I don’t I’ve seen a single time where so much of the discourse incurred against a game specifically on here had so much to do with its art style, but here we are. I suppose there is the Demons’ Souls remake, but that was a case of failing to replicate a style that could’ve been replicated using their tools, not so much deliberately choosing a new aesthetic for a new game.
Not to say there isn’t other places where Sonic Superstars could theoretically have done better, but actually playing the game and then Mario Wonder subsequently, it’s hard to shake the feeling of how much JUST the art direction surrounds everything else in how Superstars is perceived. Yes, I personally would’ve preferred sprites or a hand drawn look and yes, it is a depressing indictment on the state of your modern gamer that every title that makes the big bucks since Pokémon’s jump to 3D models has used 3D models, but I don’t think Superstars’s art direction is without merit, especially when it comes to any sort of inner screen perspective. In something sprite based like Sonic Mania, the attempt to pull a background foreground effect on Metal Madness actually looks kind of ugly; scrunching the sprites makes it difficult to actually see Sonic during those segments making them a bit more annoying than they should be and clashing with the clarity and character of the rest of the game. Superstars has that potential to keep the art design more cohesive at depth. The opening zone, Frozen Base and Pinball Carnival all try to use the background during the level in ways that make the environments feel more dynamic. During Speed Jungle there was even a part where Tails was doing something in the background section of the screen, which was pretty rad, felt like it was a cohesive way to integrate the co-op expectation even while playing single player. But then you get stages like Sand Sanctuary and Lagoon City, which have banger music but feel weirdly empty at times because there’s too little going on in their background, making the art style feel cheaper. You could cover the emptier background abstractions well with sprites in the older titles but with 3D models it practically demands denser background design (see also, Klonoa 2 and the DKC Retro Studios Duology). There’s still character to be found in all of the model animations, even down to something as simple as how each character has a different way to follow over a rock. New character Trip and returning character Fang have a lot of cute animations going on, although because of the art style being what it is it’s harder than the sprite-based ones to fully appreciate every step of animation for smaller sprites. You COULD fix this with the cel-shaded costumes……………locked behind Kroger grocery shopping in the States……………..are you fucking kidding me? I have no idea whose idea was this but they need to be locked in a dark basement until they realize their mistake.
Speaking of bad ideas, the boss battles! This is the one portion of the game I would largely say is wholly a miss (OST can be hit or miss but even Senoue’s twangiest tracks aren’t as bad as Sonic 4’s and Tee Lopes with the others hits just as strong). Not to say bosses in the other Classics (sans Mania) were top tier designs either, but they were quick ways to close out the stages after the journey that was a Classic Sonic level. But they overcorrected way too much. Remember how I mentioned about 3D having more opportunities to use the background with placing models at varying depths? It’s mainly used to make every boss drag out for way longer than they should. Bosses like Speed Jungle’s are literally impossible to hit unless by their own attacks, while the bosses of Sand Santuary and Press Factory Act 1 are slow, tedious waiting games where each hit is spaced out by aroun 20 seconds of waiting, in ways that are not cheesed by Chaos Powers when they really should at the very least be incredibly vulnerable to that option.
Sure, you’ll occasionally get a solid fight; the first boss of Pinball Carnival instantly becomes vulnerable upon your action hitting every chip in the arena, and Golden Capital Act 1’s piggy bank feels closest to a Classic Sonic boss in the quick speed you can take it down and theoretically cheese it hardcore, but the majority of bosses hide in the background, launch a series of attacks and only occasionally leave themselves genuinely open before the long wait cycle begins anew. Or worse; Fang’s boss battle is a great concept let down by too much waiting; if you cut out the auto scrolling vertical sections and just had Fang’s phases flow naturally into each other it would be a game highlight. Instead, it can be really tedious upon taking a death dealing with unclear hitboxes. The worst trend of Sonic Adventure 1’s Chaos 4 battle and damn near every fight from Sonic Rush multiplied by being in almost every stage in the game. This is especially shit with the last boss of both campaigns. A gauntlet of a battle that takes far too many hits to kill while spending far too little time being able to be hit, and in the case of the second battle, multiple instances of being killed in one hit even WITH rings. That boss is a brutal gauntlet that demands near perfection and seems absolutely determined to never end; few things more grueling than dying late in its second phase and having to start from the beginning all over again. It took me two and a half hours to defeat it; that’s a devastating roadblock for a Sonic game, and so much of that time being waiting out the motions makes it all the more painful.
