[n00neimp0rtant]

I've seen a lot of people partially placing some of the blame of the solidarity of the Sonic Cycle on a phenomenon known as the "gimmick." It seems to me that the word "gimmick" is often used to mean "a primary game element that is new and unique a game or subseries," which, while not entirely correct, can understandably be used in this sense. What I've noticed though is that it's not a gimmick itself that lowers the quality of a Sonic game; it's how a gimmick changes an overall game.

Take Kirby, for example. Some of the past few games in the series (Epic Yarn, Mass Attack, Squeak Squad) each had their own unique element(s) to them, each of which might be referred to by some as just gimmicks. What makes most, if not all Kirby games such high quality though is that none of these gimmicks really change the core gameplay of a Kirby game. When we play a Kirby game, we know just about what to expect, with just enough gimmick to keep it fresh. Epic Yarn took a slightly bigger risk by completely removing Kirby's suck/copy abilities, but it was executed very well and still felt very "Kirby."

Sonic Unleashed was a different story. The main gimmick, our good friend Sonic the Werehog, infiltrated the game by not only introducing a completely non-Sonic playing style, but by giving it a 4:1 werehog-to-hedgehog playing time ratio. The werehog stages were drawn out and essentially just make people savor the day stages that much more. But I have a theory: Sonic Unleashed was not necessarily a bad game. It was a bad Sonic game. IMO the combat felt refined, and the platforming in the night stages was well thought-out. But it was DRASTICALLY different than gameplay in any other Sonic game, so fans (like me) were disappointed to find that the entirety of the speedy Sonic-style platforming accounted for about 30 minutes of gameplay in the entire game.

Sonic Colors is a perfect example of a well-executed gimmick. By adding a new, vibrant feature to an already proven platforming style, the game felt right at home while staying fresh at the same time. It's for this reason that I feel like had Sonic 06 been given the development time it deserved and gotten proper Adventure-style physics implemented (as opposed to the entirely auto-scripted antiphysics featured in the final product), it could have been a great game. Silver's psychokinesis and Shadow's vehicle abilities would have been just enough to keep each episode fresh to play while maintaining the core gameplay.

I feel like if Sonic Team stuck to the Colors formula for main console games, only fine-tuning the basic platforming while adding/changing specific gameplay gimmicks rather than changing gameplay as a whole, there would be little chance for another "failed" Sonic game. We don't need revolutionary ideas; just ideas to keep the kinds of Sonic games we already love entertaining.

[gold lightning]

I've always seen it as an issue of what kind of gimmick is being used. Anything that legitimately adds to the flow of a game is always welcome to me. Its when a gimmick takes away from or destroys the flow of a game that I take issue with it. Just compare Sonic Generations to Unleashed. In Unleashed you have a slow combat-based werehog, messy hubworlds, and required medal collecting. All these break the flow of the game and break away from the core gameplay. In Generations you have classic Sonic, nothing but the core gameplay you'd come to expect (except for a few side missions), and a simple uncluttered hub world. All of these add to the gameplay and they don't break away from what they should be.

Another comparison could be Sonic 3 and Knuckles to any of the Adventure games + Sonic 06. With Sonic 3 and Knuckles you have multiple characters that each have similar gameplay but they each have their own abilities closely circling around that gameplay. With the adventure games + 06 you have multiple characters but only 2 or 3 characters at most share the same gameplay. You then end up with only one type of gameplay that actually fits the series in addition to other less desirable types like Big the Cat's levels, Sa2 Tails, and Silver the Hedgehog. In Sonic 3 and Knuckles the multiple characters were carefully added to the game to enhance the existent gameplay while the Adventure games + 06 used the different characters to drastically change the gameplay.

Another example of a bad gimmick is bad motion controls like in the storybook games and free riders. A game just isn't fun if you can't fully control it IMO.

TL;dr Gimmicks that legitimately add to the desired gameplay are just fine and are in fact preferred. Gimmicks that take away from desired gameplay and/or just do something completely stupid can burn in a fire.

[TimmiT]

People never complained about there being gimmicks. They complained about how there were bad gimmicks. Before Colours most Sonic games had some shitty gimmick nobody wanted in a Sonic game, like Sonic getting a sword, becoming a Werehog, Shadow using guns and vehicles etc.

This post has been edited by TimmiT: 11 January 2012 - 11:38 AM

[Narstyle]

TimmiT, on 11 January 2012 - 11:37 AM, said:

People never complained about there being gimmicks. They complained about how there were bad gimmicks. Before Colours most Sonic games had some shitty gimmick nobody wanted in a Sonic game, like Sonic getting a sword, becoming a Werehog, Shadow using guns and vehicles etc.

