Alright I'm on record, ON THIS WEBSITE, as being a Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 (Not Sparkster) defender. Maybe I was a little hasty on that.
Not completely. This game is fine and the whining I was reacting to was the kind of thing Gamers do when they don't have a great articulation of their actual issues where they just list differences. Like for example, the jetpack works differently in this one. But being different isn't inherently making it trash or anything. That's a separate decision, which was also made. Okay that was mostly a goof too.
The jetpack, like everything else, really hits on something I can only call the enSonicification of RKA here. Sparkster himself is drawn just a bit COOLER here, even if there's definitely a cartoony edge to a lot of his animations. The jet dash being so at-will, automatically charging, and not actually bouncing if you hit a surface head-on lead to him feeling way more competent by default. The dash isn't a super-powerful measure to be deployed with a lot of consideration and skill anymore, but a thing you can do constantly without losing much control. You're agile as hell. You're COOL now!
The other Sonic thing is that the levels are now much more open and much more themed. Grass level, desert level, and so on. There's less of a narrative to it. You fight a living tree thing that punches you in the first level because it was just a boss they thought of. How is it working for the lizard kingdom? No idea.
I am much less of a fan of Genesis Sonic than most but really my problems here are just that the checkpoints are kinda frustrating and the level design isn't quite up to snuff. Whatever. It's a perfectly fine game.
Not completely. This game is fine and the whining I was reacting to was the kind of thing Gamers do when they don't have a great articulation of their actual issues where they just list differences. Like for example, the jetpack works differently in this one. But being different isn't inherently making it trash or anything. That's a separate decision, which was also made. Okay that was mostly a goof too.
The jetpack, like everything else, really hits on something I can only call the enSonicification of RKA here. Sparkster himself is drawn just a bit COOLER here, even if there's definitely a cartoony edge to a lot of his animations. The jet dash being so at-will, automatically charging, and not actually bouncing if you hit a surface head-on lead to him feeling way more competent by default. The dash isn't a super-powerful measure to be deployed with a lot of consideration and skill anymore, but a thing you can do constantly without losing much control. You're agile as hell. You're COOL now!
The other Sonic thing is that the levels are now much more open and much more themed. Grass level, desert level, and so on. There's less of a narrative to it. You fight a living tree thing that punches you in the first level because it was just a boss they thought of. How is it working for the lizard kingdom? No idea.
I am much less of a fan of Genesis Sonic than most but really my problems here are just that the checkpoints are kinda frustrating and the level design isn't quite up to snuff. Whatever. It's a perfectly fine game.