Worse yet, this is a solved problem! In Sonic Rush Adventure, Dimps realized that constantly waiting around for bosses to show their weak points was incredibly tedious and lame and gave the bosses seemingly big health bars as an excuse for you to constantly wail on them quickly. That also used 3D models at depth as well, why couldn’t Arzest have looked to that for inspiration or better yet, the classic games they clearly put a lot of effort into nailing game feel and level design embodying?
Despite despising most of the zone bosses, I actually do enjoy the final FINAL boss even more than Mania’s despite feeling like it could’ve been built up a lot more across the journey or incorporated Trip in some regard. It probably helps that it has multiple phases of striking it and speed exploration is a constant part of the battle, meaning you aren’t forced to just wait in place for overly drawn out attack animations.
In spite of boss design being a fairly sore spot, the main draw for me was the level design and how it played with the physics replication to play out the ideal Classic Sonic experience with the new art style and boy do I have words.
I feel like core Sonic level design is in sort of a Schrödinger’s dilemma for a lot of people, especially those grown on Mario’s shorter carefully paced stages. If it’s too focused on holding forward/right, SEGA made the game too automated and lacking in challenge. If it’s too filled with traps you actually have to learn to avoid and a lot of instant death opportunities, the game is bad because SEGA didn’t give me enough reflexes and I have to actually LEARN the level?! Boo! Mania did manage to actually crack that code for most people outside of non-fans who still couldn’t gel with Sonic at a concept level; out of all the classics it felt like it took influence from Sonic 2’s design sense the most, very horizontal with a lot of setpieces built to facilitate speed, only a few zones like Oil Ocean or Lava Reef pushing the platforming side but mostly being pretty lenient.
Superstars’s level design sense feels more reminiscent of Sonic 1 and 3&K in comparison. The go-fasting is a lot less designated for more platforming like 1 and the levels feel longer and denser in design around all heights closer to 3&K. The Carnival Night Act 2 experience of damn near timing out won’t be uncommon in Superstars. Yet, in spite of Mania being easier to pick up and play and thus easier to recommend to non-fans. Superstars’s levels largely were still enjoyable and felt believably layered enough to encourage multiple attempts at mastering them. Time Attack mode, having the levels without the bosses, is a godsend for speedrun types. It helps further that each zone is truly new, bringing with it its own set of distinct gimmicks to spice up the run. Maybe not all of them worked; not a fan of Speed Jungle Act 2’s darkness concept, or the CyberStation mouse path section, but the ones that I think worked well to spice up dense level design that demands more consideration from players. Pinball Carnival was a personal highlight but also the character-specific acts I think built on playing to their strengths in a way Mania only got one new Knuckles stage to show for it.
Helps just as well that core control is incredibly tight. Numerous interviews talked about how important it was to nail the physics of the classic titles, and while not entirely without jank (some weird crushing collision occasionally also present in Retro Engine), the speed, the windup and the weight feels just as it should which makes platforming and exploration satisfying to uncover not unlike the Classics. When understanding the level design in the right way, going fast can still be exhilarating. Even in the second campaign when the challenge ramps up, the abilities you’re given at a base level open up exploration in the broadest sense it could for a classic Sonic game, one particular ability being game changing for keeping the pace up.
Further helping this is the new Chaos Powers system with a new power for each emerald earned via special stages that aren’t on par with Mania’s, but I do commend for being unique concepts. Some of them are overly situational, mainly the Vision power which is really just the Knuckles Sunglasses from Sonic Adventure 2, but also Water which only applies to like, two Zones in the game, but the other powers make exploration and even the boss battles more tolerable. Bullet can let you chart directional course through the air. Vine can get that necessary vertical height. Clone can clear enemies giving you a smooth path for faster running. Slow can help ease the reaction timing on obstacles, etc. They feel like Mega Man powerups in how they can enhance enjoyment without necessarily requiring them either. For the levels at least; thank god the checkpoints mean you’ll have them all back for the boss battles because damn if they don’t do their damnedness to ease the pain.
Oh yeah and there’s a battle mode I guess. It feels as much an afterthought as I’m giving it here, but I do like how robot creation affects a certain part of the main game; that’s pretty cool and unexpected.
Ultimately, I’m not gonna say Superstars is a merely good first step or anything like that; it’s doing the Mega Man 11 thing of using 3D models and new gameplay mechanics to rethink the core loop of an old gameplay style but the majority of elements ARE here if they just sort out the inconsistencies and make the style more appealing. Tighten up those boss battles a la Sonic Rush Adventure, cel-shade those 3D models to make the animations better pop and tell Jun Senoue to make music as if for the SEGA Saturn instead of the Genesis, and boom, top tier Sonic game production factory right there. In its current form, Sonic Superstars is like blueberry pancakes where the pancake tastes great but the blueberries can be really sour from time to time.
