45 replies to this topic

[Bill Cipher]

I picked up the 3ds version, will give it a go and report back in a few days. Any talk of the handheld version has been overshadowed by the console one as you said. There is connectivity between both in the sense you can unlock some extra things but not sure if that is even going to add anything of great substance.

ProJared sums it up in his review pretty well

 

 

Watched it earlier today, his One Minute version made me laugh.

[NintendoReport]

Watched it earlier today, his One Minute version made me laugh.

 

Oh... missed the 1 minute version in my feed. Gotta watch!

[KeptMyWiiUAndLeftTheForums]

Oh... missed the 1 minute version in my feed. Gotta watch!

Lol it's pretty good.

[NintendoReport]

Lol it's pretty good.

 

 

Well I finally had a moment to watch this... nearly spit out my coffee. lol. fits the game well.

 

[Scumbag]

What the hell happened between that great first trailer from way back and the finished product. Shameful.

[NintendoReport]

So I dug this up on August 22nd.... perhaps the reason  for some key people leaving could be because of this... It looks like the devs went for compression instead of optimizing the game engine (which would probably take more time, but be the better option). The 2nd important point is the devs deciding to offer co-op, not split screen but rather one person on game pad and one on TV. Similar to how Hyrule Warriors works which lowers the resolution and has frame drops.

 

Here is a quote:

 

http://www.tssznews....erate-problems/

 

 

I have a few years of experience bug testing at Vicarious Visions, an adjunct of Activision. I’m here today to discuss what I BELIEVE (not what I know) is happening to Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric based on my experience and discussions with programmers who have worked on past Nintendo hardware specifically the Wii and Nintendo DS.

 

First off, I’d like to cover the graphics. Many have wondered why they seem to look inferior to early screenshots we have seen. I speculate that this has a LOT to do with the framerate, which i’ll touch on separately in a moment. When working on the early stages of a game, many assets are loaded by the engine off a hard drive rather than physical media. With handhelds like the DS, this doesn’t lead to many problems as the assets are either small or loaded off a cart. Here’s the issue… when the game has to load off a disk… ESPECIALLY with the CryEngine, the texture loading is VERY SLOW and this is only made worse by the Wii U’s disk speeds.

 

Now… most games don’t have it so badly where it requires more than a slight compression… but why would this be different for Sonic Boom? Simple. What changed between the early photos and the recent ones? Multiplayer. Early builds only needed to load and display one screen. A poorly optimized second screen mode would lead to MASSIVE slowdown to the point where it’s not too hard to assume it would dip below 30 frames quite frequently, only making the texture issues worse.

 

How do you combat this? Well the first thing you should do is optimize your engine for several screens… which seems to have been ignored in favor of compression… A LOT of compression… How do I know this is the case? CryEngine has no splitscreen support, and I suspect the team did quick work of adding splitscreen which required massive compression and downgrades to even run.

 

Now the framerate, I suspect the game was meant to run at 60 FPS. I know this seems wrong considering the current state of the game but some signs still remain. For instance, the animations are VERY fluid, while this looks fantastic, I believe this is actually just running the well animated animations at double the frames. Hear me out, I know this wouldn’t make sense, but the engine is SUPPOSED to run at 60 Frames and could easily run on Wii U. Why would they do these things? I have no clue… stupidity? Probably not… Rush? Yeah, more likely.

 

What the hell happened between that great first trailer from way back and the finished product. Shameful.

 

I found the reason.

[Son Edo]

Good game, good horsing game.

[NintendoReport]

Good game, good horsing game.

 

I wish I knew what was good about it because I may have enjoyed it more. What did you find good about the game?

[Son Edo]

The gameplay, voice acting and story. It's simply a common trend to hate sonic games these days because of their poor reviews. Heck I bet most reviewers didn't even play the game and just gave it a poor score because it's the common trend with sonic games.

 

I had as much enjoyment with Boom as I did 3D world.

[Scumbag]

Another 6 months in development could have really helped.

[NintendoReport]

 

I had as much enjoyment with Boom as I did 3D world.

 

Well, I respect your opinion but I have to be honest. I threw up in my mouth a little bit when you said this. Imo, 3D World is in another league compared to Boom. 

Another 6 months in development could have really helped.

 

I agree. if this was Nintendo... they would have delayed it and not put out such an unpolished, unfinished product. They could of optimized the engine rather then going with compression of assets. I also think they should have went Mario Kart 8 route regarding multiplayer. Just do the classic split screen. If the game is going to take a huge hit in co-op because of sending two feeds, just don't do it.

[BrosBeforeGardenTools]

The gameplay, voice acting and story. It's simply a common trend to hate sonic games these days because of their poor reviews. Heck I bet most reviewers didn't even play the game and just gave it a poor score because it's the common trend with sonic games.
 
I had as much enjoyment with Boom as I did 3D world.

We might get along well.

[montytom]

It doesnt come out in the UK till this Friday aka 21/11/2014.

 

I would really love to buy it as I get paid then but if I wait 2 weeks it will go down to maybe half the price. I played the 3ds versions demo and it made me sad at what sonic is going through.

You cannot do this game quickly as you would miss things-Thats not sonic thats Mario.

