The Patreon Letters - 21st October, 2017

Hello friends, M here again with a letter for you. Didn't you write one last week? you ask me. Yes, I did. But Jackson's out of town for a family thing and my birthday is next weekend so it made sense to flip these things so we did. So you get me talking about Sonic in this, the weekend before Mario Odyssey drops. 

I played Sonic Mania some time ago and absolutely loved it. It made me appreciate 2D Sonic in a way I never have before, and got me really excited for Sonic in general. I preordered Sonic Forces, because I really enjoyed Generations and the hype of coming off of a game you loved but could still play more of is real. But that game's not out until early November, and I had some time to kill.

Which is how I found myself in my Wii backlog, pulling out Sonic Colors, a game that I'd been told was exceptional and seems to have really informed much of the direction Sonic is still taking in games. Colors really focused on the classic 2D stages that would seamlessly transition into Adventure style behind the back 3D Sonic running stages. Both of those ideas would be segregated into two distinct game types for Sonic Generations and (seemingly) the upcoming Forces. Colors introduces the Wisps, aliens that grant Sonic powers like a drill or a rocket boost upwards, that evoke Adventure-style powers. Those powers return in your OC you create in Forces, by all accounts.

So in many ways Colors forms a bedrock that Sega has been elaborating on in their successful games, and like I said it was well regarded, so I was interested in getting some more context before I dive back into Sonic in early November. What I wasn't expecting was a game that resembled games I enjoyed, but was so unfocused and scared of its own identity that the whole thing regularly collapses under the weight of its expectations. And it's all based around one little thing: Sonic's jump. 

Sonic in Sonic Colors has a double jump which is relied upon heavily in the 2D stages in order to get you through delicate platforming challenges. The problem is that its utterly terrible. Sonic is a character that, in 3D, is defined by a fast, lengthy, floaty jump. He needs it, because the 3D games are about wild leaps across vast chasms of space done quickly and without much context for how far forward you actually need to go in every situation. There needs to be generous slop, because 3D Sonic games are sloppy.

The problem with that is that the double jump contains within it most if not all of the same momentum of Sonic's original jump. If a jump can carry you forward an arbitrary amount (say 20 Sonic lengths), then the double jump will push you forward another 15. It makes Sonic go so much further. The problem is, because they're fast aggressive Sonic jumps, you can't easily dial that back. Sonic is either jumping all the way up or all the way forward, so while it's easy to get that 35 Sonic lengths, it's REALLY hard to get, like ... 25 length. Which you will need, because many of the jumps are set up to be achievable with a single jump, but then to rely on your double jump to make up the difference if you aren't spot on. Which means you're either undershooting platforms barely or wildly overshooting, without much in between. Which is exactly why 3D Sonics rarely give you small platforms (and when they do almost always put an enemy on for you to homing attack to get you in position to land safely), but Sonic Colors just litters the 2D levels with frequent small platforms that require pinpoint jumps without enemies to stabilize you. One slip up and you're dead. 

Sonic Team said in interviews that they were trying to create a game to capitalize on Sonic's newfound Wii fandom with the Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games series of games, and thus were seeking to create a game that would evoke Mario-ness, recentering Sonic on transformation abilities (a la Yoshi's Island), dreamy orchestral scores (a la Mario Galaxy), and a slower platforming style (a la every Mario ever made) but what that really did was create a game where half of your time with it is spent in a half-hearted attempt to make Sonic distinctly un-Sonic and capture the essence of Mario by making a terrible, sloppy Mario game. And it's most strange because the good game is right there in the other half of the game, where Sonic is just rail grinding and homing in on enemies and boosting around corners and generally doing things Sonic is both good at and known for. 

So much of Sonic Colors was built to get away from the things people didn't like about Sonic Unleashed, but much like Unleashed the ethos behind Colors seems to be a general lack of confidence that core Sonic ideas like loops and speed and pinballing off enemies was enough to wrap an entire game around. Thankfully for us, and thankfully for Sonic, audiences were desperate enough for anything quality with Sonic's name on it that the game seems to have done really well, and with a little more confidence Generations came out to show that you can just do the Sonic things well and make a good game. 

Hopefully, that trend continues in Forces. The last thing we need is Sega trying to go after Mario's ideas again and messing it up.

Ah.

Until next time,

M