Not to say there isn’t other places where Sonic Superstars could theoretically have done better, but actually playing the game and then Mario Wonder subsequently, it’s hard to shake the feeling of how much JUST the art direction surrounds everything else in how Superstars is perceived. Yes, I personally would’ve preferred sprites or a hand drawn look and yes, it is a depressing indictment on the state of your modern gamer that every title that makes the big bucks since Pokémon’s jump to 3D models has used 3D models, but I don’t think Superstars’s art direction is without merit, especially when it comes to any sort of inner screen perspective. In something sprite based like Sonic Mania, the attempt to pull a background foreground effect on Metal Madness actually looks kind of ugly; scrunching the sprites makes it difficult to actually see Sonic during those segments making them a bit more annoying than they should be and clashing with the clarity and character of the rest of the game. Superstars has that potential to keep the art design more cohesive at depth. The opening zone, Frozen Base and Pinball Carnival all try to use the background during the level in ways that make the environments feel more dynamic. During Speed Jungle there was even a part where Tails was doing something in the background section of the screen, which was pretty rad, felt like it was a cohesive way to integrate the co-op expectation even while playing single player. But then you get stages like Sand Sanctuary and Lagoon City, which have banger music but feel weirdly empty at times because there’s too little going on in their background, making the art style feel cheaper. You could cover the emptier background abstractions well with sprites in the older titles but with 3D models it practically demands denser background design (see also, Klonoa 2 and the DKC Retro Studios Duology). There’s still character to be found in all of the model animations, even down to something as simple as how each character has a different way to follow over a rock. New character Trip and returning character Fang have a lot of cute animations going on, although because of the art style being what it is it’s harder than the sprite-based ones to fully appreciate every step of animation for smaller sprites. You COULD fix this with the cel-shaded costumes……………locked behind Kroger grocery shopping in the States……………..are you fucking kidding me? I have no idea whose idea was this but they need to be locked in a dark basement until they realize their mistake.
Speaking of bad ideas, the boss battles! This is the one portion of the game I would largely say is wholly a miss (OST can be hit or miss but even Senoue’s twangiest tracks aren’t as bad as Sonic 4’s and Tee Lopes with the others hits just as strong). Not to say bosses in the other Classics (sans Mania) were top tier designs either, but they were quick ways to close out the stages after the journey that was a Classic Sonic level. But they overcorrected way too much. Remember how I mentioned about 3D having more opportunities to use the background with placing models at varying depths? It’s mainly used to make every boss drag out for way longer than they should. Bosses like Speed Jungle’s are literally impossible to hit unless by their own attacks, while the bosses of Sand Santuary and Press Factory Act 1 are slow, tedious waiting games where each hit is spaced out by aroun 20 seconds of waiting, in ways that are not cheesed by Chaos Powers when they really should at the very least be incredibly vulnerable to that option.
Sure, you’ll occasionally get a solid fight; the first boss of Pinball Carnival instantly becomes vulnerable upon your action hitting every chip in the arena, and Golden Capital Act 1’s piggy bank feels closest to a Classic Sonic boss in the quick speed you can take it down and theoretically cheese it hardcore, but the majority of bosses hide in the background, launch a series of attacks and only occasionally leave themselves genuinely open before the long wait cycle begins anew. Or worse; Fang’s boss battle is a great concept let down by too much waiting; if you cut out the auto scrolling vertical sections and just had Fang’s phases flow naturally into each other it would be a game highlight. Instead, it can be really tedious upon taking a death dealing with unclear hitboxes. The worst trend of Sonic Adventure 1’s Chaos 4 battle and damn near every fight from Sonic Rush multiplied by being in almost every stage in the game. This is especially shit with the last boss of both campaigns. A gauntlet of a battle that takes far too many hits to kill while spending far too little time being able to be hit, and in the case of the second battle, multiple instances of being killed in one hit even WITH rings. That boss is a brutal gauntlet that demands near perfection and seems absolutely determined to never end; few things more grueling than dying late in its second phase and having to start from the beginning all over again. It took me two and a half hours to defeat it; that’s a devastating roadblock for a Sonic game, and so much of that time being waiting out the motions makes it all the more painful.
Worse yet, this is a solved problem! In Sonic Rush Adventure, Dimps realized that constantly waiting around for bosses to show their weak points was incredibly tedious and lame and gave the bosses seemingly big health bars as an excuse for you to constantly wail on them quickly. That also used 3D models at depth as well, why couldn’t Arzest have looked to that for inspiration or better yet, the classic games they clearly put a lot of effort into nailing game feel and level design embodying?
