Category: Platforming

Boss Breakdown: Dark Mantis from Mega Man X8

Boss breakdown again! It’s been a while. What’s a boss breakdown? It’s a design exercise. I try to break down, to the fundamental particles, what makes up a boss fight, how its design operates under the hood, and analyze the result. Design goals, what the design accomplished, the whys, the hows, and everything between.

For this boss breakdown I want to do something a little different. I’m going to compare two versions of the same boss fight. The boss I’m going to break down is Dark Mantis from Mega Man X8 for the Playstation 2. Interestingly, one of the versions is a fan-made recreation, meant to be evocative of the 16-bit classic Mega Man X games. This ‘demake’ in question is being developed by one AlyssonDaPaz. I played a lot of this game when I was a kid, and I have fond memories of it. On balance I’d say it’s a pretty good game, but it is far from the best of the Mega Man or even the X series. It was the first game in the series following the less-than-fondly-remembered Mega Man X6 and Mega Man X7, which are both… extraordinarily flawed, each in their own way. Maybe I’ll talk about those one day. My point is that X8 was a case of the franchise trying to re-find its footing after a rough patch, and as only the 2nd ever 3D game of the main series Mega Man games, it was still experimenting on how best to leverage these new capabilities with a classic formula. The ‘demake’ Dark Mantis has no such baggage nor extant goals. The fascinating thing about fan remakes and demakes like these, I think, is how they are inherently made with the benefit of hindsight, and the added context of being made by someone a fan – a distinct perspective that colors how the design is approached.

Dark Mantis, narratively, is an assassin-type robot modeled after a praying mantis with blades attached to his arms. He skulks about in the dark for a quick, clean kill. So, a lot of his design is going to reflect that. He has a lot of fast, sudden movements to reflect this. In the original, he has two basic behaviors – hopping back and forth a short distance on the ground, from which he will react with an attack based on player-proximity, and his second behavior; jumping back and forth across the top of the screen, from wall to wall. In the demake, his hopping behavior, which characterized Dark Mantis as very cautious and careful, looking for the opportune moment to strike, has been removed. In the practice the hopping behavior slowed the pace of the fight, leaving the player more room to breathe. This reflects the design philosophy of most of the bosses of Mega Man X8, none of which are extraordinarily fast pace. In the demake, Dark Mantis is basically always attacking, with very little downtime between each attack routine. This characterizes him more as a merciless, vicious killer that dispatches his opponents quickly and efficiently. If you want my opinion, the demake does, with the benefit of hindsight, characterized the mantis better through his design – more accurately matching his written dialogue and descriptions as presented.

He still bounces between the top corners of the screen by clinging to walls, but this has been altered in the demake. In the original, this behavior would keep the player away of their relative position on the ground and discourage abusing the walls to avoid attacks too easily, and Dark Mantis would otherwise have trouble hitting players hiding in those top corners. Forcing the player to the ground also encourages them into close proximity – appropriate for this more melee-oriented boss fight. The demake version fills this some purpose, but also includes the fan version’s first new attack not present in the original. Dark Mantis will, after one or several hops, drop straight vertically out of the air, bearing his blades down when he is exactly above the player. So the player must not only be aware of their relative position on the ground, but the number of hops Dark Mantis has done, and otherwise be prepared to react with a dash to dodge out of the way. This adds a sense of tension to the behavior that the original did not have. While in the original you did not know when Dark Mantis would drop from the wall, you could always preemptively move to the opposite wall. There is no such option with his plunging attack, so the player must always be prepared to react.

The same scene plays two times, side by side. The left is a pixel-art version, the right is a PS2-era 3D version. A dark robotic mantis fights the blue android Mega Man X in a dark generator room. On the left, Dark Mantis hops from wall to wall, then plunges his blades into the ground. On the right, Dark Mantis hops back and forth on the floor, then throws a black energy projectile.

Left: Plunging Attack, Right: Shadow runner

Shadow runner is an attack that is in the original and not the remake. Which is ironic, seeing as how in the original, Shadow Runner is one of the attacks the titular X can copy from Dark Mantis after he is defeated. What it does, is produce a shadowy arrow projectile that travels horizontally, then spins outward when it reaches a close proximity to the player. This gave Dark Mantis an extra ranged option, to cover for his more melee-focus. It’s easily dodged though, by jumping over or dashing under it. It’s removal from the demake makes sense, as Dark Mantis is given an even more keen melee focus, and he much more aggressively forces the player into close proximity with him, making Shadow Runner kind of redundant. 

The same scene plays two times, side by side. The left is a pixel-art version, the right is a PS2-era 3D version. A dark robotic mantis fights the blue android Mega Man X in a dark generator room. On both sides, Dark Mantis attempts to grab X, who moves out of the way at the last moment.

Aside: The animation and sprite work on this fan game is just gorgeous.

Next, we have Blood Scythe, which works a bit differently between versions. The original  has Dark Mantis travel a set distance forward in a fast dash when the player is close enough in front of him. He may hop into this range, or the player may enter it to trigger. To dodge the player simply has to dash or jump out of the way fast enough, or else be restrained by Dark Mantis. While restrained, the player will take a small amount of damage, but Dark Mantis will have his hp restored slowly in turn, making this a highly punishing attack. This serves the purpose of making the player always away of Dark Mantis’s proximity to them. He is meant to be deadly up-close with those plays, so this attack reinforces that idea. In the original the attack can be ended early by using the assist mechanic, in which one of the player’s two controlled heroes assists the other to escape, and takes his place in the action. The demake understandably removed this mechanic, and multiple playable characters in general, presumably for simplicity and scope reasons. There is another notable difference to the demake’s blood scythe and that is its movement. Its lateral movement is now slower, but will travel however far is necessary to reach the player, before initiating the grab.

The same scene plays two times, side by side. The left is a pixel-art version, the right is a PS2-era 3D version. A dark robotic mantis fights the blue android Mega Man X in a dark generator room. Dark Mantis lifts his scythes up and dashes at X, grabbing him and sucking out his energy. On the right, another android appears to free X.

Ah yes, praying mantises, well known for… sucking blood? Robot blood?

This ties into another new attack added in the demake. When Dark Mantis is on the ground and detects the player is also on the ground, he may choose to initiate one of two attacks and move him across the entire arena from his current position until he reaches the player or a wall. In the first is bloodscythe, the second is close-ranged a slashing attack. Relatively, bloodscythe has a lot more startup time and moves slightly slower than the slash. He assumes two very different poses depending on which he will initiate – raising both blade arms for bloodscythe, and moving one blade to his hip in a low stance for the slashing attack. In many cases in Mega Man X game it is the player’s instinct to dash and jump to dodge attacks – as most attacks do not cover a wide area, this offers the most vectors of escape; up and away. It takes a good amount of discipline and conscientiousness to resist this impulse, which is what the slashing attack demands. Dark Mantis propels himself with the slash just high enough into the air that it can be dodged if the player is in a dash state, in which their hitbox is shorter. If they also jump, obviously they will be struck. Dashing and jumping is the optimal strategy to avoid bloodscythe, but not the slash. This new dynamic introduced to the fight ensures the player has to keep their eyes on Dark Mantis and watch for his tells.

A dark robotic mantis fights the blue android Mega Man X in a dark generator room, all rendered in 16-bit pixel art. Dark Mantis readies an arm blade, and dashes across the enter length of the arena floor, then jumps and slashes X as he approaches. X ducks and dashes at the last second.

This animation on this attack is really well done – dynamic and threatening.

This forms a new core identity to the demake version of Dark Mantis. The slashing attack and bloodscythe become two of his most common attacks, and thus represent an ever present threat that demands skills of reflex, observation, and control. The slashing move is then followed by a short-ranged projectile that can be dodged easily enough, but adds to the complexity of the move as something you still need to be aware of.

Finally there’s the attack black arrow. It’s a spray of projectiles that launch up, and in an arc, spreading out as they go, then coming down on the position the player was in when they were launched. To dodge, anticipate where the arrows will fall, and stand in the safe gaps between them. The in demake, this further serves as a sort of misdirection. Because Dark Mantis has so little down time between attacks, his black arrow becomes a kind of provurbial smoke screen to draw player attention away while he prepares his next move. Black arrow is very similar between the versions, but demake Dark Mantis’s black arrow attack is a lot easier to see, in general. That makes it easier to dodge, but also less frustrating to deal with in general. 

Something black arrow draws into focus is the fight’s readability. Readability is essential for fast-paced action games like Mega Man. If the game is all about spatial relationships, reaction, and timing, the player’s got to see what they’re reacting to and time, and where it’s coming from, right? Now, the intentional obscuring of information like where a projectile is at any given time can be leveraged for an extra change of pace and challenge, which I presume is what the original X8 was intending, but this can very easily become frustrating. You see, each level in Mega Man X8 has some sort of unique level mechanic or gimmick, to distinctify the stage. This could have been done for any number of reasons. It’s possible it was just to give the game its own signature style compared to other Mega Man games, or it could’ve been done to broaden the game’s appeal to a more general audience, or for any other reason. In Dark Mantis’s stage, the gimmick is a generator that, when activated, turns on all the lights in the dark, shadowy level. This includes a light in Mantis’s own boss room. In light, he’s much easier to see. 

The same scene plays two times, side by side. The left is a pixel-art version, the right is a PS2-era 3D version. A dark robotic mantis fights the blue android Mega Man X in a dark generator room. Dark Mantis throws several black arrows up. They then arc as they fall, leaving behind purple trails. X walks out of their trajectory.

Side by side like this, its easy to see which version is *much* more readable.

Even with the light though, demake Dark Mantis is just a lot easier to see. This is a side effect of him being a 2D sprite. 2D sprites are a lot easier to make readable than 3D. The artistic techniques necessary to make 2D art readable are less system-dependent as well. 2D sprites can have definite outlines without need of external program scripts, for instance.  For a further example of what I mean, consider that 2D Dark Mantis is not lit by any particular source of light in the room. He has shading, but it is general purpose – meant to look good from any position in the room in which he appears. His body catches light as illustrated, but not from any particular angle. With this in mind, 2D sprites do not have to have the same relationship of color and light to their background as 3D models do to look natural. Demake Dark Mantis is actually a lot brighter on the screen than his shadowy background may imply – he actually consists of mostly mid-tones – but it doesn’t look jarring. That contrast does make him highly readable at a glance, though. 

Original Dark Mantis, on the other hand, has to “blend” more with his environment, or his 3D model would stick out in a jarring way that would seem amateurish. A 3D model’s poses also have to be manually puppeteered, and a 3D model’s anatomy cannot easily be exaggerated the way a 2D sprite’s can to convey the artist’s intended look and feel. 2D drawings can be contorted in ways 3D models can’t to be more readable. 

At this point the difference in direction here is definitely starting to come into focus for me. One of the main things, I think, is difficulty. Mega Man x8, particularly in comparison to other Mega Man games, is not extremely difficult. It’s no pushover, on the harder difficulty settings, but the most critically beloved Mega Man games can be some real killers. The series kind of has a reputation for it, actually, and that sense of intense challenge is a big appeal for a lot of its core audience. 

I’m about to engage in some protracted speculation here.

Something to understand about Mega Man as a franchise: It’s never been a blockbuster seller. Mega Man the character is one of the most famous video game icons, period. Everybody knows Mega Man. The people love him. Thing is, that popularity never especially translated to sales. However, it’s a series with about 50 or so entries, even if you’re counting conservatively. My point is, these are highly technical games with a huge skill ceiling, and an often unyielding skill floor. Some niche, fairly hardcore games, for a niche hardcore audience. They inherently don’t have the same mass market appeal as a Mario, or even a Sonic. This was never a problem for a long time, because these games typically did not cost a great deal to make. Each sequel made extensive use of art assets recycled from the one previous, was made in a fairly short amount of time, and introduced only moderate iteration along the way. 

