SAGE Spotlight: Sonic Robo Blast 2

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Luminous said:
I stated that Eggrock is unfair to players that just started playing the game. Most gimmicks are one time traps; I'm pretty sure that most people died at least once playing Eggrock Zone because you aren't ware of the traps the girst time you play. After the third or so time you play it, it's pretty easy.
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I completed ERZ1 in about seven (IIRC) lives the first time I played through the first complete beta. I don't remember anything being unfair the first time I played through. The difficulty ranged from moderate to difficult. Though, in all honesty I would hope that ERZ is unfair to the newbies. In case it wasn't obvious Eggrock Zone is supposed to be the hardest zone in the game. If a new player beats it on the first try, what does it say about the rest of the game? Do you gain a sense of accomplishment when a game is so easy you beat it on the first try?

DarkSagaFromSegaLMA0 said:
Words
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In all seriousness, he doesn't seem smart enough to be a troll. Most trolls are more witty and less ignorant.

Mystic said:
To be honest, he is right. That is probably the worst-designed rooms in SRB2. It's not fun at all and it's needlessly frustrating.
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I agree. The difficulty of timing the single jump needed to clear it as Sonic is unfair that early in the game. Not to mention the lack of fun factor.
 
Jazz said:
In all seriousness, he doesn't seem smart enough to be a troll. Most trolls are more witty and less ignorant.
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Hey, he tried to deny being ignorant. I just played along =P
 
Jazz said:
Though, in all honesty I would hope that ERZ is unfair to the newbies. In case it wasn't obvious Eggrock Zone is supposed to be the hardest zone in the game. If a new player beats it on the first try, what does it say about the rest of the game?
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I agree with the fact that it's supposed to be hard, but once you beat Eggrock once or twice, the level is really easy.
SRB2 needs more difficulty. Once you get past the unfairness at parts, it's really easy. Even with Sonic, the most underpowered one of them all, it's still easy. Though, wasn't the fact that there are three diverse characters made the difficulty option disappear?
 
Mystic said:
The floating rings aren't very helpful to Tails without Attraction, but there are a lot of new platforms and areas for Tails now, which are a lot more helpful.
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Wouldn't the rings become useful to all the characters in that situation? They aren't placed very high.

I finally read the tl;dr review, and a thought came to me. Is WASD+mouselook the default control scheme for SRB2? Why not? Everybody's initial control issues (mine, even) stem from not knowing how essential strafing and turning on a dime are.
 
Luminous said:
Though, wasn't the fact that there are three diverse characters made the difficulty option disappear?
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Actually, it was to free up flags, like for the randomly spawning monitors in Match/CTF. There was another thing it did, but I forgot what it was. And yeah, kinda unnessesarry when you factor in Tails being Easy mode and Sonic being hard while Knux would probably need more Knux Only and Knux Proof (No climb, ledges that block climing up to the top) areas to really be less gamebreaking and "normal" difficulty.
 
I've always considered in S3&K for Sonic and Knuckles to be both the same difficulty, the main difference besides the play-style difference and obstacles is that Knuckles' adventure is shorter and Sonic has a difficulty scale from quite easy to quite hard, whereas Knuckles seems kinda normal difficulty the whole way through.
 
I'm gonna have to disagree about Knuckles Blue. I found most of his paths to be shorter, but his paths usually felt harder to me. Sonic had a few cases where his difficulty was increased, but I always found Knuckles the harder one to use. Especially in Boss fights since he had a low jump and his bosses are harder, IIRC.
 
Mystic said:
To be honest, he is right. That is probably the worst-designed rooms in SRB2. It's not fun at all and it's needlessly frustrating.
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If I remember right, you can simply do a spindash-jump-thok and clear the whole thing.

EDIT: No, you can't, but if you time it right, you can land on the last log and clear it more easily that way.
But to be honest, it should be replaced with just some stationary platforms.
 
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Actually, if you charge a spin and jump through the waterfall, followed by a thok once you're pushed out of it, you'll clear the thing no problem.

Also, I'm surprised this topic is still open.
 
Despite the premise for the review being a bit faulty ("I get motion sick playing 35fps 3D games, so I'm going to lay into this out of spite" isn't a very encouraging opening statement), the majority of his concerns are quite valid. That room in DSZ with the logs certainly feels pretty random and in honesty, most of the attempts I've tried to do that 'properly' have ended up with me just giving up and going for the old massive spindash/jump trick. The controls do feel pretty slippery if you're not used to how they work vs the regular Sonic games. Players ARE going to generally pick Sonic first, as he's the character everyone is most familiar with, despite him being undoubtably the hardest one to clear single player with. The stages could do with some more landscape-oriented 'signposting' to prevent people getting lost. This is not the thread to leap in with yet another 'Eggrock is too hard/easy' debate, but it does have some pretty cheap moments ("oh i want to make this jump but now suddenly there's a wind current and i'm dead wait what").

