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I'm just going to go ahead and say that Freedom Planet is not a good game. I don't doubt that its creators were enthusiastic about making it, but they were just trying to copy games they liked without understanding why they were good in the first place. For instance, it has speed, but none of the tactile, weighty momentum physics that defined the classic Sonic games. People have also drawn comparisons to games like Rocket Knight Adventures and Gunstar Heroes, but the similarities are pretty superficial there as well. For example there's a train/convoy sequence that's directly lifted from the Genesis version of Sparkster (a terrible game in it's own right) which seems impressive on it's own but the build up to it is a drag. It tries to emulate the "event rush" structure of those games, but the early levels of Freedom Planet alternate between sprawling but aimless terrain and claustrophobic puzzle labyrinths. It seldom matches the snappy arcade pacing of the classic Konami and Treasure games it's imitating. And speaking of pacing, the cut scenes certainly don't help. Yes they're skippable, but that's like saying, "this movie is great if you fast forward through all the bad parts". I know some people think it's unfair to criticize a game by these standards since it's an "indie game" and made with more limited resources than games from major publishers, but that makes the cutscene criticism all the more relevant since they could have spent the time and resources on refining the gameplay, level design, art direction, etc. They had the tools to make a decent game, but they chose not to.
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Jul 4, 2015 05:04
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Sebadoh Gigante posted:And speaking of pacing, the cut scenes certainly don't help. Yes they're skippable, but that's like saying, "this movie is great if you fast forward through all the bad parts". I don't think that's what people are saying, it's more that the game gives you options and it's weird to treat that as a negative. I like Freedom Planet because it's one of the only indie platformers that didn't have this..."day at the art gallery" feeling. A lot of indie games have great art, but almost no fun little interactions and it feels kinda lifeless.
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Jul 4, 2015 05:12
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Electric Phantasm posted:Someone tell me more about the UK Sonic comics please. Remember in the tv show there was that dragon voiced by Cree Summer, the UK comic gives her abusive wife beater boyfriend that makes her mentally unstable and considering drugs 
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Jul 4, 2015 05:15
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I don't know much about Freedom Planet other than I watched an episode of an LP of it, hated how it looked, played, and the voice acting was garbage.
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Jul 4, 2015 05:45
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mycot posted:I don't think that's what people are saying, it's more that the game gives you options and it's weird to treat that as a negative. I get what you mean about other indie games being to artsy, cutesy, or cloyingly retro (eg. Fez) but the lack of those things isn't inherently positive. What does Freedom Planet actually have that's so different and refreshing? The character design fails to stand above the deviant art crowd, and it's not like the game has a sense of humor or anything. As a counter-example, Hotline Miami doesn't adhere to indie game cliches and while it cribs a lot from Drive, it's still very much it's own thing stylistically.
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Jul 4, 2015 05:54
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SirDrone posted:Remember in the tv show there was that dragon voiced by Cree Summer, the UK comic gives her abusive wife beater boyfriend that makes her mentally unstable and considering drugs I think you mean the Ken Penders one. Cause that definitely happened in Archie Sonic. Goddamn that thing saw some horrible poo poo.
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Jul 4, 2015 06:00
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I thought the level design and gameplay in Freedom Planet were great, personally. Didn't really break new ground in terms of character, story, level design, and controls, but what it did, it did well. I feel like Galaxy Trail succeeded in making the game they wanted to make, and I loved it. If someone played it and didn't like it, then there's not really much I can say that'll convince them otherwise; at that point, it's really down to a difference in tastes. And that's okay.
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Jul 4, 2015 06:01
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Sebadoh Gigante posted:I get what you mean about other indie games being to artsy, cutesy, or cloyingly retro (eg. Fez) but the lack of those things isn't inherently positive. What does Freedom Planet actually have that's so different and refreshing? I thought it was charming and fun to play, but I think it's pretty clear by now this is an agree to disagree thing. It made me think of the feelings I had for the Spyro the Dragon trilogy where there were a lot of cute details you could do in the stages, put in there just for the sake of being there.
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Jul 4, 2015 06:03
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mycot posted:the feelings I had for the Spyro the Dragon 
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Jul 4, 2015 06:05
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Well I never checked if that was a popular opinion or not but I thought they were a good example of cartoon platformers that weren't very complex but were enjoyable to play.
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Jul 4, 2015 06:07
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Beef Chief posted:I don't know much about Freedom Planet other than I watched an episode of an LP of it, hated how it looked, played, and the voice acting was garbage. I also hated the look and feel but I can't hate it too much after watching some of slowbeef streaming the game with the voice actors and the dev. They seemed like they had fun working on the game and didn't take any of it too seriously. Especially the dev is, in a massive shock, not a weirdo manchild sonic fan.