Mega Man games were fast turnaround, low risk, with a loyal and devoted audience of hardcores. That is, until 2D games started to temporarily lose popularity in the advent of 3D graphics. It didn’t seem temporary at the time, though. Here’s the speculation: 3D games are comparatively very expensive to make. If Mega Man were to survive, it’d need to establish a broader market appeal. And so, the two 3D games in the main Mega Man series of platformers, are also known for being quite a bit less refined in terms of skill investment, and a bit less difficult than the other games. All this to say, I speculate a reprioritization to make these games more generally appealing coincides with their transition to 3D, to make up for the cost of production.

That tangent out of the way, the demake version of Dark Mantis holds no such priorities. This version of the insectoid assassin was clearly made to be more evocative of the very difficult bosses of older Mega Man games, with their zippy movements, narrow dodge windows, and rapid fire attacks. And when I say ‘difficult’ I mean specifically designed to better reward full understanding and leverage of the player’s movement capabilities. This is what the demake version of Dark Mantis has two dash attacks, and a much faster desperation attack. These are meant to further push the player’s understanding of how much distance they can clear quickly, and in what directions that distance can be covered, along with a bit of reaction time testing. 

Finally, both versions of the boss share a mechanic whose archetype appears in several games. I tend to call this a ‘desperation attack’, although I believe the official Mega Man is ‘overdrive attack’. It’s a special, rare, extremely powerful and high-spectacle move that fully shows off the boss character’s power, and in theory fully puts the player’s skills and knowledge to the test, as one final high-tension show stopper. This is a new addition with Mega Man X8 and I have to say it’s a brilliant one. These sorts of things offer a lot of opportunity to characterize boss enemies, from their dialogue to their design, and make a fight a lot more memorable, by giving it a real signature and identity. I do have to say though, Dark Mantis has one of the easier overdrive attacks in the original game to deal with. He jumps to, and floats at the top of the screen and arena, then winds up a glowing scythe over one shoulder. A second later, he slashes one half of the arena entirely, dealing massive damage – always the side opposite the windup. He then repeats the attack on the opposite side. This is a really cool attack, conceptually, and from sheer spectacle I really think it does its job of characterizing Dark Mantis and making him very memorable.

The same scene plays two times, side by side. The left is a pixel-art version, the right is a PS2-era 3D version. A dark robotic mantis fights the blue android Mega Man X in a dark generator room. Dark Mantis jumps up to and floats at the top-center of the room, before extending an arm blade to a great length behind his shoulder. He then slashes more than half of the room in one swipe, then alternates to the other side. On the left, he does this several times.

“I wanna see you CRY!”

The demake version once again ups the ante in terms of difficulty and challenge. The attack is basically the same, except the slash is now *even larger*, encompassing more than half of the arena, requiring a well-timed dash jump at a specific angle, and memorization of the attack pattern. That, and he will alternate slashing the left and right halves of the screen several times before his attack is done. This all makes the move much more menacing, and Dark Mantis as a result a lot more impressive, so I have to praise that. I would say it is perhaps a little less reasonable to be able to dodge this move the first go around, compared to the original, and while the enormity of the slashing effect reads perfectly well after the fact, it’s a little tough to predict that will happen if you haven’t seen it before. This is a little harder to work around, as part of the point of this assassination attack is that it has only a very subtle warning compared to its monstrous effect.

As a longtime and very hardcore action platformer(and Mega Man in particular) fan myself, I have to admit my bias for the more challenging, fast-paced Dark Mantis of the demake. I do have to reiterate that remakes and remasters, especially fan-made ones, have very different circumstances and context to the original design. I in no way mean to disparage the very talented folks behind Mega Man X8, they did not have the hindsight and their own game and future games to draw on. I do have to praise AlyssonDaPaz for his impressive work in re-adapting this boss fight for the kind of fan it’s clearly intended for – that is, longtime hardcore Mega Man fans. I think X8 was likely aiming for a broader audience and many of its design decisions reflect that. I hope you found this interesting. I know I always find boss analysis fascinating, and this sort of comparison is a rare and very educational opportunity. I feel like I was able to learn a lot from this.

Your actions are those of a Maverick!

A Heartfelt Review of Sonic Frontiers

So this is not a review blog. Reviewing things is not my usual thing. I’m making an exception for this, a very particular game. My relationship to the Sonic franchise is difficult for me to put words to. It is a property I am so profoundly invested in, I will watch all marketing and critical material for each new entry in this monolithic franchise like a hawk, and yet I can’t always bring myself to participate in new Sonic content. Lots of breath has been spent on the bizarre nature of Sonic as a media franchise, but for my part, the simple version is as follows. Sonic The Hedgehog is a franchise with identities as numerous as the stars. It is many things to many people, as it’s consistently accrued new young fans over the years with movies, comics, TV shows, and even games that are each often wildly different in tone, texture, and creative vision. Sonic seems to constantly be in a state of wanting to reinvent itself, and I’ve long been wary of this leading to games that are sometimes of questionable quality, and thus an a deep interest in critical and fan reception, despite my own desperate love of the franchise. I’ve just been disappointed by Sonic a number of times, but I desperately want to love each new game.

I’m pleased to say, Sonic Frontiers was not a disappointment to me. I love much about it, but I can’t say it’s exactly exemplary. Well, that’s for the conclusion. Like I said I don’t normally write reviews, but I don’t really care for letter or number grades on media. Art is just so much more than that could ever convey. So, I’m going to do my best, to give voice to my thoughts on the latest Sonic game.

Sonic Frontiers is the first ‘Open Zone’ Sonic game. What they mean by this is simply that the game is divided into several open-world style maps, with objectives, collectibles, points of interest, and characters to meet in each. These maps are not connected to one another as they might be in a full open world game, thus the distinction. This isn’t really an issue to me – I find I have a fondness for the unique strengths of linear game design anyway, so this is a bit of the best of both worlds for me. You can explore the zones as you wish up to a point, when the story kicks in, unlocking the next area.

You’ll find you need to collect a bevy of different objects to progress the story and proceed to the next map, by ultimately assembling the seven chaos emeralds to fight a big climactic area boss. In the mean time, these objects can be collected by exploring the many, many, small platforming challenges scattered about each island, by playing through the more robust ‘Cyberspace Stage’ platforming/speed challenges, by talking to NPCs in narrative sequences, or by simply interacting with various objects to find collectibles.

The Movement

The beating heart of any Sonic game, where speed is king, how does the movement system feel? This is something I always get caught up on. It’s also something that nobody can really seem to agree on, including the developers at Sonic Team! Sonic’s movement and gamefeel has changed so many times fans categorize the different systems like its a wildlife taxonomy, and there are categories within categories! To give you an idea of where I’m coming from, I think the best character controller in Sonic is Sonic Adventure 2, and I don’t think the games have felt quite as good since! Either too slippery, or too stiff, or some other oddity always throws me off. And of course the boost games which followed some years after the Adventure games had completely different design goals, and as such the character controllers departed drastically from what I had been attached to.

Before I get into, there is one strange thing. There are movement sliders. They feature the ability to adjust and customize things like turn rate, initial speed, boost acceleration, and even top speed! That’s a little wild to me. This may sound appealing to some, but me, I’m not fond. In a game about movement, like a platformer, the character controls and capabilities need to be fine-tuned to the environment to really excel at showcasing what a movement system is capable of. Design is decision-making, and a truly great movement system has to be deliberated on to a certain level of specificity such that it is as suitable to its place in the game as possible – you know, you need to design it. To me this is not of the same substance as, say, camera control options. It’s not even really a set of control options. It’s doesn’t affect the interface, it affects what Sonic is literally capable of as a game-entity. It’s strange. It strikes me as a lack of confidence, to have left your game’s de-bugging variable sliders in the options menu. Thankfully, there was at least some confidence here – the default ‘high speed’ style gives you, in my opinion, the optimal experience by default.

Sonic the blue hedgehog runs around a grassy plateau at twilight, sprinting in circles at high speeds with great grace and agility.
A slider labeled "top speed" is brought to its lowest setting, then the blue hedgehog Sonic runs across a grassy filed in midday at a very moderate speed.
Left: The most responsive Sonic ever, Right: The same but… slower?

The game opens with a prompt to choose your preferred control style – ‘High Speed’ style or ‘Action’ style, with the game noting that ‘Action’ is good for beginners. As far as I can tell, all this does is change where the default of the ‘top speed’ slider rests. All the other sliders remain the same! Action, uh, sets your top speed to the minimum setting. That’s all! High speed does the opposite, starting it at the max setting. I highly highly recommend choosing high speed, even for beginners. Maybe I’m off base here and as a long-time pro gamer sonic master, but I feel as though even someone relatively new to games is going to pick up a Sonic game… expecting to go fast? It’s kind of the main pitch of the character. I don’t really understand the inclination to undermine that for the sake of making the game allegedly easier. Although one would think nerfing the movement speed could also make the game harder. I just feel as though there were better ways to construct a ‘beginner-friendly’ mode.

Okay on to the actual movement. Sonic controls excellently, smoothly, without hitch. Sonic responsively turns nearly one-to-one with control stick input. He can very quickly achieve impressive speeds, while ducking and weaving around obstacles with an engrossing gracefulness. Sonic never slips and slides around, stopping pretty promptly when bid to stop. Sonic is very adaptable, capable of transferring from one activity to the next in short order, like hopping on a grind rail, hopping off midway to bounce off a balloon, then boost toward a cliff side in the distance. The fantasy of seeing a large landscape ahead of sonic and just dashing off into the distance is realized here, with a responsive and blazingly fast hedgehog.

He feels like Adventure Sonic to me. Which is to say I feel in direct control of Sonic. I don’t feel like I’m guiding him with a carrot on a stick, or wrestling against strict movement constraints. When I want Sonic to get to a particular spot, I can get him there, when I want to running around enemies with flourish and style, I can do that. This movement system really accels to me in its ability to directly translate the player’s self-expression through play onto the canvas of the game. The friction between player and Sonic is very low.

From a birdseye view, SOnic the blue hedgehog runs leaving light blue energy trail behind him, in a field of red flowers. Sonic writes the name "Ian" in cursive, using this trail.

Sonic grips the ground satisfyingly as you run. The homing attack is long-ranged and fast, although I feel it has a bit too much hit-pause, making it more disruptive to flow than it should be. Sonic has more options than ever, being able to slide, bounce, dash to the ground from the air, boost, and double jump! The latter really helps with making precision platform jumps, even at high speed.

To get into the specifics, Sonic’s boost ability has been given an overhaul. It is now a regenerating resource, rather that a purely expendable one, more in line with the stamina meter in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. I’m in favor of this change, as it makes the boost more of a strategic tool, a decision to make, rather than just a binary state of ‘holding boost down indefinitely’ and ‘not having enough boost power and walking awkwardly slow’. The boost can also be used as an air-dash to reach distant areas, which is great, because the game does not carry Sonic’s momentum much at all in midair.

It’s something you get used to, but it feels awkwardly wrong to jump out of a full sprint only to watch all of your speed evaporate. Obviously, the maps and levels are not built to accommodate a movement system that heavily transfers speed from one state to another. Every time you light-dash, homing-attack, or bounce, Sonic’s speed is totally reset, and you have to rely on the boost to pick it up again. Luckily, the boost is no longer a one-size-fits-all solution to every obstacle. It doesn’t damage enemies, for one thing, so it is possible to send oneself careening into danger at high speeds. This is the fun part though! Sonic has always been all about know when and how to leverage your speed, and Frontiers captures this through the versatility, though not omnipotence, of the boost function.

