Honestly, while forces has technically better graphics, Generations has FAR stronger art design, there's more exaggeration and variety in the colours and visuals, which is something forces lacks
Honestly yeah, Generations looks so much better than forces especially with how empty, blocky and unnatural they made green hill and other stages look.
They kept the lost world art direction even though I thought it was supposed to be unique for lost world and those strange lands they explore in the game.
Hey there... a "new" sonic fan here. In my experience, I've known sonic since mario & sonic and the winter olympic games (2010), and my first sonic game bought was sonic forces, and because of that, I always thought that sonic games were just too short and the effort put into them was just the design and the different paths process... that's why I thought buying another sonic game because for 60 dollars I wouldn't pay for a game that roughly would last me about 3-5 hours...then I bought sonic mania and sonic frontiers and oh bot, I was wrong... although they are 2 different types of sonic games, I instantly notice the difference between these 2 and forces... then, 1 month ago, sonic generations was like at 5 dollars on the xbox, so I decided to give it a shot (thinking that it would be a standard game with a few levels, and today, I am like on 1/4 of the game 100% and I love this game so much and I have given it so many hours and I really enjoy the missions... definitely I love generations more than forces...
A lot of Sonic games, especially the 2D games, are on the shorter side and make up for that by having lots of replay value. It’s what makes 2 so fun to go back to.
Gens was my first Modern Sonic game along with Black Knight. Black Knights linear level design may be why I didn't mind the linear level design of Forces my first time.
I agree with everything, but for my money Generations still looks better. Yeah, forces has more HD textures and higher quality graphics on a technical level, but generations nails a great semi realistic art style which makes every level come alive.
Just like Super Mario World and the New Super Mario Bros games. Super Mario World is years older, has way less technical less pixels and thingies, but it doesn't look like boring and generic like the NSMB titles.
It’s amazing how Sega had basically devolved ever since 2008 with unleash having the highest quality sonic model ever! And the fact that Generations was 12 years ago and still looks amazing gives Sega no excuse…
lets see, that "highest quality sonic model ever" caused some problems, called "A PS3 CANT RUN THIS SH*T" so they changed it on generations, and then they decided to keep using the generations model and edit it to make the new ones with smaller spikes and blah blah blah
@@JoacoonCraftLite Ya I don't think the model caused that much problems. If anything it was the way sonic team used the hedgehog engine to add the visuals and effects of the lighting and shadows, not only that it was the first game to use it so issues are expected. Doesn't change the fact that PS3 by itself was difficult to develop for
@@marguya4643 I don't think he was talking about poly's, I think he was just talking about the Unleashed model being better in general. Which I'd agree with.
@@JoacoonCraftLitedefinitely not because of the character polygons lmao. The game was obviously of higher quality in terms of level design and the limitations of the older console shot them in the foot. They toned everything down in generations.
I’m assuming they didn’t have the best textures just to avoid the frame rate issues of Unleashed (PS3). I love Unleashed, but my god, does it feel like I’m watching a slideshow sometimes.
What also sucks about Forces’ story, is they have Silver the Hedgehog and Knuckles the Echidna on their team, and yet they still managed to lose so much ground to Eggman. No matter how much SEGA tries to retcon Sonic’s strength, I refuse to believe Silver and Knuckles are collectively weaker than Sonic and one random avatar.
Silver & Knuckles: Together we could win! Phantom Ruby: Think again, chumps. Sonic (with the avatar): I'm back! Phantom Ruby: Oh me and my big mouth....
That and the phantoms disappear or explode when defeated. You're telling me that all of Sonic's friends combined couldn't take out one Shadow to realize it was the real thing?
Looking at the level design, maybe it really makes a difference so be able to boost. Silver has no excuse tho, in his Generations boss fight he was far too powerful (but very dumb. Its funny how I think it makes complete sense that he practically defeated Sonic twice in 06 while having way less power, because he used it smarter back then)
I remember getting sonic forces for Christmas when I was 9 years old and being so excited to play it, being a kid I obviously ignored the bad gameplay but even I noticed how clunky everything was. 3 hours after I got the game I was confused because I had beat the game and didn’t expect to beat it within the same day.
