Elysian Shadows

Sega Digital Brand Manager Ken Balough stopped by the GameSpot offices to drop off a trailer for... OH MY GAWD, what's that on his face?! Taking facial hair art to exotic levels, Balough crafted Tails' tails on his punim to reveal that the sub-Sonic sidekick will appear in Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2. Metal Sonic will also be the new "old" villain.

The second installment, expected in 2012 for console digital distribution and mobile (iOS, Windows, Android), will have some significant changes from the less-than-enthusiastically received first installment. Balough says the company listened to feedback, and episode two will have a new graphics and physics engine.

"There's going to be a lot of really positive changes and we think the fans are going to be really happy," said Balough, explaining that Sonic won't stick to walls anymore and won't "uncurl" from ball form when going uphill. "They may not sound like a big deal, but when you're playing Sonic and you're so used to the way the Genesis games felt, it's a big step to get closer to that Genesis feel."

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/12/29/sonic ... -roll-out/

oh yay!! I can't wait to hear more...

I wasn't a HUGE fan of the first one, I thought it just felt a little unpolished, but so did the first ever sonic game and all of us here know how usually the first game in a series is more about testing out an engine, it's hard to make a masterpiece, with people constantly coming up with new ideas with a fresh engine (which is why ES has taken so long I presume), I'm sure they've fine tuned it quite a bit in the past year.

And a video:



From here: http://www.1up.com/news/sonic-4-physics ... -episode-2

But I will just point out one thing. I think the reason why I disliked sonic 4 was mainly the graphics, I preferred the hand drawn pixel art to the lifeless tweened animation. They don't have to do it 16bit though, I would much rather have it like the Sonic 2 HD project:





More: http://s2hd.sonicretro.org/

In fact, if you asked me and I didn't know better, I'd say that the S2HD project was by Sega and that S4E2 was a fan game. I mean, just look at the beautiful animation of tail's... tails at the end of the sonic 2 HD video and then compare with that of the sonic 4 episode 2 video... It's so much better. I'm into animation as well and there is no argument, even on the 'tween only application's forums that you just can't compare hand drawn/individual framed and touched up animation with lifeless, spongy, rubbery, plastic tweening animation...

But despite that and only that, I'm excited.

Fixed videos. Please use only the part after ?v= in the youtube tags. Ex. [youtoob]qJaRAUHWZig[/youtoob]

It helps if you proof-read your posts after submitting them. You would have noticed the broken embeds.

Well, I'm excited as shit. I wish the video had actual... y'know, substance, but whatever.

I thought Episode 1 was actually really good. I get really tired of people bitching about how a blue hedgehog's "physics" are not quite accurate... How many 2D Mario games have the same fucking jump physics as the NES and SNES? I think Sonic gets way too much shit for this kind of stuff. Once you got the hang of how he handled in Sonic 4, it was a blast.

That being said, I actually wound up preferring 2D Sonic in Sonic Generations over Sonic 4. I have a feeling Sega will try to push Episode 2 further in that direction.