Everybody's a critic.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode One (because heaven forbid they release the whole game at once) is a sad, sad attempt at bringing Sonic the Hedgehog back to his "roots" in a blur of 2D side scrolling action. Instead what we got was a very bloomed Sonic with some ok levels and questionable mechanics. While it was a step in the right direction, the fact that the game is fairly short coupled with weird, feeling game-play/physics, make it just fall short of being Sonic's grand re-entry to the side scrolling scene. In this blog, we'll be looking at Sonic 4's formal elements and alayzing how, when set in motion, they leave Sonic 4 feeling lacking.

"You're too slow."

Sonic 4 is a single player game with multiplayer interaction via leader-boards for both scores and times. The objective of the game is to get beat 3 acts and a boss across 4 worlds while collecting the Chaos Emeralds. The procedures are as follows:

1. Sonic can run.
2. Sonic can jump.
3. Sonic can dash in the air after jumping - this will also lock on to certain objects and enemies.
4. The longer you hold left or right, the faster Sonic will go (up to a cap).
5. At any time during your run, you can hit down to curl into a ball.
6. From neutral, you can hold down and jump to curl into a ball. Releasing jump will send you forward.
7. Sonic collects rings that count as his health.
8. When Sonic gets hit by something, he drops all his rings (these can be picked up, but will disappear after a short time)
9. If Sonic gets hit with no rings, Sonic dies.

There's also fall pits, spike and spike traps, enemies, and different environmental obstacles based on your current world. Sonic always starts on the left and usually progresses to the right, which is where the end goal is. If Sonic has 50 or more rings and passes the goal, a warp gate to the special world will appear. If Sonic completes the special world, we will obtain a Chaos Emerald.

The rules of Sonic are if you get hit with no rings, you lose a life. If you lose all your lives, its game over. When you complete a level, your time and ring count are calculated into a score. The rules for Sonic are as follows:

1. If Sonic collides with an object via the lock on feature for his air dash, he can air dash again.
2. You can affect Sonic's horizontal velocity by holding down left or right (this works in the air as well)
3. After air dashing into an object, Sonic gains vertical velocity but loses his horizontal velocity (this can be slightly fixed by air dashing again after moving up)
4. When Sonic gets hit by an enemy/obstacle, he loses all velocity, is pushed back from the place he was hit and is invincible for a few seconds.

The resources in Sonic are your lives (1-UPs), rings, Chaos Emeralds, time and various power-ups that are placed throughout the levels. The conflict within Sonic is the process of getting to the end of each level while having enough rings to open the special world and collecting a Chaos Emerald. On a larger scale, you also need to defeat all the bosses and stop Eggman from killing you. (Which is the whole point of Sonic 4. But actually. Read the description.) The boundaries vary based on what zone your are in (in the Special Zone, for example, has a different gravity system and way of exiting) and the outcome of the game is really whether or not you will defeat Eggman.

While this looks fine and dandy - heck, even like it plays like old Sonic - it really isn't as peachy as it sounds. For starters, Sonic's run speed from neutral feels really, REALLY slow in the middle. (Not to mention it looks wonky and not synced with the speed). Also, the air dash could have used more tweaking - losing all your speed for air dashing makes it nonviable. There's actually a segment in the game in which you air dash five enemies in a row with no alternative to crossing the giant gap. The first time I did this, after killing the fifth enemy, I just dropped since I figured, "Ok, killed all the enemies. Time to fall to the other end of the gap." But, instead, my reward was watching the edge pass me as a fell to my death. All because I didn't press air dash again to regain my forward momentum THAT THEY TAKE AWAY FROM YOU FOR COLLIDING WITH THE AIR DASH. Ahem. Sorry, as someone who has played Sonic Rush and has SEEN Sega do a great air dash in a 2D game, it really makes me wonder why they would do this. Maybe this Sonic was meant to be fast, but slow? As in this is merely a tool to help the player focus on where Sonic is.

Which they should have no problem with, since the camera is glued to Sonic... almost too much. There's not a lot of give to it, which adds a speed deficit effect, if you will. Sonic should feel fast. While this game makes it look like its fast, it really is going quite slow. Which brings me to why the developers probably made all the decisions they made.