That said, I have no idea why the reviewer thinks the stages are Sonic oriented and that Tails and Knuckles are the same 'but just blow through the stages'. Obviously, the stages are designed so that Sonic doesn't get massively screwed over and can't complete them, but there's a pretty crazy amount of extra routes and bonuses available for players who take the time to do a little exploration. By and large though, this is kind of a fair - if a little one-sided - review.
 
Luminous said:
I don't really see how you can prove that SRB2 level building isn't monotonous by comparing to something that's worse. Sure, it's easier than most other level design programs, but it's still tedious
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"Ok, we gotta add some basic layout, check that a character can go through it, add some obstacles, make sure the flow feels right, we need to add decoration, check that it doesn't interfere with the action, damn, rebuild that part over here, ok now test, oh that broke this better fix that, ok let's place the enemies, oh, this enemy nullifies and cheapens this whole other obstacle, now we gotta accomodate some parts of the level to the enemies, ok add gimmicks, test it once, test it twice, make sure it doesn't break gameplay or feels out of place, make sure everything works together, ok more decoration to give it a polished feel, time to add subtle indications of where to go with lightning texturing, level design, ok those level design changes altered some other gameplay factor aaaaaaa"

tl;dr: SINCE WHEN HAS LEVEL DESIGN BEEN NOT MONOTONOUS.
Sure, you can open a super mario world level editor to make some platforman and some enemy avoidan, but there's a difference between something you made in 5 minutes than something that has been planned, been taken care off, and polished. There really is no easy way to make a good level in some of the even mildly complex games these days. The first level in Super Mario Bros was made last because they needed to think up of gimmicks and mechanics to use through the game, adjust them, AND THEN THEY NEEDED TO USE THEM WISELY TO INTRODUCE THEM TO THE PLAYER. Level design is one of the hardest parts of a game to get right.

Also, many of you are dissing this review because you're not a newbie to SRB2 anymore, but the moment you start, you choose sonic. Always, no matter what you do. Sonic is the hardest player, so it'll give a horrible first impression. And thanks to the missing levels, the difficulty curve is more similar to a freaking wall. A brick wall, at that. Also, what wallbank said.
 
Arf said:
... but the moment you start, you choose sonic. Always, no matter what you do. Sonic is the hardest player, so it'll give a horrible first impression.
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I dunno, I picked Tails for my first few playthroughs. I'm quite a fan of a more slow and steady approach with the ability to recover in the air when you don't know where things are.
 
I disagree that level building is uniformly monotonous. If the programmer finds the level making process boring, what chance does the level have of being fun to play? Well, all right, it does have a chance, but I think the best levels come out of an enjoyable experience.

Level design is an artistic endeavor, and, like any artistic endeavor, blinding flashes of inspiration are usually the best way to design good levels. Now, I don't know about you guys, but when I do something, even something that it usually somewhat dull, and I become inspired, I have a hell of a lot of fun doing it.
 
Project Dark Fox said:
I dunno, I picked Tails for my first few playthroughs. I'm quite a fan of a more slow and steady approach with the ability to recover in the air when you don't know where things are.
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That was probably the best thing you could do. Trying to beat the game with Sonic on the first playthrough is a waste of time.
 
Arf said:
Also, many of you are dissing this review because you're not a newbie to SRB2 anymore, but the moment you start, you choose sonic. Always, no matter what you do. Sonic is the hardest player, so it'll give a horrible first impression. And thanks to the missing levels, the difficulty curve is more similar to a freaking wall. A brick wall, at that. Also, what wallbank said.
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In my first playthrough of SRB2 in 1.09.2, I picked Sonic and game-overed at the beginning of THZ2. I'm still here. Had I beaten the game on the first try, I doubt I'd still be around to discuss it as I would have probably got bored and moved on to another game.
 
Somebody should implement Super Guide into SRB2, having Luigi clear the game automatically so the player never dies.

JohnnyWallbank said:
"oh i want to make this jump but now suddenly there's a wind current and i'm dead wait what"
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This is actually a valid complaint. Fans should probably have sound cues so you know they're around even when you can't see them.
 
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