Moose the Fat Cat
Member
Hello! I'm a new player. I've come here to say a few things, and I wanted to start a new thread because I feel like I have a lot to say, but it may be rambly and not contained in one post very well, though it's essentially one connected thought. Rather than hijacking, say, the suggestions thread (though I'll post specifics there, too, as I work out my thoughts here), I thought I'd share my Newbie Thoughts* with you here.
*
I learned about the game for the first time from UnknownLight's post on Reset ERA. I played 2.2 on Mac OS with a Switch Pro joypad for the first time I think two weeks ago, the beginning of March. This weekend, after at least 20-30 hours of playtime (if not more), I completed a full emerald run as Sonic & Tails and as Knuckles, and a lot of unfinished save-files with the bonus characters and Tails solo, Sonic solo.
1) I love it! Oh my god! Congratulations to the developers and this entire community on creating something this special. Jesus! I've been of the mind that Sonic Mania was the best Sonic game ever created but I think SRB2 is actually better. This is, I think, even with the warts and flaws and incompleteness, the Best Sonic Game Ever Made. I do not say that lightly!
2) Sonic Robo Blast 2 is easily the most difficult 3D platformer I've ever played, yet also one of the most satisfying. This truly feels like the Super Mario 64 equivalent of "classic" Sonic, moreso than the Adventure or Modern Boost titles, but ... better. I would be tempted to rank SRB2 as equal or better than any 3D platformer, because of the amazing momentum-based one-button jumping.
3) The biggest issue is the camera controls, which is always an issue in this genre, and I understand is intended for keyboard / mouse. Using the Switch Pro gamepad, I mapped jump to B and R, spin to A and L, first-person to Y, reset camera to X, center camera to R-3, with L-Stick controlling forward/backward/strafe left and right, and R-Stick controlling camera/vision/turning. That was the best I could manage; mapping itself is challenging with the phrasing in the menus. I don't know if it's possible but it would be a big help if the game recognized the pad's button layout rather than Joypad 1, 2, etc.
3a) The control scheme in theory I like. It was not immediately intuitive but eventually I got mostly comfortable with it. When they saw me playing, I handed the controller to my wife and brother-in-law to try it out, and they were very impressed with the game and how it came to be, but were too quickly frustrated by running into walls and not being able to understand where they were in space.
3b) Red Volcano Zone and the corresponding special stage are super frustrating, though I feel like as I get better with the controls the more I would find the narrow platforming and turns more rewarding.
3c) Egg Rock Zone Act 1 - the Knuckles climbing in the lava room on his path is very frustrating because the main challenge is the camera. The room of gliding upside down with the roof bottomless pit is also about being able to control the camera well enough to swerve around the walls.
4) The music is fucking AWESOME, especially the Eggman boss theme. Holy cow. CobaltBW, my wife and I listened to the Soundcloud a few times recently on a long car ride and were jamming to it. It'd be dope if it was also on Spotify.
5) I love the middle zones. Techno Hill, Deep Sea, Castle Eggman, Arid Canyon are some of the best and most memorable Sonic levels I've ever played.
5a) That said, I think the outside sections of Techno Hill are too ugly. Something about the burgundy walls are a huge visual turn-off for some reason. I don't know how to explain it but it looks really... bland and dated and cheap? It just needs a color change. Burnt yellow maybe? Magenta? Turquoise?
6) I wonder if having a different running animation when Sonic is strafing (like a grapevine motion) could help the player understand the movement a bit more? I dunno, maybe not, I know no other game has that animation, but once I understood that left and right meant strafing and not turning, things clicked a bit more.
7) I love how you feel like you really earn the speed once you're able to navigate the levels. It's exhilarating in the way the original Sonic games were at the time. I think it's brilliant to build a Sonic game, or even generally a platformer/jumping/momentum based game, in a Doom engine / FPS scheme.
8) I think it would be fine to have fewer bottomless pits in the last zones, from Arid Canyon to the end. I think it's great that the difficulty increases, but I think Castle Eggman Zone is so fun to replay in part because a mistimed jump doesn't kill you, it drops you into a spike pit.
9) The shields don't feel like they help enough in different ways outside of a few kinda scripted moments. There's some moments where it's cleverly hidden a few rooms away from where it would be most useful, but for the most part the specific varieties didn't seem to make a difference. At least not in the main campaign so far; maybe as I do more emblem hunting there are ones you probably need a specific shield for in a specific place to reach. I don't remember ever needing to use the drop fire / spin move from the Fire/Bubble shield, though it seems cool in theory and looks cool. Does it burn wood? I don't think so? And, I could be wrong, but I don't think the Fire/Bubble shield can walk on lava, right? It would be nice if it could? But maybe that would make it too easy.
