I wouldn't go that far. It was much more polished than SA1, but SA1's level design was much bigger, with the opportunity to explore, you had control of what character you wanted to play as, and the story didn't take itself quite as seriously. It had the makings of a great 3D Sonic, it really did. But instead of tweaking the things that didn't work as well and keep that which did, the steered the franchise into a completely new direction for SA2. SA2 did have its place. I loved the trick system, the grinding was actually well implemented (really the only game in the series that can claim this) and Sonic's animations were very cool; I loved the little touches, like him doing a misty-flip when jumping out of a roll, etc. Additionally, it was the only game that did Shadow well either. But the levels were too linear, there's no reason to give each character their own story without being lumped into Hero or Dark. It did start mark the end of quality Sonic games, as well as serving as but we need to remember that it was Heroes that was the first legitimate mis-step the franchise took in the core series. We can't really blame the game for the downward spiral of the Sonic franchise. The issue lay with the aspects of the game Sonic Team chose to develop further and emphasize. Premium example is grinding. It was good in SA2, added a new dynamic, but most importantly, it was by and large supplementary, and with the exception of the last levels of Sonic/Shadow, were almost completely unrequired for finishing the game. People liked grinding, so Sonic Team took it, changed it, made it a more integral part of the core game. It's this mentality of emphasizing aspects that always should have been supplementary and thrusting them to the forefront of gameplay that caused the downfall of the franchise, not SA2. I can back up this claim, because you can take pretty much any of the new game mechanics people complain about nowadays and replace my above example with them. •Grinding •Homing Attack •Plot •Additional Playable Characters •Boost (kinda sorta) And, in this same mentality, •SHADOW.
I prefer Sonic Adventure 2 to Adventure, purely because the gameplay is better, the controls are more refined, and the story, though considered darker than usual, is actually one great big homage to science fiction. It was good to have a Sonic game which departed from the norm, and it was brought back to the ground heavily in Heroes. It didn't depart in such a way where it was unrecognisable, you stil got to play in some familiar looking zones, and you got Green Hill as an added bonus. It's not the best Sonic game ever, but it's still good, and I don't really have nostalgia goggles on, purely because I got the game Christmas 2003, and have played it regulary (albeit less recently) since. Also, I'm not aware of these 'invisible walls', minus the ones in San Fran. Sonic Adventure 2 has some minor camera issues, and is often too unforgiving in terms of difficulty for it's own good, but it's a good game. The graphics were great for the time, the voice acting is pretty typical for the Sonic games of the time, the plot is a pretty decent one-off, Robotnik is a real bad guy even if he's overthrown at the end, and the game gave the story and characters the depth which they desperately needed (though this has been lessened recently by not developing it much further). on top of this, the controls are tight, it doesn't have a stupid fishing level, it was awesome music, and the most developed multiplayer of a 3D Sonic game, or any Sonic game to date. The downfall of Sonic started with Shadow The Hedgehog, hit rock bottom with the very next game Sonic 2006, and rose back up again from Secret Rings, finally ending at Sonic Colours, where they realised they didn't have to add a crappy new gimmick or playable character every single game. All in all, the 4 years of hardship the series had was incredibly low, but even then it had it's own shining games- the Rush and Rivals games being at the very core of that.
Just because one piece of shit doesn't stink as bad as the other pieces of shit doesn't mean it's good. I really liked the Sonic/Shadow levels because I happen to like speedrunning, but all the other characters are just boring. The Tails/Eggman mech levels had potential, but the level design and gameplay mechanics are bland. I recently played it again and all you did was simply walk around and hold the lock-on button so you can shoot missiles at the enemies. The Knuckles stages were tolerable in SA1, but they made it shit by making sure you could only look for one emerald piece at a time in SA2. Have fun spending an hour looking for those emerald pieces in Meteor Herd.