The new boost, like the old, effectively replaces Sonic’s spindash move, something I still sorely miss. I really feel as though it would fit quite well in Frontiers especially, given how much its movement seems to be inspired by the Adventure games which featured the spindash prominently. Its advantage over the boost is fine aiming, although there’s no reason the two mechanics could not coexist. Indeed, this is proven by the baffling inclusion of the dropdash, inspired by Sonic Mania. Sonic can spin up, but only in midair, and otherwise it functions exactly like a spindash, perhaps a bit more unwieldy than the one in Adventure and Adventure 2. You can’t use it for fine aiming since you need to jump into it, but the dropdash feels great to use once you get the hang of it, and although it’s by no means necessary to use in the game, it’s cool to have- and I feel the same about Sonic’s most iconic move! Please bring back the spindash. Anyway. The spindash feels like a glaring omission, if only for the sake of completeness, but most of its functionality has been distributed to other moves.

Sonic jumps into a blue spinning ball, and lands on the grassy hill as such, rolling down across the landscape at high speed, before unrolling into a jog.

Sonic plays mostly the same in the Cyberspace Stages, except his turn rate is more strictly throttled, as the stages are more racetrack-like. Interestingly, it seems as though the movement sliders don’t affect Sonic in these stages, at all. It seems there was confidence in how he moved in this context. And well-earned too! I honestly think Sonic handles better in Cyberspace than in any other ‘boost’ game that came before. Sonic still feels like a person, rather than a runaway car. Stopping, turning, readjusting for fine precision, is all intuitive and not a roadblock to some of the more platform-heavy stages. I do have one quibble, which is that Sonic has far less air control than in the Frontiers overworld, even while stationary. This is not ultimately very important to the core gameplay of Cyberspace, which wants you to go fast. The lack of air control while jumping at high speed is meant to be evocative of momentum, ironically, since the game doesn’t really express momentum in many other ways, and that makes sense. At low speed it doesn’t really make sense and feels awkward. It wasn’t a common issue for me, but occasionally, whether I wanted to look in every nook and cranny of a level, or was backtracking to grab a missed collectible, sometimes I’d miss a platform entirely because Sonic can barely move in the air in these stages.

Although this game lacks momentum, the way one can string Sonic’s various moves together to achieve a similar effect can be very satisfying. You might backflip off of a grindrail to air-boost right across an enemy that would’ve slowed you down, and you get through the level a couple seconds faster. It’s amazing how well the systems can interact like this in subtle ways, and leaves a lot of essential room for mastery. Though I wish there was some measure of greater momentum, which would go a long way had the levels also been designed to accommodate it, I still think this is going to be a very repayable game. It’s one of the most immediate, smooth, and frankly playable Sonic movement systems we’ve had in a long time. I’d love to replay all of the old Sonic boost stages with this new movement system.

The Combat

It’s fluff. It’s style over substance that involves a lot of stopping and starting that feels quite at odds with the otherwise very free-flowing and fluid movement gameplay. Eh. I’m not happy to say that. I didn’t want the combat to bounce off of me. I don’t think an added focus on combat is totally incompatible to a Sonic game. I just think to make it work, the systems would’ve had to better play to its strengths. What we got, feels oddly disconnected from the movement systems whereas I had hoped for a pair of systems that interlinked in some way. What we got is rife with simplistic dominant strategies, and an apparent lack of depth. Suffice to say, for a Sonic combat system, I’d hope for an intricate dance of momentum, all about constant movement, situational awareness, and yeah, speed. This is not that.

I want to be clear; the combat is not a chore. It’s not egregious, or irritating, or even too frequent. It mostly just confuses me as to why it had to be there. It’s never challenging nor interesting to me in the way that combat depth usually is. Its best qualities are the spectacle, which seems to be the primary motivator behind the design of this combat. It is indeed very,, cool,, when Sonic kicks the air so hard it shoots laser crescents at his enemies. It is very,, neat,, when Sonic zigs and zags around in a finishing flourish to dispatch an enemy. It’s pleasant enough to watch enemy robots explode, and the combat never lingers long enough to feel like too much of a disruption.

Sonic’s combat options essentially include your standard series of punches chained together, and, in the style of other genres like fighting games and beat-em-ups, the option to string in alternate button inputs in the middle or end of a combo to extend the assault an deal more damage. The wrinkle is that Sonic can chain his homing attack into the beginning of one of these combos. The homing attack is ubiquitous in 3D Sonic and allows the hedgehog to zoom to a nearby enemy’s location whilst damaging it. It’s snappy, smart, and fits in perfectly with a game all about moving. Now though, with enemies gaining larger health pools to accommodate a larger-scoped combat system, Sonic can’t just zip by his defeated foes anymore. There’s a lot of stopping, wailing on a guy with lots of health, rinse and repeat. I found myself just bypassing a lot of enemies actually, because I always felt like that’s what I wanted to be doing as Sonic. The prospect of taking two minutes to button mash some randos to death never appealed to me here. Credit where it’s due though, the decision to change the homing attack from an air-only maneuver to one Sonic can perform from any state, including running on the ground, assigned to the same button as his punchy combo attack, was pretty clever. It essentially means Sonic will always zoom to an appropriate target when starting a combo. I just wish the act of building those combos was more fun.

Sonic repeatedly punches, kicks, and spins at a red light affixed to the back of a giant robot beetle.

Enemies caught in one of your combos will be mostly stunned until you finish. Other enemies can intervene, but all the AI in the game seems placid enough that I never really found it too much of a problem. Really I found Sonic’s defensive options- a dodge and a parry – nearly unnecessary. I say parry, but it’s more like a block with a reprisal attack. There’s no timing window. By holding the block input, Sonic stops in place (ugh), and prepares for an enemy’s blow. Once he takes the hit, the offender is stunned, and Sonic can follow up with his own attack. To block another hit, you must re-input the block, but after that it can be once again held indefinitely. It’s a little wild to me, that this system gives me no sense of speed, seeing as I’m playing as Sonic The Hedgehog. The parry and it’s stationary, time-agnostic nature is a prime example.

Not that you’ll need to be very defensive to begin with. As is expected by this point, Sonic’s life meter is his ring count. Rings being the common collectible in this game, the equivalent of coins. When you get hit, you drop some. If you’re hit with zero rings, you die. Same problems as always apply. There’s not much tension if I know I can always just pick up the rings I dropped, except in very specific situations. This knowledge makes a savvy player basically invincible, and draws into question the necessity of Sonic’s upgradeable defense level, which only reduces how many rings vanish from Sonic’s inventory when hit, as opposed to how many hit the ground. No matter your defense level some always do drop, and you can just pick them up.

Sonic is cut by a robot with blade-arms, and knocked onto the grassy ground at night. He drops some rings behind him as he falls on the ground, but quickly picks them up and beats up the robot.

Sonic has a good amount of brilliant blue eye-popping moves to use, and it’s all very impressive looking, but for me, to feel invested in a game’s combat I have to feel present in the shoes of the player character. I have to feel like I’m making decisions as though there are enemies attacking me. I think the primary problem here is that I don’t feel any of that. I feel like watching some pretty nice, but altogether non-interactive animations. Even then, some of the camera choices are pretty questionable. One camera animation in particular, during one of Sonic’s moves, I could easily see giving someone motion sickness. The whole framing feels off, too. Often you’ll see a reverse shot of Sonic, as if your perspective is meant to be from the target of the attack. But that is so incongruent. I’m meant to be playing Sonic, shouldn’t the camera frame me as Sonic, not a third-party observer?

The combo system seems to be catered specifically to stringing together Sonic’s various new tricks to maximize damage in one combo, with very little emphasis on ducking and dodging enemies, which are, in the majority, woefully unequipped to pose a threat to Sonic. Though I always enjoyed the nice crunchy audio-visual feedback of smashing robots, that was all underlined by my misgivings. I rarely found myself making interesting decisions when dispatching enemies. With the exception of one new mechanic.

I did mention that the combat mechanics and movement mechanics do not interlink in a way I find satisfactory. Well, that’s mostly true. Besides Sonic’s punches and kicks and dodges, there’s also the new cyloop. The cyloop is allows Sonic to leave behind a trail of energy as the player holds the cyloop button. If the player navigates Sonic into drawing a closed shape with this energy trail, he whips up a damaging whirlwind to lift and harm foes. This is fantastic. This is a combat mechanic, which is also a movement mechanic. This synergizes with what Sonic is about, and this tiny little thing has such great room for mastery and interactivity. You can run Sonic as fast or as erratically as you please while doing it – you can even combine the cyloop with Sonic’s new boost, for some insanely agile and stylish loops.

Sonic runs a ring around a group of robots so quickly, he whips up a whirlwind that knocks them into the air. He then dashes from one robot to the next in a series of homing attacks, bashing them to pieces.

One maneuver, that never got old for me was rounding up groups of enemies as they spawned. The most basic enemies usually teleport in, in groups of three or four. If you’re quick, Sonic can boost into a full sprint, cyloop around them, launching the enemies into the air, where they are helpless to stop Sonic from using his homing attacking to blast through each of them in turn. It’s great, and feels like a real execution of skill and strategy – it requires an understanding of how two disparate mechanics (cyloop and homing attack) interact, as well as the execution of a cyloop at a high, unwieldy speed. As enemies got stronger, it became apparent that I could no longer defeat them with just a cyloop and a single homing attack. It was kind of disappointment, to be honest, to use the rest of Sonic’s sluggish arsenal. Having to repeatedly wail on a robot to defeat it feels so much less smooth and flowing than a one-two punch of cyloop to homing attack. The enemies still rarely put up any opposition to me doing this, which I would’ve liked to see, but I enjoyed the cyloop so much more than every one of Sonic’s other offensive options that I’d use it whenever I could. This is a mechanic I hope to see return in the future, and expanded on.

Honestly, even the bosses I feel could’ve been designed largely the same way just without the combo system at all. All of them boil down to -do some Sonic related activity like run fast or jump over something, until my weakpoint is exposed, then wail on it-. Why the wailing though? Why not just expose the weakpoint and hit it, then we get on with doing Sonic related things. The following would work basically the same without a combos system. Run up his arm, sure, avoid the red rings, got it, then just homing attack the weakpoint. Why stop in place for all the extra punching?

A giant three-armed robot slams the ground in front of Sonic with its hand. Sonic boosts and dashes up the arm, before slimming into the hinge that connects the arm to the top of the robot, and punching it until it explodes.

For all of my complaining I want to reemphasize that the combat is a minor enough part of regular gameplay, or otherwise inoffensive enough, that I never felt like it was really disrupting my good time. It helps that so many of the encounters are so easy. I obviously care a lot about combat design, and I tend to have a lot more to say about a subject when I do really like it, the subject being Frontiers in this case, but it has just a few niggling problems that I can’t quite ignore. So if you’re wondering how I went on at such length about a supposedly ‘not that bad’ subject, that’s how.

The Levels and Spaces

One of the collectibles Sonic needs to complete the game are obtained by doing Cyberspace levels, which are bite-sized chunks of intense gameplay reminiscent of “boost” games like Sonic Generations and Sonic Forces. In these stages, Sonic’s movement is more restricted, and there’s a focus on completing them fast. In fact, there are several objectives in each, and you receive more of the required collectible the more challenges you complete. One such challenge is to beat the level in a minimum required time.

Most of these times are pretty generous, but some of them really push the movement system to its limit, demanding the player squeeze every last second they can out of Sonic’s ability to cut corners, boost over obstacles, and bounce off baddies. It’s really quite exciting, and the smaller levels had me a lot more invested in trying to get good times than more open-concept levels in past Sonic games might have. I still miss Sonic Adventure style stages, but the refocus on speed running is a good fit for these narrower experiences.

The Cyberspace levels lack the spectacle and narrative context of boost games from previous games, using only a short list of visual elements, recycled across many stages likely for the sake of development scope. That aside, this may be the most I’ve enjoyed boost-style long-corridor Sonic levels in a long time. With the updates to Sonic’s movement, I find them a lot more approachable, and my playstyle a lot more freeform.

