Thanks to a very generous co-worker, I was able to borrow a PSP and take it home. This allowed me to play Sonic Rivals for the first time since the end of July. I will admit I looked at the credits as the first order of business. Man, what an ego I have!
Next was the actual game play. They did a ton of work on the game after I left. It’s been polished and improved in many places that needed it. One set of tracks got a fantastic makeover. I looked for several in game objects that I was responsible for programming the behaviour. Though the game is a race essentially, I stopped several times to examine those objects in detail. Oh there was spike horizontal log, which exhibited the damped harmonic motion I so happily wrote in. Then there was the catapult which caused me so much consternation but thanks to Rich, it finally worked. Who could forget frozen air geyser, which froze characters just like I remembered it.
I’m still working through the game but I can see they cut a few things. For example, I had this jack-in-the-box that sprung open when you jumped on it. It’s still there but nothing happens when you touch it. Why that is, I’m not sure. I’m still eagerly awaiting the appearance of the black holes which were a pain to get working. They were still kinda wonky when I left so maybe that got cut too. I’m most looking forward to the monkey boss. What a ton of work that was. Imagine a huge mechanical monkey that shoots missiles that embed into the ground that also has a detachable flying head that does a beam attack. I left it in a somewhat shaky state so I feel sorry for who had to clean it up after me. I wonder how it’ll look.
Rivals now has an overall score of 72 over on metacritic. That ain’t bad but it’s slightly under good.