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Jul 4, 2015 09:52
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Amppelix posted:Especially the dev is, in a massive shock, not a weirdo manchild sonic fan. To be fair, they did actually finish a game without it all imploding.
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Jul 4, 2015 10:22
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The Bee posted:Yeah. I mean, for crying out loud they gave him a tragic backstory where his parents died in Pac World War 1. Ha ha ha what the gently caress, is this real Also Freedom Planet being OC DONUT STEEL the game is 100% deliberate, it is a Sonic game with the serial numbers filed off, that is the entire point
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Jul 4, 2015 10:31
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You know what's a good Sonic fan game? Sonic After The Sequel.
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Jul 4, 2015 10:36
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No it isn't.
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Jul 4, 2015 10:45
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Well yeah it is. Every level has a stupid gimmick, the controls are pretty tight but the physics are janky, the boss battles are okay and the music is simply amazing. Just like every 2D Sonic game.
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Jul 4, 2015 10:48
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Kikas posted:Well yeah it is. Every level has a stupid gimmick, the controls are pretty tight but the physics are janky, the boss battles are okay and the music is simply amazing. It's true, it's so much better than Before The Sequel which was a terrible blandfest (with gret music though). It's actually impressive how much Lake's level design abilities improved from one game to the other. Aaaand then there was Chrono Adventure. 
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Jul 4, 2015 14:43
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Sebadoh Gigante posted:The character design fails to stand above the deviant art crowd, and it's not like the game has a sense of humor or anything. While I disagree about most of your points about Freedom Planet, this one I find especially odd since they straight up tried to put in silly bloopers in their game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmy4EgBY7Zw Like, I don't think most of them are actually super funny, but at least knowing that they put in something silly like this at least makes it feel like they are having some fun.
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Jul 6, 2015 19:29
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Freedom planet is actually really really awesome, the designs, the levels, the bosses, it mixes the best of sonic and gunstar heroes with an awesome scale to them. I think you guys are being super dismissive and you're missing out on a legitimately cool game based on nothing.
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Jul 6, 2015 19:52
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Al-Saqr posted:Freedom planet is actually really really awesome, the designs, the levels, the bosses, it mixes the best of sonic and gunstar heroes with an awesome scale to them. I think you guys are being super dismissive and you're missing out on a legitimately cool game based on nothing. I played through it. I thought it wasn't terrible but "really really awesome" is stretching it. The level design works against the character mechanics and it straddles too hard between being a Sonic fangame and a game that diverges from that. It was fun enough but I wouldn't replay it.
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Jul 6, 2015 20:14
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Sleeveless posted:It's an OK game whose combat isn't nearly as deep as it seems to think it is wedged in between hours of doe-eyed furry blobs crying about their feelings. Yeah, everything about the mechanics feels like there is definite potential there, but the combat is repetetive, buttonmashy and super easy (the 1000-hit combo quest for example wasn't hard at all, once you found a good spot to do it). The equipment is disappointing in that you never have to balance your stats and you never have to compromise, your character will just continuously become more and more badass at everything, and in the end you will have two of the ultimate rings that have the best stats boosts for every stat. The story, voice acting and character designs during dialogue and cutscenes are terrible. But the in-game character animations are pretty good. Hey, I thought It was good enough that I completed it.
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Jul 6, 2015 21:22
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Dust felt like a talented animator tried his hand at writing a story, programming an engine, and designing/balancing a game without prior experience of doing any of those things.
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Jul 6, 2015 21:39
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LORD OF BUTT posted:Ha ha ha what the gently caress, is this real You mean a Sonic fangame with the serial numbers filed off. Kikas posted:You know what's a good Sonic fan game? I haven't played it, but I looked it up and was surprised to see all the press coverage it got. It even has it's own Wikipedia article! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic:_After_the_Sequel Ventana posted:While I disagree about most of your points about Freedom Planet, this one I find especially odd since they straight up tried to put in silly bloopers in their game. Yeah but they hid them away as easter eggs where only a few people will see them. Meanwhile, they opened the game with a decapitation, ensuring that everyone who played the game would see it at least once. It's not even unintentionally funny like the opening to Symphony of the Night, it's just cringeworthy. ImpAtom posted:I played through it. I thought it wasn't terrible but "really really awesome" is stretching it. The level design works against the character mechanics and it straddles too hard between being a Sonic fangame and a game that diverges from that. It was fun enough but I wouldn't replay it. I decided to give the game another shot and I realized it's not so much that I dislike the game itself but the reaction to it. Reviewers are all "Sega could learn a thing or two from Freedom Planet" but it makes so many of the same mistakes as the bad Sonic games. It has off-kilter physics (Sonic 4 ep.1) a disproportionate emphasis on combat (Sonic Heroes, Sonic Boom) and an overly serious story (Sonic 06). One specific gripe I have about the mechanics is Lilac's dragon boost. It attempts to combine Sonic's spindash with Sparkster's rocket boost, but due to the way the special meter works, it charges passively and you have to wait around to get a full charge. This is really lame, especially compared to the games that inspired it, where you had to tap the button repeatedly or hold it, respectively. It may not sound like a big deal on paper but pressing a button is a lot more fun than waiting, especially if it's an action you'll be performing constantly. Also you can't chain a cyclone jump into a dragon boost due to the meter mechanic, and for some reason it doesn't let you boost vertically. Sparkster could do it, why can't Lilac?