No matter how many weeds one identifies and plucks, you'll never repair anything until you be rid of the roots. Darker tone, multiple characters, - decisions associated with brand name whose staff has been seemingly replaced several times over the years. Efficient production schedules and motivated directors with appropriate experience would eliminate any Werehogs from reaching the pipeline. Fans generally don't have an understanding of how to make games or what would best suit a specific team of programmers and artists, and yet the new marketing campaign is surrounded around the idea as if they do. One's “favorite era of games” was crafted by a completely different studio than the one that exists today. So why should today's Sonic Team be treated as if they should “return” to something that was the most successful at a different time, with a different team, under different politics, and possibly from a different country?Personally, I believe "playing things safe" is just as detrimental if not worse than any failed experiment in this industry. The franchise has been so many different things over the years that no gamer can agree what a good Sonic game is. Personally, I'd like to see Sonic Team take a break from Sonic games, possibly get a name change. Concentrate on original titles about werewolves, and Knights, and third person shooters without cramming a Blue hedgehog in it (though admittedly this brings comedic effect in a B movie sense). Making fans wait doesn't make them turn in to vapor and spamming releases doesn't boost reputation. If titles like Toy Story 3, Duke Nukem Forever, and Smash bro's Brawl prove anything, it's that absence makes the heart grow fonder where profit is concerned.
TV Tropes has something to describe the sort of phenomenon people are getting at here. Frankly considering Sonic Adventure 2 was the last 3D Sonic game to have both controls that weren't a mess and level design that wasn't made up of boost corridors I'm certainly not going to hate it.
Oh look, it's this thread again. This regurgitated "downward spiral" BS is completely subjective and someone makes this thread every time a new Sonic game comes out. In fact, most people don't even make the thread anymore, because it doesn't need one - it's pretty much a generally accepted opinion by most people who dislike the 3D Sonic games. I couldn't count the number of times I've seen this exact same claim summed up in just a few short and sweet sentences. Identifying what you don't like about the games is one thing, making blanket statements like "___ ruined the franchise!" or "___ was the last good game!" is just flamebait that doesn't really provoke any insightful thought or lead to any reasonable discussion.
YES! Exactly, just like your post. Ok, back to SA2 being a piece of shit. While the music is total balls, I DO think that Pyramid Cave and Lost Colony are REALLY awesome tracks. Just to say something nice about the game.
Sonic Adventure 2 was the beginning of the end. It is easy to bring up the numerous personal changes that Sonic Team has gone through over the years. Heck, there were staff changes right after the first game. Ohshima was only involved in two of the classic games, the original and Sonic CD. Naka and Yasuhara were involved in all the main Mega Drive titles, but after that his work on the series was only with spin-offs of the classic era. Ohshima and Naka reunited for Adventure, but their reunion was preceded with Nights and Burning Rangers, and Sonic Adventure was just as much Iizuka's baby as it was Naka and Ohshima's, and with the latter's departure and Naka becoming far more interested in other non-Sonic projects, the franchise became Iizuka's. And that is why Sonic Adventure 2 is so distinct from the first Adventure, and in turn the original games. Let it be clear that, as someone who grew up on the classic series, the original Adventure to me seems like a game that wanted to try new things, but maintain some sense of continuity, both stylistically and plot-wise. I know everyone loves to talk about how so much of the game was focused on characters that weren't Sonic the Hedgehog, but they were trying new things, and at the end of the day, the game was focused on Sonic. "Tails" gameplay was very much in line with Sonic's, as was Knuckles, they just had different goals. You could even say that Knuckles' levels were just an expansion of the inherit urge for exploration that made up the classic levels. Amy was a short diversion as was E-102, and Big...well, take one look at the front page and you'll know what I think of Big the Cat. The problem with Sonic Adventure is that they took the parts that didn't necessarily work, built a game around them, and somehow made it worse. Say all you want about how the controls are tighter, the levels were far more linear. Most of Sonic's levels felt like repeats of Speed Highway, as did Shadow's. Speed Highway was cool because it wasn't repeated over and over again. City Escape, Radical Highway, Sky Rail...heck, even the space levels felt the same, just on a smaller field you could run/grind on. The treasure hunting segments and the shooting segments were made mandatory, which took away the novelty of them, and the tightened controls and changed mechanics somehow made them more a chore than fun to play. When E-102 ran through, you felt like you were sliding about, things were fast, and you had a time limit so you still had the echos of how things worked in the past. With "Tails" and Eggman in Adventure 2, it felt like forever to make them move, forever to shoot something, and forever to finish the level. Funny how that works out. Then when you look at the art direction, you're given a game that wants to be as real as possible. Even though the original Adventure used places inspired by real life, and even went as far as using textures created from pictures they took from South America, it still had a surreal quality to it. The closest Sonic Adventure 2 got to that was Pumpkin Hill. It wouldn't be until...well, Colors until things started to change that way (handhelds excluded). The very identity of the Sonic franchise changed when they altered the art direction. And the story...there's nothing wrong with a few dark shades. Unleashed did it well, because even though there were demons and the Earth breaking apart and all that, it was still something that wasn't dark and dreary. Everything associated with Shadow, on the other hand, was. Even when he first showed up, there was nothing fun about it. And the ending scenes with Eggman's grandfather talking...yeah. I think it went slightly further than it should, especially since it was balanced out. Maybe if more of the game had felt fun, the ending set pieces would have been fine. After all, Perfect Chaos had to have killed a few people, and yet that didn't bother me as much as Gerald Robotnik just talking about it. So yes, while Sonic Adventure 2 wasn't the worst Sonic game, it certainly did start the downfall of the franchise. but he is still cool and blue like the planet
I still don't see why people are always consistently down on multiple characters. Personally I thought it always helped Sonic 3K and the Advance series.
