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"Sonic's shitty friends"

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Dark Sonic, Feb 26, 2012.

  1. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Sega has taken a sort of "NO FRIENDS" approach lately with Sonic, and honestly I find this somewhat disappointing. It's not that I don't like them it's that I don't like how they were implemented in the past. They can't seem to figure out the simplest gimmick of all which they did back in 1994... and Sonic & the Black Knight. Have different characters that play like Sonic but can get to the end of the level in different ways. I don't understand why Sonic can't have his Sonic Adventure moveset, and then throw Tails and Knuckles in the same levels and have them run about. Fuck, let Sonic boost still that can be his power. And if the gameplay has to be slightly different then give Tails Sonic's levels from Sonic Adventure and make Knuckles into a platforming heavy werehog lite sort of thing. It was nice to see Tails in Sonic CD and Sonic 4 Ep 2, but one has Tails run around levels not designed for him (still fun though) and the other uses him as a gimmick.

    We hated the abundance of characters in Sonic 06 because they played like ass, not because we necessarily hate them. I love Tails and Knuckles. I just hate hunting for treasure and running around in a robot. I may want my Sonic games to play like Sonic games, but that doesn't mean Tails and Knuckles can't play like Sonic.
     
  2. Metal Man88

    Metal Man88

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    It's a catch-22. Either you accept the occasional existence of the "bad" use of characters, or not at all. Since you just know that if other playable characters return, not all games with them will be good. Knowing this, Sega decided to skip that problem altogether.
     
  3. It takes a lot more careful planning to make those levels fun for every character they add

    First they have to balance the design for Sonic, which is already hard enough for them all things considered. With that pre-baked lighting they have to make sure everything's in place well before deadlines, and as we all know sometimes they'll drop the ball on small things which hurt the flow of levels.

    Then they have to consider how to make it viable for Tails and Knuckles without breaking it for Sonic. Its like a puzzle. They're good enough to handle it with JUST Sonic but they're not good enough at it yet to add to it.

    We might see some Tails and Knuckles as they get more practice with the Hedgehog engine if we keep bugging them about it
     
  4. Blue Wisp

    Blue Wisp

    Easy on the car okay Member
    I agree with what you said, Sir Dark Sonic. But it will be weird to see Tails and Knuckles with Sonic's gameplay, otherwise they would basically be "skins" for Sonic with no change whatsoever. Since Day 1 both of them had differences to have a different experience from Sonic's normal gameplay, Knuckles is known for being rather slower and able to reach places where Sonic never could, and Tails was known to be near as fast as Sonic but with the ability to fly and basically break the stage :v:

    Still I don't want another Big The Cat gameplay in another Sonic the Hedgehog game unless it's pretty much made from scratch with a better experience.
     
  5. dsrb

    dsrb

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    What? The phrase "shitty friends" is generally taken to refer not to Tails and Knuckles but rather to the billion other critters who've been shoehorned into the franchise in the meantime. If Sega have interpreted this the wrong way and taken it too far by allowing only Sonic to be playable, it's only silliness and/or laziness on their part.

    Anyway, there definitely is potential for Knuckles and Tails to have their own gameplay styles, perhaps based on power/combat and exploration respectively, whilst Sonic focusses on speed. Or have levels with medial, underground, and sky-based paths. Or both! But again: laziness.
     
  6. Greg the Cat

    Greg the Cat

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    Or their minds really can no longer comprehend the idea that they'd have the same levels as Sonic (granted, with specific paths for them as you said) and make their work all the easier. There is truly nothing to it. They're just incompetent morons that should design other games that I'm sure they themselves would rather work on, while some true blue heroes take on the franchise.
     
  7. FollOw

    FollOw

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    If they included tails and Knuckles as playable characters with the same goal of running through a level and nothing else I would be completely happy. I loved the Sonic Advance games just for that reason.
     
  8. Willie

    Willie

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    I think one of the biggest problems Sonic Team has that gets in the way of possibly having additional characters is boosting. I guess they could just give everyone the boost ability, but it would be kind of weird if everyone can now boost. Then again, I've never played as Blaze in Sonic Rush and I've never touched Sonic Rush Adventure so maybe I'm just not used to seeing it with other characters. Worked well with Shadow in Generations though.
     
  9. Mr Lange

    Mr Lange

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    What infuriates me is Sega's bratty sarcastic way of handling the avalanche of requests regarding the exclusion of the ridiculous parade of meaningless characters that have no important role except in one single game, yet are forced to reappear somehow in every Sonic game following. Not only have they wrecked the formula for proper Sonic gameplay, they mixed in irrelevant gameplay mechanics attached to some of these characters (Big, Silver, E-102, etc). Sega/Sonic Team could not have dealt with these pleas any worse; they hear "we hate the new characters, original Sonic gameplay was best" and so they respond to the opposite extreme by excluding EVERY character except Sonic, where Sonic is the only playable character, and the rest of the cast is very small and only supportive in plot. Then they make it worse by continuing this except bringing back all of the unliked characters at once into a game yet still only Sonic is playable. Outrage continues and Sega appears to still be cockeyed and blathering "derp we don't understand what the problem is we pretty much did what you said derp"

    They can't seem to swallow their pride and admit their stupidity, bitterness, or whatever the fuck is driving their decisions. The key is very careful moderation. The original Sonic games each introduced one new character, who followed the same gameplay rules but had a couple different tricks which shifted perspective a little bit. The cast remained small and the gameplay remained golden. Sega just keeps swinging this out of balance way too far one way or the other because they have absolutely no intuition or natural sense of game design. They're organ grinder monkeys who are paid to repeat thoughtless parlor tricks on a computer they memorized in some school.
     
