Forreal. The last thing a Sonic the Hedgehog game should do to its players is patronize them, lol.
...
I think a game such as this needs to be as simple as possible to jump into. "Easy to play, difficult to master" as they say. Not everyone needs to be a master player, but just about every gamer should be able to play a few levels and say "wow that was fun!"
Strong agree, I've been saying the same. Sonic is not Sonic if he's not easy. If that part isn't right, the whole broth is spoiled. Or in this case, it's not spoiled, but requires a refined palette or a lot of patience and ideally both.
SRB2 is somehow both the most
and least accessible Sonic game ever made, at the same time.
Fortunately, the things that make it less accessible are adjustable and correctable.
Unfortunately, I think those adjustments aren't included not for ignorance of the possibility but because the decision is already made.
The Tutorial is recommended and strongly advises KB+M, though also offers custom options and encourages you to give it some time to experiment and adjust. The controls are adjustable, the tutorial is a great accessibility feature, but you don't have the option to adjust the overall accessibility of the game.
In other words, the difficulty isn't a choice because it isn't an accident. The difficulty in each moment is a choice built on choice built on a series of choices that required a lot of time, care, consideration put into each choice by multiple people.
I think there's a detectable attitude in the DNA of SRB2 for whatever reason that is a bit patronizing... in the sense that it is catering to the patronage of the existing user base and SRB2 being mostly PC gamers on top of it, it becomes the thing of making the game for each other in a bubble. This is part of what makes it great, also. You can feel the love, care, attention, and thought put into every detail.
"Casual" and "Simple" and "Beginner" and so on... for some reason including these modes can be taken as a personal affront to the veteran gamer (and not without reason if the difficulty options aren't accessible from the beginning). The veteran gamer doesn't have the time or the patience to play this game again in "baby" mode. That's fair enough. And it should be as fair to the other version. The baby gamer doesn't have time or patience to play hard mode until they become hardened.
But even the easiest easy mode you could imagine would probably still be difficult to
someone. And maybe
that person needs to be in consideration as much as the player who makes the hardest hard mode look easy.
Until very recently (and still it's the prevailing attitude though I'm glad to see it changing), game developers worldwide seemed insistent for decades that Easy Mode was simply intolerable, and if it merited inclusion, it just couldn't also be real mode. SRB2 is this way about it — Tails is easy mode, but you're not really completing the game, you can get all the emeralds but you can't go Super. You beat it with an asterisk.
Some of the difficulty in SRB2 is over the top in a way that feels like an inside joke— moments like the elemental shield surrounded by coils in THZ (link to thread); backward springs in Castle Eggman 1; lava room in Black Core 1 — it's like... lol, why are you doing this? Who are you spiting here?
Those "aha! gotcha!" moments feel intended for advanced players, but to the new player, it feels like a sucker punch.
It's a version of gamer elitism that manifests as sort of nerdy snarky bullying. Penny Arcade, or every webcomic about gaming ever made, or any gaming community ever assembled. There's a gamer fetish for difficulty linked to satisfaction, not realizing what is satisfying to one is not necessarily satisfying to another.
And it can then feel needlessly cruel by forcing the player to essentially memorize the layout (BC1, EZ1) in order to advance. (See: Woolie video). To the dev or experienced player, these are very intentional, presenting a tricky test requires a strong degree of control over your abilities and lightning-quick reaction time, recognition, decision making, and coordination.
SRB2 is
supposed to be hard, I understand. That "hard is good" is a matter of preference; I don't think SRB2 is good
because its hard. It IS good, and it IS hard, but adding an easy mode doesn't make either of those less true. I think a lot of game developers see it as being an affront to their work, and the degree of care to which they put into each specific challenge.
But the game is already difficult without also flogging the new player for not already being the veteran player. SRB2 is heavier on platforming than any Sonic game in 2D or 3D besides maybe CD, and each level's platforming challenges become more difficult than the last. You can see this in the Sonic Abilities thread, I think there's a cultural element of resistance to the idea of making Sonic significantly easier, or having clear difficulty options in the base game. There's some agreement that Sonic could be different, Sonic could be easier, or Sonic could be better, but not agreement on all 3 at the same time or how that works.
So it makes sense how the game's evolution would be shaped by these cultural preferences and attitudes, it's just a choice I disagree with and one that increasingly feels dated and exclusionary.
A friend of mine put it this way about a different platformer, sarcastically saying
"You know what I love, is spending 30 hours playing a game to completion, only to be given a C and told I have to do better next time. It reminds me that I need to spend my time on a hobby that doesn't insult me for using it."
"Easy Mode" should be like subtitles. It is an accessibility feature. It's subtitles for motor skills.
tl;dr -- Let the hard ways die. Sonic should be easy!