure you’re always enjoying it but never overwhelmed. These are some of the aspects that go into a perfect video game.

Kirby Super Star, released for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1996, is a perfect video game.

Let’s back up a little. Kirby Super Star is a 2D side-scrolling action game (I hesitate to call it a “platformer” because any actual platforming is pretty trivialized by Kirby’s ability to fly indefinitely, and combat is a major focus) where Kirby utilizes their unique ability to eat enemies and copy their abilities to systematically pound the snot out of various other enemies and bosses. This formula was first spawned with Kirby’s Adventure on the NES (while Kirby’s first game was Kirby’s Dream Land for Game Boy, Adventure defined the “Copy” ability that is utilized in nearly all future Kirby games), but Super Star goes above and beyond in order to make a truly wonderful game. Let’s explore why this game is perfect, shall we?

Reason 1: Kirby

To start our exploration of why this game is perfect, we must start at the game’s biggest constant: Kirby themselves. Kirby, a genderless orb who loves to have a good time, is simply wonderful to control. Kirby is neither too slow nor two fast; they walk along at a leisurely pace, but dash with a bit more urgency if you double-tap left or right. Kirby, like just about every side-scroller character not named Spencer, can jump, of course. Unique to Kirby, though, is that Kirby can puff up and fill with air with another tap of the jump button, and then press jump repeatedly to fly. Kirby can fly for as long as they want, meaning that navigating pits and hazards is generally no obstacle. Pressing the attack button while flying causes Kirby to spit out air and fall towards the ground. The act of spitting out air also fires a small projectile that does a bit of damage to non-boss enemies. Kirby can also guard against enemy attacks, but many attacks will still do slight bits of damage to a guarding Kirby, and a few attacks cannot be guarded against at all.

Kirby’s basic attack is sucking in enemies like a vacuum. Most normal enemies can be sucked up; a few specific normal enemies cannot, nor can any mid-boss or boss. Once Kirby is comically large thanks to holding an enemy in their mouth, they can either spit the enemy out as a projectile or swallow them to destroy them. While some enemies have no effect when swallowed, others give Kirby a special power, which is where the game’s real depth comes into play.

Reason 2: Copy

Copy abilities are the heart of Kirby Super Star. When Kirby has a copy ability, their inhale ability is replaced by a set of attacks unique to that ability. While in previous games each ability had a single attack, Kirby Super Star decided to dramatically expand every ability. Abilities now contain multiple attacks depending on whether you press the attack button, hold it, press it multiple times, press it while pressing a direction, while jumping, while dashing, while dashing and jumping, while close to an enemy… Kirby’s moves rival fighting games in variety. Not only does Kirby have a ton of moves, most of them are useful, fun, and satisfying to use. From the sound effects of attacks and hits to the beautiful, flashy attack effects, to the fun of performing combos on enemies and tearing down bosses, Kirby Super Star is just a fun game to fight in. Oh, and copying has one more neat use…

Reason 3: Co-op

At any time, Kirby can give away their power in order to generate a partner that can be controlled either by the AI or a second player. This partner is generally based on one of the enemies that Kirby can get the power from, and they almost always share moves with the ability they were made from. They have their own health bar, but if they die no lives are lost and they can be created again freely, making them a good take on “little sibling co-op.” If the partner picks up a healing item, they can share it with Kirby by touching them, and vice-versa. Going through Kirby Super Star’s episodes with a friend is a wonderful experience.

Reason 4: Episodes

Kirby Super Star is made up of seven main episodes. Four of these are unlocked when you first start the game, the fifth is unlocked after beating a specific starting one, the sixth is unlocked after beating the previous five, and the seventh is unlocked after beating the sixth. The episodes are not just sets of levels, however; they each have their own core design principle that makes them feel unique. The episodes are as follows:

-Spring Breeze is a short and easy episode designed to introduce the player to Kirby’s abilities. Fun fact: it’s also a remake of Kirby’s Dream Land!

