Sega: Sonic Quality to Be 'Fixed Over Time'

Mario already did it.

 

Nonononononononono!

Take any communications class and you will find there is a huge difference between listening and hearing. They read what the fanbase says and completely misinterpret it. They are not listening to the fanbase at all!

Frankly, the problem is the ineptitude of those in charge.

Case and point: Sonic Heroes. On paper it would have been the ultimate fan service, but HOW they did it was so poor that it got the disgust of the community. Why? Because they don't try to capture the things that made each of the ideas they blended together great in the first place.

They hear, but they don't listen. The fans know what they want. SEGA just can't bloody figure out how to give it to them. It's really a shame.

 

Piranha does have a point somewhat, we did want Adventure 3 and were about to get it, but Iizuka decided to change it to Sonic Heroes for fuck knows whatever reason.

 

I'm glad I'm a jaded fan nowadays. Sometimes I like to go to the SEGA boards and spam the hell out of their shitty forums.

 

I am curious though, as to just how many development studios have follow up a title that is fundamentally flawed and nearly unplayable with one that is utterly spectacular though.

Mega Man 9 wasn't preceded by a couple titles that were really, really bad in that same way.

 

The first Stret Fighter was pretty crappy. Special moves had ridiculously tight timing on them but were way too powerful when you could do them. Some people will tell you that Wipeout Pure was a return to form, though I still think the handling isn't really sorted and some of the ships are pretty ugly. What's funny about the Wipeout Pure example is that the developers essentially just decided they were going to make the game better. What's even better is that Wipeout has a somewhat loose canon to it, and the later games back story describes Wipeout Fusion (the crappy one) as taking place during a period of corruption within the inner workings of the sport where it was little more than a vessel for sponsorship.

This guy's Weasel Words just don't stop bugging me.

I think that might just be a strange abbreviation for "Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3".

 

If I recall correctly, Capcom wanted to make Mega Man 9 originally to be 3D. The developers managed to convince them to let the game be the way it ended up being. Now, I bet that Capcom is going to let them do whatever they want without arguing next time :P

 

Ha ha, no. Keiji Inafune still fights to get his projects approved by Capcom. Mega Man 2, Lost Planet, and Dead Rising are some examples.

And they wanted a Mega Man game like Bionic Commando: RE-Armed, not a Mega Man in 3D.

 

Grinding my ass. Werehog stages for one, were specifically designed to be explored. All you have to do is keep an eye open and you'll get most (if not all) of the medals during your first playthrough without wasting a bunch of time (seeing as how stage segments, such as rooms and the like, tend to be rather compact). The word "grinding" also insinuates that the medals have no rhyme or reason to them, when in fact, they are purposefully placed and often have portions of the level dedicated to them. This same principle applies to the hub areas as well, though on an even simpler scale, seeing as how concise they are. Standard Sonic stages, on the other hand, really only contain medals for good measure, and there's no need to crawl to a hault to find any (and often enough, you'll collect a decent handful of them by playing through a stage normally).

Whenever I hear someone strongly associating Unleashed medal collecting with backtracking, I can't help but question how they were playing the game. Even on my first playthrough I never came across an instance where I NEEDED medals to proceed (though there were one or two instances where I didn't have enough for an optional stage). Whenever I was in a Werehog stage or hub area I always made sure to scope around and check any nooks and crannies for a hidden area and secrets. I found it rewarding to find a medal tucked away in a clever area. If I just blitzed forward down a straight path, it felt like I wasn't getting the most out of a stage.

 

Is that how a normal player is going to play it?

 

Is a "normal" player going to appreciate Castlevania? What about Contra? "Normal" players will probably just write those games off and go play Wii Fit or Gears of War or something.

I couldn't care less about "normal" players.

 

You're confusing your mother with people who have general interest in video games. Face it, no game has ever been truly hardcore, and the ones that were originally started as arcade games in order to suck as many coins from you as possible. I've come across several of what you deem "Normal" people who love Oblivion and Fallout 3. Games that fit in the Castlevania Atmosphere. And how is Contra and Gears of War any different? There's shooting, there's co-op, there's bad guys. Only thing that has changed is that it's a modern game.

Stop being an elitist prick.

And yet, Sonic the Hedgehog was designed with them in mind.

This is you, this is what you do. This is not what everyone else does however. It's not at the fault of the player of the levels aren't that great to explore, or if some medals are in some bullshit areas that nobody would ever go to. (The Sun Medal in Windmille Aisle Act 2 near the end for example.) Exploration is fun when the sense of exploration is there. Castlevania and Metroid do because you have no linear route to follow. Just explore, see where the game takes you. Sonic Unleashed Werehog does not. You follow a linear path, and every now and then you might find an area with a corner that has something hidden behind a bush. That's not exploration, that's just bullshit.

Finding a room with a missle upgrade because you decided to go up isn't.

