Are the new Sonic games REALLY so bad?

I actually enjoyed Heroes, it had a nice non faggy classic story, the music was MUCH better than that crappy hard rock music, and the level designs were quite nice. Its the only 3D sonic that is enjoyable to me..

 

I didn't care about the corny lines, the random deaths (I don't recall that much of there), or the linearity. I just found Sonic Heroes to be boring.

 

The main problem I had was with the stupid helmeted hammer bots. So hard to hit; they take forever without a blast meter, which is irritating to charge up.

The controls were insanely tight but once I got used to them I really liked them. There were a bunch of times where the sensitivity added to a white-knuckle feel -- one wrong move and -death-.

Of course, the ease with which one could die on some of the later levels was very irritating. After Bingo Highway the game suddenly became hard.


I actually had little problems with the controls to Bingo Highway (I have the PC version; maybe the controls were improved for it), and the special stage was okay, not great. If the STAGE instead of the characters rotated a la Chaotix, it probably would have been a lot better, since the direction to move the stick to get the characters to go down from the top of the stage was not intuitive.

I think that some of the earlier stages were quite well done, and required platforming skill as much as hyper speed at times. Power Plant is my favorite zone among the levels that I have seen or played in the 3D games.

I can cut out the voices on the PC version. I just wish that they didn't say the exact same thing every single time -- more of the ? blocks might have been better. Still, the reference to Mushroom Hill is pretty cool, as is, of course, Big.

Also, the music to Lost Jungle, Ocean Palace, and to a lesser degree Bullet Station all rock. Lost Jungle is absolutely awesome.

Of course, there's a lot of twitch gaming here. If you're not good at it, you won't like it. This is almost as much like Battletoads as it is 16-bit Sonic.

 

Just like in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2? It's getting old. Also Metal Sonic was much more awesome when he was just the badass metal servant of the Doctor.

I rarely hear anyone complaining about Heroes' music anyway, that and the graphics are two of/the only two positive things about Heroes.

Level design =/= graphics. The latter were great, but the layouts mostly sucked, they were FAR too linear without anthing to explore or to vary really.

Enjoy your abysmal physics.


Anyway, good points about the new Sonic games? I guess "new" would be post-Dreamcast.
- Sonic Advance: The only modern games that played like the old games. And was overall rather charming if yet a tad generic in style.
- Sonic Pinball Party: Entirely awesome
- Sonic Advance 2: Horrible hold-right-gameplay, but at least the graphics and music were nice. And it was /sometimes/ fun.
- Sonic Heroes: Great graphics, nice music. Everything else sucked.
- Sonic Battle: No real complaints here. Not excellent, but pretty good.
- Shadow the Hedgehog: It played a little better than Heroes. Which isn't that hard anyway.
- Sonic Advance 3: No holding right anymore, the Chao collection was fun, the hub was a nice idea and graphics and music are excellent yet again. The team feature ruins it though.
- Sonic Rush: The special stages are somewhat fun. But that's the only good thing about this pile of...
- Sonic Riders: Lots of replay... I guess... the game wasn't abysmal but still quite bad.
- Sonic the Hedgehog: Sonic's levels were very fun to play once you get used to all the bugs, and the level design with its secrets and alternate paths is pretty good. The music is great too, graphics aren't really next-gen but at least charming. Anything else as awful, except for the few times you could play as Blaze or Omega.

 

lol. I've heard stories about this. :P

My opinion on Sonic Adventure... letsee, firstly, I liked the theme songs for both Sonic and Tails a lot. The Chao Garden theme kicked ass, as with the whole chao thing itself. The levels, though extremely linear, were creative and entertaining, with Emerald Coast and Final Egg being particular favorites for me. The goofy animations were a bit of a turn off, but overall, it was a good game. I keep going back to it time after time. The only annoying part was FROOOOOOOOOOGGY WHERE ARE YOU FRIEND

Sonic Adventure 2 was also a rather nice game. I loved how they took realistic settings and turned them surreal in that sonic style. City Escape was pretty cool, and I like the music for it. Metal Harbor, Pyramid Zone (Sonic's version), Pumpkin Hill and Green Forest were excellent by my standards. The chao world/garden and the races were a fun distraction. The only things I didn't like where Sonic and Shadow's last levels, and the profuse amount of techno music in Shadow's levels. I loved when Eggman turned completely badass on the ARK by kidnapping Sonic's bitch and almost getting rid of him, but when he joined sonic's side... not that bad.

Sonic Shuffle. Heh, yeah, Sonic Shuffle. I liked it, I'm not sure of your opinions on it. I really enjoyed the minigames, in particular the one where you have to step on the other player's shadows during the sunset. My only gripe with it was the stupid complexness of the galaxy themed board.

Sonic Heroes was awesome. I would have preferred they cleaned up the act complete routine a bit, and I really would've loved solo playing, even if you had a sort of character switching system. The music was good, the levels were good... I didn't like the big ass battle fortress Eggman had though, it took me 20 minutes with Team Rose. The special stages blew, and cause of the terrible physics on them, I could never get the fourth chaos emerald.