-Dynablade is a slightly bigger follow-up to Spring Breeze, with more levels, more powers, tougher challenges, and a few secrets to find.

-Gourmet Race is a quick race against King Dedede where you are scored on the amount of food you collect on the way, with bonuses awarded for finishing a segment first.

-The Great Cave Offensive takes place in a single, giant, interconnected area and asks Kirby to explore it and find treasure in a more nonlinear fashion than most of the game.

-Meta Knight’s Revenge is a fast-paced, intense episode where the levels have time limits and the enemies are strong and fierce. It also features dialogue from the villains and small cutscenes, giving it a lot of personality.

-Milky Way Wishes is the final “normal” episode, and features a bunch of levels you can do in any order, as well as harder versions of bosses from previous episodes. Its most notable aspect, however, is that Kirby’s normal Copy ability doesn’t function; instead, you find special items that grant you each power permanently, which you can then select from the pause menu at any time.

-The Arena is a special episode where you are tasked with fighting all of the game’s bosses in a row without losing a life, with only limited healing items available between fights. It’s the game’s toughest challenge.

The episodic format keeps Kirby Super Star feeling fresh. The pacing is wonderful, and you can take breaks from longer episodes like The Great Cave Offensive if you find yourself getting tired.

Reason 5: Bosses

Kirby Super Star’s bosses are big, flashy, varied, and above all, fun to fight. They all have a variety of attacks and patterns that are always fun, always fair, and regularly a pretty solid challenge. No wonder there’s an episode that’s solely dedicated to fighting all of them!

Reason 6: Music

Kirby Super Star’s soundtrack is amazing. It’s upbeat, bombastic, and catchy as all hell. Plus, unlike a lot of Super Nintendo games, it features really punchy bass and strong percussion, making it really stand out in your ears. There’s a nice variety, too, from the upbeat and happy tunes of Spring Breeze and Dynablade’s levels to the big, adventurous compositions of The Great Cave Offensive to the intense, menacing sounds of Revenge of Meta Knight. Heck, I could probably write an entire article on how brilliant all of Revenge of Meta Knight’s music is in terms of setting mood.

Reason 6: Yo-Yo Kirby

It’s Kirby with a yo-yo!!! And they can breakdance!!!

Reason 7: That Boss Fight Against The Thing Where It’s Set Up Like An RPG With A Status Window

It’s So Cool Guys

Reason 8: aaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I LOVE THIS GAME

*ahem*

Kirby Super Star has no flaws and is an extremely fun experience all the way through, no matter how many times I play it. I think that it’s one of the few examples of a perfect video game, and that it’s the best game on the SNES. (I apologize to Super Metroid fans, Link to the Past fans, Mega Man X fans, Super Castlevania IV fans, and fans of all of Squaresoft’s RPGs of the time.)

(No I don’t.)

[keegames]

Expectations and Gaming Mentality: In Defense Of (What We’ve Seen Of) Sonic Forces

Sonic Forces, the latest 3D entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog series, has had multiple new gameplay videos and trailers released in the past few weeks. With every bit of footage, more scrutiny follows, with the biggest criticism being of the linear level design. Considering that Sonic Mania, with its massive, multi-tiered, sprawling 2D levels, is fresh in everyone’s mind, it’s no shock that people see a 3D game with a more linear design as a step backwards. Still, as someone always open to various design intentions in games, I’ve decided to take a bit to write about the sort of thing Sonic Forces seems to be going for. This probably won’t change minds, but hopefully it’ll be another stepping stone to more nuanced and accepting games discussion, which is really what I want more than anything out of this blog.

As I said in a previous post, players can get different things from their experiences with games. People play games for different reasons, and they’re all valid, and they all have different games that serve them best. But what happens when a long-running series drastically changes the kind of experience it offers? What happens when people whose tastes were met with early entries are no longer served by the latest ones?