 

I think the only time I needed to look for medals was when I got to Adabat, but I wasn't really taking the time to explore the night stages. My own fault I guess.

Sad though, that normal players these days aren't the same as they were way back when.

If Sonic 3 had been released in today's gaming world, there would've been a sign with up/down arrows and an Omochao-esque character telling you exactly how to get past the Carnival Night Act 2 barrel.

Though I question whether or not they would've included it to begin with.

 

Back then we didn't have bullshit medal grinding. Mario didn't require you to get 5 keys to get to the very next level.

Are you trying to defend the barrel?

 

I'm saying that the average gamer these days can't figure shit out for themselves, hence over-extensive tutorials and unnecessary advice markers. So in a way, yes, I am. I figured it out when I was a kid, so I'm sorry if I have trouble sympathizing with everyone who thought it was impossible until GameFAQs existed.

What, are you following me around now Chimpo?

 

Regarding my mention of Castlevania and Contra, I was mainly referring to sentiments regarding accessibility, not style or setting.

Ooh, warranted.

But Unleashed apparently wasn't, so I'm just taking it how it is. And honestly, how a game is generally percieved means little to me as long as I like it. It does make it less inviting to discuss it, but that matters little.

...of course? And I had a pretty decent experience out of it all things considered, which is more than I can say for others apparently. Sucks for them.

 

Because I can't post in a forum without running into other active members.

It's completely unfair to say that "normal" gamers today don't have the same patience and ability to adept that we do. That's because we had it easy you fucknuts.

Games today have become to complicated. You only need to look at the remotes themselves. Back then we had 2-3 buttons and a D-Pad. Nowadays we have not one, but 3 separate inputs dedicated to movement or camera control, 2 shoulder buttons, 2 triggers, and four face buttons. People today are more easily confused, especially if they've never grew up with this shit to adjust.

My 8 year old cousin regularly comes over and plays on my systems.

It didn't take me long enough to explain Sonic 3 to him. You move with the d-pad, and you can jump with any of the face buttons. You can perform Sonic's special move by pressing down and any of the face buttons repeatedly, and once you let go, you get a speed boost. Shields grant you special powers depending on which one you have. To use them, jump and press the face button.

Sonic Unleashed however, he's confused as fuck. There's a jump button, you have to press it twice to do an air dash, and if you want to do a homing attack, you gotta make sure that green marker pops up, you move with the left analog stick, but there's two ways to move. When you get into the 2D sections, you move forward and back with left and right on the left analog stick, and when you get into the 3D sections, you move forward by pushing up, you can move left and right by tilting the stick to the left or right, or using the shoulder buttons to quick step. You can also break and drift with the B button, but that's only in the 3D sections. If you want to use Sonic's boost attack, press Y, but you have to have enough Ring Energy. Oh, and then there are parts with button presses that you have to do in order and quickly or else you'll fail and go to the shitty section.

Sonic Unleash is in no way a great introduction to newcomers of video games. They've become overcomplicated, everything that the original went against. Providing you a fun and challenging game that you can pick up and play quickly.

 

Sonic is for the kids.

Yes.

Shocking to hear I know, but those games that game out from 91' to 95 and onward are marketed at kids. Little blue animal that runs around collecting rings = kid material. The target audience for the series would be different if they called it Sonic the Wine Connoisseur, but it's not.

A lot of you seem to be somewhat disillusioned of the quality of Sonic games. Yes they are fun games, but you must remember that if you were 8 years old in 1991 playing Sonic 1 on your Sega Genesis, you are no longer the target audience. Sega expects you to have grown up, gone to college and moved on. They do not care about the Retro fanbase. The guy even said in the article:

I think older, die-hard Sega fans who grew up with the franchise and the first Sonic the Hedgehog associate Sonic more with 2-D side-scrolling super fast, and they liked the daytime gameplay, but when it came to the slower paced gameplay they were fairly critical of that, and that's fine – they have their opinions,Opinions. You guys can have opinions, but unless you are age range 7-12 (or whatever), your opinion doesn't mean shite.

I enjoyed the games. I still do. I get a strong feeling of nostalgia when I play them, but I am not angry at Sega for producing such crap because I am not the intended player. I'm older now, and it's time for a new set of kids to enjoy the series.

 

As much as the games are intended for kids, there's no reason for them to suck.

 

Here's the problem with that—the old games aren't bad. They're timeless classics that have been shown to—time and time again—still appeal to kids of even the newest generation of video gaming. I think the only thing that really gets in the way of that is that a lot of kids are spoiled by news systems and 3D graphics; as such, that becomes the general "requirement" for a game to be considered "good"—a notion that I think is a load of crap.

The new games may be the established Sonic standard of this generation, but that doesn't mean they should be—or that change even needed to occur for the games to still be considered good. The only reason a lack of quality is acceptable in Sonic games these days is because kids don't know any better.