N+ also forces you to do an entire level in one run, with no checkpoints. While many of the levels are short and sweet, there are a few fairly long ones where you will have to do the same thing over and over before finishing it. Even with a finite lives system, the most they make you do is start the level over again. I don’t see this as a problem really. You fuck up too much, you pay for it by start from the beginning of the stage. It’s not really that far a ways back. LittleBigPlanet uses a finite lives system, you don’t see people bitching about that one.
This is simply going to be a case of us disagreeing with each other though; I doubt either of us will change the other’s mind. And I could get behind your idea of having an option in the menu to turn infinite lives on and off. Or maybe like Easy = infinite lives, Hard = finite lives.
Personally, I’m disappointed with infinite lives though. I keep coming back to this game in examples, but oh well: Ratchet & Clank Future. It’s a fun game. But I tore through it disappointingly fast because the weapons are so overpowered and I will respawn at the last checkpoint indefinitely. Even though I did enjoy the game, there was no challenge whatsoever. The whole time I was playing it I couldn’t help but keep thinking to myself that it would be a lot more fun if I actually had a fear of failure sometimes.
EDIT: I agree with everything Carbunkle said too.
Check back on the last page. I’ve been enjoying the Wii version, and Shadow Ace says the 360 version is pretty fun too.
So as I’ve said earlier, I was going to cop Unleashed this morning for the PS2 and I did. For Sonichuman and any others to read my thoughts about the game, here they are. Please know that this is an evaluation of what I’ve experienced so far. I will give another review if something really big comes up.
- Status -
Stage: Chun-nan - Village (just finished Holaska Day Stage 1)
Day Crest count: 20 (6 Werehog stages)
Night Crest count: 16 (2 Sonic stages/2 bosses/2 special stages)
- Story -
Its standard “giving you more than what you’re asking for”. The main thing you need to know is that Eggman did something bad and Sonic is saving the day. The background story is pretty wack. Also, the cutscenes and town hopping gets pretty tiring after awhile and it ends up cutting into good gameplay time. I sat through 30 minutes of cutscenes, Chip’s annoying ass, and town hopping before I got into some action. Its mad boring too. Hopefully there would be a M. Night twist soon.
- Music -
I’m getting a jazzy/piano Sonic Adventure 1 vibe off this music. Any of you agree? =) I think its really good by far. Good fight music for the werehog stages and most town themes are pretty mellow and catchy. I am pretty sure it will get better since Im in Chun-nan now and I heard the music there is pretty badass.
- Gameplay (Day/Sonic) -
So what if its lacking on graphics? The gameplay is still fast as advertised. Although, some of the parts you’ve seen on the videos seem to be not there (example being the rail switching at the Isle) but the more 2D it is, the better to me. I was kinda suprised at the abundance of how many times the game switches to 2D. Also, the ring meter system seems to lessen the times you can die from not having enough rings and can easily make it to super sonic speeds. Drifting is something I had to get used to because Im used to staying fast. Not saying its bad, but its not cool to cut off the speed so quickly. One last thing is the lack of day stages by far. I’ve only been through 2 full day stages by far and I’ve been through 4 areas in the world.
- Gameplay (Night/Werehog) -
Shit. I will have to admit that was some hate and animosity towards the werehog stages but take it from me, its not as bad as many thought. I think werehog are stages are there for people to have more to do other than running around at fast speeds. I will say that I felt somewhat “preoccupied” with the stages before I could get to another day stage, but its a good type. You never have a dull moment with werehog stages. None. There is always something to grab, something to open, something to fight, something to jump over. The only quall I have with night stages are the early fights. Werehog Sonic only has one combo and one special (kind of like Dynasty Warriors 2) and it got boring quickly with fights ending fast.
Also, most of the holes in the gameplay (that would most likely be on PS3/360) come from the night stages. Picture this. You about to get into a fight from a cutscene but instead of a gameplay fight, they give you a button-order fight where if you get the 3-button order right, it gets rid of a monster. It made me mad at first but hopefully I wont have to do something so boring anymore.
Werehog stages (by far) are split into 3 zones like old school Sonic but the day ones arent. They are mad long and having to do it times 3. Why…:shake:
- Overall Score -
By far it gets a 7.5. Could have gotten an 8 like Remy said but the story is mad wack and the spaces between gameplay and story is too big. Im too busy mashing X and that’s not in the good way. Plus there are loading times that make you wanna watch TV.