Sega has been having a tough time with the 3D Sonic series post-Sonic Adventure 2. Sonic 4 is directly linked to Sonic 3 story wise and was Sega's response to the constant "Where's old 2D Sonic?" Effectively, they tried to modernize old Sonic. This point is further emphasized in the 4 frame Sonic wiggling his finger at you on the title screen. This modernization is what makes it look like a Sonic game but not FEEL like a Sonic game. That's why the developers left us with what feels almost like we're playing old Sonic, but not quite. As you watch him run, you can see something is wrong. As you jump, you don't feel as speedy as the Blue Blur should.

Part of Sonic has always been the difficulty of balancing going to fast with seeing what was coming next. Removing that element by adding things like a slow air dash and a weird speed-up time ruined what we as fans of Sonic wanted from the game. Sure, the Special Zone is exactly like Sonic 1. Sure, we're back on Angel Island running through all the old levels in new HD graphics. But its not Sonic. It really is not. This whole rant has made me sad inside. I think I'm going to go play Sonic CD.

Remember the feels.

Yes, its time. Time for more love to a game that I feel was underrated and little bit belittled for no good reason. And that game... is... issssss.... Ah yes, Remember Me. [SPOILER ALERT DOWN BELOW FOR THE REST OF THIS BLOG]

Remember Me is chock full of emotional juiciness in both the main characters and the lives of those she (and to a lesser extent, they) touches. While it isn't quite apparent at first (since Nilin has just had her memory wiped), you start to warm up towards the main character. At first, I was all, "Man, she's a criminal or something. Maybe." But as it turns out, you're only half a criminal! As you learn about your past you start to question your future more and its just a whole roller-coaster ride of emotions. What makes you feel even worse (or better... or just feel in general) is remix the characters' memories. While there are only 4 points in which this happens (3, if we're being really technical); what you need to achieve in each remix is very interesting. For example, in the first remix, you need to edit the woman's memory so that she thinks the doctors KILLED HER HUSBAND. Oh yeah, we're getting heavy right off the bat. The cool part is that going through the memory is sort of non-linear: the timeline plays forward, but you can edit objects at certain points in time. This in turn splits the memory at each "point" that you've modified. (You can rewind backward to delete the modification as well, looking for the optimal "memory tweaks" to get the desired result).

The whole memory remix thing is a two fold as it both sparked my imagination and provided me with copious amounts of feels. It was really neat to see how you could remix and explore various options of one person's memory (although the things I could edit were fixed, it still felt like I was manipulating their brain). On top of this, I'm the only person in the world who can do it, thanks to the glove that my father made. And why, you may ask, did my father make the glove? SO HE COULD REMIX MY MEMORY AND REMOVE THE REALLY PAINFUL ONE(S). 

I say one because your family is broken apart due to your mother blaming you for distracting her in the car and crashing (which is actually the most illegitimate excuse). This led to your father creating the memory remixer (so you could forget the car crash) which in turn led to the memory bank thing, which in turn led to the near destruction of the city of Neo-Paris.

On top of this, while you are regaining your memory, you REMIX YOUR OWN MOTHER'S MEMORIES. (Mind you, you don't realize its her until after the remixing). You rig her memory so she thinks she's completely responsible for the crash. While this fixes your personal life, it also makes you question your leader, Edge. He's the one that's been blindly pointing you towards your and the group you are part of, the Errorists, goals. (Since when the game starts, you have no memory of what is going on). He breaks you out of prison and your relationship with him wavers over the course of the game; y'know since he's making you remix your parents memories and stuff. The real deal breaker is at the end and as much as I want to spoil it, I think even typing this may have been too much. Just know this: the feels are EXTREMELY BOUNTIFUL AT THE END.

Nilin as a character is also just... so easy to connect with. You feel terrible for her during the whole game and you just want to help her. (By... I dunno, being good at the game, I guess). Watching her uncover her past and seeing how memory and emotions connect... the game has a very powerful over-arcing theme in this respect. In summary, Remember Me is a game that illuminated the mind, the imagination and my emotions. It has a cool device that doubles as a weapon/boxing glove/gun/brain terrorist thing and it also has enough emotionally going on that you have waves of feels for pretty much the whole game.