Actually Green Hills for Classic Sonic can be beaten in a shorter amount of time, like less than a minute. Still though, you have to be skilled and fast to get that time unlike in Forces
Day/Modern Sonic is almost the same, they just made him slower (and you can be back to normal using "skills"); putted a cooldown to the sidedash (so you wont gain enormous amounts of speed by spamming it), and limited your air boost to just one (you can spam it in Unleashed); apparently the angle of the joystick needs to be even more precise to do the M-speed glitches; they changed the drift animation; and they added the air tricks of Sonic Rush when you jump from certain objects Graphically, Unleashed has higher resolution models, and textures, because in Gens they made those lower so the game runs better and also added better lighting. About performance, I also experiment lag in Gens for the ps3, but Unleashed is supposed to happen more often The only other think I can think of is the voice acting, were Day Sonic had Jason and Modern Sonic has Roger. Between those two I prefer Jason, but personally I only play Gens in the Spanish dub, because personally thats the best Modern Sonic voice to me, and its sad that Unleashed didnt have a Spanish dub, and that the actor is dead
Great comparision! I've always wondered what the differences are + why they're rated differently and you answered all my questions perfectly. The script is pretty good with the clear sections, And I gotta appreciate the editing, it all demonstrates and complements whatever you're saying at that time. Thanks for the video
Apologies about the poor bitrate during some parts. RU-vid compression seems to have lowered the bitrate far more than I require, so the image quality suffers greatly. I'll most likely get that fixed by next video. EDIT: Well the issue apparently fixed itself so... nevermind I guess? Anyways, enjoy the video!
Generations vs Forces is the best example I know of for why art design is so much better than graphical fedelity. Like, yeah, Forces has more technological advances graphics, but it still looks way more lifeless and overall worse than Generations despite that. Honestly, I don't think you're right in saying Forces looks better at all.
Well sorry to break it to ya..but sonic forces does have better visuals and graphics than generations and unleashed for better or worse like...damn it seems that the only redeeming quality about this game..
@@JakeThehedgehog-m1x Technically speaking yes. In terms of art direction, no. Just look at all the other comments down here and you will see that your opinion is a standalone opinion.
Honestly it’s pretty stupid how the comics tell that Eggman literally found the phantom ruby right on his doorstep. No big crash or mess or anything. It was literally sitting there half buried.
Game developing is hard, specially if you make dumb decisions or force developers into unrealistical time expectations (making the games rushed). For Gens they only had to make Classic Sonic (edited from Unleashed's Day Sonic, and for Modern Sonic, they barely changed him) Then they made Lost World from scratch (or maybe heavily edited Gens Modern Sonic) and it was gold for what it was, but then they edited that to try to fit a boost game (editing out Lost World's mechanics and adding boost), and of course they also edited the new Forces Modern Sonic to make a Classic Sonic. They edited Forces Modern Sonic AGAIN (and twice since Cyberspace and Overworld are different) for Frontiers and in my opinion Unleashed/Gens Modern Sonic was still better than Cyberspace Sonic, who tries to be like Unleashed/Gens, but lacks drift, and still has kept that awkward second jump from Lost World PD: Out of topic, but the air dash from 06-Gens sucks. The Adventure one was better, it reacted to momentum PD: Not that out of topic, but Classic Sonic's spindash sucks. Yes its fun to gain a lot of speed to speedrun levels, but there's no casual way to use it and thus no casual way to gain speed to platform, because in short platforms you cant spindash and jump. Why tf they made it like a weird hybrid between CD's and Genesis spindash? In older games you could just spindash once and start moving inmediatly (but not that fast, allowing you to platform. If you wanted to go fast, just spam the button like 3-6 times before releasing it to go at max speed), while in Generations there's not a "not that fast speed", unless you press the button for too short, which will just make Sonic stop. So there's no in-between of Sonic either stopping completely and Sonic moving at the speed of light when releasing the button. By the way, the spindash is so much faster than Modern Sonic's boost
There was also a much bigger plot hole in forces: The phantom ruby is the same as the one in Mania and that causes a bunch more questions: how do the chaos emeralds and ruby open up worm hole to another dimension? , how did modern Eggman find it? The ruby in forces is shown to cause illusions, so was the entirety of Mania also an illusion? Were we just on Angel Island tripping balls? There was literally no reason for these games to be connected
Knowing how much Subcribers people have I don't usually comment but seeing how small your Subscriber count is, I need to say one thing! Keep this going, your video content is very interesting and I had a fun time watching, I would recommend reading up on some basic video game development to further explain issues or additions worth discussing - this would push your content to the next level for me personally!
