OBSERVATIONS: Score by Sprint

Don't you just hate that the scoring system in most modern Sonic games feels almost pointless? You can get the highest score possible, get every ring and defeat every enemy, but you were five seconds below the average.

D RANK

I'd say this is an issue that plagues a number of titles. Sonic Colours wasn't too bad about it, but then you have stuff like Sonic Generations and Lost World. The worst offender has to be, ironically, a fangame; Sonic World. I tried so hard to like this game, but the core experience is just so poorly designed. It lacks some of the quality-of-life features that other modern games have, the mods have a chance of crashing the game, the game takes forever to load, the physics are just wonky in certain areas and the grading system is...basically the reason I even did this. As a control I did something similar to what is above. I went through the same level, once as normal Sonic and once as Boom Sonic (you have to mod Boom Sonic into the game, and he looks hideous amongst the nice crisp models of the other characters).

For Normal Sonic, I followed the level as I normally would; I got every ring and tried to not lose them, I attacked every enemy I could in chains, found as many item boxes and secrets as I could and got a high score for it. D Rank. For Boom Sonic I just blitzed through the level with no regard for rings or enemies, so my score was piddling but I got to the end in half the time. A Rank, because this game is stupidly stingy with giving out S-Ranks even when you're sequence breaking.

I understand that, on the surface, this can look a little petty. Like I know that it looks like I'm whining about not being able to get a high score in a video game. But the issue at hand is bigger than just a letter at the end of the level - its more that the whole speed aspect is glorified too much.

Wait, let me explain. I understand that Sonic is supposed to be speedy. It's what the franchise was built on, and every attempt to go slower has just not succeded (Heroes, Werehog, Rise of Lyric and so on). But there is a limit to how fast you can get before things just start to go wrong. Take, for example, the Genesis and Dreamcast games; Sonic 1 to 3&K (and also Mania), Sonic Adventure 1 and 2. Now in those games, you can go fast, but compared to modern Sonic titles it feels a touch slower in comparison, yes? But the level design (mostly) set up the speed so that it was a reward, not the constant. You got loop-de-loops and corkscrews and the like, but inbetween you have genuine moments of platforming perfection, so you still had a challenge. A zone that does this both right and wrong is Chemical Plant from Sonic 2 and Generations and Mania and Forces and probably the next Sonic game to come along, too. Everyone remembers running down all those half-pipes in the zone, and it felt amazing...but then you had to go platforming in areas with the Mega Mack and then you just got crushed by the endless moving blocks everywhere.

As for the Boost Gameplay games (Colours, Generations, Forces), speed is all that there is. "Gotta Go Fast" is the resident meme, speed pads are everywhere, Boost is omnipresent...and Sonic's controls suffer for it. While he may have been slower in the previous games, he was for the most part more controllable for it, the exceptions being Sonic 06, Secret Rings and the Werehog stages from Unleashed. Whereas the Adventure games had the issue of control being fine when going slow, but then suffering when you had to speed up, Boost!Sonic is only easily controllable at top speed and anything below that makes him a chore to control. A good example of this is Sonic Unleashed's day stages. Don't get me wrong, I love that game with all my heart, but Sonic handles like a stick of butter being pushed across a greased frying pan; slips and slides with the tiniest movements and just cannot stop in any effective manner. This is fine in most of the stages where you must make fast movements and everything is straighter. But when you have to slow down and do some more precise platforming? Hoo boy.

Of course I don't blame them for doing that. When the Boost games work as intended, they work fantastically. But when they require you to slow down, it's like your comitting a sin against nature and Sonic will refuse to cooperate. And then he falls down a pit and dies. Now of course, Sonic Generations improved this massively, but I replayed the game while at the Super Western Sonic 2017 convention and I thought the controls were a lot heavier than I remember when I owned the game. Sonic Lost World, for all its issues, was going in the right direction with this; you started slow, could move faster as the push of a button and platforming was more important than sheer speed. But Lost World's questionable level and general game design meant it came off as janky and hard to wrap your head around. Alongside, you know, that pathetic excuse for a parkour system.

This adherance to speed has gone so far that people throw a fit when you have to slow down; you "gotta go fast". But the adherance to it is so great that speed is first and flow is second. Part of me wonders if that's why Sonic Forces' general level design is so linear, alongside the more setpeice-driven style of the gameplay; it's hard to make a good level when the character you're playing as just isn't that precise and will just burn rubber throughout the whole game anyway. Hence why the Avatar stuff is the best kind of stuff in the game, as their slower speed allows for more precise platforming integrated into the combat.

"But Perry, what about Classic Sonic in Forces?" You ask. Oh ho ho..._{oh i'll get to that pandering little shit some other day}

But I'm getting off topic here. What I'm saying is that speed is perhaps a little too focused on in these games. You can still have a fast game without needing to go fast all the time. Take Doom 2016. Yes you move fast in that game too, but the speed comes more from the flow of combat more than just moving around. You're constantly dodging and weaving to rip and tear the demons like the Doom games of old, with moments of respite and exploration scattered in to break up the shooting and calm yourself for the next bout. And that loops back to what I was yammering on about above with the time bonuses and score grades; the only thing that matters is how fast you can move through the stages, nothing else. It is a glorified speedrunner game, and while there's nothing wrong with that, I can't be the only one to think that general quality is beginning to suffer because of that...right?

Previous Observation: fav.me/db7ntgh

Next Observation: N/A

Speaking of comparisons to Boost and Adventure gameplay, check this video by Em-Bani. It's obscenely in-depth about how Boost and Adventure gameplay works, and it's certainly worth the watch; www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi5ToF…

_{See, the irony is that this took me so long that Sonic Forces came out and actually doesn't do this; the score and rings matter just as much as the time does, as does the amount of times you continued, as the game lacks a lives system. For all of Forces' problems, I must admit that Sonic Team are heading in the right direction once more. Izuka still needs to resign, though.}