Know what the hardest daytime stage in Sonic Unleashed is, even if you're not speed running it? Savannah Citadel Act 2, LOL.
This stage brings me back to when this game first had my attention and I didn't know anything about it. On YouTube... (unfortunately...) I saw someone run the stage and I was aware the point of getting through it was to drift, and the player who was playing it was pretty much like, "Drifting is useless in this game." ... and this is why you shouldn't take the comments on YouTube seriously from random people.
Yeah, I'm seriously exaggerating that this is the hardest stage to speed run, but the stage... as simple as it appears, pretty much just laughs at you if you drift this stage wrong. As far as from what I've seen done by the heavy hitters that speed run Unleashed who make it look easy (I still have yet to understand how they drift with precision in this stage), it doesn't seem like a nail you can miss once you've learned how to hit those turns fast without falling off the stage.
I've also been dabbing in the Rooftop Run stages, and... I'm having the same experience with daytime Act 2-2 as I had with Jungle Joyride 1-2, and that is... the DLC act is easier than the original. As I've mentioned before, a lot of the DLC stages in this game are pretty good, INCLUDING the Werehog stages (although the majority of the ones I've played are actually harder than their DLC counterpart such as Arid Sands 1-2... holy shit...). But I've got to say, I'm really impressed with Rooftop Run 2-2. It is probably the most fun in this game I've had. Act 4 is quite challenging, but I haven't spent much time in it. Act 5 was another challenging yet very fun (and funny) stage. Funny because game logic says that if Sonic falls to the bottom of the stage, he "dies." But here... he clearly hits the ground and walks forward for a bit... and stands until the game fades to restart the stage. We all know Sonic is virtually indestructible because as you know, in Sonic Adventure 1, he jumped from a FREAKING AIRSHIP, like 30,000 feet from the ground! And in lolSonicX (I actually like Sonic X even with it's inconsistent artwork) he fell from outer space and survived, earning nothing but a week or two of sleep after the impact. This character can survive falls from infinite heights and he dies from a measly 20 story fall, lol. But he has to "die," for how else will he get back up? I think Sonic Team should've at least killed off his dying voice or say "fail" if they knew he was going to hit the ground.
Great... now I sound like a true, nit-picking Sonic fanboy, lol.
But honestly, I have no idea what I want to do next for a speed run (maybe Rooftop 2-2). I could run Skyscraper Scamper 3 again and go for a faster time (and mayyyyybe try out the glitch), but nah. Oh, before I forget, I also figured out how to get a ridiculous time in Windmill Isle Act 3. Man... this game... lol. It's not such a big deal now, though. Been talking to Craig about increasing the quality of my videos and I will be looking into it deeper. Shoutouts to him! Here's his run of Rooftop 2-2.
I'm going to play Unleashed for a bit. I hope I can get better at this game.
I love Sonic's Japanese voice. I blame all of the speed runs for me falling for it. Otherwise, I'd be going WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! in English... though QSSing in English sounds weird.
I've been messing around with Unleashed lately. This game, I tell you... it feels so complex compared to Generations. Speed in Unleashed feels so... inconsistent sometimes compared to Generations. It's true. This game has a lot of speed caps and with that, even more ways to break the speed cap. I guess that's what makes it interesting. But getting the most out of speed in Unleashed is hard. Not that speed running Generations was easy - no. It's just that there are so many little things you have to factor in to keep Sonic's momentum. So many things that try to stop him from going fast - kind of like Crisis City Act 2, but worse.
The first speed run I did of Act 3's Skyscraper Scamper is probably one of my favorite stages because 95% of the time, it's really just Sonic moving at his uncapped speed with the Quick Slide Step + Boost. Most of it is just memorization. I think the last part is the trickiest because you must target the right enemies to get the goal ring up and then you must aim Sonic at the goal ring which for me is tricky. Why? I'm just not used to it. It seems simple but Sonic moves really slow when he turns and I usually expect him to be facing where I want him to when my thumb is pointing which direction I want him to go.
And that's what's going to be the challenge here - controlling Sonic. Memorization? Not so much, I think.
By controlling Sonic, I mean that I MUST be able to do EVERYTHING he is capable of doing to go faster (though I'm not too concerned about D-Speed, M-Speed, etc.) Quick Slide Step, yes. That's easy. Stomp-sliding... don't get it and I really want to. Gaining extra speed from speed boosters... straight line drifting... man... all of this may sound strange, but every time I look at Unleashed speed runs, I think of how awesome it would be to do most (if not all) of that stuff, so I'm gonna try.
Today, I decided that I would take this journey of controlling Sonic as slow as possible, so yesterday I was messing around with the very first daytime stage in the game. You know it. It's really short. My goal was sub 30 seconds and the current record was somehow 33ish To get the most out of the first part requires some straight-line boost drifting in between some rocks, or you can QSS it, but I found that was even more challenging. For now, I just boosted through it and after the last rock, starting QSSing and jumping over the speed boosters before the first 360 to get max speed in the loop. The next part is strange and tricky. If you simply run over the ledge, you will loose all control of Sonic until he lands, but if you side-step just before leaving the ledge (timing is important), you will be able to air boost over to the next area. If the side-step is mis-timed, it will kiiiiiiill youuuuuuu~ because you will fall into the pit. The air boost needs to be immediate so Sonic will land asap and can gain as much speed as he can on the ground so he can jump just before hitting the springs so he can reach the highest platform. I don't get how he should land afterwards but I always air boost and it seems to just throw him into a wall lol. The rest of the stage is really simple. The only thing I can really take note of is the after the side-step area, it's better to hop than hit the launcher, and after the corkscrew, you can either stomp slide or QSS for a bit more speed before the ring (just don't slide UNDER the ring.)