I completely agree. I really don't see what's so bad about having extra characters. The problem you have with them in SA1 SA2 and STH06 is how they're implemented. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with having other playable characters- in fact if done correctly it could even save the franchise. Think about this... Why do you think Sega felt like they had to add the werehog in unleashed? because a full game of nothing but day stages (if they made enough to compensate for the lack night stages) would be too much of a (pretty)good thing. It would just be too much. At least with a game that moves at that speed the whole way through. If they could come up with and refine a play style that didn't suck for aditional characters it would add depth to the whole game experience. Whether it's making different stages for knuckles and tails in their own format or making some kind of addition to the regular sonic levels that gives the other characters their own advantage like in S3K. either way it's obvious that until recently Sega hasn't even discovered a way(or realized what they had in the classic games) to make sonic work on modern systems so I don't see additional characters being fun until they put as much work into them as they did into the unleashed/colors style of gameplay... and hire some people who are willing to tell them when their ideas suck. SA2 is most definitely not everything that is bad in a sonic game. It succeded in many areas. It's just that when Sega tried to duplicate these things in other games they failed miserably. I'll agree that it was too linear and that the treasure hunting and shooting stages weren't for everyone and could hardly be called sonic game gameplay, but a lot of us still enjoyed them. I don't think SA2 started a downward spiral. Sega was already heading in the SHTH/STH06 direction and it didn't really have that much to do with SA2. (ok maybe you can blame it for SHTH) But the fact remains that no matter what they were still going to be making lazy unfinished products reguardless of SA2. EDIT: and it's not SA2's fault that the series fell into the ridiculous final boss fad. It's pretty common in video games ya know.
Classy ;P Meh, I can't really comment on this much. Sonic Adventure 2 was my first Sonic game at all, and I loved it at the time. Playing it again makes me feel nostalgic, and I just love it to death... The Sonic stages, that is (and Shadow, since it's the same thing). What I hate, though is the fact that it forces you into the other characters. That, and their play styles are kinda meh. I like Tails'/Eggman's stages slightly, however the hunter levels (Rouge and Knuckles) are horridly done in multiple aspects. Other than that, I really like the games for my own personal reasons, and if you guys don't like the game for your own reasons (didn't appeal to you, too thick-headed to like non-classic gameplay, just wasn't fun, etc) that's fine, though to be quite honest some of your reasons here are making me facepalm to the point I look like I'm blushing/have a sunburn in the shape of a hand. I mean, dark story ruining the franchise? The deapth of a story isn't a bad thing. It lacking "happy bright colorful adventure" isn't a bad thing. Eggman's a bad guy. He'll do bad things. As will every villain. Please get your head out of the clouds =.= That's all I have to say on the subject. I'll expect 3 or more people debating on what I said, but whatever, nothing pleases you people :v:
....I really don't see why the Adventure games are apparently so terrible. They weren't exactly masterpieces, but they sure as frick didn't represent the fall of Sonic. They were good fun, and introduced new concepts. The real problem was the overuse of those concepts later on. And if, God forbid, they overuse the Unleashed/Colors formula and the Sonic series spirals downhill again, that wouldn't necessarily make Unleashed and Colors bad games. I think the games that mark Sonic's downfall were Sonic Heroes, Shadow, and Sonic 2006. Sonic Heroes was the first Sonic game that made me...errr....convert to Nintendo games. Shadow was terrible in every sense of the word. And Sonic 2006, well yeah. No need to complain though, things have been looking up with the most recent games haven't they?