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Jul 7, 2015 02:55
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Sebadoh Gigante posted:I decided to give the game another shot and I realized it's not so much that I dislike the game itself but the reaction to it. Reviewers are all "Sega could learn a thing or two from Freedom Planet" but it makes so many of the same mistakes as the bad Sonic games. It has off-kilter physics (Sonic 4 ep.1) a disproportionate emphasis on combat (Sonic Heroes, Sonic Boom) and an overly serious story (Sonic 06). Lilac's dragon boost gives I-frames, so it would have trivialized pretty much the entire game if it could be done following a cyclone jump or spammed repeatedly. Also, being able to boost straight up would have introduced a whole lot of different design concerns regarding the levels and bossfights. I think it works pretty well as is. I also don't think the emphasis on combat is disproportionate, given the pretty diverse moveset that each character has. I prefer to think of the game as a platforming beat-em-up with a tendency to be fast, rather than as a speedy sonic-type game. I'm not sure what you mean by off-kilter physics, though. Could you elaborate on that a bit?
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Jul 7, 2015 08:44
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Well what if it didn't give iframes? Which wouldn't exactly be a challenge for the people making the game to change.
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Jul 7, 2015 10:26
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Katsuma posted:I'm not sure what you mean by off-kilter physics, though. Could you elaborate on that a bit? He means the game doesn't hold momentum if you release the direction you're currently running at. Which is a huge problem in a Sonic game, but while inspired by it, Freedom Planet isn't one. The physics were deliberate to make the game stand out from Sonic, never mind that it has three (soon to be five) drastically different characters it has to account for.
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Jul 7, 2015 11:35
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Stink Terios posted:He means the game doesn't hold momentum if you release the direction you're currently running at. 2D platformers that have a lot of combat (like Contra, Ninja Gaiden, and Mega Man) don't tend to bother with acceleration or momentum, so your character always moves at a fixed speed as soon as you press a direction. Without medusa heads coming from all directions, the platforming in these games would be pretty easy since you always jump to the same height and distance. Mario and Sonic are just about controlling the character's movement, and the platforming is where most of the difficulty comes from, so they use momentum to make things like taking a run-up or rolling down a hill necessary to get past obstacles. I don't remember much about Freedom Planet, but it was probably trying to do both at the same time and just felt off. Sonic 4 is a good example of doing it wrong, because it takes ages to build up to full speed by holding right, but you come to a dead stop the moment you let go. In earlier games you would have gradually slowed down (or kept going if you were on a downhill slope) and you would need to press the other direction to skid to a halt.
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Jul 7, 2015 12:14
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Freedom Planet's physics are fine, it simply isn't much fun to traverse Sonic levels as MMX or Doki Doki Ristar.
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Jul 7, 2015 12:40
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Electric Phantasm posted:Someone tell me more about the UK Sonic comics please. Each comic was made up of numerous stories, with earlier issues having bits on other Megadrive games like Golden Axe or Revenge of Shinobi (and one for Streets of Rage done by Mark Millar); these eventually gave way to mostly multiple Sonic-related stories, though a bizarre Decap Attack strip was the last other game that had an ongoing section, which got weirder and weirder over time. The main Sonic bit featured a much smaller cast than the bloated American comic, and with this allowed for characters to develop over its long run. All that said, it's very "local" to British sensibilities and can feel a little impenetrable at times, but that only ever made it better.
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Jul 7, 2015 13:08
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In StC the characters had very different backstories than you'd expect, like Tails being from another dimension which he'd occasionally return to in order to fight goblins, Robotnik transforming from the Japanese design to the AoStH one by encasing himself in a giant egg, and Knuckles actually being part of the ancient echidna tribe, somehow living in the present with no memories of it, rather than being the last decendant. Still makes a lot more sense than the actual game story since Adventure 2, because that's like if the 60's Batman show was part of the same continuity as The Dark Knight.
