Sonic Superstars (2023)

Well, let's start with that I don't like Sonic... I downloaded it for friend to play in CO-OP and so... Funny, but boring a little. Controlling of the character is meh, you feel like all the level covered in oil.

Bosses? Well, funny, but still boring and sometimes annoying. You need some time to understand that "ahaaaa I can attack at this frame", which is just playing like waiting til boss strike than you strike.

Well, at least you can pick every character... but shared ability (if you use Clone your friend can't use Clone til recharge) is annoying too.

We played like 3 hours and that's all, lol, still funny for me, but she is kinda unprepared player and this game is too hard for her (yes, bosses)

I've seen a lot of different takes for this one, though the most baffling to me is "it's a completely by-the-numbers 2D Sonic that does the bare minimum and offers nothing new." I'd argue against that: we've finally got decent Sonic physics for a 3D-graphics style (unlike Sonic 4, AKA "The Travesty"), five playable characters (one being a new one, who plays great), plenty of levels (several of which spice things up in new ways, at times incorporating clever new gimmicks), entirely new special stages (which I personally enjoyed), new special abilities to utilize upon collecting each Chaos Emerald (my personal favorite addition, particularly for the exploration-related abilities that made level revisits more interesting), more engaging bosses that you can't just cheese (a reasonable complaint for older Sonic games, being that you can just bash the enemy repeatedly via invincibility frames upon taking damage), a multiplayer battle mode with plenty of unlockables (not really my thing, but still welcome), and a hard-mode campaign that unlocks after your first playthrough (a great way to revist a game IMO).

All that said, I think Sonic Superstars is... just fine. It's a good, decent, all right game. Nothing that super-impressed me (save for the aforementioned Chaos Emerald abilities), but nothing that I thought was really bad either (save for the co-op play, which as I expected, was a total crapshoot). Since this was the dev team's first crack at a 2D Sonic game though, I'd call it a solid foundation for them to build off of for a hopefully even better sequel.

Man...what is, just...what happened.

The first half of this was tremendous, that alone better than the entirety of Sonic Mania, but the second half...level design and boss fights fall of a goddang cliff. It's such a shame. The second half is so rough - not BAD, just rough - that it makes me not even want to try and finish the game now :/

I still maintain that it's a better game than Mania, which felt at times bloated, convoluted and way overstaying its welcome and that its original level designs were more often than not awful while its "remake" designs were tremendous, but I will say that at least it didn't completely tonally change halfway through.

Damn.

Sonic Superstars makes a strong first impression. 2.5D Sonic is nothing new, but 2.5D Sonic in freshly themed stages with classic physics finally intact is a truly wonderful thing.

Which is why it's so disappointing that it doesn't stick the landing.

It's not the level designs, which I largely enjoyed. It's not the characters, which are enjoyable to control (and offer some nice variety). It's not the special stages, which are repetitive and random but far from the series' worst. It's not the presentation, which is a bit inconsistent with some notable highs. It's not the medals, which are unexciting to collect but easy to ignore.

It's. All. The. Bosses. So many. Too many. Why are there so many?!! 😨

To be fair, this isn't the first Sonic game to have bosses for every act. Both Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles introduced "sub-bosses" that followed Act 1.

But those sub-bosses often took 30 seconds to defeat. These bosses just go on... and on... and on. The levels themselves are these brief, glorious respites from an otherwise punishing boss rush of a game.

If you've ever defeated a boss in a classic Sonic game and thought "I think that should have taken five times as long," run (don't walk) to your local independent game shop and demand a copy of your new favorite video game.

But if you were hoping for Sonic Mania 2, dial those expectations down and seriously steel yourself before playing.

This is a generous 3 stars. There's some infuriating design choices here. It's disappointing as most of the time when Sonic is in full flow, I'm having a good time. But then you'll hit some jank, usually in one of the many slow boss battles, that throws you off and you die unfairly and you have to redo the boring bit again... the soundtrack is average to poor too. I don't really know what the point of including Nack and his... sidekick(?) was for? They don't do anything other than star in some of the sub par end of level fights. I also dislike the choice of character design here. Sonic and co look bland. I'd love to see a game staring "classic" Sonic looking like he did in ANY of his previous media (cartoons, comics, sprites) than this dumpy look.

It just smacks of a lack of care and attention throughout. There is a good game here but it's charmless.

I also think there's some input lag going on. Sonic feels sluggish when reacting and it's criminal in a game like this.