EDIT: Shadow Ace 50: IMO, I think it held up for the last gen, but PS3 is the one that’s getting the final say.
Long rebuttal that is partially off-topic, so I’ll conceal it in a spoiler tag for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t care to read it:
Lives
[details=Spoiler]
How is this any different than a Super Mario Bros. games that had infinite lives? Or anything with an abusable way to stockpile lives?
Opinions. That’s terrible for you, maybe, but you know what? I like to half-ass my way through shmups. And I’ll never beat your score, but that’s not what I’m playing for. If a shmup gives unlimited continues but, say, resets your score to 0 on continue, and I half-ass my way through the whole game whereas you whole-ass your way to the end for a high score, we both get what we want out of the game.
Games can cater to the casual and the hardcore. And if done in a way that ensures both types of players get the most out of the game that they want to get out of the game, that is ALWAYS better than only one type of player getting what they want. A+1 > A, always.
It’s unreasonable because the solution is exclusive. Again, if a game gives you unlimited lives, you can still choose to play the game with a life limit. If the game limits you, you don’t have the option to NOT play with a life limit. One method gives you two options, the other gives you one. There’s a method amongst those two that is clearly superior.
Some players do like challenge. Others don’t. Some players want to play certain games to be challenged and other games purely for shits and giggles (that’s where I fall; I take some games very seriously, and some games very casually). If the game gives you options (difficulty settings, life counts, how much score to get another life, etc.), players who want a challenge can set the options to give themselves a challenge, and players who don’t want a challenge, who just want to casually run through the game, can enjoy the game too without having to buy a GameShark.
If it’s a matter of taste, why do you want a system that only supports how YOU want to enjoy the game over a system that supports not only what YOU want but what other players want as well? This isn’t a matter of taste.
The longest N+ levels are still shorter than most Sonic levels, and you have to beat N+ levels in sets of five to proceed. But N+ does not force you to re-do the entire set of five if you fail. You only have to do that if you give up and shut down the game. In addition, you can choose another set of levels to try if you aren’t jiving with the current set, not to mention the recent FREE Level Pack 3 for even more. Giving you infinite tries is not exclusive to punishing the player for failing to meet the game’s objective. After all, that is what a game is; a challenge to be overcome.
The option would be nice. Where I stand is that I don’t see the point, at all, of limiting lives. Limiting lives doesn’t make obstacles any easier to overcome; it just adds tedium when, because you lost your LAST life, you have to hike through a bunch of shit you already defeated to get to where you failed.
It sounds, to me, like the problem is more with the overpowered weapons than with always respawning at the last checkpoint. Halo 3, solo on Legendary, has a similar system where you respawn at your last checkpoint, but man oh man is it ever brutal to get to the next one.[/details]
Since I don’t own any next-gen consoles, I must ask a question about the PS2 version…
Given the history of Sonic games on the PS2 (Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, and the Sonic Riders series), which have been notorious for suffering from slowdown and crappy frame-rates, how is the frame-rate for Unleashed?
Sadly the frame rate is 30-33 at times but there hasnt been much slowdown in the game at all thus far. It handles explosions and things of that nature pretty well altho the overall frame rate is meh.
So it’s like Sonic Heroes, then? I own the PS2 version and I rarely experienced slowdown, but the frame-rate wasn’t the best. Shadow the Hedgehog for the PS2, on the other hand, featured abysmal frame-rates AND slowdown (not to mention that the game was mediocre).
Thanks for the info, BTW!
EDIT Also, this is a question with an obvious “YES!” answer, but does the game beat the ever-loving shit out of Sonic Next-Gen?
that’s not really a bug…that’s pretty consistent with the other sonic games…Sonic 3 when you ran on the water if you jumped you’d end up underwater and in the rush series you’d end up underwater as well. And we all know Sonic’s problem with water…I think this is awesome as hell cause it presents a situation where you aren’t allowed any lee way to mess up period on a few sections.
thanks Shinobi…and it’s just like I figured…the game is about a 7.5. Supposedly I’ve heard that this game actually gets a bit harder as it goes on…I also haven’t figured out how the emeralds play into this game yet I.E. special stages or part of the story…Or for that matter allowing you to play Super Sonic on the daytime stages or something at the end…If Sonic Team had actually finally did something like that this game would automatically get around a .5 or 1 point upgrade for me.