Shadow... meh, I played it, and I can't say I enjoyed it. I enjoyed Grand Theft Auto: SA (which I also didn't enjoy) more, and it had the same general concept, except with less aliens. You know, an oppressed black creature with a ridiculous arsenal of weapons at his disposal looking to discover his past/looking to take back da hood.

Sonic 2006. I haven't got around to playing it yet, but based on those videos made by that LUA hacker guy at Sonic CulT, I think it looks rather fantastic. Wave Ocean looks just as sexy as it's music is, and Kingdom Valley looked pretty badass too.

Rush/Rush Adventure. Don't have them, nor have I really seen them in action.

Sonic Advance 1 was good, it went back to the classic feel. The Casino zone's music was nice, as was Ice Mountain's music. The moon boss was a rather interesting take on the whole "You'll never take me alive, Sonic!" thing.

Sonic Advance 2 needed less right button... I dare say it even neede less existance. Sonic Advance 3... I didn't get a chance to inspect that, but it looked like a rather lame attempt at Heroes on GBA.

All in all, New Sonic = good, if you look at it without being an old fart. I like old sonic, but that doesn't mean I'll worship it and bring out the Down with Sonic picket signs every time a new game comes out, like some of you people.

 

Sonic 06: What PPA Said
Sa3: I sorta liked this, however it god boring quickly
Sonic Battle: Battle mode wins, story mode fails. nuff said
Sa2: Ghetto sprites ruined it
Shadow: Butter running fit shadow's running. Guns ruined it....
Heroes: Everything was great, went back to classic sonic, except the running on butter.
SA2B: I liked it, however the gamecube port could have been better, at least redo the textures or fix the models...
Rush/Rush Adventure: Rush was great, rush adventure I hated.
Riders 1 and 2: I enjoyed this new style of gameplay, however WTF was with the models? That ruined it for me...

 

New 2D Sonic games are good. New 3D Sonic games are mediocre/bad

I enjoyed Sonic Advance, Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure. They were all pretty damn good in most aspects.

I've also played Sonic Heroes and Sonic Adventure 1. They both have pretty bad cameras and I hate the "LOL POWER OF TEAMWORK" bullshit through Heroes.

So yeah. The only thing that's really great in all the new sonic games is the music. That's the best part of this whole franchise.

 

SA1 was still the best 3D effort yet. They should return to that but without the camera and flickery spazz bugs and those stupid adventure zones.

 

Each 3D Sonic game has somehow managed to become worse than the previous one. That's not to say that every element is bad, but it is possible to identify at least one thing that regresses in each game. I spent a lot of time writing about this a couple of months ago. Sakura Courage Solo, you'll notice that I actually like some of the same things about Sonic Heroes that you do (I actually pointed out the special stages and the graphics). The problem is that the good points are worthless if the game isn't enjoyable to play - and thanks to some poor design decisions, many of the 3D ones certainly aren't.

As for the recent 2D games, I've not played Sonic Advance 3, Sonic Rush Adventure or Sonic Rivals 2 so I'm a bit out of the loop there.

 

While I won't call the new games "bad," I do have some complaints about them, and each and every one of them could have been improved greatly given that Sega would invest more time into the making of the game. Sonic 2006 is a prime example, since it is quite buggy and, at times, nearly unplayable. The latter, however, is more of a personal thing, I would guess, since I myself don't have the kind of patience to try to roll a large white ball from Point A to Point B without hitting any obstacles. That would go for any difficult and/or irritating scenario. As muteKi already said, the difficulty spike after BINGO Highway in Sonic Heroes is irritating, and a bit of toning down in some aspects of the later stages (such as the constant rail jumping and dodging, and those big hammer bots) wouldn't hurt any. However, my biggest problem with the newer games (from Sonic Heroes onward) is the inclusion of some sort of gimmick and/or new character(s). Sonic Heroes had the three-at-once deal with teams, Shadow had guns, and Sonic '06 had Silver and his telekinesis. They may add some interest to the game, but in the end aren't necessary, and stray away from the original premise of Sonic: speed. When it comes to the characters, I think Sega should just stick with the original main characters, such as Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Eggman, and maybe even Amy. Introducing some random new character every game is getting stale quickly (the only exception is Blaze, in my opinion), and really takes away from "bringing Sonic back to his roots." Well, I guess I'll go ahead and end my rant here.

 

Really, if I were going to give my actual opinion on this, it would tl;dr the lot of you.

So I'll just say that Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity as actually an excellent game under the surface, and I'm enjoying it a lot. To me, none of the new Sonic games (Bar '06, possibly) are bad per se, they just aren't as definitive and fresh as the original; and only Sonic CD ever came close, it being a total abstract headfuck and all.

 

Sonic Adventure 2 is the only really enjoyable experience that I've had with 3D Sonic, with the exception of the recent Brawl. Sonic Heroes was simply a mess, or at least on the PS2, since I would end up falling through floors, trying to attack enemies only to spin around them instead, and just do simple commands. Sonic Adventure 1 felt awkward as hell to control, and a bit to loose in guiding the player to whatever the hell they were supposed to do. I haven't touched any of the next gen Sonic games due to my lack of any next gen systems up until recently. Shadow the Hedgehog...

