#for me homing attack is more iconic than spindash

[fennecfoxfloatingthroughspace]

Finally! Let's gooooo!!! :D

Yeah, I started playing yesterday. So hyped that forgot to post or anything? Maaaaaaybe... xd

[blazehedgehog]

Looking back at that Sonic Adventure trailer got me to wondering: What do you think about the Homing Attack it introduced? I see a lot of people down on it, but I really loved it, at least for the 3D games at the time. I even wished Mario had something similar, since his 3D game of that time seemed to really downplay his trademark stomping. So do you think it was good for the game design, or bad? And can you think of anything to improve it?

Gosh, where to even begin. Every time somebody asks me this question I have to launch in to this big spiel, so buckle in.

To answer your question simply I’ll say that I think the homing attack is good and even necessary for Sonic to work in 3D, and I’m going to try and explain why. This might be difficult to understand because I’m gonna try and condense it, but bare with me.

The example I sometimes like to go back to is Castlevania in 3D, given it’s a pretty good example of how what works in 2D doesn’t always work in 3D.

The whip attack you use in Castlevania shoots straight ahead, like a short range bullet. It’s perfectly suited to giving the player range while also not giving them too much range. But if you translate this move directly in to 3D…

Whipping straight forward in front of you in 3D is almost worthless. The depth of the 3D environment complicates matters significantly, making it incredibly easy to miss lining up your attack. In 2D, objects are either directly in front of you or directly behind you, but 3D space introduces a full range of lateral positioning.

Here’s a crash course in game mechanics psychology: So let’s take Mario, for example. How do you stomp on a Goomba? Well, you jump up, move yourself above it, and then drop on its head.

In this scenario, your subconscious is tracking information about two dimensions: up/down (Y Axis) and left/right (X Axis). Except, even then, not really: when you jump, it’s easier to just assume that Mario’s elevation is higher than the Goomba, so your brain is really only paying attention to whether or not Mario is lined up with the Goomba before he drops. It’s such a simple action that it barely even registers as a blip in your brain once you’ve become accustomed to it.

Once we reach 3D, all of the rules change. For starters, you’ll notice Goombas are now a lot bigger. They barely came up to Mario’s waist before, now they’re almost as tall as he is. There’s a reason for that.

Stomping on a Goomba in 3D isn’t just about lining Mario up to the left or right anymore while he’s in the air. By adding just one more dimension, how our subconscious processes Mario’s position gets a whole lot more complex. That’s because, unlike the absolute positioning of left or right, up or down, now we have to judge distance. Judging distance is a lot more subjective, to the point where we as human beings have invented physical, real-life tools to help us judge distances.

Ask even a child whether something is to the left or right and they’ll know, but ask how far away it is in an exact measurement, and you’ll only get a best guess. One that’s also more than likely incorrect.

Games employ tools to help us line things up more easily. You’ll note Mario, Goombas, and even trees all have a shadow. The easiest trick is to ignore perceived distance and line up the two shadows, but that’s akin to zen meditation – you have a whole noisy world of audiovisual input, and you’re telling the player to forget about it all and focus on lining up two dots.

3D depth perception and environmental awareness is one of the most deceptively complex, difficult things present in just about every single video game currently available. It takes years of practice to successfully cope with.

A lot of games employ many different tricks to help players cope with 3D depth perception. Games with lots of jumping occasionally employ assists that will snap players to ledges so they can’t fall off as easily. Sly Cooper, Infamous, Uncharted and Assassins Creed do this. Shooters, particularly third-person shooters, have aim assists so your bullets will automatically target enemies within a certain extended range, avoiding the Castlevania whip problem. Bullet spread (where not every bullet travels in an identical straight line) also helps combat this issue.

This is also why Goombas became bigger – it’s an assist to make it a little harder to miss your target. The larger the bullseye, the less effort required to hit it.

Speaking of Castlevania, that problem was solved by God of War. Instead of Kratos’ chain whips striking directly in front of him, most of your attacks are sweeping arcs.

Something I didn’t bring up earlier about Castlevania was the real problem of whipping in 3D space: if you preserve the whipping action of classic 2D Castlevanias, you can only attack one enemy at a time. That’s tolerable for one-on-one battles, but Castlevania was never about one-on-one battles. Imagine you’re in the entrance hall, the game’s first level, and four zombies come after you. You might be able to whip one before it gets to you, but while you’re distracted, the other three are free to go in for the kill.

God of War’s sweeping attacks solves that problem. Now, four zombies rush you, and your chain sweeps across the screen in an arc, hitting all four at the same time.

This is how most melee combat in 3D has evolved. Zelda, Dark Souls, Dead Rising – you don’t hit directly in front of you. You swing baseball bats, clubs, swords, or axes so you don’t miss the enemy. When you punch, it’s called a “right hook” for the way your fist hooks around your body before it eventually finds where to connect.

Crash Bandicoot and Mario learned this. Both employ spin attacks where they whirl like a top, throwing their fists out like helicopter blades.

Super Mario 3D Land replaces this move with something that serves almost the same identical purpose: the Tanooki tail. It’s considered a power-up, because of how easy dealing with enemies becomes while using it.

If you’re playing a game that gives you something like a spear, stabbing motions utilize auto aim so you’re always properly facing a target when you thrust.

Which finally, after all of that, brings us to Sonic the Hedgehog.

Sonic has a specific aesthetic gimmick for how his character attacks enemies, and that is the Super Spin Attack. By curling in to a ball (as hedgehogs do), Sonic can utilize his natural speed to turn his whole body in to a living buzzsaw, capable of shredding through almost anything. Stone, metal, wood, you name it.

Though there are games where he uses his fists, it’s not Sonic’s gimmick. The whirlwind punch of Mario and Crash Bandicoot wouldn’t work for Sonic. Nor would the tail spin of the Tanooki suit. He’s not an every-man like Mario, capable of many utility functions. Sonic spins in to a ball. That’s his thing.

And like Castlevania’s whip, Sonic’s spin primarily only works for things that are directly in front of him. When dealing with more than one enemy, facing from his sides, one of Sonic’s most iconic moves is now functionally worthless.

Enter the homing attack.

With the homing attack, there’s no lining up shadows in a zen-state, there’s no punch swing arcs, there’s no need to inflict gigantism upon your enemies, you just get close enough, push a button, and the game handles all of the hard stuff for you. It is absolutely, unquestionably necessary for a game like Sonic to function in 3D.

The only real problem I have with the homing attack is that modern incarnations of it are usually a little too powerful – the homing attack is most similar to the aim assist you get in console shooters, and the range on it is insane. Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Generations often demonstrate that enemies can be totally off screen and you can still do a homing attack on them. To me, Sonic Adventure 2 was pretty close to perfect with its homing attack, because you had to be fairly close and really aiming in the general direction of the enemy you wanted to strike.

It just needed the lock-on crosshair (which, like adding the Spindash to Sonic 1, should have been retroactively added to all past 3D Sonic games when they get HD updates).