The reduction of level themes to a rather sparse and measly handful certainly there’s a lot less visual variety than I might be used to in a Sonic game. For what it’s worth, I can’t honestly say that I got tired of the repeated patterns by the end of the game, as the levels themselves are engrossing enough as bits of challenge and play. They’re pretty sizeable, too. They’re not primarily what you’ll be doing in the game, but nor are they purely optional side-content. You do indeed have to play at least some of them, but they are fun, and I found it pretty breezy to complete every single one. The levels are fun to play, but that’s all. I will never have the same sort of visceral, emotional connection, or immersive sense of place to these nearly context-free spaces as I do to some of Sonic‘s classic locations. Speak of which…

For many of these cyberspace levels, the physical platform layout, obstacle placements, and overall design is borrowed largely or in-part from existing Sonic levels from previous games in the franchise. While this may seem off-putting to some, it’s actually kind of refreshing, to retread familiar ground with Sonic Frontiers‘ new and frankly quite competently put together movement system. Some of these stages haven’t been in the spotlight for literal decades. While you do need to do at least some minimum number of cyberspace stages, you do not need to do even nearly all of them, so the presence of reused content doesn’t feel like much of an imposition to me. Their presence is largely explained away by cyberspace being ‘constructed of Sonic’s memories’ or somesuch, even though certain stages that are present such as Radical Highway are not levels that Sonic himself ever ran through. It’s neither here nor there.

Ultimately, a curated list of tried and proven stage designs alongside a handful of originals and remixes makes the Cyberspace level design quality feel quite consistent overall. The stages also being bite-sized allows the designers to explore gimmicks for the levels that might be tiresome otherwise, like a series of suspended boost rings you have to jump between, for example.

When it comes to the overworld, we have a repeating pattern of context-free grind rails, bounce pads, and booster pads littering a mostly naturalistic environment dotted with high-tech ruins. The ‘context’ to these is that they are bits and pieces of these ruins, but they don’t really read as that. Their presence faded into the background for me as I simply began seeing them as gameplay items, though I wish they could be that and a more natural part of the world. The open zones themselves to me feel pretty uninspired. Grass place, volcano place, desert place, etc. I’ll remember the Starfall Islands well for a number of reasons- the events that took place here, the fun I had running around with Sonic, the conversations I had with his friends – but I won’t remember them because of my sense of place while visiting them. They feel honestly, kind of generic.

The Music

I probably don’t need to tell you this, but Sonic Frontiers‘ soundtrack is out of control. It’s bursting with levels of palpable passion and energy such to be bordering on unreasonable. The way I feel when listening to some of these songs is how I should be expecting to feel listening to a sold-out rock concert in a stadium. To experience the same sitting in my living room playing a video game for children about a cartoon hedgehog feels almost surreal, but this has always been the case. The consummate strangeness of this franchise is a feature, not a bug. You can’t quite replicate this exact experience elsewhere. This is the kind of energy that got me invested in the hedgehog in the first place.

The high-energy stuff is kept close to the chest, for a bit though. The overworld is rather ambient, chill music just capturing the vibes of nature. It seemed in marketing to me like it would be an ill-fit for sonic, but the overworld really is more about vibes than action and adventure. The heart-pumping electronic stuff starts to kick in with the Cyberspace levels, which utilizes some short-looping but very catchy and cool tracks.

It’s pretty much tradition at this point, Sonic’s got good music. No matter what you think of any given Sonic game, there is a weird, infectious bug at Sega that convinces each and every person on their audio staff that they need to compose and perform music like they’re going to die tomorrow. The energy flows, and every Sonic soundtrack inexplicably has a song powerful enough to crack a mountain in half. Lesser game soundtracks would settle for a profoundly powerful endgame boss theme that rolls with a thunderous buildup of swelling instrumentals before awashing you in a tidal wave of heartfelt lyrics which tie together the themes and the game and steps along the way the characters had to complete this journey together with you. Sonic Frontiers has at least four. Four lavishly produced lyrical tracks that put most of what I hear in other games to shame. The Metal Gear Rising: Reveangence comparison early was foreshadowing. There was clearly some inspiration here, these songs kick ass, and in similar fashion, blast you in the face with some of the most earnest lyricism you’ve heard since you first discovered what music was when you turned fourteen, just as each boss enters their climactic final stage. Blaring guitars accompany dual vocalists utterly convinced they’re creating the coolest thing of all time – and they’re right. I feel like I could crack a mountain in half with my fist listening to these.

Weird side-note: The main credits theme for this song, Vandalize, which is also very good, has an original edit not featured in the game. This original edit pretty heavily features the F**K word, in the context of its traditionally 1st definition. Kind of funny, having that officially closely associated with a Sonic The Hedgehog game. Y’know I’m not a prude for that sort of stuff, not at all. Just crossed my mind that actual children will probably be googling this song once they finish the game. It’s nothing that’s gonna ruin anybody’s life or anything, just. Funny? Strange? I dunno. Side-noteworthy, I guess.

Sonic is sliding across a grindrail, offset from a cliff overlooking the sea. He jumps off the rail to reach the cliff, but in midair, the camera shifts perspective to focus on a distant menacing robot labeled "Tower". This shift in perspective has killed Sonic's momentum, and he falls into the ocean like a sack of bricks.

The Narrative

Sonic fans made a big deal about the new head writer for this game, Ian Flynn. He’s been heading up the new run of Sonic comics lately, and apparently is much beloved for that. I don’t read the comics, and video games are a very different medium, even aside from the fact that game development is often messy and solid writing can get mangled for any number of unforeseen reasons. I was cautious going into the story of Frontiers.

Narrative for Sonic has been as divisive and chaotic as his gameplay, for much the same reasons. Seems like no one can decide what Sonic really should be, or if he should even be anything. Maybe Sonic can occupy any tone or style at any time. Who’s to say? Before Frontiers Sonic’s games have given up on much of the melodrama and outlandish plotlines that defined him for some years, focusing more on child-skewing comedy and such silliness.

Frontiers sticks more to the old dramatic model. Sonic’s friends are in real trouble, trapped in Cyberspace, and he’s got to rescue them. A new antagonistic force in the form of the mysterious AI-hologram girl Sage has appeared. I have to say, the plot of this one is rather thin. It feels as though Flynn was brought on quite a ways into development, to post-hoc fill out the narrative beats to fit in with Sonic’s adventure across a series of islands. Not much happens other than Sonic getting beat up by big monsters repeatedly as he slowly gets closer to his friends’ release. Then you fight a bigger monster at the end.

That said… though the plot didn’t do much for me, there’s a lot more dialogue and character writing going on here than Sonic has had in a long time. You know, there’s like, some real growth and personal introspection on the part of these cartoons between some of their conversations. It seems Ian Flynn has a real talent for character voice, as Sonic, Knuckles, Tails, and Amy haven’t felt so much like fully fleshed out characters for a long, long time. They have opinions of each other, senses of humor, dreams, and desires. They aren’t caricatures. Where the plot feels thin, the story is consistently carried by these character interactions, and I constantly felt compelled to find the next story cutscene, because I just wanted to see these bozos interact with each other more. There’s a lot of one-on-one dialogues between Sonic and one other character, and I would’ve liked to see more group interactions, or interactions sans Sonic, and perhaps a more robust plot would have been able to accomodate that.

Another highlight is the subplot of series archenemy Dr. Eggman, which happens mostly off-screen, but is recorded in a series of obtainable voice recordings from him. Eggman as an example here, we really see some new takes on these characters, sides that logically work, but have never really been explored before. How does Eggman feel about the, like, by all accounts, actually alive machines that he’s created with his own hands? Maybe Tails, though he values Sonic as a best friend, has feelings a bit more complicated than that. What does Amy think of Sonic, having chased his affections for so long, but been rebuffed at every turn? There’s a lot here.

That’s to say nothing of the new character, Sage. She’s adorable, entertaining, and even packs a bit of a pathos punch. I wouldn’t say she’s terribly deep, or anything, but she’s obviously got some emotional complexity to her, and her relationships to the other characters are super interesting. Her visual design is really cool too. I really, really, hope we get to see more of her in the future.

Another fun quirk of the writing is that is seems almost religiously committed to reaffirming the canon of Sonic The Hedgehog as a series. Nearly every game is referenced in some way, its story being incorporated into Sonic’s personal history, no matter how absurd or bizarre the events would seem to be in retrospect. I honestly have to respect the hustle. For a long-time fan like me, I found it amusing, and even somewhat compelling, the persistent callbacks and connections.

The storytelling technique and presentation, as far as games go, is nothing you haven’t seen, for the most part. You go from game objective to game objective and occasionally trigger a cutscene conversation between Sonic and an NPC. As I’ve mentioned, it did keep me continuously motivated to find the next one though, it’s certainly not bad! In terms of presentation, when the game wants to build excitement, it delivers, with that insane music and some absolutely gorgeously boarded animated action scenes.

The plot, like it begins, ends somewhat underwritten, with a dearth of real context or answers for what’s happening. There are bits and pieces that suggest a grander narrative that may follow, but I could see this leaving people cold in some respects. And yes, I got the real ending. Still, the character writing remains strong-throughout and I’d be excited to see what this new writing team can do with perhaps more leeway.

Conclusion

Sonic The Hedgehog once felt like every creative involved through they were creating the coolest thing in the goddamn world. For a long time I didn’t quite feel that anymore. Maybe it was a sign of growing up, or maybe something was lost. It’s hard to say. From the music, to the visuals, the ambition and scope of the story, the style you’re capable of in gameplay. It was all just so cool. And you know what? Sonic Frontiers is far from a perfect game, it’s full of baffling decisions and strange inconsistencies that feel as though someone should’ve been on top of, stuff that feels obvious to me in hindsight. And yet, I feel shades of that same feeling again for the first time in maybe a decade. Sonic is cool. Sonic has always been cool but this is different. This is like, advanced cool. This feels like every creative involved is convinced that they are creating the coolest thing in the goddamn world. The passion is palpable. And it’s fun! I breezed through the game 100% with basically no desire to stop. The gameplay may not have as much ‘momentum’ as I hoped, but there’s momentum in the energy of this game. Like it’s the first step of a mountainous surge of creativity. Sonic Frontiers is good. Go play it.

The blue hedgehog Sonic runs at high speed through a field of red and white flowers, wind whipping past him as he goes. He hops over a rail, and ducks to slide beneath another one.

They’ll Know Your Name, Burned Into Their Memory…

Thoughts on Multiversus: Sticking Out In Well-Explored Territory

I’ve spent a few hours playing Warner Brothers’ answer to Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. this week. Yeah, Warner Brothers. Seemingly also an answer to, uh, I guess Viacom’s Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. (MultiVersus developed by Player First Games and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl developed by Fair Play Labs and Ludosity). It’s funny video games’ premiere crossover game has met its competition lately from the television and film industry. Or maybe not quite competition. I’ve had a lot of fun playing MultiVersus, and it definitely gives me some of the same chaotic, good vibes of a good Smash Bros. session, but it also feels distinct in some key ways. MultiVersus has been pulling some impressive concurrent player numbers and seems to have drawn a great deal of positive attention. I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on here, so these are more or less my first impressions and initial thoughts on the matter.

Finn and Superman team up to fight Batman and Harley Quinn on a concert stage from the show Rick and Morty
Ah yes, the classic matchup. Superman, Batman… Harley Quinn… and Finn The Human from Adventure Time

Drawing People In

I think of lot of MultiVersus‘s initial success can be attributed to some very savvy distribution and marketing decisions on their part. The game dropped with an absolutely delightful fully animated short featuring some of the more surprising inclusions to the game. Fighting games are complicated beasts, and as crucial as their nuances may seem to the enthusiast and designer, it’s often the case that an audience is found by virtue of aesthetics or indeed, character roster. Smash Bros. has earned its reputation as mechanically deep and irrepressibly fun to play, but lots of games are like that – Smash is so huge because it has a singularly unmatched roster of characters. The absurdity of Arya Stark defending Bugs Bunny from a batarang may be matched only by the absurdity of the Iron Giant rolling up alongside actual Superman. MultiVersus starts strong with a trailer that features a great deal of the character roster, including surprising editions with devoted pre-baked fanbases, in out-there abnormal team-ups and head-to-heads.

