More importantly, later Sonic games would handle rail grinding (and specifically rail switching) much better, as early as fuckin' Shadow the Hedgehog. From what I can see of the video example, you don't really control the speed or momentum of how fast you grind, unlike in most Sonic games that feature rails.ģ. Ratchet and Clank's rail grinding mechanics are more automated than that of Sonic's. You're comparing the rail grinding mechanics of a 17+ year old game by devs who, regardless of their talent or lack thereof, may have been crunching to get the game off, to a modern game with better time and budget and a better handle on game design due to years of experience.Ģ. I will concede that Heroes' rail grinding mechanics (more specifically, it's rail switching mechanics) are rather crap. Ratchet & clank never had any of these issues, here's a rail section from the new game (what do you know, IT WORKS PERFECTLY FINE) People complained about Sonic 2006 making you play through all three stories to reach the end chapter, but at least the gameplay was different enough that you're not just playing the same game three times, there's a story that unfolds as you play from different perspectives, and Dark Pit in Kid Icarus: Uprising is a good example of how that dynamic could work, and I think one of the writers for that game said they specifically were trying to parody Shadow.Īnd finally, the True Ending: That's an insane amount of hoops to jump through to unlock that looks like a significant amount of content. And maybe played up the rivalry with Sonic more-basically making him a Gary Oak with delusions of gothhood. On Shadow: I think he would work better if they intentionally wrote him as someone who's trying too hard to be cool. Someone'll have to check the engineering on that one. The turret drones in BioShock have two opposing rotors mounted on the same stalk, which might be possible if you had one post inside a hollow one separated by bearings. You can also get around this by having two or more rotors that spin in opposite directions, like Chinooks and quadcopters. On the subject of Tails flying: Physics violations of the attachment points aside, can we talk about how that's just not how helicopters work? Seriously, there's a reason they have a sideways propeller on the tail that's always spinning: because otherwise, the whole helicopter would be. And I feel like the GameCube version would have made X and Y actually look like the kidney bean shapes that it had. On skyboxes: This is cheap, but if nothing else works, you might consider upscaling them and then running them through a lens blur filter, to hide the crust and make it look like the product of limited depth of field?īy the way, what control scheme were you playing this with? The HUD suggests the existence of a Z button, which I've never seen on any controller other than the GameCube. My theory is that you'd want to not just temporarily ignore the inputs and let the character coast on momentum, but then continue ignoring the input until the stick is shifted to a significantly different angle, similar to how "flick stick" differentiates a flick from a turn. I'm interested in hearing from people who worked on other platformers and what they did to get around this issue. Crisis City was especially bad with that. Same with camera changes that send you flying off in a direction that was correct before the camera changed. 2006 had that problem too, in a big way, and it's interesting to learn that it was an ongoing issue that Sonic Team struggled with.
You mentioned the game occasionally continuing to accept input during what's supposed to be a scripted sequence. I never realized there even was a console Sonic game made between Adventure, which I'd heard people nickname "Sonic Adventure 3". I mean, I had heard the name in passing, but I never knew anything about it, including when it came out. OK, this left me with a lot of things to talk about, so going down the list:įirst off, I didn't even know this game existed.