The Genesis Sonic games are pretty unorthodox in terms of design compared to a lot of 2D platformers of the time. Unlike 2D Mario, levels are not singular paths to the end with perhaps a small secret area or single path fork leading to a secret exit; they are large and spread out over a wide area, vertically and horizontally. However, the levels don’t REQUIRE you to explore various corners to complete them. You don’t have to find objects; there is a singular goal to reach. The result of this design is that classic Sonic is very free. You can utilize the games’ physics (and, in Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Mania, the special abilities of Tails and Knuckles) to reach all sorts of new places, but you’re never forced to. The reward for them is generally only small extras for your current playthrough; rings, temporary power-ups, occasionally extra lives. Basically, in classic Sonic, you can take the levels in many ways for no reason other than your own desire, which is unusual in 2D platformers. This freedom helped endear these games to many players of all ages.

Sonic’s tumultuous history with 3D games is well-known, but there is a consistent bit of design that started with Sonic Adventure 2 and continued through all of his 3D adventures: the grading system. At the end of a level in nearly all 3D Sonic games, you’re given a letter grade, usually ranging from E (worst) to A or S (best). This grade is usually based on your score, which includes a time bonus, a bonus for how many rings you have at the end of the stage, as well as any points gathered from collecting rings, destroying enemies, and performing certain other game-specific actions (though a few games or missions within games base your grade solely on time).

Grading systems like these show up in other games beyond Sonic, such as action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, and they generally serve a specific purpose. That purpose is pushing the player towards flawless, optimized play. Do it right, do it fast, and make no mistakes. It’s no coincidence that 3D Sonic level design really started to become more linear with Sonic Adventure 2; it’s designed to push players from exploration to optimization.

Personally, I love the “optimization” style of game design. It’s a choice straight out of intense arcade games, where it’s all about making the perfect maneuvers to maximize your score. After you beat the game once, you go back to it to try and REALLY perfect it. There’s an amazing feeling of satisfaction when your performance improves through nothing but your own skill, rather than in-game character upgrades or something similar. The thing is, not everybody is looking for that in single-player games. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that it’s not actually a common desire, considering the kinds of single-player games that are popular these days (big RPGs and open-world games that are more about exploration, tons of content, and character/world interaction). Not only that, but with how beloved the Genesis Sonic games and Sonic Mania are, people probably want to see that style advanced into 3D, rather than jettisoned to make something completely different. The expectations of a long-running series are different than those of a stand-alone game, and as much as games should be taken on their own merit, it’s not wrong to have those expectations.

Basically, I’m not saying that the things people are saying about Sonic Forces’s level design are wrong, because they’re not. What I am saying, however, is that they don’t inherently make a worse game, just a different one. I don’t think there’s inherently anything wrong with 3D Sonic’s current focus on improving and optimizing your runs to get the best grades. However, I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with not liking that. I just think games discussion needs to move beyond classifying everything as “good” and “bad,” especially if it’s not broken on a technical level (which 3D Sonic games certainly have been in the past, but not recently outside of Boom). Games can be many, many different things, and how we talk about them should respect that.

Sure, Sonic Forces might turn out to have more damning problems. The game’s not out yet, so I can’t say for sure. (Expect a thorough review/analysis on this blog, by the way.) But I think that the game deserves some respect for what it is, rather than simply critiquing it for what it isn’t. I’m not asking anyone to like linear games that are about score optimization, but I want it to be known that they’re valid.

And that I like them. Because, hey, I get to have opinions too, right?

[keegames]

“It’s Not For You” - A Medium’s Breadth

With the recent release of Cuphead, an action-packed run-and-gun title with gorgeous art emulating the style of classic Fleischer Studios cartoons, a discussion on challenge in games has reared its ugly head once again. A few articles positing that the game needs to allow its challenges to be skipped have appeared on gaming websites, and responses declaring that the authors need to insert themselves inside themselves have sprung up in comments and on social media. Those who willingly align themselves with GamerGate and the modern, dangerous alt-right movement that it helped spawn are using this game as yet another way to spew their toxic sense of entitled superiority towards anybody who thinks differently from them. It’s a bit sad that a labor of love like Cuphead has brought out such anger in people, but like many controversies, there’s a real discussion to be had that’s being drowned out by frankly idiotic rhetoric.