The aesthetic of this game is just appealing too. Not too fancy on graphical fidelity, but the game has a soft, round, inviting look to it and all of its characters. The models are animated well and look quite appealing from the middle-distance a player is going to seem them in the heat of battle. The inclusion of not just voice acting, but the legitimate, genuine article original voices for much of the cast is a huge appeal for me personally. As much passion as Nickelodeon All Star Brawl clearly had, I struggled to maintain an interest in the game when it was eerily silent, without the iconic voices that helped make its cartoon fighting cast stars in the first place. Their post-launched inclusion in an update was much appreciated, but the production values of that game, likely on the basis of budget, simply don’t compare to the push Warner Bros. has clearly given to the development of MultiVersus, financially speaking.

Maybe it’s not that surprising that TV and film companies see opportunity in the crossover fighter space. Original characters, regrettably, just don’t have the kind of draw that legacy characters do for a genre like platform fighter, that has traditionally only maintained a few active games. Even then, Smash is arguably the only one that’s achieved mainstream appeal. When Sony last challenged the throne with PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale in 2012, they struggled to populate the game’s roster with characters that are as instantly marketable as Superman, Batman, Bugs, Adventure Time‘s Jake The Dog, Tom and Jerry, and, uh, Lebron James. Warner Bros., obviously, owns a lot of properties, so they’ve got an inherent edge in that marketability by way of character roster. Selling on the merits of your character roster is essentially selling on the merits of your game’s possibility for play. When someone sees the Iron Giant – it primes their imagination for what is possible in your game, because even if you don’t know the Iron Giant, he’s a big terrifying metal man with jet boosters. It gets a potential audience excited in a way the presence of something more abstract like a “wave dash” never could. Not that mechanics are unimportant to retaining your audience, but more on that later.

The Iron Giant, a massive robot, picks up and throws Shaggy from Scoobie Doo, before jumping on him in a grid-lined empty arena.
I always knew shaggy could totally take The Iron Giant in a fight. Now I can prove it.

Next to consider, the game is free. Now I have a lot of personal issues with some of the particulars of the game’s monetization strategy, but it cannot be denied that playing the game, at bare minimum, costs not a penny. That’s something MultiVersus has over its contemporaries and seems a natural fit for fighting games. Free-to-play gained a lot of notoriety among business types for its wild success on behalf of games like League of Legends, games about battling between champions chosen from a huge roster of distinct characters sporting unique abilities. A high-skill-ceiling game that rewards intimate knowledge of the game’s intricacies, experimentation with multiple characters, and an understanding of how all the different characters interact. Yeah, a fighting game also seems a good fit.

Finally, with modern netcode and full cross-platform play support, MultiVersus has a refreshingly smooth online experience. For all of its popularity and quality in other areas, Smash Bros. has never been able to say that for itself. I cannot understate how delightful it is to be able to install a game on multiple platforms, pick it up where and when I choose, carrying all of my game progress between machines, and play with any of my friends who are all using their preferred devices. It really makes online games without this feature feel… a little archaic. Honestly, this is the form online gaming always should’ve taken since its inception.

“Platform Fighting Games”

With all that tertiary stuff going for it, it’s no wonder MutiVersus has retained such a player base and media presence in the last few days. People are loving it. A game can’t be carried by media presence alone though and I can confirm that the game is, indeed, fun to play. MultiVersus is a “platform fighting game” like Smash Bros. before it. Smash is certainly the most famous and successful of these, but there have been more platform fighting games than you might think. In addition to the recent Nickelodeon, there’s been a number of indie games following the formula like Brawlhala and Rivals of Aether, and also weird stuff you might’ve never heard of like DreamMix TV World Fighters, developed by Bitstep and published by Hudson, a crossover fighting game featuring the likes of Bomberman and Optimus Prime. Really.

I think one reason platform fighting games haven’t had the same presence as traditional fighters like Street Fighter or Dragon Ball FighterZ, despite one of the genre’s advantages being its beginner-friendly nature, is the ever-present shadow of Super Smash Bros. No other platform fighter has been near as successful as of now, to the point that “platform fighters” were once “smash clones” much as first-person shooters started their history as “doom clones”. But, as with Doom I think there’s been a period of experimentation with with these Smash Bros. off-shoots that have tested the water of what can be done to distinguish oneself from Smash while remaining familiar enough to draw in the players looking for platform fighting games. How much do you change? How much do you keep? Player First Games’ answer? Not too much, but just enough.

Platform fighting games are by nature more beginner friendly than the traditional variety of fighting game, with a greater degree of freedom of movement baked-in, and less reliance on complex minimally-visible mechanics. Multiversus well leans into this strength, even in some ways better than Smash. For example there are much more robust control customization features, allowing you to do things like separating combo moves and charged moves to two different buttons, or swapping what moves are mapped to neutral button presses and directional button presses, among others. Movesets are somewhat limited, even, which could potentially be a mark against it for some, but really does make the game simple to pickup and play. I’d go as far to call it somewhat button-mashy. You may find success just throwing attacks out there. I think there’s some depth to be found here though, the game seems much more naturally suited combo strings that Smash, allowing plays to intuitively juggle their opponents and give chase. And although things can get a little chaotic and hard to read, the action does remain readable if you concentrate, I’ve found, and just a little getting used to if you’re coming from Smash.

There’s a lot familiar here to platform fighter veterans. Characters have their standard attacks, which change depending on directional input, as well as four special attacks likewise influenced by direction. Taking damage makes you more vulnerable to being launched by enemy attacks, and getting launched past the game’s boundaries results in a KO. The ringout KO with ramping knockback from damage is one of Smash’s most elegant inventions, I think. It’s such a natural fit for a fighting game with platforming because it makes one thinking about their standing position within space. Most fighting games exist on an abstract flat plane, with implied impenetrable barriers on either side. The terrain is not a concern there. In platform fighters, where the player’s relationship to the terrain is as important as their relationship to their opponent, a win condition involving the ejection of your opponent from the terrain is brilliant. Some other platform fighters like PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale have had win conditions that just did not work for me, because they de-emphasized this player relationship to the battle arena in a way that made the platforming capabilities of the characters feel somewhat redundant. MultiVersus knows what to crib from its contemporaries.

Finn the human teams up with Superman to fight Batman and Harley Quinn on a floating concert stage from the show Rick and Morty. Finn digs BMO the living calculator from his backpack, then holds BMO up as he karate chops Batman and Harley Quinn into the distance.
Finn’s down-special operates like a simpler version of Hero’s from Smash

It’s also a little different though. Weird and unique decisions like giving Finn the Human from Adventure Time the ability to charge his attacks while moving keep the game fresh. Most characters have such small interesting unique mechanics, in addition to bigger and noticeable ones. On a broader scale, this game has some intense aerial mobility. Every character practically plays like Sora from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, flowing nimbly through the air at high speeds. In Smash, players are allowed two jumps and a recovery attack to stop themselves from falling off the arena. In MutliVersus, you can use a recovery twice, air-dodge twice, then climb up an vertical surface. They really didn’t want people falling off the stage by accident. In free-for-all mode, the edges of the play area draw in, making the safe ground smaller when the round’s timer nears its end. It’s a pretty elegant way to prevent camping, an often reviled somewhat bad-faith way of playing, which I think is quite clever, especially in a ‘just for fun’ party mode like free-for-all. I always appreciate fighting games that encourage engaging the enemy and utilizing the fighting mechanics, rather than just turtling up or running away.

Another unique and rather clever angle the game has is that it’s 2v2 focused. Now this is a mechanic that I think does come across somewhat in building your initial audience, because it has such an overriding effect on the game’s design and, like the character roster, is something that can spark a general audience’s imagination. Some people play games for the experience of being a support role for their friends. These people, I’d say, are less likely to play traditional fighting games, but the presence of characters with a support-specific focus like Wonder Woman or Reindog might be appealing to them. You can really feel the way the game wants to encourage team-play too. The presence of cooldowns, a rarity in Smash Bros., encourages teams coordinating their available resources and the timing of their most valuable moves. Having support roles in a fighting games allows MultiVersus to do things that Smash simply doesn’t, carving its own niche.

Superman and Finn The Human from Adventure Time team up to fight with Wonder Woman and Steven Universe. Superman's ice breath slows so Finn can followup, and Stephen creates a barrier with his shield for Wonder Woman.
Superman’s ice breath slows so Finn can followup, and Stephen creates a barrier with his shield for Wonder Woman

The game also just makes some design decisions for their fighters that just seems very… not Smash, not necessarily in a bad way. Smash is far from creatively stifled but it does have a little bit of a brand, and that’s fine. It’s nice to see its contemporaries establish their own brand though! Some of the wacky stuff characters can do feel like things Smash didn’t really start doing until the later downloadable characters of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. When I see the Iron Giant enormously stomping around the battlefield in MultiVersus I can’t help but think of the years hand-wringing online discourse had about the inclusion of “too big” space dragon Ridley from the Metroid series as a fighter in Smash. He got in anyway (and I will go to my grave being smug about that), but at quite a modest relative size. I love the depiction of Ridley in Smash, he’s practically perfect. Iron Giant though, I think is going to be a very memorable fighter in his own right, because the developers of MultiVersus feel so unrestrained by tradition, while respecting the foundations that were the inception of the genre they’re iterating on.

There’s a lot more to see and learn about MultiVersus. I’m sure there’s an encyclopedia’s worth of knowledge yet to be discovered about combo strings, frame data, tier lists, and other such silliness, but on first blush the game is a blast and is doing a commendable job of setting itself apart from obvious comparisons. It’s production values are exceptional, its roster is absolutely wild and it’s free… more or less. My issues with monetization are the biggest sticking point for me. I don’t know if I want to talk about that here, though. At any rate, I’ve had platform fighters on the brain and wanted to get my thoughts out there.

Two Finn(s) The Human, Batman, and Wonder Woman duke it out in a 2D bat-cave themed arena. The Finns slash their swords, Batman throws punches, and Wonder Woman bashes with her shield as gouts of steam erupt from the ground.

Mathematical!

How Sonic’s Spin Dash Got Iterated Out of Existence

I must admit I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about Sonic The Hedgehog. That was a sentence. The three-dimensional variety Sonic in particular. It is a topic I could wax about for ages, especially in light of recent promotions for the, as of this writing, still upcoming Sonic Frontiers. Promotions which have given me some thoughts. One such thought was ‘they really still haven’t brought back the spin dash’. 

What is the spin dash? If you’ve ever heard of Sonic The Hedgehog you probably know, but it is a special move that Sonic can do by rolling into a ball and spinning to charge up energy, then launch himself real fast in one direction. Terribly simple, terribly elegant. 

Sonic the Hedgehog from Sonic 3 rolls into a ball then blasts off at high-speed across a vine suspended in a lush green forest.
Spinning and Dashing from the beginning

One of the bottomless yawning abysms which haunt discourse around Sonic as a series of mechanical systems is what values, exactly, make the games fun, and which should be the focus in a given design system. ‘Momentum’ is a word that’s thrown around a lot, and I generally agree it’s an essential component to the gameplay formula of the blue hedgehog. Building momentum is an angle Sonic has explored a lot through his games, but I’d argue that from the beginning, Sonic Team has understood that maintaining momentum is a lot more interesting than building momentum. Sonic The Hedgehog for the Sega Genesis, the debut, introduces us to the spin dash. Titular super speedy player-controlled hedgehog, Sonic is able to roll up into a ball, spin rapidly in place like the wheel of a revving race car, then take off with near-instant acceleration to a great speed. In Super Mario Bros. 3 Mario has to run a good few seconds as the player holds down the dash button to reach top speed. This requires space, it requires time, it’s generally not something you can do on a dime. Sonic Team did not want Sonic crossing long stretches while not running at super speed. The super speed is the draw after all, it’s the fun part. Ideally, the player should be given methods to reach that state of fun as readily as possible if high-paced action is the goal. Even as the spin dash fell by the wayside this value never seemed to go away. The ‘boost formula’ games, as they’re called (Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations, Sonic Forces), none of which feature the spin dash in the same prominence as the older games, still feature a way to rapidly build speed to a maximum level, but more on that later. 