After playing forces i got so bored i tried to emulate Unleashed instead, my pc sucks ass so i can't even play it properly but the small piece i managed to play just made me want an Unleashed pc port.
I gotta be honest, this is one of the best comparison videos I've ever seen. I have to say I couldn't spot any subjective point that you told in this and can confirm everything was fair and square, well explained. Congrats on this! Not everyone can do comparison without being subjective.
@@SERGEO-sn4pjAnd that is perfectly valid! As someone who enjoys analyzing media, I like saying this: "just because you like something, doesn't make it good, and vice versa" Personally I believe Forces is a bad game and I also hate it. However, there are some things that I don't like, but still respect as a well made piece of art and others that I objectively consider bad, but can't help but love.
What's funny about Green Hill Act 1 in Generations is that you can beat it almost 30 seconds faster than 1:20, there's even a trophy/achievement for beating it in less than a minute.
I enjoyed the video, but I need to say - the rewards you get in Forces were character customisation options, which I'd argue are much more fulfilling than concept art. One helps me create unique and cool looking characters to play as, the other I look at once and say, "neat" before never looking at them again. On the same note, it's probably a bit unfair not to mention Forces had the avatar stages, or that Forces had more stages in total despite their shorter length.
That was something I was going to mention with an extra section, but had to cut it from the video to save time. I might address the stuff I missed in another video, though.
@PhantomLee No need to be rude about it, Technonova already said he cut it to save time in the video and he may talk about it in a future video, so I'm not really sure what you're trying to say. I suppose he was focusing on the Sonic and classic Sonic parts for a more direct comparison with Generations, so I can understand him not mentioning it as you can't experience those character customisation options when playing as the Sonics.
Forces had 30 stages which includes 7 bosses in its count, meaning there are 23 standard levels. Generations by comparison has 18 standard levels and also 7 bosses. It's not that much of a difference unless you count the extra stages and Episode Shadow, in which case there are probably enough side missions in Generations that change the level design or mechanics enough to match that.
Strictly speaking gameplay, Unleashed and Generations are the superior boost games. the only thing Forces does better is the double jump which makes platforming better but everything else Forces is inferior. As for Classic Sonic, he feels much better in Generations compared to Forces, mainly due to better Physics, better level design, general quality and the music isn't ear-rape.
About the returning locations: Green Hill, yeah, we're tired of seeing it, and the only reason I can think of its return is that Eggman wanted to take over the area where the series started. Somewhere with sentimental importance to both him and Sonic. Chemical Plant makes at least some sense, since it'd be a base of operations for Eggman, so it'd be necessary to not only take it out, but to get intel from there. The Death Egg. I honestly don't remember a game the Death Egg was in before Forces besides Sonic 3 & Knuckles. This returning not only shows us more of it but provides a bigger base of operations that the Chemical Plant. Taking this out would be absolutely vital, and if the game was written better, it could have been so much more than what we ended up getting, which was actually pretty good in my opinion.
I disagree with the visual arguement, unless you mean just graphics, but the art design feels lacking. I like the grass on Forces, but the dirt & background elements feel too blocky & boring. I like the textures & more appealing look of Generations, it's more natural & feels like a more realistic version of Green Hill.
Kinda surprised you didn't talk about music, or the 3rd gameplay style in forces. Helpful video for understanding people's feelings on the games though!
That was originally part of the video, but I had to cut it out to save some time. I might address everything I missed in a follow-up video in the future. Thanks for the comment!
Great video, only thing I would add is that Sonic Forces homining attack is hyper frustrating/glitchy compared to how well it works in Sonic Generations.