I’ll keep things simple: no video game is for everyone who plays games.

The basic concept that everybody has unique tastes may sound so obvious that an article on the idea is unnecessary, but let’s explore it anyway. Most people purchase a game on the assumption that they’ll enjoy it; this is the core of entertainment in general. We make these assumptions based on information available to us about the game. This information can include video footage, screenshots, pre-release impressions, and more. However, if one makes an assumption of enjoyment based on one element of a game while not taking into account another that they end up disliking, then the consumer may end up feeling disappointed. Many times this isn’t the player’s fault; if a particularly frustrating segment of a game isn’t shown before a purchase is made, then a player feeling betrayed when they reach that section is understandable. However, sometimes a lack of research from a buyer leads them into being disappointed in a way that was easily avoidable. I think that frustrations that spawn from having to repeatedly play boss fights in Cuphead until you overcome them fall into the latter category.

Cuphead made a splash in the gaming community thanks to its wonderful visuals, to the point that I think that many people bought the game because of those without stopping to pay attention to what kind of game it really was. The information was readily available, however; Cuphead is a run-and-gun 2D action game, a decidedly old-school genre built on intense challenge. The cornerstones of the genre include series like Contra and Metal Slug, which are widely known to be difficult games, and the old-school challenge that permeates this style of game is present in Cuphead as well. I suspect that people frustrated with Cuphead’s difficulty wouldn’t normally play something like Contra or Metal Slug, but were entranced by the game’s amazing art and animation. If these people had put the gameplay style in their mind first, they probably would have skipped it entirely.

Now, here’s the catch: not wanting to play intense, challenging arcade games is PERFECTLY FINE.

What the screaming bozos latching onto the “journalists aren’t good at games” shit-flinging narrative are missing is that their constant put-downs of people who don’t like intense old-school challenge games come from the exact same place mentally. Just like those journalists who don’t think games should be exercises in repetition until success is reached, they think that games should ONLY be that. These self-proclaimed gamers use their narrow view of what video games are as a badge of superiority when the medium offers much more, and has for many years.

The idea of games as things other than hardcore challenges dates back many, many years, which throws a damper on the tendency of these gamers to look back on the late 80s and the 90s as a time of “pure” games. For example, The Secret of Monkey Island, a game about exploring a world and having humorous interactions with many characters, had no way to actually lose at all, and that came out in 1990! SimCity, the seminal city management simulator, was released a year earlier and had no singular full goal or win condition at all, though it had a number of scenarios that a player could challenge themselves to build a successful city through. The kind of player that would enjoy exploring and interacting in The Secret of Monkey Island might find themselves utterly annoyed with, say, Mega Man 3, a challenging NES platformer released in the same year, and vice-versa. And that’s the beauty of games, really. The basic concept of interactive computer entertainment can manifest in so many different ways that saying that a specific game should change to fit your tastes, or that people who don’t enjoy a specific game are worthy of scorn, is just doing a disservice to the medium.

Basically, what I want people to get from this article is that there are SO MANY different games that offer SO MANY different things. Games that you would never be interested in playing offer things to people very different from you. Not only that, no single developer is obligated to please you, specifically, with their game. They might not be making it for you or for people who like the things you do. And that’s perfectly fine. The only thing that’s not fine is talking down to developers OR players of games that aren’t your style.

P.S. For the record, my gaming tastes skew towards more linear/arcade-style action games with deep mechanics where mastery is expected for completion, higher scores/ranks, or both. This is not an absolute rule, however. Sometimes I do enjoy more story-based games that are less focused on mastery if the plot and aesthetics sweep me up.

P.P.S. If you’re wondering why I use some more heated language and style when talking about far right gamers, it’s because I think they’re fucking scum. Sorry if it seems unprofessional, but this blog is a hobby anyway.