God of Camera

It may seem hard to believe (or maybe the change was so seamless, we never noticed it coming until it was over), but games didn't always have the robust, dynamic systems they do today. In the earlier days, all the action was contained to a single screen (oh yeah, we didn't even have scrolling). Eventually, scrolling was integrated and when we finally got to 3D games, we had the camera usually following the player. The player would have the option to rotate the camera, or zoom in and out - but the camera was (usually) ALWAYS focused on the player. This all changed, however, with a game known as God of War. God of War broke the mold for the camera; it wasn't just about the character anymore. It was the character and the environment together, creating a more artistic, almost movie-like experience. Not every game adopted this exact style after, but the system they used has become extremely popular in modern games. Instead of focal points on characters, developers place nodes throughout the level with various weights on them. As the character approaches the node, the camera interpolates according.

Above is the result of using node traversal for the camera.

A game that I have been playing recently that uses this technique extremely well is Remember Me. It has a third person camera similar to that of Dead Space, with this shaky vibe that persists throughout the game to add to the feelings of confusion and disorientation. There's always sweet GUI overlays everywhere and the way the text is used and interacts with the camera is phenomenal. The amount of nodes there are for each cut-scene and interspersed within the levels keeps everything looking fresh, even while platforming. It also (kind of) hints toward where you should go next, which can be beneficial when you're avoiding security drones on the fly. Below is the into sequence to the game and it perfectly sets the mood for the game and camera. The real fun starts after 2:34.

In the first few moments of in-game cinematic, you can see just how many different nodes and triggers there are. What's nice is that even while this is going on, there are still moments where you can rotate the camera and look around while the events are happening. The first time you get to move the camera is really neat as well: instead of just slapping some text on screen, they give the movement purpose. After holding the camera to look at the robot, you get your "eyes scanned." This is a neat way at adding interactivity to the game while also setting the tale. What's also neat is the way the camera bobs as you awkwardly stumble forward. Since your "memory has been deleted," the camera even does little glitch things as you progress (keep in mind that everyone in this world has a brain computer thing, which is why you can see floating images everywhere). Later on the game, there's also a shaky-cam effect that the camera will occasionally perform, presumably some random "jitter" variable that is used.

When you end up escaping the death of the memory wiping chair, there's this awesome sequence where the camera pulls back as you escape a robot bent on stopping you. Whenever the robot breaks something and causes you to stumble, however, the camera zooms back in on the character until she's gained her balance, then it recedes back to its old distance. This sequence gives a clearer idea on how the camera is implemented into the game. While the camera is linked to the main character, it isn't necessarily focused on her. (Note that the camera is actually very slightly to the right of the girl). When the camera rotates, we can see that it does rotate around the main character, but it always keeps her slightly to the left. This means that there is a node that follows the main character that the camera can swap to and from as necessary based on the triggers in the world. For example, in the robot sequence, when the camera pans back, it has a focus on the whole hall. When it shakes, it goes in-between the event node and the character node and does the wiggle effect based on the trigger of the main character losing her balance. At the end of the hall, you can see it actually snap back to the character.

Such a robust camera system allows for a more cinematic gaming experience; arguably a "vastly greater and more involved one." While I won't disagree, I will say that the feel of a game should be the top priority in deciding your system of camera. In a 2D game, I don't know if I would necessarily want a node traversal system for my camera (mind you, it wouldn't be a bad idea!) since I may be able to accomplish the same effects without having to implement it. 3D is a whole 'nother can of worms which I don't want to open... today anyway. 

So yes, Remember Me is a fantastic emotional and visually appealing game, which decent combat and some nice platforming/puzzles. I would even go as far as to argue that the camera system is what made me enjoy the game. If the camera didn't respond the way it did, or simply rotated around the character instead of interacting with the game world and leaving the character slightly off center, I may have not enjoyed the game. I'm sure these things were taken into account as the game was created, and maybe at one time the character was center. Its these little things in the camera system that we take for granted, but I won't anymore. I hope that all my camera systems are one day, just as awesome as these.