10) I think the difficulty in the game is mostly very rewarding. I just think that you can still punish the player with less severity (deaths via bottomless pits) particularly because a lot of the deaths can feel "cheap" because it's more about struggling with the camera than not quite having the precision in jumping. It feels VERY VERY satisfying in this game to have the right timing and precision with jumping/speed/solving a vertical jump problem. But it feels almost equally annoying when you're dying because you can't see around the corner like the character would be able to. There's times where switching to first person makes it a bit easier to navigate but I wish that weren't the case.
11) I wish I could play with the add-ons or the online but it seems like the Mac version, maybe because it's only 2.2 and not 2.2.2, isn't compatible with those things. That's okay, the base game is really what I'm here for... I just wish I could add the camera mod and the 3D model mod and other things like that.
12) I understand the Egg Rock Zones are being completely remapped by the developers. That's cool, there are a lot of cheap and frustrating deaths in those levels, but I LOVED the look of the zone and the music. Very cool.
13) I know the game is incomplete and 2 more zones plus RV2 and 2 are being developed... wow. I'm especially excited for Dark City!
14) Of the bonus stages, I had this thought -- Aerial Gardens is the most fun as a Knuckles level. I wouldn't mind fewer bee drones but my main thought was -- this level should be Sky Sanctuary themed with more Echidna statues / references, and maybe even a hidden path to the Master Emerald or something. That zone has a lot of potential, but I think the main issue is the design looks like Minesweeper instead of what it's going for, amazing ruins of an ancient civilization
15) Are there any plans to expand the ending beyond the fireworks/constellation and the animation of the asteroid breaking out of the space station with the emeralds? Maybe it's something like where one of the un-used hero characters flies in to save you from the exploding Black Core 3 in a rocketship? It'd be REALLY cool if there was an ending epilogue that matched the prologue with animation & copy.
16) This is probably hearsay and if so please have mercy, but... is it possible the "final", or even a 3.0 version, might change the game's title? The reason why you wouldn't change it -- for legacy -- I totally get it. It's cool to honor the long timeline and all the respect in the world to SSNTails and Sonikku for setting this game and community into motion.
That said, the name is obviously bad and I think it holds this game back from reaching more players who would love this! It's amusingly bad when you know the reason behind it, but it's not SO amusing as to justify the self-sabotage. I think there are other ways to include the homage of the "full" and "true" name of SRB2 within the game as an homage, as easter eggs or an optional title screen or something.
16a) "Sonic Doom" was, if I remember reading this right, the original title for SSNTails' multiplayer game which I think became Ringslinger (which I'm unable to play on Mac but that's okay), but I think that title is much more fitting for the experience... in the meta-sense, but it also works better for the story, and it's also a pun on "Sonic Boom." (The final stage of this project should involve somehow getting Tyson Hesse to animate a Sonic CD style animatic set to a song -- Sonic Doooom, Sonic Doooom, Sonic Doooom)
16b) Maybe flip that around and go "Sonic Mood" -- which is a bit more abstract but plays on both Doom, Mod, and Mania, which all seems appropriate. (What is a Sonic mood? It's the happiness that comes with the feelings of freedom and momentum and exhilarating speed once harnessed)
16c) Or it could be something else entirely, I don't know. But, as a newbie who is just learning about this game, I feel like the game deserves the opportunity to brand itself as its own thing.
17) In real life I work as a freelance writer and have covered video games in the past for Vice, IGN, Vulture, Paste, others. I don't know how or when but I feel like this game and this community needs to have its story told. Maybe I'm wrong but this all feels very special and unique and heartwarming, to me. Anecdotally, anyone I've told about it so far has been quite interested, albeit acknowledging it's all very nerdy, but it's definitely a cool story and perhaps with the next major release, I'd love to help tell it to a wider audience.
18) I love the special stages. I haven't earned any grades higher than C on them yet, but I haven't spent a lot of time replaying them outside of the main campaigns. I just think it's very cool and smart to use the Nights stages, I too have always thought they would make great special stages in Sonic, and it is beautiful. Honestly, SRB2, Mania, and Sonic 3 (not S3&K) are the only special stages in the series that I actually enjoy playing.
19) Again I just wish the camera was easier or more intuitive to control with a gamepad... I wish I could see the front of the character.
20) There really need to be drop shadows for the characters!! It's hard enough to gauge distance and accuracy in this kind of 3D environment with the camera controls. The physics feel great, and it all works well once you've got it kinda memorized, but it should be easier to judge where you're going to land in a 3D platformer, imo. Drop shadows!
21) Congratulations again to everyone involved with SRB2 on a fantastic achievement.