Despite despising most of the zone bosses, I actually do enjoy the final FINAL boss even more than Mania’s despite feeling like it could’ve been built up a lot more across the journey or incorporated Trip in some regard. It probably helps that it has multiple phases of striking it and speed exploration is a constant part of the battle, meaning you aren’t forced to just wait in place for overly drawn out attack animations.
In spite of boss design being a fairly sore spot, the main draw for me was the level design and how it played with the physics replication to play out the ideal Classic Sonic experience with the new art style and boy do I have words.
I feel like core Sonic level design is in sort of a Schrödinger’s dilemma for a lot of people, especially those grown on Mario’s shorter carefully paced stages. If it’s too focused on holding forward/right, SEGA made the game too automated and lacking in challenge. If it’s too filled with traps you actually have to learn to avoid and a lot of instant death opportunities, the game is bad because SEGA didn’t give me enough reflexes and I have to actually LEARN the level?! Boo! Mania did manage to actually crack that code for most people outside of non-fans who still couldn’t gel with Sonic at a concept level; out of all the classics it felt like it took influence from Sonic 2’s design sense the most, very horizontal with a lot of setpieces built to facilitate speed, only a few zones like Oil Ocean or Lava Reef pushing the platforming side but mostly being pretty lenient.
Superstars’s level design sense feels more reminiscent of Sonic 1 and 3&K in comparison. The go-fasting is a lot less designated for more platforming like 1 and the levels feel longer and denser in design around all heights closer to 3&K. The Carnival Night Act 2 experience of damn near timing out won’t be uncommon in Superstars. Yet, in spite of Mania being easier to pick up and play and thus easier to recommend to non-fans. Superstars’s levels largely were still enjoyable and felt believably layered enough to encourage multiple attempts at mastering them. Time Attack mode, having the levels without the bosses, is a godsend for speedrun types. It helps further that each zone is truly new, bringing with it its own set of distinct gimmicks to spice up the run. Maybe not all of them worked; not a fan of Speed Jungle Act 2’s darkness concept, or the CyberStation mouse path section, but the ones that I think worked well to spice up dense level design that demands more consideration from players. Pinball Carnival was a personal highlight but also the character-specific acts I think built on playing to their strengths in a way Mania only got one new Knuckles stage to show for it.
Helps just as well that core control is incredibly tight. Numerous interviews talked about how important it was to nail the physics of the classic titles, and while not entirely without jank (some weird crushing collision occasionally also present in Retro Engine), the speed, the windup and the weight feels just as it should which makes platforming and exploration satisfying to uncover not unlike the Classics. When understanding the level design in the right way, going fast can still be exhilarating. Even in the second campaign when the challenge ramps up, the abilities you’re given at a base level open up exploration in the broadest sense it could for a classic Sonic game, one particular ability being game changing for keeping the pace up.
Further helping this is the new Chaos Powers system with a new power for each emerald earned via special stages that aren’t on par with Mania’s, but I do commend for being unique concepts. Some of them are overly situational, mainly the Vision power which is really just the Knuckles Sunglasses from Sonic Adventure 2, but also Water which only applies to like, two Zones in the game, but the other powers make exploration and even the boss battles more tolerable. Bullet can let you chart directional course through the air. Vine can get that necessary vertical height. Clone can clear enemies giving you a smooth path for faster running. Slow can help ease the reaction timing on obstacles, etc. They feel like Mega Man powerups in how they can enhance enjoyment without necessarily requiring them either. For the levels at least; thank god the checkpoints mean you’ll have them all back for the boss battles because damn if they don’t do their damnedness to ease the pain.
Oh yeah and there’s a battle mode I guess. It feels as much an afterthought as I’m giving it here, but I do like how robot creation affects a certain part of the main game; that’s pretty cool and unexpected.
Ultimately, I’m not gonna say Superstars is a merely good first step or anything like that; it’s doing the Mega Man 11 thing of using 3D models and new gameplay mechanics to rethink the core loop of an old gameplay style but the majority of elements ARE here if they just sort out the inconsistencies and make the style more appealing. Tighten up those boss battles a la Sonic Rush Adventure, cel-shade those 3D models to make the animations better pop and tell Jun Senoue to make music as if for the SEGA Saturn instead of the Genesis, and boom, top tier Sonic game production factory right there. In its current form, Sonic Superstars is like blueberry pancakes where the pancake tastes great but the blueberries can be really sour from time to time.