14th Game Completed in 2023

Sonic Superstars is 2023's Nier Automata. No, seriously. Nier Automata is a weirdly apt touchstone for what Sonic Superstars is. Bear with me here.

So if anyone remembers the discourse in 2017, Nier Automata was not considered to be a great game. A great many reviewer and forum poster only played through the game once, and were understandably baffled. In the following years - and it did take a good year or so - people eventually came to understand that Nier Automata cannot be played just once; the full game requires multiple playthroughs.

Sonic Superstars is the same way. Not with story, but with gameplay. There's two very different games in here, and the fact that few reviews allude to this tells me that the low Metacritic average is based on a single playthrough, and not in the complete experience. Sonic Superstars has two campaigns, and a brief epilogue episode after them. And it's really a great little game, one of the absolute best in the series.

So let's start at the top. The first playthrough of Sonic Superstars is good in and of itself. You can play as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles or Amy, and each of the four have different abilities, and can access different routes of each level, much like in Sonic 3 & Knuckles. While the first five or six zones are pretty bog standard Sonic fare, playing much like your typical Genesis era Sonic games. And make no mistake - this isn't some Sonic 4 stuff. These are some really good levels. But in the back half of the game, things really start to shine.

Press Factory might be a top 5 Sonic zone all time for me. Both acts have excellent level gimmicks - Act 1 has giant, world-shaking stamping press that pounds down at timed intervals and launches your character into the air. Act 2 has a doomsday device that slowly powers up, while the level contains giant, glowing buttons that will cut the power and force the machine to begin start-up. Both of these add tension and diversity to the game, and I had so much fun. Pinball Carnival Act 2 is basically a horror-themed spin on Casino Night Zone. Cyber Station looks like something out of Wreck-It Ralph, with chunky voxels composing the world. There's some seriously cool levels in this game, and they're all good.

Except Golden Capitol Zone. Golden Capital has a pretty cool end boss, but this zone is deliberately designed to piss you off. It's awful, it takes way too long to complete, it has all the game's cheapest enemy types, it has really cheap spike placement... It's not even hard, per se, it's just annoying. Incredibly annoying.

Something new to Superstars is Emerald Powers. As you unlock chaos emeralds, you also unlock new abilities that really open the game up. Some of these are offensive, allowing you to wipe out enemies on screen or score hits on a boss when it's otherwise unreachable, and others can be used to access hidden or obscured areas. They're all fantastic additions, and while a handful aren't especially useful, some of them really make you absurdly powerful if used correctly.

So that kinda brings me to the boss fights. I have seen multiple times in other reviews about how the bosses are bad - how it takes way too long before you are able to damage them, how they're incredibly slow... And that's true to a point. If you're playing these like every other 2D Sonic game, that's true. But when you start cracking out the emerald powers? You can shred these bosses in significantly less time. Something too high to hit? Crank out the fireball or vine. Window to hit too tight? Slow time. Want to score a cheap hit as a last resort? Use the clone rush. You can absolutely play this game without using these powers (at least in the first play), but once you start playing with them, they fit into the game seamlessly. A lot of this game's emerald rings and other goodies are tucked away in places that are most easily accessed with these emerald powers.

Then there's the final boss. This thing is exhausting, in both campaigns. Each phase can take 5-10 minutes, and you will die. A lot. Quite a few bosses in this game use randomly generating terrain that materializes in front of you while you need to stay in constant motion, and that design choice really makes this fight a ballache. You will spend 15 minutes on an attempt, then get totally screwed by the terrain when you bounce off the boss and into a raised part of the terrain, which then drags you into a one hit death. I attempted this thing probably 30+ times before I finally beat it, and that was with the clone emerald power scoring 3 free hits in the final phase.

So the second campaign. I won't spoil it too much, but you unlock a fifth playable character whose powers are quite different from the others. Because these powers can make the main game trivial, this new character gets their own levels - remixed versions of the existing levels, granted, but with the difficulty cranked up significantly.

And it's in these levels where the game design really shines. You will need to understand and master this character's mechanics pretty quickly to adapt, and the level design is incredibly creative. You know how Pokemon fans complain the games are too easy and hardcore fans need a hard mode? This is that hard mode. The first playthrough has its tough moments, but is a pretty casual play. This one? It will take some patience. With the exception of one boss (we'll talk about this little bastard in a minute), nothing in this campaign is cheap, or broken, or frustrating. It's a step up in difficulty, but it's fair difficulty. I would die a lot, but I wanted to keep pushing, because I always knew where I went wrong and what I could do different. Bosses here take more hits, so really leaning into those emerald powers is paramount here. They like to float up in the air to hide, but you have tools to get to them up there.