  10. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Not everyone has to boost. If they downplay the boost mechanic it can serve as Sonic's exclusive power, like the insta shield or homing attack. This way all the characters can run at the same speed as Sonic, but with the addition of the boost Sonic is still faster. It's a better alternative then Sonic runs sorta fast, everyone else runs 2 miles per hour (Sonic 06)

    Sonic Adventure got the feel for Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles almost perfect, it's just the surrounding mechanics and level designs were broken (Also Sonic's spindash and Tails's flying were way too abusive. Doesn't help that Tails's levels catered to flight abuse though)

    Oh and to make it clear I don't suggets making the other characters simply skins of Sonic. I'm talking the Sonic 3 route here (Play like Sonic but they each have their own powers and abilities that let them get through the levels in a different way)
     
  11. OSM

    OSM

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    I don't have a problem with it. Sonic games have become more minimalistic again as they should be.
     
  12. Rokkan

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    We had a thread like this a few months ago. Can't we just revive it? My stance on it is unchanged since then.
     
  13. TheInvisibleSun

    TheInvisibleSun

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    This. Why not just merge it w/ the old one?
     
  14. LockOnRommy11

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    Frankly, this pisses me off the most about the Sonic series.

    I loved the choice I used to have. In the Gamecube era, I had the hocie of playing Sonic Advance 1, 2 and 3 with all the major characters in the same style but with added moves. I also had the 3D games to mix it up and give me some shooting levels or treasure hunting stuff.

    This generation we've had fucking nothing. Where's my playable Tails? Where's my playable Knuckles? Althought it doesn't seem like it because we're constantly replaying the same game, it's been seven fucking years since I was able to play as Tails or Knuckles by themselves. I mean for god sake. Yes, we all love Sonic, and people complained about his friends, but not the ones he already had- people objected to useless NEW ones.

    I'm glad Sonic 4 Episode II seems to be addressing thsi issue in some form, and I hope that with the next 3D Sonic game that they address this issue too- they could even make Tails and Knuckles levels score-based rather than time, or have them taking still linear but specific paths only accessible to individual characters. Knuckles could dig, accessing areas Sonic can't get to- like using the drill wisp etc.

    Frankly, I've been put off by the Sonic series as of late- the games are very good now, having recovered from the dip they were in, but SEGA don't seem to be doing anything major with the games- we've had three similar games (Sonic Unleashed, Colours and Generations) without them adding anything major to the formula. Classic Sonic wasn't a huge change because it was just Sonic in 2D, something the 3D games partially did anyway. They need to add variety and make it interesting- give the games some replayability, and for christ sake don't add something in palce of something preexisting- the Werehog was awful, and it would have been better as Knuckles.

    Anyway, rant over.
     
  15. Tiranno

    Tiranno

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    At the very least Tails and Knuckles need some love. As stated over and over again by fans that Werehog should have been Knuckles but with more platforming.
     
  16. MattManAGES

    MattManAGES

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    While I would definently love to have Tails and Knuckles back as playable characters, I think we'd be fine without all the others. Honestly it's kinda nice that SEGA layed off them,
    because it has allowed them to focus more on the gameplay and not just some completely boring and convoluted plot that goes on forever with half-assed gameplay that just seems
    thrown in. I'd hate to have another game like sonic shuffle( Although that was just a one time thing, or a fluke, if you will).
     
  17. Kogen

    Kogen

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    Sonic's shittiest friend is Takashi Iizuka.
     
  18. Rosie

    Rosie

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    Damn. I laughed XD
     
  19. Stages are too long and consume too much dev time as Sonic alone. And then on top of that adding extra paths and rebalancing them for T & K? I'd rather have stages designed to play with the intended character. Super Meat Boy had a billion characters, but the core game was designed for Meat Boy, so playing as any other character made it impossibly frustrating. Fuck this noise.
     
  20. The Game Collector

    The Game Collector

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    It seems like the other characters in Sonic games are pretty much in the same dilemma as the other Kongs: Dixie, Kiddy, Tiny, Chunky, Lanky and DK Jr. It was cool when we got to use them, but they really only appeared in one or two main games or in spinoffs. The difference is that I haven't seen any hacks where Dixie or Kiddy was hacked into DKC1, or where Donkey was hacked into 2 or 3.