[keegames]

AAA Value vs. Focused Design, or The 3D Sonic Problem

I’ll not mince words: I’m a Sonic fan. Ever since I borrowed the Sonic & Knuckles Collection for our old PCs, I’ve loved what the hedgehog has brought to gaming. As it stands, however, Sonic has had a rocky history with his 3D games. Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), Sonic Unleashed, Colors, Generations, Lost World… even the best of these games have had glaring flaws, and the worst have been some of the most infamously bad games in gaming history. Still, you can always catch me anticipating the next adventure from the blue blur, as even his worst games provide ample material to analyze.

While I could write entire chapters on what works and what doesn’t in nearly all of these games from a design standpoint, I’ll instead cut to the chase and focus on the core problem that has plagued Sonic ever since his jump to 3D in 1999 (and, perhaps, even longer than that). Many of the series’s issues can be connected to a trend that goes far beyond Sonic or even SEGA.

Size, Replayability, and Value

When you look at modern big-budget single-player-only video games, one thing you might notice is that they’re all HUGE. Maybe they’re a 100-hour RPG, or maybe they’re a massive open world with tons of collectibles or side quests. Maybe they’re both! Whatever the case, single-player games have gotten bigger over the years. There always has to be more to do. This isn’t new, of course. Ever since the 16-bit era, the “game you can beat in an afternoon” has fallen by the wayside. It’s not shocking; games are expensive, after all. Games like Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past offered hours upon hours of gameplay before you would ever see the credits. The switch of games to 3D continued this trend; first time players will spend an incredibly long time getting the 70 Power Stars needed to reach Super Mario 64’s ending, much less nabbing all 120.

This transition to “bigger games” was, necessarily, a rejection of arcade design. Arcade games have to let more players play them in a short period of time, which is why many of them are difficult to learn or play, and also short to complete once learned. Arcade games derive their replay value from being difficult to master. This is also where the concept of “high scores” comes from; what better way to make players want to play again than clearly numerically rating their performance? Console games, however, did not have such design goals. Once a player purchased a console game, there was no more money involved, and a single copy was generally played for a long time by one or a few people. Innovations like the ability to save progress were also introduced to the design space, and data space became larger. Developers could now make every hour of a player’s time with the game different content, rather than expecting them to play the same thing over and over again.

However, with what was gained, something was, too, lost. The idea of playing the same content to improve your performance was lessened in importance. Scoring systems became irrelevant, and eventually disappeared altogether from many games. Many games nowadays don’t give any importance to a player’s performance at all beyond the basic level needed to complete the game. Gaming as a whole has a decidedly different mindset, thanks to this transition.

A Team Lost In Time

So, how does all this relate to Sonic? Let’s look at the original Sonic the Hedgehog, released in 1991. Sonic the Hedgehog has no save system, and it has 18 levels, each of which takes between 2 and 4 minutes to complete once a player can do so without dying. Super Mario World, a game with 72 levels with similar lengths of time taken to beat them, was released earlier. Sonic levels, however, offer something different. Most Super Mario World levels offer either a single path or a path that branches in a single spot, with the second path reached by performing a specific task. Many of Sonic the Hedgehog’s levels, however, have many different paths stacked on top of each other. Reaching them tends to require careful understanding of both the levels and of Sonic’s unique physics. Green Hill Zone, specifically, was designed with lots of ways to complete it, because the designers knew that it would be played every single time a player turned on the game. The series continued to build on its formula in its sequels, and even though a save feature was added in Sonic the Hedgehog 3, the game didn’t come close to the size of some of the bigger games of the time without “locking on” with Sonic & Knuckles, which essentially combined two games into one continuous experience.

After the Genesis, Sonic Team took a break from Sonic, but their two Saturn games help our perspective on the current situation of the franchise. NiGHTS into Dreams… and Burning Rangers were both very short games in a gaming landscape increasingly intolerant of short games. In order to give those games replay value, Sonic Team introduced an innovation that would enter the Sonic series with Sonic Adventure 2: a grading system. Both games expected you to go back to them and improve at each individual stage until you could get an A rank on them all. While both of these games are cult classics, neither gained large popularity. So, with the Dreamcast, Sonic Team finally made the jump into modern game design.