While these levels do use the same zones and a lot of the same assets, these remixed versions have totally different layouts, usually have new hazards, and often iterate upon gimmicks introduced in the first play. For example, Act 1 of Press Factory has a press that gets progressively faster as you damage it. It's a really clever way to deliver a "double campaign" on a budget, and without making the game feel like it drags on too long.

But let's talk about Terrordactyl real quick. Terrordactyl hates you and wants you to suffer. You know how I said nothing in the second story mode its cheap or unfair? This little dick needle is the exception. You know how I complained about randomly generated terrain earlier? Yeah, this boss has that. But worse. Some of the platforms and floor tiles are conveyors running in reverse. If you take damage on one of these, you are dead. If you bounce off the boss and land on one of these, you are dead. The boss also launches mines at the level. They land in random places. Sometimes, they destroy a platform off screen and you run into a pit with no notice. Sometimes, they land on you and knock you into instant death. You need to jump up on randomly generated platforms to hit this boss... Those platforms can generate on an angle. If it generates on the wrong angle, you miss your window to hit the boss. This boss fucking SUCKS, so much, and I am genuinely shocked anyone thought this was okay. I dead more times on this than the final boss, and it's a mini boss.

And then there's the final boss of the second campaign. Listen, I haven't beat this thing. I simply lack the patience. It has the same problems as the other final boss, but this one adds one-hit kills. Constantly. And it takes FOREVER between openings to do damage, you can't even use emerald powers to expedite things. Like this boss isn't hard per se, I just don't have the energy right now to keep trying over and over. But I have watched the game's true ending, and it's pretty cool stuff.

Overall, Sonic Superstars is an excellent Sonic game. It's not just aping the Genesis games, but truly iterating and expanding upon them - while also respecting the things those games did so well. If Mania was a celebration of Sonic's best years, Superstars represents the next stage. Between this one and Frontiers, Sonic has a really bright future if Sega and their devs learn from these games and keep building upon them. If you like classic Sonic, and you aren't completely closed off to new ideas, I think you'll find a lot to love about Superstars. If you're expecting Mania 2, it's not that. It's not trying to be that. And I think it's better for it. The devs here tried something new, and I think that boldness paid off.

I beat this one last night, but I'm playing through a second time. I have a sneaking suspicion this is gonna be one of those Nier Automata situations... People dismissing the game not knowing that a first play is not the whole game.

Okay, so, spoilers kinda, playing through the game once with Sonic or whoever is not the full game. There's a second, harder campaign with remixed levels and a new character.

This is where Sonic Superstars really elevates. It gives me some serious DKC vibes. I'm frustrated, but I keep trying because nothing is unfair.

I love this game. It's excellent. It has a few little issues I'll highlight in my review, but overall, this is an excellent platformer, and one I think is being unfairly dismissed.

Started this one up and played maybe half the story mode... This game's great! I will make a final verdict when I finish it, but I'm overall enjoying this one a bit more than Mario Wonder.

I'm really quite baffled by the 74 review average though. The only thing I can think of that I would consider a major knock against it is the price... But it's also a Sega game. Sega tends to launch games at full price and rapidly mark down. I paid $50 vs. the $80 MSRP. I think that's the right price for this one, given the scope of the game.

If you're going to evolve the classic sidescroller Sonic formula without leaning too hard on the Genesis stuff, I think this is exactly how you do it (and not Sonic 4). I think Mania 2 would have felt like "Oh, another one" if it had come out, where this one tries to shake things up, and I really appreciate that about it.

As a generality I always liked Sonic more than Mario... Mario has generally been even-keel "good" but rarely exceptional, where for me, Sonic has been exceptional (Genesis games, Mania, Generations 3DS, Frontiers) occasionally, but also utterly baffling garbage (Forces, 06, Adventure, etc.). So when Sonic hits, it REALLY hits for me.

After the excellent Sonic Mania, I think it was justified to feel a sense of optimism going into Sonic Superstars. With its retrospective look at the elements that made past Sonic games fun, I was personally hoping that Mania would set a template for future 2D Sonic games. That optimism felt amplified after I heard that Sonic Superstars would use Mania's physics, but inject a brand new 2.5D coat of paint into the equation. So, did we finally get a great new entry into Sonic's classic side-scrolling format? Well, yes and no.

