The New "Games I Bought" Thread -- Copied For Your Enjoyment

[A Black Falcon]

Chaotix level design was pretty dull, yeah. I got a lot of fun out of mastering the weird control style and the special "fling yourself basically all over the place at high speeds" stuff. That was pretty creative, though it does involve a very steep learning curve (at first, it'll hold you back to the point of frustration). Anyway, those controls, once mastered, were fun enough that it carried me the whole game without me ever really thinking about the level designs. That's probably a sign of the problem, because in retrospect not a single stage comes to mind.

The "flinging yourself around" thing is my only guess about why the game doesn't have any pits or spikes, actually -- maybe they thought that because of how random where you go is, having the pits and spike beds that normal Sonic games all have would make things too unfair, so they ditched them all? That doesn't explain why there are so few enemies, though (fewer than the past games by a good margin), and NO SPIKES AT ALL. I mean, I'd think there are some places where they would fit! But no, it's "if you die in this game you did something really wrong" all the way. The only spike balls and pits are in the 3d bonus stages, which are, as I said, the best part of the game. I wish there was more of it. :)

And yeah, the levels are just so boring. The designs are repetitive to the extreme and you do the same things over and over, rarely with much actual danger behind it. However though, as you say it is fun to fling yourself around and figure out how to use the spring/two character mechanic. It makes the game interesting and different. It slows the pace down a lot, so this definitely is not a Sonic-fast game, but it is interesting. They just didn't seem to quite know what to do with it beyond basic platforming, which is too bad.

I think one of the problems is that there's almost no difficulty curve thanks to the crazy design decision to have you play the levels in a random order. Sure, the level 5s are going to be harder than the level 1s by a little, I'm sure (I'm not there yet), but when all five worlds are accessed from a slot machine, there's not going to be much difference from one world to the next. It's just so strange having to play the levels in random order, and because each of the five worlds has five levels, and each level does not have a boss (Only the last ones maybe?), this game also has a lack of bossfights. So far I fought one boss-like enemy, and it was a fun fight, but with the random order system it's not like they can be spread out well. They had to make it so that you can start from any of the five level 1's, so while some stages are more complex than others none are that hard... it just seems like such a bad design. Sure, it's original, and plenty of games let you choose what order you play the levels in, but usually there is a clear difficulty curve despite that. With this there's a little of that, but perhaps because of the fact that it's randomly selected there seems to be less than usual. And the levels are LONG, partially because of that slow pace I mentioned (thanks to the spring largely, you have to charge that thing constantly and that takes time). In one level so far I finished the stage with one and a half seconds remaining on the clock... and I hadn't been trying to go slowly or anything. I just barely, barely made it to the end in 10 minutes. :D

So yeah, sure, the game's some fun to play and the bonus stages and spring mechanic are kind of cool. It's also great that the game has on-cart saving. But they made some real design mistakes in the game, for sure, and there is a lot about this game I find disappointing.