 

I will be getting both versions of Sonic boom but not untill they have dropped in price.

 

I remember when I used to pick up sonic games day 1 but now ill wait

[NintendoReport]

At the very least, I do hope BRB doesn't just let this game sit idle. There are some fixes that could be done... and should be done. Basic bugs, glitches etc. I mentioned previously on the forums the game cover mentions DLC... would be curious to see if this idea is dropped entirely. Lost Worlds got it and those devs were pretty good about showing support. BRB... let's see what they do...

[BrosBeforeGardenTools]

I'll be getting my copy on Wednesday. But I'm like Son, I appreciate all the Sonic games (Sonic 2006, etc)... not just the ones that certain people determine to be 'quality'.

[KeptMyWiiUAndLeftTheForums]

It doesnt come out in the UK till this Friday aka 21/11/2014.

Releasing on the same day as smash in a country that already lacks Wii U support. Bad idea.

At the very least, I do hope BRB doesn't just let this game sit idle. There are some fixes that could be done... and should be done. Basic bugs, glitches etc. I mentioned previously on the forums the game cover mentions DLC... would be curious to see if this idea is dropped entirely. Lost Worlds got it and those devs were pretty good about showing support. BRB... let's see what they do...

Well that's assuming there's anyone left at the studio but the janitor...

[montytom]

 

 

I fully agree I am still not seeing adverts for this great little console. The only info i get is from here and the nintendo direct. Its such a shame as its my favourite next/current gen console

[KeptMyWiiUAndLeftTheForums]

I fully agree I am still not seeing adverts for this great little console. The only info i get is from here and the nintendo direct. Its such a shame as its my favourite next/current gen console

Honestly, if all those people who are like "DAE OoT and Pokemon from when gaming was good." were to do their research they would know the Wii U is the perfect console for them, and if they bought it, it could put the Wii U in competition with PS4. But people don't like to do research. I still see people complaining about how Nintendo isn't working on a starfox or metroid when they've confirmed they're working on one and heavily hinted at the other.

Ah well. People are stupid.

[Bill Cipher]

The gameplay, voice acting and story. It's simply a common trend to hate sonic games these days because of their poor reviews. Heck I bet most reviewers didn't even play the game and just gave it a poor score because it's the common trend with sonic games.

 

I had as much enjoyment with Boom as I did 3D world.

What.

 

Story and Sonic Game. Good. Pick One. As Alex Day puts it, Sonic doesn't need a story.

 

And contrary to your belief that "The reviewers just gave it a poor score" the Last 3 Sonic games all have above a 60%, with Generations and Colours getting an 80% on Metacritic. That's not a BAD review, that's just a flawed but still good game. Compare that to Boom, which has a 40% as an average. No, it is not Sonic hate, it's just the game sucks.

 

The gameplay completely misses the point of Sonic and when it does get sonic(Go fast), the framerate completely screws it up. There are numerous videos showing this. Framerate in a fast paced game is crucial to good gameplay

 

Voice acting outside of Knuckles is actually quite good for a Sonic game, I'll give you that.

 

Is it a terrible game? No, terrible is what I reserve for a game like Dungeon Keeper iOS. However, the game is still a  broken mess of a game in terms of a LOT of stuff, probably not helped due to the rush to get the game out.

 

At the very least, I do hope BRB doesn't just let this game sit idle. There are some fixes that could be done... and should be done. Basic bugs, glitches etc. I mentioned previously on the forums the game cover mentions DLC... would be curious to see if this idea is dropped entirely. Lost Worlds got it and those devs were pretty good about showing support. BRB... let's see what they do...

 

There's been a massive Exodus of staff from BRB starting back in September of last year with the game's creative director. I think the company is more of a shell now then an actual game studio.

 

Honestly, if all those people who are like "DAE OoT and Pokemon from when gaming was good." were to do their research they would know the Wii U is the perfect console for them, and if they bought it, it could put the Wii U in competition with PS4. But people don't like to do research. I still see people complaining about how Nintendo isn't working on a starfox or metroid when they've confirmed they're working on one and heavily hinted at the other.

Ah well. People are stupid.

I'm nostalgic not for the games(OoT is one of the weaker entries in the Zelda Series, where as opposed to creating something new they just went "3D GUYS" and added a time travel element late in development. Conversely, It's little surprise that MM/WW/aLBW are my favourite, mostly because each one picks an idea and executes it), but I am nostalgic for the way the Gaming Community was in a sense. the biggest issues were over what game was better, not about game devs selling games that don't work, or online DRM, or the whole Microtwitsactions trend, or the very idea that 10 MILLION copies is needed for a game to break even. I miss the smaller, more simple, less factory produced AAA games. 

[BrosBeforeGardenTools]

Actually Doctor Strange, the reviewers don't respect the new style of Sonic games (2006, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic Boom) and will be a bit harsh, but will be crazy nice and generous to the old style (Colors, Lost World). Generations might be an exception because it was flat out fun for both parties.

But for those of us who do kind of like the new style, we just have to turn the other cheek to most reviews and opinions.

Edited by Porhorse, 17 November 2014 - 05:47 PM.