I hate Forces for the story predominantly, especially with how much it pales compared to the hype and marketing, and how it also worked in tandem to minimize gameplay as well. I don’t give a crap about visuals, and I only realized the gameplay in hindsight. At the time, I was just playing game and…well, not really having fun, but I was going through a story I thought might at least end interestingly, because we had Infinity on top of Eggman. Spoiler alert: Infinity is revealed to be basically irrelevant. Eggman is the final boss. That was the final straw to make me absolutely hate the game. But more importantly, before that the story was way too ambitious apparently, bringing back four returning bosses that are handled SOOO poorly in ways that go beyond story and enter into gameplay. 2 of them (Shadow and Chaos) are reduced to cutscenes. You don’t get to fight those two bosses at all. Metal Sonic’s boss fight plays a LOT like one of Infinity’s. This is actually predominantly a gameplay issue, and it is blatant laziness or signs of the game being rushed. The one returning boss that got a full unique boss fight of their own was Zavok, a character coming from Lost World, a game that also got a lot of hate. I don’t have a problem with that, but if one character got special treatment over the others, it should NOT have been Zavok. Screw Classic Sonic. I could notice that blemish before even playing the game. He’s not worth talking much about. His entire presence is a mistake. Wisps were a fun thing for gameplay at least, and I have nostalgia bias due to Sonic Colors being my first game. But they shouldn’t be here either. That’s a returning mistake initially made for Lost World though, iirc. Even in the stuff I did realize in hindsight, the straightforward layout of the gameplay is certainly disinteresting and forgettable, but the writer in me is just as frustrated about how unaffected Sonic is by the experience of losing and being locked in jail for a long time.
I just re-watched the Sonic Forces launch trailer and it looked epic! No doubt people would be hyped for that game back then, but yeah... How did they mess up the game that much? Literally 2017 was a great year for Sonic but only because of Sonic Mania which ironically wasn't the main focus considering it was done by fans I'm glad Sonic Frontiers is doing better though, it has space for improvement but we now know Sonic Team *can* actually make amazing Sonic games if they put real effort into it
Frontiers is not amazing, definitely not as good as Generations (unless story is your #1 priority), but it's much better than Forces so that's good I guess? If "it's not great but at least it's better" satisfies you, you'll definitely like it
Please stop saying mania was made by fans, the creators are proffesional game devs, with a lot of help from sega, and saying it was "made by fans" is a pretty gross oversimplification as it devalues the devs as mere small fangame developers. I understand why you're saying it, since a lot of people say this :)
@@Pinkio Christian whitehead and the rest of the team are proffesional game devs, but they're also big sonic fans. If it was actually random sonic fans that where hired mania wouldn't be nearly as good as it is. Also sega helped a lot with mania.
Even though I’m probably gonna stick with Frontiers for a while now, I know I’m still gonna come back to Generations later on while I’m probably not even gonna look at Forces. I will probably check out Forces Re-imagined once that mod is done though.
Not sure if Forces really wins on a graphics front. I mean the assets themselves might be higher quality, but the overall visual style seems more flat and less interesting.
I never really thought about it since there was such a gap between the two games, but why didn't SonicTeam just take modern and classic Sonic's controls and physics and everything and just build Forces around that instead of totally fucking with the controls? I know Kishimoto loves to force players to use his shitty controls, which Frontiers proves, but why would the team waste time building Sonic's movement from the ground up when they could have just ruined Generations' movement to save time and money, AND they probably couldn't have fucked up Generations' controls as bad as Forces feels with it's ground-up movement
As someone who had S ranked every stage in forces collected every red ring, bingo numbers and moon rings, I indeed can confirm that the only reward for collecting all these is nothing except a feeling of nothing and extreme regret after sinking that many hours into a mediocre game
Partially, yes. At the very least, assets were reused and altered. But Forces had a new framework dubbed Hedgehog Engine 2, which was made primarily for Forces.
@damattboii5495 Same here. At least for Sonic, the story isn't my main focus, but it can be a good supplement to the core gameplay if executed well. If it's simple and straightforward, though, I don't personally mind it.
My main issue is if you’re gonna modernize a level from the classic games and have classic Sonic, give those stages less 2-d gameplay. The game consisted of 90.9% 2-d gameplay. According to the developers, they wanted to make the game easy for people.
Honestly, after lost world the camera in general was less impressive and more stiff. this was bc HE2 was built on top of lost world (which had an extremely stiff and downgraded camera compared to gens and unleashed) and it hasnt really been upgraded since. You can see the stiff camera movement in Frontiers and in the footage we have for Shadow Generations.