The spin dash is also a rather compelling bit of fiction. Sonic is a hedgehog, you may have heard, an animal known for rolling up into a ball to bear the quills on its back. Sonic is also super speedy, so combining these ideas creates the rather visually appealing idea of a character rolling up like a wheel in place and peeling out in a particular direction. Sonic isn’t the flash or quicksilver. He doesn’t just run fast, he rolls faster than fast. It’s one of his most distinguishing features. Mario jumps. Doom Guy shoots. Sonic rolls. The maneuver is so synonymous with Sonic that the promotional phrase “Sonic spin dashes onto the Nintendo Switch” preceded a trailer for a game in which Sonic cannot spin dash. 

Or at least, I assume the spin dash is absent. As of this writing Sonic Frontiers has not shown footage of such a feature, and the move hasn’t prominently featured in a 3D Sonic game in years. At the very least this suggests it’s not very central to gameplay. It wasn’t always this way. The classic 2D Sonic games practically built its levels around its use. One of the most versatile techniques it affords by virtue of being an on-demand burst of speed is jumping out of a dash to achieve a huge amount of air time. Similarly, spin-dashing up ramps can send Sonic to great heights he cannot otherwise reach. Secrets, alternate paths, and bonuses are all available this way. The spin dash has always been a tool of exploration. 

You can understand the confusion. You would think any Sonic game would prominently feature his best move. Abstractly, the spin dash is synonymous with not only Sonic but also the very act of play within the Sonic series, so foundational was it to the games’ very identity. It is like Mario’s ability to jump. Well, Sonic can jump, but likewise Mario has near-always had a dash mechanic. Nobody who scrutinizes the mechanics of games would mistake a Mario Jump™ for Sonic’s though, and likewise you could never mistake Mario’s dash for a spin dash. 

Sonic the Hedgehog from Sonic Adventure 2
Gosh I miss it here.

Sonic’s first 3D games leaned into this angle. Jumping out of a spin dash remains a viable and valuable way to navigate levels in interesting and unconventional ways, really embodying the idea that Sonic can go anywhere. Not only that, but 3D adds the wrinkle of allowing the player to precisely plan where Sonic is going to be catapulted. During a spin dash’s charge time, Sonic is totally stationary but his rotation can be controlling for some precision maneuvers. Having a mechanic that halts movement like this may seem backward at first but it’s implementation gives more of a slingshot-like impression. It’s is more of a reorientation than a halt. Like redirecting a bolt of lightning. In combination with Adventure and Adventure 2`s character physics system, which allows momentum to carry or bounce Sonic along surfaces, the spin dash’s sudden dizzying speed can accomplish some truly magnificent feats of traversal. Manipulating and redirecting Sonic’s momentum this way is an extremely compelling game system onto itself. It adds a skill-based bit of nuance to Sonic’s kit where it was needed, as 3D Sonic has historically had to make concessions to automation in certain areas, to keep players on track when running at high speed, and thus the skill ceiling is hidden in little details like these. The spin dash is what gives Sonic’s mode of play the methods for player expression and exploration that gives a platform game its longevity. Watching any speed run of Sonic Adventure 2 will give you an idea of what I mean, like this one by Talon2461 for SGDQ.

In a verdant green tropical rainforest, Sonic the hedgehog from Sonic Adventure 2 spins into a ball before launching himself off a ramp through the air and onto a tree, which he runs up vertically along its trunk.
This is the sort of insanity I feel like a lot of Sonic games are missing

Sonic Heroes does not feature the spin dash in name, though it does represent the first step toward eventually phasing it out of headliner Sonic games. Sonic Heroes dubs its variant of the spin dash as the rocket accel. Fancy. The differences between this version and the adventure permutations are rather pronounced. I think the big distinguishing factor for me is in the immediacy of the rocket accel, or rather… the lack thereof. Its rather slow and sluggish startup puts its use niche in a completely different category as compared to Adventure’s spin dash. The spin dash is used for precision and traversal – it interacts with the physics of each respective game such that it can be used to navigate the terrain in interesting ways. The rocket accel is by contrast mostly restricted to the ground, as jumping in Sonic Heroes heavily stymies your momentum. The mandatory ramp up time for rocket accel, which forces Sonic to move forward for its duration, makes it unwieldy and imprecise, not suited to the surgical feats of propulsion that the spin dash was capable of in Adventure. And thus, you cannot design levels for a mechanic that isn’t there, and exploration becomes de-emphasized in the games from here on out.

Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles from Sonic Heroes are at a tropical beach. Sonic rolls into a ball as Tails and Knuckles push him from behind, a light briefly envelopes him as he rockets off ahead, but his speed is cut down when he jumps into the air.
Unable to stop moving during the startup, and with little effect on momentum

From there, the next iteration of the spin dash features in one of the many oddities of the Sonic series, the 2005 game Shadow The Hedgehog. Here it makes its most minor appearance to date – once again it seems as though levels are not being designed with the possibilities of the spin dash in mind, and its inclusion consequently feels almost like an afterthought. One of the advantages of the spin dash was initially the ability to launch one’s player character like a projectile to defeat enemies along a chosen path, but Shadow The Hedgehog is a game that perplexingly immerses itself in sprawling shootout scenarios, with guns everywhere. An alternative to projectiles seems rather redundant – were that the gunplay of Shadow were near as nuanced as Adventure‘s spin dash, but alas. 

About the actual mechanics and physics of the Shadow spin dash, it’s back to being a little more like it was in Adventure, with a stationary startup animation and the ability to precisely turn toward your desired trajectory, although only “precise” to the level that anything in Shadow The Hedgehog could be described as “precise”. The startup for this one is terribly sluggish, however, taking up to nearly two full seconds before a full-powered spin dash can be performed. The turn rate of the startup is incredibly slow, making any “precision” you can glean from it come at the cost of something very disruptive to game flow. One of the main advantages of the spin dash is how it can be used to quickly plan a trajectory. What’s more, Shadow’s basic acceleration is so potent in this game that the spin dash isn’t really needed for quickly getting up to speed either. And finally Shadow, being built on essentially the same engine as Sonic Heroes, shares its momentum-killing jump, so the aerial utility of the spin dash is lost as well. As a child I found myself hardly ever using what used to be my favorite move in the speedster hedgehog playbook. 

Sonic The Hedgehog from 2006, colloquially Sonic 06 is infamous for its disagreeable player interface and wonky movement systems, but how does its spin dash handle? Well, not great. Like everything else in this game, it is so bizarrely disconnected from every other component of Sonic’s moveset, it hardly has a use case. It is based on the Adventure mechanic, but it does not fulfill the same advantages. For one, you cannot jump while dashing out of a spin dash. The game simply will not allow it. The jump button does nothing while Sonic rolls around (at the speed of sound). Rotary function has been restored, turning Sonic while he revs up the spin is no longer painfully slow, but the dash itself doesn’t reach a particularly impressive top speed. So the poor mechanic is still missing its once great utility.

Sonic the Hedgehog from Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) rolls into a ball with an intense pulsing light around him on a beach, before launching out toward some hostile robots.
No precision, no utility, and no OOMPH

Starting with Sonic Unleashed, the series begins to de-emphasize traditional precision platforming in favor of high speed, almost race car-like tracks of long linear terrain, with a peppering of obstacles, but very little of the exploration that characterized the Adventure Games in favor of a more narrow approach. No disrespect. What these games, the “boost games” do, they do very well, usually. They’re not platform games in the same way traditional Sonic games are though, and as such the spin dash simply didn’t fit. There’s no real reason to ever stop, or sharply pivot in these games. Forward is your chief concern. They handle the maintaining of momentum in their own way. Some of the less standardized Sonic titles such as Sonic Lost World would continue to feature the spin dash, and its position in the 2D and ‘classic’ Sonic games is quite enshrined. Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations, and Sonic Forces however, essentially follow Unleashed‘s lead and decentralize the need for a spin dash in any 3D settings. They are all mechanically competent games, though focused away from certain qualities of Sonic I’d like to see return. On the other hand, it leaves Sonic the character in an odd place where he lacks one of his most memorable abilities which stylistically played off his status as a rodent that rolls into a ball. Sonic has spikes on his back, but in these boost games he mainly dispatches enemies by running headlong face-first into them. Mega Man has a cannon on his arm, so it’d be a bit odd if he never used it to shoot anything, and it’s a bit odd that while Sonic can roll into a ball and go fast, he can’t roll into a ball to go fast. 

Sonic the Hedgehog from Sonic Unleashed gets ready during a racing countdown, then rolls into a ball briefly before slowing to a stop.
This can hardly be described as the same mechanic

I cannot hide that the apparent lack of the spin dash in Sonic Frontiers is deeply disappointing to me. One would think, in a game that apes so much from its open world contemporaries, that interesting and nuanced methods of exploration would be a chief concern in designing Sonic’s move system for this game. The boost games don’t care much for physics-based momentum or complex acrobatics, and they seem to be the blueprint for Sonic Frontiers as well. There’s a fundamental incongruence, though, in dropping a move system designed for running down long, straight corridors into an open world map. There’s a lot that concerns me about that game to tell the truth. The spin dash in particular though was such a natural fit to the expansion of Sonic’s field of traversal to three dimensions that any iteration upon it since Sonic Adventure 2 has only served to make Sonic less suited to his environment. By the time Frontiers began development, the spin dash was so far fallen from its former importance to the hedgehog’s gameplay that I’m not sure it was even in a position to be executed well were it included. In an ‘open zone’ concept game, as they’re calling it, I cannot help but feel as though the ability to stop and start with a precision speed boost on a dime would be invaluable for a game that puts increased emphasis on exploration. “Imagine if you could just see a landscape on the horizon, and run straight there” I’d see people say day after day, every time the speculative discussion of open-world Sonic came up. That’s the appeal. Do you want to know what the Sonic game mechanic is for fulfilling such an experience? You know already it’s the spin dash. After such a long time of distancing Sonic’s more exploration-heavy roots, I had truly hoped that an open-world Sonic would reconsider the design context of this once-ubiquitous ability. Perhaps the spin dash can be unlocked in some capacity, but that still leaves it as a niche in the design, not a central defining mechanic like it used to be. Sure a regular old dash is still present, but hopefully I’ve illustrated to you why the spin dash is so much more than that. 

Sonic the Hedgehog from Sonic Adventure 2 nimbly launches himself across great gaps of water, from scaffolding to scaffolding on a metal harbor platform, rolling up each time to build speed before each launch.

Rolling around at the speed of sound…

Sonic Adventure 2: Combat as Traversal

Sonic Adventure 2 is loved and it is hated. As an early adaptation of the 2D platform game star Sonic the Hedgehog it is rife with both 3D growing pains and extravagant, outside-the-box ideas. I find it notable for a great number of things. I’m particularly fond of how the game integrates its main gameplay attraction of momentum-based platforming- going fast, in so many words – with enemy encounters. More precisely, how this enemy encounters do not intrude upon the traversal gameplay, as the combat itself becomes a form of traversal.