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Jul 7, 2015 13:35
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That loving Sned posted:Still makes a lot more sense than the actual game story since Adventure 2, because that's like if the 60's Batman show was part of the same continuity as The Dark Knight.
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Jul 7, 2015 19:29
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arcsig posted:Dust felt like a talented animator tried his hand at writing a story, programming an engine, and designing/balancing a game without prior experience of doing any of those things. "Talented" might be pushing it because I've never seen Dean Dodril actually willingly do humans. The only real difference seems to be whether he draws his furries western style like in Jazz Jackrabbit 2 or anime style like Dust.
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Jul 7, 2015 19:35
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Yeah I get that it's for balance reasons, it's just that the way they chose to balance it made the controls feel 'off' to me. If they had designed the levels with one, well-defined moveset in mind they wouldn't have had to compromise the consistency of the moveset. From what I understand the actual level design process was: Sonic level > less-sonic-y level > less-sonic-y level that can accommodate three different characters. I realize that it would have taken a lot more work to redesign the levels around an ideal moveset, but it would have been a much better game if it had. I'm not finished with the game yet, but to it's credit Pangu Lagoon was a lot of fun, and I like the big Nights-looking rings you go through to get a double boost. If the rest of the game was like that level it'd be great. Stink Terios posted:He means the game doesn't hold momentum if you release the direction you're currently running at. Yeah that's what I mean, and while Freedom Planet's physics aren't necessarily a detriment in the context of the game itself, people keep trying to compare it favorably to Sonic. And I'm not picking on you here, but there are other people who really try to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to the Sonic comparisons. You mentioned new playable characters, will Johnny Five Aces be one of them?
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Jul 7, 2015 20:29
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Why are we complaining about furries in the loving Sonic thread? In all seriousness, though, I remember reading a post somewhere by Tracy Butler where she explained why she draws anthropomorphic cats instead of humans in Lackadaisy. I don't have the exact post, though. I do know that, for her, at least, it's not just because it's an art crutch. I have no idea about Dean Dodril.
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Jul 7, 2015 20:45
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Normie Slayer posted:Gerald Robotnik's execution was kind of nightmarish when I was 7. SA2 broke all the rules for what should and shouldn't be in a Sonic story, like giving Eggman relatives, Rouge's design, and having a child and an old man shot in the loving face. In Crazy Gadget, you can hear Eggman say over the intercom "Sonic! If you don't get here right now, I will kill her!" while holding Amy hostage at gunpoint.
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Jul 7, 2015 21:11
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SA2 was edgy as poo poo looking back on it. Also it was supposed to have an instance of "drat" or "hell" I can't remember which. I don't know what the gently caress Yuji Naka was thinking in that period between SA and Shadow. Cutting back on the plot and bizarrely dark Sonic lore with Unleashed onward is a step in the right direction. That's also the point where Yuji Naka left Sega, I think.
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Jul 7, 2015 21:29
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mr. yuji naka is alright
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Jul 7, 2015 21:40
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Sebadoh Gigante posted:You mentioned new playable characters, will Johnny Five Aces be one of them? Yes. Torque too, and it seems he'll play sort of like a Gunstar Heroes character.
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Jul 7, 2015 21:54
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Normie Slayer posted:SA2 was edgy as poo poo looking back on it. Also it was supposed to have an instance of "drat" or "hell" I can't remember which. I don't know what the gently caress Yuji Naka was thinking in that period between SA and Shadow. Cutting back on the plot and bizarrely dark Sonic lore with Unleashed onward is a step in the right direction. That's also the point where Yuji Naka left Sega, I think. I think it was in the music in one of Knuckles' stages, where Sonic says "You're drat right, Knuckles!" You're right about it being a good decision to move away from that kind of story. Speaking of Yuji Naka, I think he has a new game coming out this year for the 3DS and Wii U, which is a bit like a 3D Nights game where you have to use homing attacks and lightspeed dashes to stay airborne. It looks really low budget, since the Wii U version is just a port of the 3DS one. Apparently, when he left SEGA during Sonic 06's development he asked if anyone wanted to join him. No-one did. He was responsible for a few really good games, but was a nightmare to work with.
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Jul 7, 2015 21:59
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That loving Sned posted:You're right about it being a good decision to move away from that kind of story. Speaking of Yuji Naka, I think he has a new game coming out this year for the 3DS and Wii U, which is a bit like a 3D Nights game where you have to use homing attacks and lightspeed dashes to stay airborne. It looks really low budget, since the Wii U version is just a port of the 3DS one.
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Jul 7, 2015 22:16
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