@@invalidfile it's definitely a nitpick of mine, but the stiff camera just feels off. It's definitely been here for a long time, but I hope it'll be altered in the future.
eh i think generations still has the one up in terms of visuals purely because of how much personality it has in comparison. just comparing green hill alone generation's feels so much more alive
I agree completely. When talking about visuals, I focused too much on the graphics and technical aspects of them. I forgot about the art direction, which was a massive mistake on my end 😅. But yes, Generations is better in its art direction IMO.
Hello, Technonova! Kinda surprised you didn't talk about music, or the 3rd gameplay style in forces. Helpful video for understanding people's feelings on the games though! But could you make a video called "Sonic Generations vs Kirby and the Rainbow Curse: A Complete Comparison"?
One thing I wish you dedicated some time towards is the moveset of the Sonics. More specifically Modern Sonic, because a lot of moves are either removes or unused in Forces. The short way I can say it, is that games like Unleashed and Generations teach and make use of the manoeuvres Sonic has while Forces barely ever does that.
A few months ago, I did my final playthrough on Forces on Xbox (Series S, was the final version I needed to play before I 100% completed all versions), and after that, I did Generations on the same platform. Generations still remains one of my favorite titles, while Forces is just decent. I have a bit of a bias towards the latter though, as that was the first 3D game I modded. Also want to add that Modern Sonic in Forces *does* have the wall jump, but it goes unused as none of his stages have walljump objects. Adding one in, he'll wall jump like normal.
Come on, man. How ya gonna pit the class-clown against the class-favorite? You sit anyone down the first level of Gens and Forces.. The control alone would sway them from Forces. Good breakdown tho. 🤙
Lol, and here I much preferred Forces to generations. Played both games for the first time before Frontiers, I was so happy to be finished with Generations whilst I was replaying levels of Forces loads. Preferred Frontiers to them both though, so yeah, glad to see the series is getting better
@@ViltrumiteIsRite99 Short and sweet levels (with surprisingly short load and restart times), amazing music (which is subjective, but there wasn't a single song I didn't love in Forces), absolutely breaking the game with Boost doing things I can only imagine the devs never intended for. I never felt the urge to replay a single level in Generations, whilst I did want to replay levels in Forces for these reasons (little bit of credit towards the avatar stages different Wispons too, a lot of levels become much easier or much harder with particular wisps - not to mention the drill wisp completely breaks the game in the most amazing way). Not to mention the story, whilst it wasn't good, had me laughing at several occasions ("this is war Vector. nothing is good."). It fell into the "so bad, it's good" category of entertainment, which I'll take over the absolutely forgettable Generations story in a heartbeat (the most memorable part of Generations was everyone cheering the sonics on, which wasn't funny - just cringe-inducing). While you've got me talking about this too, I really don't understand the criticism that Forces in short when Generations is only slightly longer. Hell, with Episode Shadow, there's barely any difference in both game lengths. I wish I could do a better comparison here, but I can say that I beat Generations in 4 hours. It's harder to say with Forces since I spent a lot of time doing SOS missions and doing side missions in earlier levels before I beat the game since I wanted the customisation options, but 4 hours definitely isn't long enough that it should escape this same criticism I see thrown at Forces all the time.
Generations and Unleashed had much more vibrant and colorful lighting and a stronger art style, despite Forces being more impressive from a graphical standpoint.
I’m still blown away by how much better the in-game animations of Unleashed, Colors, and Generations are over Forces and Frontiers. The only times Forces and Frontiers ever seem more well animated than the older boost titles is in cutscenes, but Sonic’s animations during gameplay are the stiffest I’ve seen since Sonic 06. It’s sad to see Sonic go from one of the most well-animated characters in gaming to one of the most poorly animated…
I'll be completely honest I enjoyed forces when it came out but more recently I'm really only enjoying it for the the free Super Sonic, the arsenal pyramid glitch, and the optional shadow campaign the real problems of the game are it difficulty and it's run time Even on the hardest difficulty it shouldn't be this easy to beat the game. You could've never played a single sonic game and still beat it in a good day or 2 And im not saying all sonic games are easy, but this game is boost to win on crack Both games looks great and the visuals are very well done The gameplay of generations still holds up a decade later and is still a fun game to go back to while forces is like once in a blue moon i might go back to it Both good games but forces was lacking in stage replayability due to the skill combination of both classic and modern sonic in generations.