Because I made it to 29.66, I now have another stage to record. I will do my best to try and get Sonic through the first part asap. So far the fastest time I've seen was sobatsuyu100's run of the stage.
It's been a while. Admittedly, I decided to take a break from focusing on Sonic. Information overload? More like information motherload. What does that mean? I think that staring into the screen, peering through various fan sites, various forums, certain youtube accounts (NOT youtube comments, most people on YT are just dumb kids) and my own efforts towards expressing my love for this franchise, simply got a bit overwhelming. It was also the first time in a long time that I was consistently playing a Sonic game at a high level. A part of me was yearning to play something more laid back as I seem to have forgotten how to do that with a Sonic game (until recently).
What I wanted was an RPG. Sonic Chronicles? No. In fact, I don't really see myself enjoying that game. I tried to watch a playthrough of it (something that's become somewhat of a past time for me this year, watching playthroughs of video games) and I didn't get far for two reasons. First of all, the story was poorly written, and secondly... I was not in the mood to watch a Sonic game of Sonic doing something that doesn't express his speed. It's a deal breaker because how he expresses his speed is a big deal. (Why do you think there are so many people throwing in custom Sonic voices in Generations? Voices from Unleashed and Adventure 2. To put it simple, it brings him to life.) So I picked up FF13 - yeah, I said it. A non-Sonic game in my blog. You know... this is actually something I've been wanting to point out, actually (especially since I've been playing Unleashed lately). When I was looking at what people were saying about Final Fantasy XIII, they seemed to say two things about the game that were very similar to what some people were saying about Unleashed. Yeah, you guessed it.
1. Linearity: Now, if Role-Playing Games happen to be something new to you, or you've never played any games in the FF series, I'll try to keep it simple. RPGs such as FF have always offered a sense of diversity and openness. On a large scale, you get a world map with plenty of exploration, a variety of ways to travel, a long story, a battle/character development system and hopefully a thoroughly developed cast. On a smaller scale, you get various vehicles, various mini-games, side-quests that have various tasks that offers either a reward or if you're lucky, it can add to the story, sometimes optional characters, a ton of monsters (some of which may aid you in battle), tons of items that rank from useless to too good to use unless it's the hardest battle in the game (though it still may never get used), side-bosses, weapons/armor, etc.. 13 was in fact missing a lot of things longtime fans were accustomed to. No world map, no various transportation, no sense of exploration (everything's mostly a long narrow hallway), no mini-games (maybe one). Final Fantasy XIII is really an all or nothing game, and people bitched.
Sonic Unleashed's linearity was criticized in it's level design of course and people bitched because it didn't have much of a platforming game.
2. Auto-play: In FFXIII, people said that the battle system requires little to no effort thanks to auto-battle. Now this was only true up to a certain point. First, if you didn't reach the part of the game where the character development system opens up (give it an hourish) then you'd eventually learn that you can not just mash autobattle. The irony of this is that most people who started the series (like myself) played FF7, and honestly, that game's battle system in comparison was extremely linear. Everyone pretty much leveled up the same and your physical power would eventually reach a point where you could just HOLD down the button that selects the command while you waited your turn and just auto-attacked with your normal attack. I have never, ever died so much in a FF game like I have in FF13. It does to a very solid degree, require a lot of micromanagement to develop strong characters and to earn high scores in battle, you must be strategically efficient with your attacks (which will also depend on how you developed your characters). It does boil down to making the right decisions fast enough.
Sonic Unleashed's auto-play, you've heard it... boost-to-win. I've probably already given my opinion in the past on what I think of that term. Personally, I think it's a scrubby term that suggests to me (when referring to Unleashed) that the game requires little or no effort to get from point A to point B. Some people may argue back that old school games were just hold right-to-win in some cases. Again, like in FF13, if you do not reach a certain point of the game, you will soon find out that braindead boosting doesn't work for very long. The linear level designs won't allow it. Another thing is that there is a reason why in Sonic games, the clock ticks forwards instead of backwards. There is a huge gameplay in Unleashed that's still to this day being developed which dictates how fast Sonic gets from point A to point B to point Z. I don't think many people get it. Just because you get from point A to point B in Sonic Unleashed by holding down the boost button doesn't mean you win. It means you just aren't able to figure out the other things Sonic is capable of in terms of creating speed. It's not that simple as pressing a button in Windmill Isle Act 2. (I had something else to say, but I forgot.)
In the end, FF13... for what it was worth, I felt it was a pretty decent game. It may not have been closer to it's roots, and it did have room for improvement (yeah, 13-2 pretty much let me down by dumbing down the battle system and making a story I could hardly consider captivating.).
Unleashed on the other hand... yeah, you think I'm going to start bitching about the Werehog? No. For what it's worth, it took a while for me to appreciate Unleashed, but it somehow seems to surprise me to this day (even moreso than Generations) what people can do in that game to make the fastest time. It's NOT EASY. I felt like Generations sort of closed the gap a bit with how advanced you can be in the game (granted it's newer and yeah, I've still been paying attention to it - the D and even M-speed is possible in Generations, though it's harder to execute.) Unleashed really had the makings of a great 3D Sonic game with the daytime levels.
Well, that is all... oh wait... almost all. Yeah, I made a vid. I'll go into details about it later.