Semijuggalo: Honestly…come on now lol. We try to keep talks about ‘that’ game to a minimum…this game is slightly better than secret rings so you can’t completely hate on it. If you’re any type of sonic fan you should probably just nab the game to cast your vote despite werehog stages…
I managed to get about what…20 minutes into the wii version before I had to sleep so I can open the store in the morning. Chip surprisingly isn’t as annoying as I’d figure he’d turn out to be from listening to his japanese voice in the earlier cutscenes, that being said if I had a choice I’d probably still stuff a cork in his mouth just avoid ‘Navi’ situations…If there’s an option to switch VA’s to japanese I’m probably gonna do that…haven’t checked yet so I don’t have lament how Ryan Drummond would have done a better job lol. Jason’s doing aight…but he’s still not quite there for me in capturing the character.
I was a bit disappointed in the way how the tutorial levels started out in comparison to 360/ps3 version but you can’t win em all right? Loading times between those small segments made me lift an eyebrow…but you know what? at least i’m not going up to an NPC waiting 30-45 secs at a loading screen, getting a mission, sitting at another 30/45 second load screen, doing the mission, 30/45 sec load…etc. Ya know? It’s gonna take me a little while to get used to the drift and side step mechanics…but I like the fact that I got a B on the first day time area and then Aced the second daytime area on my first try. Hoping for more reaction stuff as the game progresses once you really get into the groove of seeing ahead.
Enjoying the music so far…I’m already humming the first stage music today and I haven’t heard it but twice…usually a pretty good sign lol.
One thing I’m hoping that they’ll change in the future is the pause between homing attacks…Is it me or has the pause between homing attacks gotten progressively longer since Adventure 2?
The only Mario games I know of with infinite lives were the 64 series. Those penalized you with lost progress (IE- booted you out the stage; try to get the star/shiny/whatever again). But you were still penalized for dying.
Since when is a game penalizing you for screwing up ‘hardcore’? Is that really how soft gamers have gotten these days? That they don’t want to deal with ANY consequences for playing badly at ALL?
What’s the point of giving you a life limit at all if you’re going to dodge around it? You might as well just make up a challenge game.
There is a large large difference between having some kind of penalty for dying so as to make the game something other than pointless and making the game say, Ninja Gaiden hard. A penalty system such as limited lives can play into difficulty, a penalty system CAN be a vehicle for the difficulty, but such penalty systems are not necessarily the difficulty.
To distinguish my point from what you’re saying clearly: my point is that there needs to be some kind of penalty for dying in a game. I think lives are a time-tested and functional penalty. They are hardly as archaic as save points are.
I am stating an opinion that happens to counteract yours. Nothing more. Your assertion that I am apparently forcing my gameplay style onto you and your games by doing so is really silly O_o.
Spin Dash to my attention is not in Unleashed. However, it takes some from the Adventure games such as hitting enemies to get from one place to the next.
I would agree with you but you are allowed to jump and still run on the water IIRC. there is no splash animation to indicate that you just fell in and instead of registering the lost life instantly as it should, there is a significant delay before the game figures out you’re dead.
nope…you jumped in S3 while on the water…you went under. You jump in Rush while on the water…you went under. The fact that you immediately died in this game comes as no surprise to me as the first Adventure game was the only 3d sonic game so far that had Sonic underwater (Adventure 2 it was Knux, Rouge). Every other 3d game that had to do with with the Sonic + water equation ended with death.
Sonic does spin at times in Sonic Unleashed and for whatever reason the spin that he does looks like his start up spindash animation while he’s spinning.
Biolink: Also if you’re talking about upgrades as in like Light speed dash shoes, Ancient Light, Magic hands and what not then if I remember reading correctly…Werehog gets more abilities and stuff as the game goes on but I don’t think reg Sonic does. What those ‘abilities’ are…I don’t know.
To date as far as I know…No MAIN(SMB1,2,3,world,64,sunshine, galaxy…dunno if the yoshi island games count by they probably have lives as well) Mario game has NOT had the lives system in place…
Oh, don’t get me wrong. There’s no doubt I’m gonna snag the game when I get the chance, but I’m just trying to be on the safe side. I’ve been into Sonic since day one, and despite how bad some of his console games have been, nothing’s gonna change that. Fortunately, I’m not one of those Sonic fans that pay money for ANY merchandise that happens to feature Sonic in it.
Honestly, I barely own any Sonic-related stuff, even games.
I’m actually a bit surprised at the amount of of people who are still sonic fans now but are like you and specs. The character is awesome…but the games have to be at least on the level with that if Sega wants to bring its fans back.