I dunno, I see Sonic Heroes and I see retroactive fixes for just about everything that I hated about Unleashed. On the other hand it has plenty of issues of its own.
A mad man on a giant battleship with immense firepower attacking an ancient cultural and historical landmark. A mad man attacking pristine locations and enslaving all it's enhiabitants inside robots to live and slowly die as live-betteries.
Demons? Based on the Real World? Your argument that Adventure 2 started this is shit, because that's exactly how you would describe the original beta iteration of Sonic the Hedgehog Get outta town.
Yes and those ideas never featured in a final game because they realised that it was the wrong direction for the series, until SA2. I had this exact conversation only a few years ago.
At the end of the day, it's a video game, and the only question that really matters is "is it fun". In my opinion, no. I found it incredibly frustrating how you were forced to play as a different character every level. At least in Sonic Adventure if you didn't really care that much about earning every emblem and the story and all that you could still blow through the whole game as only Sonic. I didn't feel like I missed much by not playing the other character's adventures. I got to interat with them, visited most every locale, and got to have the epic showdown with Eggman. What do I need all that other shit for? Yeah, and? All you've demonstrated is that they had that idea originally, and rather than leaving a bad idea alone it was brought back years later.
Not entirely, mind you. Tails Sky Patrol featured the first human in a sonic game that was shipped since Eggman in the original game. Also, I think you'll find the Sonic OVA released in 1996 introduced other humans and real world environments to the canon long before Adventure 1 ever did. If you don't think the movie's canon or otherwise need more proof, even before that, in 1991 Sonic Patrol Car was released in which Sonic has to keep a city safe. Though that didn't add humans except Eggman, it would help to introduce the city-like environments we'd come to see from Sonic later. As for "demons and dark environments", we wouldn't see that until the endgame of Adventure 1 as noted. The first "monster" post-Chaos IIRC was in Sonic Shuffle, not Adventure 2. Of course, all this means is that SEGA has been playing with these ideas since the first inception of Sonic, those ideas were played around with in the lesser-known games (perhaps on purpose?) before becoming widespread with the adventure series. Maybe Yuji Naka felt the desire to put those ideas to action, maybe not. We'll never know.
Man, what the fuck ever. I liked SA2. I think the notion that it contains elements that ruined the franchise is funny, though, because unless you count the poor story continuation in Heroes/Shadow, the games that came after weren't even remotely similar. Heroes went out of its way to hark more back to the classic games; outside of Shadow, most Sonic games didn't even acknowledge SA2. Sonic 06 was just trying to be a copy of the original Adventure gameplay-wise and Unleashed/Colors have their own, ultimately refreshing formula that made the 3D games better. SA2's fatal flaw is being compared to its superior predecessor. It's perfectly enjoyable on its own and honestly an interesting take on the 3D Sonic formula while still containing a lot of the elements that made the original Adventure enjoyable. I will admit that the music was far inferior, though; Jun Senoue's overuse of Buttrock GOA hasn't really made the series any better. I also didn't like that you absolutely had to play as all the character to progress, but after remembering that you had to do the same thing in the original Adventure to progress to the final story I was less apprehensive about it. It's nothing you hadn't dealt with already if you'd played the first game, after all. Still, I think people bitch too much about really minor things like the number of characters in the game or what the story's like. If you don't enjoy the story in a game you can very easily skip over it or just ignore it; conversely, if you do enjoy the story it can enhance the game experience for you. Still, the story does not affect your ability to play the game. Heroes had the worst concept and execution for a storyline; that's why I just downloaded a full gamesave and played through the levels through the stage select. You can do the same with SA2 as well if you want. It's pretty easy to pick and choose what you actually experience when you play and I think that's important in discerning between objective issues with the game and matters of personal taste. Now if you applied all of these complaints to Shadow the Hedgehog I might actually agree with you. That is the only game I have ever played that I have deemed objectively terrible. It also made me physically sick to play. Fuck that game.