Sonic Adventure was, for the time, a big game. With six separate stories, fully voiced, lengthy cutscenes, hub worlds, minigames, and a virtual pet system, Sonic Adventure had all the trappings of a modern console game. However, it wasn’t all good. The characters that weren’t Sonic tended to just use shorter versions of his levels for the most part, and much of their gameplay was half-baked. While the game’s sequel technically had every character’s every level be unique, many of them reused assets, and the flawed non-Sonic gameplay continued to put a damper on the game. As the Sonic series continued, the 3D games tried various ways to make them proper modern games in length, all of which ended up flawed. Even Sonic Colors, which had a singular gameplay style and was generally well-received, ended up reusing lots of level geometry with small alterations and additions in the form of easily repeatable objects like boxes and platforms. I think that Sonic Team could make a short 3D Sonic game where the replay value is focused on the ranking system and it would be of high-quality, but their need to live up to modern console game design standards inevitably hurts everything they produce.

It’s Not Their Fault (Entirely)

While there are definitely questionable decisions going into every 3D Sonic game, the crux of the matter is that the need for “big” games is killing the concept of shorter games that beg to be replayed, at least at the budget and price point of modern AAA video games. The concept of “content” is valued to an insane degree, and I think that that might be hurting the variety of games that get made. We’ve created a culture where seeing the credits or reaching “100% complete” is the end of a player’s experience with a single-player game, no matter what. A player is only expected to go back to a game until all of its content is exhausted, at which point it’s tossed aside for the next game. The drive of the industry towards “bigger and better” has conditioned consumers towards treating games as singular experiences. Consumers then feed this treatment back into the industry, demanding that games be bigger in a single playthrough instead of deeper in multiple. It’s possible that these desires have even contributed to the terrible working conditions in the gaming industry, where people have to work awful crunch hours to put together the gigantic AAA games that gamers and publishers demand.

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of mastering something. A short game that encourages its players to master it causes said players to learn said game inside and out. It lets them get closer to the game, and to its developers. There’s an experience in plumbing the depths of a game that you don’t get from just playing once. I think it’s a worthwhile feeling for developers to chase, and it’s something that gets lost in our 80-hour open world single-completionist AAA game mindset.

Maybe I’m unusual. Maybe replaying a single-player game to get better at it is an extremely niche desire. Maybe nobody else would see a $60 value in a short, polished action game with scoring and gameplay systems meant to encourage replaying for the many hours that other games take to complete once. But if the market’s there, then it might be really helpful for developers, publishers, and consumers alike to let these ideas into their hearts. The hard-working folks in the industry might be able to have more time to themselves, publishers might have to spend less, and consumers might develop deeper attachments to their games.

And maybe, just maybe, Sonic Team would be able to put out an unequivocally great 3D Sonic game.

[keegames]

Guilty Gear: Why It’s The Wildest Fighter On The Market

While it’s never enjoyed the popularity of Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, or Tekken, Arc System Works’s debut fighting series, Guilty Gear, has spent the better part of two decades carving out a niche for itself. Its fast-paced, weapons-based, mobile combat took influence from some of both Capcom and SNK’s more experimental fighters and wrapped it up in an aesthetic that combined 90’s anime with American heavy metal. After a rocky first entry, the series came into its own with Guilty Gear X and has been iterating ever since (ignoring the detour into 3D action-RTS hybrid that was Guilty Gear 2 Overture).

If there’s one word that describes how Guilty Gear plays, it’s “wild.” The game regularly brings its players into situations that require them to think on the fly. High-level matches frequently end with both players scrambling for that final hit, players drop combos and leave gaps in their setups, and minor mistakes completely change the tide of entire tournaments. While some of this can be attributed to the nature of competitive fighters, I think that Guilty Gear in particular has a number of design decisions that make the game more unpredictable. What’s super interesting is that none of these choices  use randomness to cause unpredictability.* This write-up on what these choices are will likely use various terms known to fighting game players, so bear with me. If you have a question as to what something means, let me know. And with that, let’s take a look.