I can start by saying that the core of Superstars' gameplay feels great. I've read in multiple places that Sonic feels heavier than in the past, but I honestly didn't notice a huge difference; Sonic's handling still feels great to me. Sonic's full arsenal from Sonic Mania--drop dash included--makes a comeback, and what I played of Tails, Knuckles, Amy and newcomer Trip all feels great. But if I learned anything from my recent run-through of the classic Sonic trilogy, it's that level design plays a huge role in how much I enjoy a Sonic game.

That’s where I feel that Sonic Superstars can sometimes falter. Bridge Island Zone starts things off with a fairly standard opening Sonic zone, reintroducing the player to all of Sonic's key mechanics. While there is some basic use of transitions between foreground and background, it didn't feel like there was anything "new" that really set Superstars apart from past games, which made things start off on a rather sour note.

Later levels do end up introducing some really cool mechanics that I haven't experienced in Sonic before. Press Factory Zone has a brilliant gimmick where a giant press in the background makes everything jump every few seconds. Cyber Station Zone turns Sonic into a voxelized series of creatures, like a squid or a rodent. There are many such flashes of brilliance. Despite that, the typical moment-to-moment of Superstars' levels feels a bit iffy.

Superstars does feel more likely than past Sonic games to slow things down for some light platforming, which I don't necessarily mind. But the game's love for putting obstacles just off screen that stop you in your tracks hampers the sense of momentum that Sonic games typically revel in. The levels also tend to very severely overstay their welcome, often being padded in length with repeating mechanics and annoying boss fights. The final zone, Egg Fortress Zone, is emblematic of all of these issues. It lasted way too long and gave me déjà vu with its blatantly repeated sections. To twist the knife, Act 2 of the zone is simply you taking the exact same opening act in reverse. And then to top things off is one of the most frustrating final boss fights I’ve ever played in a Sonic game.

I wish I could take solace in the game’s visual presentation, but that’s also a slightly disappointing area in the game, at least in the Switch version. The game runs very smoothly on the system, but it has a bit of a cheap look. The low-resolution textures, the rather basic animations, all contribute to this. It’s probably a much better situation on the next-gen console versions of the game, and it makes me regret buying this on the Switch. I did enjoy the Sonic 3-style story connecting the game's levels together, though--I can clearly see from them that there was indeed some care and effort put into the presentation. The music is inoffensive, but not very memorable either.

Despite all of this, I don’t think Sonic Superstars is a bad game on principle. There is fun to be had here. I did enjoy searching the levels for Chaos Emeralds, though I couldn’t be bothered to find them all this time around. They do reward you with new powers that you can experiment with at any time, while not forcing them down your throat, which I appreciated. The wealth of playable characters also gives me options to have a different experience with the game if for some reason I ever feel like checking it out again.

I think more hardcore Sonic fans will likely still have a good time with this game. For everyone else, this might be one you could pick up in a sale, but your mileage may vary. I found myself struggling to find the motivation to finish it, personally. This is certainly a better crack at the side-scrolling Sonic formula than Sonic 4 was, but there is still a long ways to go if Sega and Sonic Team want to recapture the same magic that Sonic Mania harnessed.

Sonic Superstars on uusi nostalgiasyötti Sonic-faneille. Kyseessä on siis 2D-tasohyppely, jonka DNA on jalostettu tarkkaan sarjan Mega Drive -peleistä.

Alkuun peli tuntuukin todella hienolla tavalla modernisoidulta klassikko-Sonicilta. Sonic Mania -henkinen musiikki on loistavaa, grafiikat ja miljööt räikeän tyylikkäitä sekä – käsittämätöntä kyllä – pelituntuma erittäin lähellä esimerkiksi Sonic 3:sta. Fanien iloksi pelattavia hahmojakin on taas monta mukana. Myös pienet yksityiskohdat, kuten trippaavat bonuskentät ja pienet cutscenet kenttien välillä, ovat kohdallaan. On mukaan tuotu myös uuttakin, sillä chaos emeraldien keräämisestä saa rajalliisesti käytettäviä supervoimia, joilla voi esimerkiksi tehdä bosseista helpompia tai päästä kentissä eri poluille. Ihan semi lisäys. Ja on mukana myös moninpeliä, mutta tätä en päässyt testaamaan.

Vaikuttavista lähtökohdista huolimatta, mitä pidemmälle peli etenee, sitä pliisummaksi meno menee. Esimerkiksi musiikit tuntuvat pelin loppupuolella pyrkivän kuulostamaan enemmän Mega Drive -musiikeilta, missä ei ole omiin korviini oikein mitään järkeä. Kyseessä ei ole Mega Drive -peli, ja pelin ensimmäisten kenttien musiikit jo todistivat, että 2D-Soniciin sopiva musiikki ei tule äänisirusta vaan sävellyksestä ja sovituksesta.

