Sonic Dream Team (New 3D Game from Hardlight, coming to Apple Arcade December 5)

gonna be honest, this is like posting a picture of Sonic 4 and being like "This is where the classic format got us:"

 

-Like giving Tails a mech that nobody asked for instead of keeping his stages the way they were
-and instead of giving Knuckles action stages, they give him harder treasure hunting stages
-or overusing bottomless pits to make the game more difficult

The adventure games didn’t go downhill during Sonic 06 or Shadow The Hedgehog. It was way before with Sonic Adventure 2. Sonic Adventure gets blamed for a lot of the stuff that game did to that series.

 

You say that like it's a bad thing.

 

I agree. Thanks to mods I’ve learned to have fun with all of SA2’s gameplay styles… but as a kid playing vanilla SA2 I only enjoyed playing as Sonic/Shadow.

 

Don't go changing your story, let's go dig up that post again:

The reason people got mad at you was because you specifically decided to make fun of an individual, not because you were criticizing Sonic Team in general.

Lots of people here have a great deal of respect for Iizuka, especially considering he's done a lot for the franchise. He lost 20 pounds trying to get heroes out the door. He's literally the reason Mania existed at all. He even risked his job getting Frontiers the delay it needed. It's not hard to see why people would get feisty at you making fun of him.

 

I don't think people should have gotten on you so hard about that, Mana. I get that it was a joke! But at the same time, there's been SO much bad-faith shit-slinging directed as Iizuka over the years, I think people are understandably touchy about that sort of thing.

 

I'm sure Iizuka is a wonderful person and there's no doubt that he works hard for the series, but we don't judge games based on the people who made them, but the quality of the game itself.

Fact of the matter is that Iizuka was at the helm of some of the franchise's lowest points, so it's very easy to point fingers at him, whether it's justified or not.

Does it suck that he's kind of become a scapegoat for some people? Yes, but it's not like he's the only one and this is the kind of the situation you find yourself in when your franchise has been as mishandled as Sonic has.

And I don't think @Mana had any malicious intent with his post, just pointing out the irony that other developers seem more in tune with the fandom's general desires than the guys at the top of the food chain.

We all make scathing remarks about this franchise, let's not change it up just because we feel pity for one of them.

 

It's nice to see more respect on here for Iizuka lately. He's definitely not perfect (He directed Shadow the Hedgehog lmao). I always felt like he got a bit too much hate for all the good stuff he has done (direct SA1,SA2, ask Christian Whitehead to turn 3 levels into a whole game, etc.)

 

Ken Pontac and Warren Graff were the scapegoats in the 2010's, and Ian Flynn and Kishimoto are the current scapegoats.

It's just a thing that's inevitable when dealing with a franchise as polarizing and divided as Sonic. Everyone feels passionate about different things. So arguments tend to be heated.

 

I think it is also important to note though that in many ways Adventure 2 is far superior to Adventure 1. Not just in presentation but also design. Many of the non Sonic characters in Adventure 1 are barely developed prototypes. Whereas in Adventure 2 they are often more tedious at times but are actual gameplay experiences. Adventure 2 is far more sophisticated in design overall. I feel this point is often missed because despite how much the Adventure games are discussed the actual discourse about them is incredibly shallow compared to the Classic games. Often just talking about Adventure 1 being better because it is less linear and more like the classic games in aesthetics.

I want to do a long post on the Adventure games one day but can never be bothered.

 

I've come to see Sonic Adventure 2 as less a sequel to Adventure 1 but more the first true modern Sonic game. The speed levels even play like the boost games as they're about learning the level and figuring out how to maintain a feeling of constant speed.

They're nothing like the Adventure 1 stages but that doesn't make them bad. They're just going for a different philosophy.

 

Sonic Adventure 2 is a very misleading title tbh.

 

Yes, and you call it Sonic Adventure 2 despite the fact that it's Sonic Unleashed 0?

 

Sonic 06 is more Sonic Adventure than Sonic Adventure 2.