Manual Air Teching

“Air teching” describes the ability to flip out of air combos that you’re on the receiving end of. Aerial hits in Guilty Gear have a certain amount of time where you’re forced to be in hitstun (and therefore can be juggled, guaranteed), but after that time is up, you have to press an attack button to escape from hitstun, or else you can be juggled in what’s known as an “invalid combo” (because you COULD’VE avoided it, but you didn’t). This feature has carried over to Arc System Works’s other games like Blazblue and Persona 4 Arena (as well as plenty of other fighters influenced by ASW’s work). Persona 4 Arena and later Blazblue entries have made a quality-of-life change to the feature, however; they allow you to hold any button during hitstun to automatically escape at the first possible moment. Despite being released after some of those games, however, Guilty Gear Xrd has not added hold-to-tech; you MUST press the button to escape air combos. To some, this may seem like an arbitrary clinging to tradition, but I think it’s a deliberate choice. This extra input causes extra uncertainty, as the game doesn’t give any visual indication that hitstun is no longer “true.” You’re more likely to be late and eat extra damage, or to be mashing a button and end up throwing out an attack that you didn’t want to.

Guts

Guts is a system that boosts your defense when your health is low, allowing for comeback situations. This is nothing new to fighting games, having been around since Street Fighter 2. However, Guilty Gear takes it a step further by having different Guts boosts for each character. This, when combined with characters having different defense values, makes it very hard to determine exactly when a combo will KO your opponent. The Guts system means matches can be dragged out to the bitter end when they weren’t expected to.

Juggle Weights and Wakeup Timing

As in many fighters, certain moves in Guilty Gear can launch the opponent into the air, while hits done in the air cause the opponent to rise slightly, allowing for high-flying aerial combos. But characters in Guilty Gear can have different weights; they rise different amounts on hit, meaning that some combos that work on some characters won’t work on others because they’ll hit the ground too fast. Meanwhile, after being knocked down, every character in Guilty Gear gets up at a slightly different speed. A large part of Guilty Gear (and many other 2D fighters) is forcing your opponent to block attacks as soon as they get up so you can continue offensive pressure. These differences in wakeup timing can be the difference between the opponent blocking with no options and them being able to jab you out of whatever attack you try to do. It’s almost impossible for players to exactly remember and adjust for every single character’s properties, so even offense becomes unpredictable.

Attack Clashing

When two active attack hitboxes in Guilty Gear touch each other, they clash, which is accompanied by a special sound effect, a unique spark, and a quick freeze of time. Players can cancel clashes into any of their moves freely, even if they otherwise wouldn’t be able to cancel that move. It’s generally impossible to purposely clash moves, so reacting to this special event is tough, let alone picking the right move to follow up with.

What does it all mean?

I think it’s no coincidence that all these mechanics exist in Guilty Gear as they are. The game is deliberately designed to be unpredictable and to prevent players from becoming complacent. These mechanics cause extra mistakes from even the best players, and it keeps everyone on their toes. Not only that, it commendably does this without adding actual randomness to the game.* The better player in Guilty Gear is not just the one that knows all the combos and setups and out-thinks their opponent; they’re also the one who can take into account all the bits of uncertainty and handle unexpected situations on the fly. You can’t get comfortable in Guilty Gear; you have to be ready for anything. All these design decisions keep the game wild on a level that most other fighting games can’t reach. Guilty Gear has a clear commitment in its design that shows in these mechanics, and I think that’s extremely smart design.

*Guilty Gear Xrd did add a mechanic that is completely random called Danger Time, which activates occasionally whenever attacks clash. The series also features a character named Faust who has a move that throws random objects with different effects. While it’s not completely free of randomness, the fact remains that Guilty Gear is a great example of how unpredictability can be added to a game without dice rolls.