*
*Newbie in this sense: I'm an adult man in his 30s. I played Mario 3 and Sonic 2 as the first video games I loved, then Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles and so forth. I dropped the Sonic series after SA2 because I stopped playing video games in general around that time. After N64 and Dreamcast, I lost interest in gaming for about 5 years until the Wii brought me back, then it was PS3, PS4, Xbox One, and Switch. So, I'm an experienced Sonic gamer, but NOT with computer/PC games and not really with FPS shooters, either. I probably wouldn't have spent any time with SRB2 after the first few minutes of messing around if it were only playable with keyboard and mouse. Being able to play with a gamepad and having the installation be simple was tantamount to reaching me as a player.
I learned about the game for the first time from UnknownLight's post on Reset ERA. I played 2.2 on Mac OS with a Switch Pro joypad for the first time I think two weeks ago, the beginning of March. This weekend, after at least 20-30 hours of playtime (if not more), I completed a full emerald run as Sonic & Tails and as Knuckles, and a lot of unfinished save-files with the bonus characters and Tails solo, Sonic solo.
1) I love it! Oh my god! Congratulations to the developers and this entire community on creating something this special. Jesus! I've been of the mind that Sonic Mania was the best Sonic game ever created but I think SRB2 is actually better. This is, I think, even with the warts and flaws and incompleteness, the Best Sonic Game Ever Made. I do not say that lightly!
2) Sonic Robo Blast 2 is easily the most difficult 3D platformer I've ever played, yet also one of the most satisfying. This truly feels like the Super Mario 64 equivalent of "classic" Sonic, moreso than the Adventure or Modern Boost titles, but ... better. I would be tempted to rank SRB2 as equal or better than any 3D platformer, because of the amazing momentum-based one-button jumping.
3) The biggest issue is the camera controls, which is always an issue in this genre, and I understand is intended for keyboard / mouse. Using the Switch Pro gamepad, I mapped jump to B and R, spin to A and L, first-person to Y, reset camera to X, center camera to R-3, with L-Stick controlling forward/backward/strafe left and right, and R-Stick controlling camera/vision/turning. That was the best I could manage; mapping itself is challenging with the phrasing in the menus. I don't know if it's possible but it would be a big help if the game recognized the pad's button layout rather than Joypad 1, 2, etc.
3a) The control scheme in theory I like. It was not immediately intuitive but eventually I got mostly comfortable with it. When they saw me playing, I handed the controller to my wife and brother-in-law to try it out, and they were very impressed with the game and how it came to be, but were too quickly frustrated by running into walls and not being able to understand where they were in space.
3b) Red Volcano Zone and the corresponding special stage are super frustrating, though I feel like as I get better with the controls the more I would find the narrow platforming and turns more rewarding.
3c) Egg Rock Zone Act 1 - the Knuckles climbing in the lava room on his path is very frustrating because the main challenge is the camera. The room of gliding upside down with the roof bottomless pit is also about being able to control the camera well enough to swerve around the walls.
4) The music is fucking AWESOME, especially the Eggman boss theme. Holy cow. CobaltBW, my wife and I listened to the Soundcloud a few times recently on a long car ride and were jamming to it. It'd be dope if it was also on Spotify.
5) I love the middle zones. Techno Hill, Deep Sea, Castle Eggman, Arid Canyon are some of the best and most memorable Sonic levels I've ever played.
5a) That said, I think the outside sections of Techno Hill are too ugly. Something about the burgundy walls are a huge visual turn-off for some reason. I don't know how to explain it but it looks really... bland and dated and cheap? It just needs a color change. Burnt yellow maybe? Magenta? Turquoise?
6) I wonder if having a different running animation when Sonic is strafing (like a grapevine motion) could help the player understand the movement a bit more? I dunno, maybe not, I know no other game has that animation, but once I understood that left and right meant strafing and not turning, things clicked a bit more.
7) I love how you feel like you really earn the speed once you're able to navigate the levels. It's exhilarating in the way the original Sonic games were at the time. I think it's brilliant to build a Sonic game, or even generally a platformer/jumping/momentum based game, in a Doom engine / FPS scheme.
8) I think it would be fine to have fewer bottomless pits in the last zones, from Arid Canyon to the end. I think it's great that the difficulty increases, but I think Castle Eggman Zone is so fun to replay in part because a mistimed jump doesn't kill you, it drops you into a spike pit.
9) The shields don't feel like they help enough in different ways outside of a few kinda scripted moments. There's some moments where it's cleverly hidden a few rooms away from where it would be most useful, but for the most part the specific varieties didn't seem to make a difference. At least not in the main campaign so far; maybe as I do more emblem hunting there are ones you probably need a specific shield for in a specific place to reach. I don't remember ever needing to use the drop fire / spin move from the Fire/Bubble shield, though it seems cool in theory and looks cool. Does it burn wood? I don't think so? And, I could be wrong, but I don't think the Fire/Bubble shield can walk on lava, right? It would be nice if it could? But maybe that would make it too easy.
