Summer of Sonic (6.5): Sonic After the Sequel

I'd be happy to know that most people don't know the internet like I do. I've been browsing online a pretty long time - over twenty years now, in fact  - and I've seen some shit. Unfortunately, a couple years back Steam started Early Access, and that was a rare portal into what Indie gaming kinda actually is.

A lot, and I do mean a lot, of unfinished work. Not as bad as Patreon but... Yeah... So digging through Sonic fangames is a bit of a sad affair. It is a lot like digging through Fallout New Vegas mods, mostly abandoned, patched together ruins of games that never will be. A lot of them have blog posts like "We're not canceled guys, just getting things back on track" with dates like April 2009 and so forth.

But you're not wondering about that. You're wondering, why is there a Sonic fangame in the middle of this Summer of Sonic? Because fangames are, unfinished or not, a part of the Sonic gaming genome. When Sonic CD took a fan-gamer's work at porting it and put it up for sale, it legitimized fan-gaming and Sonic Mania continues that. I feel like if Mania does well, and it sounds like it should, we may see Sonic opened up to 2d fangaming slash indie development. But if you're wondering, why this one and not just why, it's because most fangames either aren't done or turned into Freedom Planet or something of the sort. This was one recommended, that works and is done.

I knew very little about this game before installing. I believe the developer went on to make a kickstarter something that people in the SA "Thousands dead, injured as Sonic Mania sweeps the nation" thread described in less glowing terms, but I might be conflating mod makers, and really that's neither here nor there. Apparently the game connects with Sonic 2 in some capacity, but I'm not certain exactly how that works either. And I don't care. To me, canonically, Sonic CD is before Sonic 2, and then Sonic 2 goes right into Sonic 3. There's not a lot of room, but it doesn't matter. Sonic's world is the childhood world, where there's sprawling cities and insane abomination carnivals in the middle of uncivilized islands, but also vast sweeping ruins 'just over there'. He can have as many adventures as people want to put him in.

The point of reviewing a fangame, I guess, is to briefly talk about what Sonic 4 is not, and to look at someone's attempt at doing that without being an official Sega whatever. That being said, I'm mostly doing this to play the game, not to delve into what honestly should be meaningful research in re-creating physics and the mod scene.

Anyway, Sonic After the Sequel is really interesting to play, though not necessarily in the best way at all times. The game claims it was "made by one guy and six musicians", though it also states it uses the sonic worlds engine or something. Wikipedia seems to imply the sonic worlds deal is to "simplify game creation for those with limited programming skill".

I guess we should talk about the physics... They're pretty good. They're not spot on to Sonic physics, or at least don't consistently quite feel like it, but they do feel internally consistent which is basically all I'm looking for. There's a couple odd floaty moments here or there, but they seem to mostly do so at reliable times. The only thing I find really obnoxious is the super peel out - a Sonic CD move - doesn't seem to work properly a fair amount of the time, even when the spin dash will. I don't really get why this is, but it basically means the super peel out isn't an especially useful move.

As for the floatiness, well, to be fair Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 both have some bugs and glitches. I had a couple spots where I, for example, fell through a wall and got stuck in Sonic 3 or things just tossed me around in unexpected ways. You can't ultimately be too hard on an engine for replicating something that was always a little contextual instead of perfectly consistent. The physics are good enough I stopped noticing once I was a few more days away from playing Sonic 3.

Basically, if you pick this up right after playing S3&K, you'll imagine the physics are wrong. Play it right after S4E1, and you'll go "this is much better". I don't think they'll ever feel quite right, but maybe if you handed it to someone who isn't burning nostalgia oil they'd go "who cares"

To go back to the thrust of the S4E1 review, I mentioned four stand out elements to Sonic 2 and S3&K: Visual style, music, the aforementioned physics engine and mega drive slow down. There's no slow down in this engine, as best I can tell, other than the odd floatiness. That leaves us with Style and Music.

In terms of visuals, SATS is a bit of a mixed bag. I mean, let's be frank here: I don't know if he hired any artists or he is the artist, but there's two main things you're going to look at. The levels and the objects. The backgrounds, the levels, the stuff you're running on? I don't know how much of it is lifted from elsewhere, but it is assembled into some really nice Sonic stuff. The levels, barring the first one, have a very influenced by Sonic CD style. The second zone is a sugar production facility - weird bio-tanks in the bottom, huge sugar dunes up top - while there's also hover car swarmed city, a robotnik train station and I'm not even sure how to describe the technology tree zone other than awesome.

