Sonic: What went wrong

[Sahaqiel 1232]

From ProJared's review (and from having to actually beat '06) it actually looks a lot worse than '06.

 

Like are the losses of delaying its release past the holiday really worth the losses of a notoriously bad game that nobody with sense is going to buy? On a somewhat related note, I'm glad Twilight Princess was delayed as much as it was, or it might have been the Sonic '06 of the Zelda franchise.

[Teto 2609]

One of the saddest things about the Sonic franchise is that Sonic doesn't really have a home. Like, Link has Hyrule, and Mario has the Mushroom Kingdom. The Mushroom Kingdom doesn't have a very strictly defined map or anything, but when you think of Mario you think of the Mushroom Kingdom, and Bowser's Castle, and the Boo Mansion place. What do you think of for Sonic? In some games he's in the human world, or some fantasy version of the real world, or a medieval real world, or in his own fictional land. A strength of the first games was that Sonic had a world in which he made sense. If you were to put Mario in the real world, it'd be weird and uncomfortable, but Sonic does it all the time.

 

He just gets transplanted into some randomly selected setting every game. It's hard to have strong series themes without some kind of consistent setting. It relies so much on the charm of the characters to hold up the stories, and it doesn't really work. There's a kind of warmth about revisiting the Mushroom Kingdom in each Mario game, whether it's evident or not. Hyrule is different each time, but going back there is part of the excitement of each new Zelda game. With Sonic there's not much thematic consistency or continuity. 

 

I'd dig a sonic game where you could get lore on Sonic's personal world, revisiting places like Aquatic Ruin Zone, and looking it as an actual large physical place in the context of Sonic's world.

 

Maybe there are games that do this, but I haven't played them. Sonc Lost World's demo was okay, but it was still an abstracted nowhere-land, crafted once and likely never to be seen again. Very little character.

[Cassandra 623]

One of the saddest things about the Sonic franchise is that Sonic doesn't really have a home. Like, Link has Hyrule, and Mario has the Mushroom Kingdom. The Mushroom Kingdom doesn't have a very strictly defined map or anything, but when you think of Mario you think of the Mushroom Kingdom, and Bowser's Castle, and the Boo Mansion place. What do you think of for Sonic? In some games he's in the human world, or some fantasy version of the real world, or a medieval real world, or in his own fictional land. A strength of the first games was that Sonic had a world in which he made sense. If you were to put Mario in the real world, it'd be weird and uncomfortable, but Sonic does it all the time.

 

He just gets transplanted into some randomly selected setting every game. It's hard to have strong series themes without some kind of consistent setting. It relies so much on the charm of the characters to hold up the stories, and it doesn't really work. There's a kind of warmth about revisiting the Mushroom Kingdom in each Mario game, whether it's evident or not. Hyrule is different each time, but going back there is part of the excitement of each new Zelda game. With Sonic there's not much thematic consistency or continuity. 

 

I'd dig a sonic game where you could get lore on Sonic's personal world, revisiting places like Aquatic Ruin Zone, and looking it as an actual large physical place in the context of Sonic's world.

 

Maybe there are games that do this, but I haven't played them. Sonc Lost World's demo was okay, but it was still an abstracted nowhere-land, crafted once and likely never to be seen again. Very little character.

I personally disagree. I've never felt lore was ever important to the sonic franchise. Sonic has always been much more gameplay oriented, and rather than focus on story, I feel it would be more logical to focus on perfecting the gameplay that they seem to have such a hard time getting right LOOKIN' AT YOU SONIC BOOM.

[Teto 2609]

Well, I use 'lore' loosely. I just feel like it'd be nice to have a sense that your adventure is taking place in a world similar to those that you were in before. Like Mario isn't lore-based either, but there's still a kind of familiar warmth about returning to the world it's set in. Obviously it's not enough to fix Sonic just to give him his place in a world, but I feel like it's something that makes Sonic fail as a franchise.

 

Of course Mario goes to space and Delfino Island, and that's pretty out there compared to Zelda, which has so much lore that the setting is of more central importance to the franchise. But it's still all fantasy set in a world, and you can imagine it all being connected in some vague way, but with Sonic it's just him being transplanted into some setting or another.

Though I guess Mario does jump around a lot, now I think a little longer. I suppose the only point to be made here is: Sonic shouldn't be in the real world it's too weird.

[T1g 1503]

 

this guy gets it right. Sega can't innovate for shit. They need to learn from both their failures AND their successes

[Teto 2609]

Tried out the Sonic Boom demo on the 3DS. It's not bad. Fine use of homing attack, hookshot, and some kind of power dash (shoot through the air to break blockades).

 

It has one race level, an ordinary level, and a boss level. The race level and ordinary level consisted of much of the same gameplay; running, jumping, homing, breaking blockades. Racing was just Sonic, and the ordinary level offered tangents where you could go off and play as Knuckles, Tails, or some girl with a boomerang; but it was mainly designed around playing as Sonic. These modes were actually quite fun. All side scrolling, and most of it flowed quite nicely. You had to slow down from time to time to disarm an enemy's shield, but you could just as easily ignore the enemy if you wanted to keep going. Going from running to ricocheting off walls, onto homing enemies or bounce pads and breaking down blockades. For the most part it flowed really well, and what you had to do to keep the momentum changed up enough to keep it interesting, making quick decisions about how to keep moving forward, without having to slow down. It went at a comfortable pace, and I never really felt like it ever threw something at me which I couldn't have seen coming. Sometimes the game places things questionably, like checkpoints placed where you don't have time to jump after to keep going, or placed such that you end up jumping over them by accident and have to go back to hit them.

 

Of course I don't know how it holds up later on in the game, but from the demo it doesn't seem like a bad effort. Enjoyable at least. I feel like Sonic games are at their best when they stick to a 2D format.

[T1g 1503]

Funny, me and Saha just played co-op of the Wii U demo. It was awful

 

It used a similar format of 3 chunks, one being a boss, one being a "puzzle" area, and another being a running segment that lasted 20 seconds

[Sahaqiel 1232]

[T1g 1503]

What follows is a bowl of alphabet soup, so that they can make him eat those words

 

actually wait no i just realized that was set up so that they would eat the note I am such a FOOL

[Cassandra 623]

In regards to Sonic Boom, I'm kind of glad it's not Sonic Team's fault because they've been on good behaviour as of late. Colours, Generations were both good/great, and Lost Worlds was... kind of average, not bad not good. The fact that this is all BigRedMutton's fault kind of gives me hope that Sonic Team will make a better game.

[T1g 1503]

JUST MAKE MORE SONIC GENERATIONS CHRIST

[Necropolis 763]

What if they made a game and called it Sonic Adventure 3.

[T1g 1503]

I would cry because I know they would puppy it up somehow

[Sahaqiel 1232]

What if it actually happened and was actually good and established Shadow as canonically dead and not cloned or robot-ed or whatever

[T1g 1503]

well then thats fine, but we know the latter part will never happen