10) I think the difficulty in the game is mostly very rewarding. I just think that you can still punish the player with less severity (deaths via bottomless pits) particularly because a lot of the deaths can feel "cheap" because it's more about struggling with the camera than not quite having the precision in jumping. It feels VERY VERY satisfying in this game to have the right timing and precision with jumping/speed/solving a vertical jump problem. But it feels almost equally annoying when you're dying because you can't see around the corner like the character would be able to. There's times where switching to first person makes it a bit easier to navigate but I wish that weren't the case.
11) I wish I could play with the add-ons or the online but it seems like the Mac version, maybe because it's only 2.2 and not 2.2.2, isn't compatible with those things. That's okay, the base game is really what I'm here for... I just wish I could add the camera mod and the 3D model mod and other things like that.
12) I understand the Egg Rock Zones are being completely remapped by the developers. That's cool, there are a lot of cheap and frustrating deaths in those levels, but I LOVED the look of the zone and the music. Very cool.
13) I know the game is incomplete and 2 more zones plus RV2 and 2 are being developed... wow. I'm especially excited for Dark City!
14) Of the bonus stages, I had this thought -- Aerial Gardens is the most fun as a Knuckles level. I wouldn't mind fewer bee drones but my main thought was -- this level should be Sky Sanctuary themed with more Echidna statues / references, and maybe even a hidden path to the Master Emerald or something. That zone has a lot of potential, but I think the main issue is the design looks like Minesweeper instead of what it's going for, amazing ruins of an ancient civilization
15) Are there any plans to expand the ending beyond the fireworks/constellation and the animation of the asteroid breaking out of the space station with the emeralds? Maybe it's something like where one of the un-used hero characters flies in to save you from the exploding Black Core 3 in a rocketship? It'd be REALLY cool if there was an ending epilogue that matched the prologue with animation & copy.
16) This is probably hearsay and if so please have mercy, but... is it possible the "final", or even a 3.0 version, might change the game's title? The reason why you wouldn't change it -- for legacy -- I totally get it. It's cool to honor the long timeline and all the respect in the world to SSNTails and Sonikku for setting this game and community into motion.
That said, the name is obviously bad and I think it holds this game back from reaching more players who would love this! It's amusingly bad when you know the reason behind it, but it's not SO amusing as to justify the self-sabotage. I think there are other ways to include the homage of the "full" and "true" name of SRB2 within the game as an homage, as easter eggs or an optional title screen or something.
16a) "Sonic Doom" was, if I remember reading this right, the original title for SSNTails' multiplayer game which I think became Ringslinger (which I'm unable to play on Mac but that's okay), but I think that title is much more fitting for the experience... in the meta-sense, but it also works better for the story, and it's also a pun on "Sonic Boom." (The final stage of this project should involve somehow getting Tyson Hesse to animate a Sonic CD style animatic set to a song -- Sonic Doooom, Sonic Doooom, Sonic Doooom)
16b) Maybe flip that around and go "Sonic Mood" -- which is a bit more abstract but plays on both Doom, Mod, and Mania, which all seems appropriate. (What is a Sonic mood? It's the happiness that comes with the feelings of freedom and momentum and exhilarating speed once harnessed)
16c) Or it could be something else entirely, I don't know. But, as a newbie who is just learning about this game, I feel like the game deserves the opportunity to brand itself as its own thing.
17) In real life I work as a freelance writer and have covered video games in the past for Vice, IGN, Vulture, Paste, others. I don't know how or when but I feel like this game and this community needs to have its story told. Maybe I'm wrong but this all feels very special and unique and heartwarming, to me. Anecdotally, anyone I've told about it so far has been quite interested, albeit acknowledging it's all very nerdy, but it's definitely a cool story and perhaps with the next major release, I'd love to help tell it to a wider audience.
18) I love the special stages. I haven't earned any grades higher than C on them yet, but I haven't spent a lot of time replaying them outside of the main campaigns. I just think it's very cool and smart to use the Nights stages, I too have always thought they would make great special stages in Sonic, and it is beautiful. Honestly, SRB2, Mania, and Sonic 3 (not S3&K) are the only special stages in the series that I actually enjoy playing.
19) Again I just wish the camera was easier or more intuitive to control with a gamepad... I wish I could see the front of the character.
20) There really need to be drop shadows for the characters!! It's hard enough to gauge distance and accuracy in this kind of 3D environment with the camera controls. The physics feel great, and it all works well once you've got it kinda memorized, but it should be easier to judge where you're going to land in a 3D platformer, imo. Drop shadows!
21) Congratulations again to everyone involved with SRB2 on a fantastic achievement.
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