How do you mean before Colours? Colours was merely a gimmick in itself with the addition of Wisps! If it wasn't given such praise, I often believe I would probably of given the game a miss. The Wisps in my opinion, are still annoying and very gimmicky. Whilst they were fluent, it was very much in the way of a standard Sonic game.

I believe Gimmicks are fine in games, when they're level specific not entire game specific. Sticking a sword on Sonic the whole game? No. But Giving him a sword for part of ONE level in a game? Probably bare-able. Generations was a fantastic example of this. Planet Wisp, had wisps. And going back to my earlier opinion, I disliked them when they were plastered throughout the whole game non-stop. But Planet wisp was one level and a few mini-levels. Other than that, Wisps weren't used at all in any of the levels (excluding hacking).

Another good example of a level specific gimmick was the Crazy Gadget Zone in SA2. The whole flick switches / change gravity was found just in that level (And Cannons core, which was more of a merge all existing level gimmicks)

But level gimmicks have their flaws too. Need we mention the planned Minecart level for Sonic 4 (consoles) / Still in the iPhone version. What a disaster for a main-line console title, and I'm glad they got rid of it. The replacement act 2 was great, in a sense the minecart was there, just on that level, in a little area of the level. Not the whole of the level. Same goes for Act 2 of the Casino level in Sonic 4. Whilst the whole pinball gimmick is lovely and over-used, we didn't need a whole level dedicated to getting to a high score.


So yeah, in conclusion, as echoed quite a lot recently I would expect, but Generations hit the nail on the head. Classic / Modern Sonic could be seen as a Gimmick but at the end of the day, they're both Sonic. It's when Sonic's a Werehog and a faggot gimmick the shit gets sticky.

[Mr Lange]

Its false to say a gimmick is bad or good, because gimmick itself has no meaning. Its what the gimmick is that counts. I love the light speed dash, which is a gimmick. I hate quick time events with extreme fury.
The problem with Sonic games isn't so much about gimmicks. Its when they turn it into Sonic 4 where the game itself is essentially broken or lousy.

[Covarr]

There are essentially three kinds of gimmicks: level gimmicks, character gimmicks, and whole-game gimmicks.

Level gimmicks, such as the ziplines in Splash Hill Zone or the spinning platforms in Marble Garden Zone, are usually fun, as long as they are merely a part of the level and not the focus of it. They bring variety to the game, and by the time they start to wear out their welcome, you're moving onto a new level. When the gimmick becomes central to the level, such as a pinball score challenge, they can only be fun if the gimmick is well-implemented. This is why minecarts work in Donkey Kong Country but not Sonic 4 Episode 1; in DKC, it's a timing puzzle and it's over quickly, whereas in S4E1 (iOS/e3 beta), it's a struggle against the physics and controls and it lasts too long. The score challenge has similar issues; the board is too small, the required score is too high, and the physics interfere with playing it like a pinball game. The idea itself isn't inherently bad, and if they'd put more time into polishing it and made the board much bigger and more diverse, it could've been fun.

Character gimmicks, such as the differing movesets of Sonic/Tails/Knuckles, or Hedgehog/Werehog, tend to depend on how well they fit into the game they're put into. Going back to the Donkey Kong Country series again, all of the Kongs play essentially the same, with minor physics and moveset tweaks. As a result, they were generally well received. Sonic 3&Knuckles did much the same thing, but with additional character-specific paths. Where games such as Sonic Adventure and Sonic Unleashed failed is that the character gimmicks they introduced often didn't mesh well with the game as a whole. E-102 Gamma was certainly fun to play as, but he had no business in a Sonic game; the werehog seems to have been much the same (but I can't truly speak for that, only having played the Wii version). For all its failings, this is something that Sonic Heroes got very right; all of the characters really moved and felt like they belonged in a Sonic game.