Myös pelin aluksi lupaavat miljööt paljastavat mielikuvituksettomuutensa. Vaikka vanhoja "zoneja" ei pelissä nähdä, ovat uudet todella ennalta arvattavia: tehdas, pinball-kasino-sirkus-hybridi, avaruusasema, vedenalainen temppeli, Mirage Saloon -kopio... On pelissä muutama teemallisesti virkeäkin uutuus, mutta nämäkin kärsivät pliisuista grafiikoista. Esimerkiksi atsteekkikaupinkimainen laavakenttä Golden Capital on ideana kiinnostava, mutta toteutuksena yksi tylsimmän näkösistä paikoista koko pelissä. Myös pelin loppupään zonet heittävät sekaan erilaisia kenttämekaniikoita, jotka eivät suoranaisesti lisää peli-iloa. Esimerkiksi yhdessä kentässä on taustalla valtava tasaisin väliajoin hakkaava paalutuskone. Koneen iskiessä maahan, hahmo pomppaa ilmaan väkisin.

Isoin pelin edetessä kasvava rasite on kuitenkin bossit. Nämä on toteutettu jokseenkin nintendomaiseen tyyliin: venaile bossin koreografiassa iskun paikkaa, laita osuma sisään ja venaile hieman hankalammassa koreografiassa uutta mahdollisuutta iskeä. Pelin alkupuolella bossit ovat vielä ihan kohtuullisia joskin tylsähkön hitaita, mutta loppupuolella rasittavuus on jo hulluissa mittasuhteissa. Peruspelin viimeinen loppari on todella hidas, puuduttava ja vaikea jurnutus, jossa kuoleminen tarkoittaa koko paskan yrittämistä uudelleen. Ja kuoleminen ei todellakaan ole vaikeaa. Naiivina luulin, että pelin viimeinen loppari olisi rasittavuuden huippu, mutta olinkin väärässä: post-gamessa on kiinnostavan kuuloinen pelimuoto, joka paljastui jonkinasteiseksi hardmodeksi ja jossa on eri loppupahis. Tämä bossi se vasta niin kutsuttua myrkkypaskaa olikin. Tämän voittamisen jälkeen ajattelin, nyt on peli vihdoin taputeltu ja hermot lepäävät... mutta ei. Vielä tämän jälkeen aukeaa yksi hämmentävän irrallinen, pitkäveteinen ja vaikea loppariosio. Ei myöskään auta, että näissä puuduttavissa bossimittelöissä on myös enemmän bugeja ja huonoa suunnittelua kuin aiemmin pelissä.

Pelin turhauttavan lopputaipaleen jälkeen päätin hieman kokeilla pelistä löytyvää Time Attackia ihan ensimmäisessä kentässä. Ja kuinkas ollakaan, taas minulla oli hauskaa. Itselle isona plussana time attackissa on se, että bosseja ei tarvitse katsella. En silti tiedä onko tämän pelin aika-ajelu se, mihin haluan rajallista aikaani käyttää, mutta ainakin löytyy hyvä tapa palata nauttimaan pelin miellyttävän alkupuolen parhaista paloista, jos nälkä iskee.

En voi kieltää ettenkö olisi selkeästi pettynyt Sonic Superstarsiin. Siinä on hyvää, ja pitkään kompastuskivenä ollut retro-Soniccien pelituntuma on kerrankin kunnossa, mutta kokonaisuus on epätasainen ja paikoin hyvin rasittava. Yhdessä asiassa peli on kuitenkin loistava: näyttämään kuinka mestarillinen Sonic Mania oikeasti oli.

Holy flipping shit. Who the hell thought the final boss of this game was a good idea? It's one of the most tedious, annoying, time-consuming bosses I have encountered.

Little did I know that I would soon encounter even a worse boss: the final boss of the extra game mode. Nothing lifts your spirits like dying of one hit after a nine and a half minute battle with a boss. Especially when that hit comes from a move that had a different area of effect than you saw the last time. Top it off with some glitches where your attacks to the boss don't register each time. Chef's kiss.

Like Jesus Christ almighty, I just spent more than two hours just trying and trying the boss without success. I was a bit on the fence about this game but I'm getting really sour about this mediocre piece of blandness that's best at making me remember just how good Mania was.