Honestly Sonic generations is just a better version of forces, I can’t think of anything that forces has over generations aside from the use of characters aside from Sonic, Tails and Eggman (but even then they do nothing but talk for all of it, they say they are constantly helping in the war but we never see it until the very end so it’s not believable at all) this is why I despise forces despite it only being considered to be mediocre by most others, the only good part of forces is the modern sonic sections imo (but even then the generations modern sections are better, in forces, modern is slow, stiff and the stages are linear, short and easy, things that generations levels lack usually)
Forces has better graphics but animations have been _heavily_ downgraded. Just compare them side by side and you'll see how artificial and dead everything feels.
I value story as much as gameplay but I still prefer Generations over Forces. Maybe it’s because Generations is closer to perfection than Forces was imo but eh
Yeah the only bad point of Generations is its story, it could have been so much more. But everything else is great, and it more than makes up for it. And this is coming from someone who loves stories in video games more than anything else and does wish Generations had a better story. But at least, by not being a big story, it's not especially bad either. It's just eh. Generations' story can't fail to deliver if it has nothing to deliver, even if the fact that it has nothing to deliver in the first place is disappoiting. Meanwhile Forces has a lot more to deliver but fails to do so. So I'll take Generations over Forces anytime.
Some people prefer an ambitious story over a shallow one. But for Sonic, it's a safer bet to go for a shallow one because people mainly come for the gameplay, not the story.
@@Technonova323 I prefer an ambitious story too. When it's well written. But between a poorly written complex story and just an story without much ambition... Well I guess I would choose the poorly written ambitious story too, since at least there's something there. But I don't know... With Generations it's different. Since everything is so great, I'm happier that the story is just eh rather than actually bad. And it has some potential too.
Forces felt very short & lost my interest. Ive never played the console version of Generations but Im gonna! I played Forces on a switch & I had to make a character I never got to play as Sonic 😂. So it didnt feel like a Sonic game to me🤷🏼 but regardless If I even compare Forces to Generations 3DS version I would rather play that. I think Forces is such a weaker game. Just my opinion. I did play generations on PS3 & it is probably one of my top 3 Sonic Games now!
It is normal for one game to vary in large to the other since Generations came out when the Engine had not yet optimized it and Forces if but the artistic style of Forces is very cartoonish to be one based on war and Generations. Come on we came from Unleashed is it normal that the style was more realistic and its levels? It's normal how colorful. But now with Frontiers it's my pleasure to be able to say Hedgehog Engine 2 you did a great job Ignoring things like history and things that don't matter, despite the graphic sacrifice Generations made to maintain a steady frame rate still looks good
honestly the only reason that i dropped sonic forces was the gameplay so stiff and limited movments and so short , i missed sonic unleashed and generations system of gameplay , even frontiers looks a bit stiff with the gameplay but better than forces , and last but not least i missed the longer and smooth sonic hair (kind a hair ?) ,now it's just a bit shorter and doesn't have that fluid animation that was back in the older games . basically this is all my complains about modern sonic contents .
In terms of these modern Sonic boost type gameplay 1. Unleashed 2. Generations 3. Frontiers Cyberspace (there are a couple levels in here as good as Unleashed and Gens tho) 4. Colors 5. Forces
yeah and the modern games removed the best move: bounce (except frontiers but it feels stiff and isnt usable cuz its just a stomp and then instant jump not even spammable
2:24 i have one problem with this cutscene, Why the f*ck is shadow skating? like, i got that's that how he moves around FAST, they're going pretty slow there, can't he just... idk... RUN?!
The reason why wisp are in sonic forces is because the wisp liked sonic's world so much they moved to it and the reason why the textures in cutscene's of generations is because the camera is close to the textures (EDIT: Actually you can beat green hill act 1 fast around 50 to 40 seconds
Seems like a cop out to me and the Wisps are not needed in later games (minus Team Sonic Racing) and they legit warped out of Sonic's world after saving him in return.
About Generations grafics, it might not be your pc, but the port. I play Generations in pc too, and some cut scenes are awsome, but others not so much cuz the pc version is a port of xbox 360 version. I play in the most recent update steam has and looks the same you recorded.