Specifically I am talking about the Sonic and Shadow Action Stages, as they are relevant to what I’m getting at here, with the treasure hunt and mech stages being their own beasts. The Action Stages as such involving running across long, winding highways filled with deadly robots and ridiculous loopdy-loops. The first thing to note about these enemy robots is that they barely attack Sonic. Maybe a laser or bomb or two will be launched every few seconds. The thing is that Sonic stages need obstacles for there to be a game. Speed is meant to be a reward for performance, and if there’s nothing to overcome there’s no way to perform. An excess of obstacles though, quickly grinds down the experience to one of attrition, with frequent starting and stopping that strips away the core gameplay. In other words, Sonic has to have a very low skill floor and barrier to entry. Complicating this with more involved combat breaks the flow of Sonic that is one of its staple selling points.

Sonic (Sonic Adventure 2), in a tropical jungle environment, rolls into a ball and dashes straight ahead at high speed, blasting through a robot and running ahead as if the obstacle was nothing.
Yeah, that robot did not put up much of a fight.

So enemies in Sonic Adventure 2 are barely obstacles, and will generally be destroyed in one strike. They’re more like platforms in and of themselves, as the act of attacking them can propel Sonic forward and allow him to bridge gaps. By making the act of combat also an act of traversal, it blends more seamlessly with the main gameplay of traversing at high speeds. Sonic doesn’t have to stop and build up any sort of combo or other combat-centric mechanic to deal with enemies. He can simply vanquish them as he runs by, they’re more like a speed bump than a wall.

Sonic (Sonic Adventure 2) spins into a ball and launches into the air in a San Francisco-like cityscape, bounces off three flying robots, destroying them, then jumps off a hapless humanoid robot as it jumps out of a hidden spot.
Being able to careen past this humanoid robot at the end is hilarious, and fun. Stupid enemies can be a feature!

By necessity, this is also somewhat an article about the homing attack, introduced in the original Sonic Adventure. The homing attack was a pretty clever solution to adapting Sonic’s primary method of attack, which is to say jumping into things as a spinning ball, from his 2D genesis games to 3D space. By pressing the jump button in mid-air, Sonic will do an air dash with a burst of speed, and home in on a nearby enemy, destroying it, if there is one. It’s still possible to precisely jump into enemies as Sonic in Sonic Adventure 2, but it is cumbersome, a pain, and more pertinently, slow. That’s the real undercurrent here, that every time the Sonic franchise has endeavored to include more complex or involved combat into its gameplay it’s operated mostly to slow down gameplay or distract from the core fantasy of playing as Sonic The Hedgehog. Obviously, to go fast, or in a more practical game design sense, to build and maintain momentum and feel powerful in doing so.

Sonic is at its best when speed is an expression of skill that gives the player power over their environment. The homing attack essentially compensates for the third axis of a 3D game in a way that makes using a homing attack comparable to jumping Sonic into an enemy on a 2D plane, in terms of complexity. What’s more, if there is no enemy is available to home in on, the attack operates more as a normal air dash, giving Sonic a degree of momentum in the direction he is facing with little to no ending lag. With the homing attack as Sonic’s primary method of attacking, combating enemies because an integrated part of movement itself. You’re always moving while attacking, and almost always attacking while moving as well. Part of the reason I chose Sonic Adventure 2 in specific to cover this topic is because the homing attack’s lack of ending lag is not always the case in every Sonic game. I feel as though the evolution of the homing attack across the series is something that could fill out its own write up.

In a grassy urban park, Sonic (Sonic Adventure 2) spins into a ball and dashes ahead at high speed, bouncing off a humanoid robot, destroying it, and bounding over a fence. He then speeds across the grass to two flying robots, which Sonic bounces off of and destroys in one smooth motion.
The homing attack would never feel nearly as satisfying as this again.

The game implements some clever ideas with the homing attack too. It allows strings of enemies to act as a sort of make-shift bridge to get to hard-to-reach areas. It allows Sonic to climb up more vertical surfaces if they’re lined with targets. Common elements in Sonic that need to be interacted with, like powerups and bounce pads, are less easily missed with the homing attack. If every one of these targets needed to be precisely collided with, Sonic’s own speed could make the process disruptive, and the homing attacking does away with that awkwardness as well.

Sonic (Sonic Adventure 2) swings through the air of a tropical jungle on a vine, then briefly runs across a grassy platform before rolling into a ball as he jumps and homing in on two flying robots, destroying them, then homing in on a red bounce spring.
No stopping to fight, fighting is going, because this is a game about going!

All of these advantages Sonic Adventure 2 rings out of the use of simplified combat are things that later Sonic games double back on at various times, that I feel makes them overall weaker. Sonic Heroes and Shadow The Hedgehog populate their levels with slow combat encounters full of enemies that will take multiple, repetitive attacks before allowing the player to return to the main gameplay loop of high-speed platforming. Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) and many of the later “boost” style games like Sonic Colors sport a homing attack with greater ending lag and less seamless momentum, making them clunkier and less generally useful for traversal. When combat is an end onto itself, rather than an element of the greater gameplay which adds to the overall experience, the combat itself has to be extremely engaging. The problem with putting extremely engaging combat into a game primarily about traversal, is you’re now overloading your design overhead with two very complex, very essential systems that need to not only both have a great deal of depth, but also not interfere with one another. It can be done, but it’s not something to be undertaken lightly. When Sonic attempts to flesh out combat in this way it has thus far for me invariably fallen flat. If there’s any point I was trying to make here, I think it’s that combat does not always have to be an end onto itself, and can be simplified to serve a greater design purpose. That from a guy who has an embarrassing number of hours in the sorts of high-complexity combat games that are the antithesis of the homing attack. Sometimes less is more.

Sonic Adventure 2‘s weakness, when it comes to combat encounters, I feel is largely in its boss fights. The game is not without some fun to be had in boss encounters, but this is definitely one area in which the Sonic franchise has usually improved over time. If the unity of combat and traversal is the game’s strength, as I have claimed, then the scarcity of boss battles that take place while Sonic is running a distance is pretty alarming. Later Sonic games would have Sonic running down an infinitely long highway as the boss keeps apace with him and the two exchange blows that way. It seems a natural fit to Sonic’s gameplay, so the question of a lack of this sort of encounter in Sonic Adventure 2 may have been a technological one. The game includes precisely one boss encounter of this type, but it is rather simplistic compared to what would come later.

Combat in the Sonic series never felt so satisfying to me as when it was merely a tool of traversal. It had its place, populating the Action Stages with obstacles that were not too intrusive to the overall experience. Often I find games, especially platforms, shoehorn combat into spaces where it does not belong, and this intrusion can disrupt the flow of a game, which can be dire for a game like Sonic, so dependent as it is on that flow state. Sometimes the best way to design a system is knowing when to simplify, and knowing when to hold back, knowing the proper place for each element. The prospect of the upcoming Sonic Frontiers is an exciting one, following in the trend of open world games inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild, itself a game primarily about traversal, but applied to the momentum- based platforming of sonic. The synthesis of those unique gameplay styles could be something really special. I hope the design keeps its emphasis where Sonic really shines – on the traversal – with combat not intruding too much on the fantasy of gliding across vast landscapes with super speed.

Sonic (Sonic Adventure 2) runs along metal scaffolding over an artificial bay. He spins into a ball then launches into the air, destroying several flying robots before landing on another scaffold.

Talk about low budget flights! No food or movies? I’m outta here…

Sonic’s Famous ‘Health’ System, The Rings

Sonic The Hedgehog is an exquisite corpse of a franchise with a history as deep, interesting, and confusing and some of earth’s mightiest empires. You could fill volumes on the ins and outs of this thing. I cannot deny, I love this weird little rodent and his weird little world immensely. Yes, I’m as excited as anyone for Sega’s next absurd windstorm of a Sonic title, despite all the, uh, feedback, I’m about to unleash. Sonic has had some very high highs for me, and it’s a series that does certain things in gameplay that have never quite been captured elsewhere. There’s a laundry list of things people like to complain about in regards to this series, and I’d probably agree on most fronts too. Instead of the usually suspects, though, I want to complain about something I haven’t seen brought up before. It’s something that’s been with Sonic since the beginning, actually.

I don’t know if this is something that only bothers me. Perhaps that’s why I feel the need to get this jotted down and explore my feelings about it, but the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise’s rings system is weird, right? In Sonic The Hedgehog, and near every sequel and spinoff to that game since, rings have acted as the primary collectible – a sometimes currency, sometimes score counter, and almost always a barrier against the failure state. While rings in Sonic games frequently have some use within the game that make them valuable, their primary purpose is to prevent a Game Over. When Sonic is hit by an enemy or obstacle, he’ll lose all the rings he’s collected, spilling them out into game space, where they can be re-collected. If Sonic is again hit without any rings, the failure state engages, and Sonic is returned to the last checkpoint.

Grassy Cliffs. Sonic The Hedgehog walks into a beetle robot, losing rings, which scatter out in a circle from him. Sonic then destroys the robot by spinning into a ball. (Sonic The Hedgehog)
Gameplay this week sourced from Evolution of Sonic getting hit and losing rings (1991-2021)

To elaborate on what bothers me about this system I went and tried to elaborate on what makes a compelling health or damage system in general. To me, there are three things to guide the design of a successful player health system. A successful health system may include one or all of these. First, the health system provides a balance knob by which the designer may tune how many mistakes a player can make before incurring a greater failure state like a Game Over. It makes for a pretty simple tool to balance the game. If it’s too hard, players can simply be given more health or ways to restore their health. Furthermore, this balance can change as the player collects upgrades and gets stronger, or encounters more deadly enemies. It’s good for tuning the interest curve. Secondly, health systems can create a sense of tension or danger, to shore up the threat of the player’s opposition. Instant death makes for threatening enemies too, but that little bit of anticipation a more graduated health system provides, as the player slowly watches their strength wane with each hit they incur, it exaggerates and emphasizes that danger. Third, health systems can be used to incentivize players in interesting ways to guide the gameplay, by tweaking how it is that players regain or maintain their health through specific behaviors. Doom 2016’s glory kills, which reward aggression when the player is low on health, comes to mind.

So how does the blue blur do on all of these fronts? Well, the ring system is rather limited in that having rings only prevents Sonic’s defeat through a single mistake, before more rings have to be collected. In this way it doesn’t do much for balance. By virtue of how the system works, rings are always available when you get hit, unless you’re over a bottomless pit and will just die from the fall regardless. Rings are also plentiful enough in the world that tense moments of danger are few and far between. This is a good thing in a sense, Sonic is a game about flow and freedom, less one about oppression or danger. The result, though, is often that getting hit is just annoying – a disruption to that flow- more than anything else. Sonic gets a lot of its somewhat undeserved reputation of excessive simplicity from this. It’s hard to fail (instant death traps aside), and very easy to get annoyed.

Grassy Hills. Sonic The Hedgehog walks into a moving robot and loses rings, which fall into the foreground and off the screen. (Sonic The Hedgehog 2)
I feel like this ‘scattering rings everywhere’ thing works better in the 2D games, generally. With one less axis to worry about, it feels less restrictive.

Finally, rings are indeed a highly incentivizing aspect of Sonic games, especially those of which have a store in which rings can be exchanged for prizes, although this brings up an important point. I feel as though rings are desirable more for their excellent audio-visual design and feedback. It’s fun simply to hear and see the cheery, shiny sound and sparks of collecting them, and watching the ring counter go up, rather than for any practical gameplay reason. The reason for this is that collecting an excess of rings does very little to contribute towards the player’s success. Sure, having a certain minimum number of rings makes it far less likely you won’t be able to pick up another ring before it disappears, once the player gets hit. However, there is a maximum number of rings that can actually be displayed on screen before any excess rings simply evaporate. You get no real advantages having 200 rings over having 20 rings. So, Sonic‘s health system doesn’t do much to incentivize interesting gameplay. On the contrary, actually, since having a single ring can theoretically keep Sonic alive indefinitely, the player isn’t really incentivized to learn about their obstacles or enemies because getting hit doesn’t have much of an impact or consequence. Some Sonic games have attempted to address this, by having Sonic only lose a fraction of his ring total on hit. The results are a similarly toothless health system, in which hoarding large numbers of rings essentially trivializes any threat enemies could possibly pose, without addressing any of my other issues with the system.