It's great. If I hadn't recently played Sonic CD, I'd probably be a little down on it, but I did and I quite like the visuals. I love the train station act, although that's not the entire zone. The game's zones transition through a lot of elements, and assemble themselves into a really interesting set up.

The actual objects, though, can be a bit poorly done. I get the feeling some stuff he slapped together out of other games, and a couple of things he needed to make himself, and that isn't where his skillset lies. It doesn't take too much from the game, but they look kinda stark against the fantastic back drops. The worst at the made up badniks, but mostly because he was willing to rip some badniks, so why not all...? There's a lot of badniks, and several of them most people won't even remember.

Not that they all look bad. Just a couple of them do.

As for music, the music is fantastic. I liked almost all of the tracks, and none of them were annoying - just not fantastic. There's tons of variety in the music, I think there's a different track for every act of each zone, except maybe the boss act. And yes, the game has 3 acts per zone, then a boss act, with a different tune and style running through each act of the zone.

Acts are longer than Sonic 2 acts, which I think averaged me like two and a half minutes, but are generally shorter than the longer S3&K acts, which generally works. The fact the game tends to shift the background around your path of progression within and between acts, as well as offering different musics and gimmicks per act, generally keeps things fresh for most of the game.

Audio is lifted directly from other games. If you've played other Sonic games, you will recognize the sounds used, though some are from Mario and maybe Mega man X. They're all well selected, but what a shock, that's something triple A 16-bit games always knew to do well. Picking from a library of the best 16-bit audio gives you a lot of good options.

As I said in the S3&k review, there is a point where Sonic games begin to progress from lane switching gameplay and into fending off gimmicks, which I was proposing as more or less a systemic issue that causes problems in later Sonic titles out of 2D. I don't know how limited SATS was by the single guy doing most of the work, but it thankfully keeps it from getting overwhelmed with gimmicks. I really enjoy the level with the trains, for example - and in case it isn't clear, I mean you get hit by trains - but some are a mixed bag. Snowboards and sugar highs are "ok", a machine that makes Sonic super bouncy is amusing while these weird levitating rocks that barely seemed to work were annoying. On the other hand, compare this to Sonic 4 where it just felt like all the gimmicks were either re-iterations or new and annoying, and you have to commend the guy. Rarely do they slow the game down too much or feel overwhelming.

Boss fights in SATS really demonstrate a grasp of creativity that at times doesn't quite flourish in execution. There's a lot of variety and I think I liked most of the boss fights, but a couple either go on too long or break up into phases that are too easy at the start then suddenly more difficult.

Basically, between the solid visuals, the excellent music, the mostly there physics and the generally high quality level design, this is a very well put together, solid fangame that doesn't disappoint. It's not better than any of the original trilogy, but it does rate up there with them, and it's good enough I'm not offended he denoted it as "between" Sonic 2 and Sonic 3. Angel Island even makes an appearance, in the last boss fight, as you're trying to race to stop him from reaching the island.

So what is bad about the game? Well, like I said, the physics aren't quite perfect, and sometimes this feels really trippy. It's not consistent, but the other problem is a lot of the levels play with the physics - anti-gravity, ice, hard to discern water, etc - which can end up feeling completely off. This is minor.

Some of the boss fights, like I said, do go on too long. There's more than a few with phases, which ends up feeling a bit tedious if you don't nail them first pass. It's not like, last boss of Sonic 4 level or something, but it is an issue. Some of them are inversely a bit too easy and maybe should have spent a little longer in the oven. Enemy design in general really takes a backseat to level design, which is fine - that's basically how Sonic works - but some of them seem like little more than window dressing.

Lastly, and this is highly subjective, as much as I loved the levels individually I do feel like the game goes on long enough that the "techno-organic" Sonic CD feel starts to overwhelm. The end result is a game that loses some of its Sonic-essence by being so long and detailed, but so technological, you find yourself missing levels like Hilltop Zone or Mushroom Hill Zone - those breaks between techno-wonderlands - and that kinda brings it down. I still really, really love the creative process behind the levels.

In conclusion, SATS does what Sonic 4 unfortunately does not: a quality production that engenders nostalgia via muscle memory and tone, not through desperately re-using old ideas. It is creative and enjoyable, and while it is a fan game quite thoroughly, I still enjoyed it a fair bit.