Whole-game gimmicks are harder to define. It can be argued that whenever a game is founded around a single idea, that idea is a whole-game gimmick. Cover in Gears of War, stealth in Metal Gear, speed in Sonic the Hedgehog... These are fundamental to the game as a whole, but arguably every game has them. As such, I'm only going to refer to things that cause a game to wildly differ either from its genre, or other games in an established series like Sonic. In the Sonic series, this includes things like time travel, playing as three people at once, or having a gun. The success of a whole-game gimmick really depends ENTIRELY on execution. Sonic CD and Heroes both did a pretty good job with this, in that both games' dominant gimmicks added to the game more than they hurt it (again, Heroes had its share of problems, but this was mostly with the level design and string-of-enemies boss fights, and not the gimmick). This was also the biggest problem with Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic and the Secret Rings. Shadow's gunplay didn't really add to the game at all, and felt like a chore, and Secret Rings' nonstop running deliberately hampered the controls for the sake of motion sensitivity. Both gimmicks were not inherently bad, just not well implemented.

What it really boils down to for all gimmicks in general is two questions: "Does it fit?" and "Was it executed properly?". The first issue can usually be solved by making the game a spinoff or moving it to a different IP entirely, and the second can be sorted with some extra development time. I think a large part of the reason gimmicks tend to be so poorly received in Sonic games is because for years they've consistently suffered from at least one of these issues, and occasionally BOTH problems at once. Big the Cat didn't play like something that should be in a Sonic game, AND didn't control well. When you suffer from neither problem, people tend not even to realize it's a gimmick. Just look at boosting, which we've had since Rush. It was completely new to the series, and at the time there was no evidence it'd ever be seen again. But it worked. It suited the franchise, as well as the level design, and was well implemented; it felt natural. Hell, even the spindash was a gimmick at first. But it worked well and felt like something that Sonic would do, so nobody complained.



tl;dr - There is nothing good or bad about gimmicks in and of themselves. They just need to be done right.

[SpeedStarTMQ]

Typically, a gimmick isn't a bad thing at all. A gimmick becomes something awful when it isn't thought out properly, or is needlessly integrated into the game itself. Sonic- a game about freedom where you can either take your time or run fast through a level doing everything and anything you please being turned in to a Werehogfest that spans two thirds of the game is just stupid. Also considering that said Werehog stages had odd controls and repetitive gameplay and music just also shows that it's not the gimmick that counts, it's how it's used. Werehog could have been a very interesting and fun concept, much akin to how Knuckles plays. Unfortunately that was not the case.

Other Sonic examples

Shadow using guns? That was a good gimmick. Why? Because it was entirely optional, it fitted the style of a character who was literally at his lowest, with angst, regret, depression and memory loss, and was also a throwback to E102's Adventure stages AND Tails stages from Adventure 2.

Sonic with a sword? Also technically another good gimmick- it was a spin-off game based in another world, was on the Wii, and had a lot of potential. The game itself was fun, but it was ultimately the actual movement controls and often unfair level design which spoiled the game, therefore because Sonic has a sword in a game which genuinely had some flaws BESIDES the actual gimmick, it's been tethered to the same rock.

Lastly; hoverboards? It was a spin-off game, and Sonic would clearly have been disqualified by the rules of the competition had he run. Sonic is all about justice, y'dig?

[DimensionWarped]

Some of these gimmicks people are talking about are really basically the core premise of a game. The whole Sonic being a fast-paced platform series... that's not a gimmick, much like cover-based shooting isn't Gears of War's gimmick. Those are simply what the games are about. A gimmick on the other hand is something used to distinguish something from its peers. That's why we refer to level gimmicks such as Seesaws and Ziplines and such as gimmicks. They distinguish the gameplay of one stage from another. Likewise the werehog thing is a gimmick because it distinguishes one Sonic game from another. The pacing of Sonic the Hedgehog isn't really unique enough on its own to call it a gimmick though. I guess you could argue that the use of that speed for physics-induced fun like ramps and loop-de-loops and other such similar items is a gimmick (and loop-de-loops themselves are definitely a more or less pointless but fun feature that distinguished the series from its contemporaries), but it is hardly alone in that regard, as lots of platform games had emphasized speed and acceleration. It's hard to argue that Super Mario Brothers 3 isn't a fast paced game when in the hands of good players, even if the top speeds don't quite approach Sonic rolling down a hill levels.

Werehog mode on the other hand wasn't really used to distinguish Sonic from another type of game though. It really only made Sonic Unleashed different from other Sonic games. The gameplay behind it is fairly generic brawling/platforming, and there isn't a whole lot that is unique to it. But it does serve to make Unleashed the only Sonic game that does that, so this is a gimmick in that sense. You could also argue that it's a use of the popular "dual-world" marketing gimmick, akin to Twilight Princess's wolf mode (why is it always wolves?) or Metroid Prime 2's Dark Aether (why is it always dark?), but again all of these things really only tend to distinguish whatever game employs them from other games in the same series.