Sunny Beach. Sonic The Hedgehog dashes through the air, but is hurt by a tank-like robot, losing rings which scatter on the ground. (Sonic Adventure)
Stop to pick them up, or ignore them and keep going. Kind of just pointless or disruptive.

One thought I’ve had on it is how starkly getting hit in this game kills momentum. I get it, it’s kind of the point. In lieu of a persistent tracker for how many mistakes the player makes, getting hit simply means halting forward motion, which means you don’t hit that all important state of flow that makes Sonic games so enjoyable. That annoyance is your incentive to get better at avoiding obstacles. At the same time though, if that’s what we assume the player wants – to go fast- then it is odd that rings are scattered around the player when they’ve bit hit at random, or in the case of the 3D games, in every direction on the floor. Surely, we only want to incentivize the player to go in one direction – forward. If a player wants to re-collect some of their lost rings, as they surely would, then they can’t immediately continue their forward momentum where they left off, they have to take a moment to mill about collecting the rings. It’s just a bit odd. Elsewhere in Sonic games, free-floating rings are used as signposts to guide that sense of forward momentum for the player. If you see a path of rings, it’s generally a clear and safe path forward to gaining speed.

Sci-Fi cityscape. Sonic The Hedgehog, Knuckles, and Tails run into a robot turtle, getting hurt and scattering rings on the ground. (Sonic Heroes)
Sonic Heroes loves to kill forward momentum. It’s basically its favorite thing.

Losing rings normally does not create much of a sense of tension for me either. Getting hit in a Sonic game rarely creates any palpable danger for Sonic, outside of falling into instant death pits. This all-or-nothing approach makes enemies in Sonic games rather toothless, until they aren’t in very specific scenarios, which can often feel cheap – as though the difference between losing some rings and having to start over is outside of the player’s control. You lose any sense that dangerous things in the world are actually dangerous, and more like the environments are dangerous in a way that’s almost arbitrary.

Beach Pier. Sonic The Hedgehog walks into a robot crab, getting hurt and scattering rings everywhere. (Sonic Advanced)
Are we really expecting the player to double back and chase those rings here?

What if, instead of spraying rings in every direction, when Sonic is hit, rings fly out ahead of Sonic relative to the direction he’s moving, so that when it comes time to re-collect rings, Sonic needs to keep moving forward in the direction he was going? He needs to regain his lost speed to regain what was lost. First of all this make sense. If Sonic is losing speed and letting go of his rings at the same time, they should logically pour out in front of him as they retain their previous speed. That’s a secondary concern, but not an unimportant one. I think making the rings behave realistically that way could contribute to keeping the gameplay flow even when Sonic gets hit, which is my primary concern here. The main thing this would accomplish is keeping the re-collection of lost rings as a harmonious part of simply playing the game, which is to say, running forward. Sonic is all about doing things while running forward – defeating enemies while running, avoiding traps while running, and yes, collecting rings while running. In this scenario not only is there a greater challenge, a greater uncertainty of re-collecting what was lost that calls on player skill, but it’s far less disruptive, not requiring the player to behave in a less fun and interesting way as punishment for being hit. On the contrary, your punishment for being hit is a momentary increase in intensity and demand of skill, or in other words, a heightening of tension.

Grassy Hills. Sonic runs into a beetle robot, getting hurt and scattering rings a small distance ahead of him. (Sonic Generations)
When I say ‘fly out ahead of sonic’, I mean send the rings into the distance, so you have to like, build up speed and run after them. Maybe we could even ease up on the ‘knock Sonic on his ass’

Sonic is as inseparable from his rings as Mario is from his coins, which was the point, of course, when Sonic was invented in the 90s. Sonic was meant as a counterpoint to Mario, to stand out as different. He’s younger, faster, and has an attitude. His game is about speed, and his collectibles serve as health, in a way. It’s certainly novel enough to have survived about a billion iterations on Sonic games, but I’ve never totally understood how it fits in a game that’s about speed. Everything good that I love about the Sonic franchise is somewhat apart from this one odd yet oddly persistent gameplay mechanic. The classics like Sonic can provide a useful lens to see how certain design goals can be successfully executed. However, I’d never want to design something in a way just because that’s how it’s always been done. The weird ring system has its advantages, like near any mechanic in the right circumstances, but I’m still skeptical it’s the best solution for what Sonic is and could be.

Grassy tube-shaped planetoid. Sonic The Hedgehog walks into a beetle robot, getting hurt and scattering rings in a circle around him. (Sonic Lost World)

Don’t give up on the sun. Don’t make the sun laugh at you…

Yes, that is a real Sonic quote.

Mega Man X: The Dash and The Wall Kick, Power and Applicability

Mega Man X, released in 1993 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, marked a big step forward for its sister-series Mega Man, as well as for 2D action games in general. It’s a game about robots, fighting robots, with cool weapons and powers. The protagonist of Mega Man X was cooler, sleeker, just a liiiiiiiittle bit more Bladerunner (maybe like 10%) and slightly less Astro Boy. The titular Mega Man X was made to be stronger, faster, more capable than his older predecessor. Nowhere was this made more apparent than in the movement system, which included two new movement mechanics, the Dash, and the Wall Jump.

The fighting robot Mega Man, starting with Mega Man 3, is able to slide, which changes his hitbox for registering enemy attacks to a wider, shorter rectangle, meaning it could be used to dodge certain projectiles, while also making him move slightly faster in quick bursts. The Mega Man X dash was an evolution of this, retaining the change in hitbox while also greatly magnifying the speed of the ability. It was made more powerful in that sense, but also made more generally useful with an additional technique. Jumping out of the Mega Man X Dash would allow the player to clear greater distances with their jump, as the Dash’s bonus speed would not dissipate until they hit the ground or a wall from said jump.

The protagonist of Mega Man X can jump into a wall, cling to it, and slowly sliding down its length. When jumping from this wall slide, he can gain additional height by jumping off the wall. The interesting thing, is that because of the high degree of aerial maneuverability in this game, it’s possible to change direction mid-air immediately after a wall jump, and reattach to the wall at a higher elevation, effectively allowing the player to climb any vertical surface. This is known as the Wall Kick. 2D action games, obviously, have two axis of movement, though generally one access is rather strictly limited, the vertical axis. The Wall Kick gives a vector of control over this space while maintaining the advantages of limitation through gravity have on the game world. Giving the player a limited method by which they can break the rules of gravity offers the overall design a certain dynamism. The player now has two modes of operation they can switch between on the fly without even thinking about it – aerial oriented and ground oriented.

Secrets and extra areas like this are littered all over the place, giving the levels a rewarding sense of scale

These two moves, simple though they are, were designed intentionally to be extremely powerful, and extremely dynamic by giving them a huge possibility space with a wide range of use cases. Wall climbing can be used to avoid attacks near the ground, to reach hidden areas, or to get over and behind a troublesome enemy. The dash can be used like a dodge to quickly position the player out of harms way, to clear a level faster by stringing dashes together, or to clear large horizontal spaces with the dash jump. Those are just a few examples. With such a broad range of possibilities, this empowerment of the player greatly raises the skill ceiling of this games, making mastery more rewarding, while broadening what can be done in the design of levels and bosses. It’s the applicability of these moves, in particular that widens the possibility space. Mega Man X can climb any vertical surface, and dash at any time. Because these moves are always available, the game needs to be designed with them always in mind.

From here, bosses start to incorporate this possibility space into the overall plan. If a player is made more powerful, in this case given a broader degree of control over their position in 2D space, then the environment needs to be designed to both accommodate and interact with that power. You’ll notice a lot more verticality in the level design of Mega Man X over Mega Man. Trees, tall buildings, and aircraft are common. The original series did play with vertical movement from time to time, but mostly in the form of moving platforms and falling – not things the player had much control over.

Chill Penguin here is pretty simple, but at least the extra verticality gives him more to do than just running back and forth across the screen

With this added degree of control comes added obstacles. A Mega Man game in which enemies never posed a threat to you while wall-climbing would mean losing the game’s notable blend of combat and traversal for the sake of this new mechanic. Rather than make it incongruous, the Wall Kick feels like a natural extension of Mega Man‘s movement systems, that flows with the established gameplay. What’s more, by introducing threats and problems to solve in the context of using the Wall Kick, the Wall Kick is made to have functional, practical application in and out of combat.

Tall shafts like this become a lot more common as the series goes on. I feel like a ninja!

I know the title of this piece says Mega Man X, but the Mega Man series, overall shows an increasing level of acuity when it comes to making use of the Wall Kick and Dash abilities. The story and general gameplay aesthetic of Mega Man X continued on to the Gameboy Advanced Mega Man Zero titles, as well as the Nintendo DS Mega Man ZX titles, which are direct sequels to the Mega Man X series, despite the change in subtitle. Faster and snappier than ever in both control and combat design, they really illustrate the limits to which the Wall Kick and Dash can really push Mega Man. Mega Man X itself has some fun and memorable bosses, but they only scratch the surface of how the new movement can be leveraged to make new and more interesting boss encounters. X and others like him will find themselves climbing walls to reach weak points, ducking projectiles, and clashing with inhumanly fast foes as the series goes on.

Killing robo goons from below just never gets old. It’s all so seamless

Bosses like Deathtanz Mantisk (which, incidentally, may be the single best name for a boss enemy in any video game ever made. I’m serious. Just, try saying it out loud. You’ll see.) utilize vertical space in really interesting ways, creating a counterpoint to the player’s ability to climb walls. Now not only can the player climb walls, which is fun, but they can outmaneuver their foes by doing so, which is fun and empowering! When this terrifying death-robot zooms across the screen, narrowly missing Mega Man Zero with a razor-sharp scythe blade, as the player readjusts their position with a dash, the sensation of taking part in a sci-fi-anime-robot-battle becomes very real. A high-powered player character creates high-powered situations, if the enemy and level design rises to meet these elevated powers.

Very few games make me feel as capable as a good Mega Man

The best part of all of this is that Dashing augments the Wall Kick, meaning both of these maneuvers can be used in concert to an even more powerful effect. Using to verticality to your advantage is powerful. Moving great distances in quick bursts is powerful. So, moving great distances in quick bursts through vertical space is extremely powerful. Mega Man is able to populate its many entries with some of the most visually impactful and fluidly playing boss encounters in the business leveraging the possibilities allotted by this high level of player power. Growing up on these games, they’ve had a big influence on me, and I tend to, when designing, leaning towers player empowerment. The more powerful a player is, in a practical and broadly applicable way, the more room there is in the design to do crazy and surprising stuff with environmental and enemy encounters. Because Mega Man can traverse so much vertical space so easily, there needs to be wild, sprawling vertical spaces filled with interesting things to see and do, things that wouldn’t be possible if he were more strictly adhered to the ground. There’s something to be said for more limited player power depending on the overall design goals, of course, but Mega Man very succinctly shows the design advantages of allowing the player a great deal of power.

Omega’s encounter has no walls on which to climb, although this is because, as an early boss, he exists to teach you the merits of ducking and jumping projectiles with the dash

The simple combination of a dash and a powerful yet limited method for traversing vertical space has become an extremely effective tool for 2D action games in creating elaborate and spectacular combat systems. It’s no surprise to see surprise to see spins on it utilized in such titles as Hollow Knight, Azure Striker: Gunvolt, and Super Meat Boy. It’s just a very elegant way to give the player a way to leverage the huge amount of air control they have in those games for interesting combat and traversal scenarios. Metroid has been exploring its own take on this concept to similar effect since 1991, actually two years prior to the release of Mega Man X, but no series has quite so thoroughly explored its possibilities as that of the blue bomber.

You may even become as powerful as I am…