No.

Compared to all of them, Sonic Adventure 2 just felt like what a Sonic game should feel like in 3D. The stages were creative, the speed was fun, and the controls felt natural and responsive. My only complaint with the game was some over the seas translation issues, such as the dialog mixing up with each other, being overshadowed by the music, completely being off sync with the movement of their mouths, and other various things...

 

I've always really enjoyed the new sonic games. Especially Sonic '06; it had amazing graphics, but that might have been the only reason I loved it so much. It was definitely "different", but I really liked it. Almost all the sonic games I've played I very much enjoyed, including the classic games. The only exceptions so far would be Sonic Spinball and Sonic 3D Blast. I just found Sonic Spinball boring, and Sonic 3D Blast very repetitive (the isometric perspective also made it difficult for me at points).

Sonic Adventure 2: Battle is probably one of my favorite sonic games, City Escape being my favorite level. I've never played Sonic Adventure or Sonic Heroes (We usually didn't have the money to keep buying games).. or SADX... but I recently got hold of the first Sonic Riders game, and my first time playing it was really thrilling. Eventually I got more used to the game and it was less thrill and more try-to-get-1st, but I think they did excellent on this game, besides the models (they looked a bit odd to me).

My post is kind of jumping all over the place, but one last thing: people always seem to complain about "horrible cameras". I never get what they mean, the cameras rarely gave me grief in the 3D sonic games.

 

Some people do focus on the wrong things. There are a number of people out there who reject any and all Sonic games unless it replicates the game physics of Sonic 2 or Sonic 3 exactly.

The easiest test to weed these people out is to ask their opinion on the Sonic Rush games. The Sonic Rush games (especially Rush Adventure) are very fun games, and if you find a purported Sonic fan who rejects these titles, that's usually a sign of somebody who doesn't seem to care if a Sonic game is fun - they just want to re-live the Genesis Sonic games.

Whether that's wrong is a matter of opinion.

The Genesis Sonic games were good, no doubt. Sonic stood toe-to-toe with the heaviest hitters in the game industry back then. The world has changed, and so has Sonic. Speaking personally, I am here to play a fun game, not to play another Genesis Sonic game. Would I play another Genesis-styled Sonic game if it came out? Definitely. Are the new Sonic games missing elements that made the old ones awesome? No doubt about it. But if the gameplay is fun, who cares if it follows "the rules" set back in 1992? Fun is fun. I'm not going to let an obsession with the old games ruin my fun of the new ones.

That being said, there are definitely quality standards all videogames - not just Sonic games - need to meet. And Sonic games have been slipping away from that quality standard steadily for years now. Speaking not as a Sonic fan, but as a gamer, the examples given for Sonic Heroes in the OP do ring very true.

Sonic games have always had notoriously bad cameras. This is, in part, because Sonicteam likes very dynamic camera angles that point the player in the right direction - only problem is, when you try and adjust the camera yourself, it will often move right back where it was because it's trying to show you the direction you need to be traveling in. This was at its worst in Sonic Adventure 2, where you could only adjust the camera while standing still and if you moved at all it would snap back to where it was before you adjusted it instantaneously. Sometimes, the camera angle the game chooses for you is not ideal (or it switches suddenly to a new angle and you weren't prepared), and that's when the frustration sets in.

Not to mention the fact that Sonicteam is still stuck in the Dreamcast era. Even Sonic 2k6 still uses the shoulder buttons for camera adjustment! Nobody does that anymore because we've evolved beyond that, and now the right analog thumbstick is used for camera controls (which Sonic 2k6 also uses, but I digress).

The writing is also terrible. It's a story about a cartoon blue hedgehog with an evil twin and a mad doctor but it takes itself way too seriously. It's like bad anime. Maybe in Japan characters like that are treated differently, but over here it's like trying to write a serious Bugs Bunny cartoon about an ancient evil bringing about the apocalypse. I can't take something like that as seriously as it's trying to be, which shifts it in to rolleyes territory.

And the controls? Either too sensitive or not sensitive enough. Combined with the dynamic camera, this often means you'll die because the controls won't properly cooperate and do what you want them to do. Sure, you can "get used to them", but truly good controls take very little getting used to. Sonic Heroes will STILL do things control-wise that I don't expect and can get me killed, and it's been four years since that game came out; any adjustment I'd need to make to "get used" to the controls took place years ago.

Yes, certain Sonic fans do focus on the wrong problems, but SonicTeam themselves don't make very good games, anymore. It's the worst of both worlds when nobody seems to know what anybody really wants because the fandom is so divided on what is "right" and "wrong" about Sonic games.

 

Maybe they wanted to give an alternative design to people who preferred the Dreamcast camera controls.

Well, the formula did not have to be changed, why mess with it when it doesn't matter?

I'm sure people do.

 

When 99.5% of all games since the Dreamcast use dual stick camera controls?

Most people don't seem to realize that, outside of Sonic fans, people were actually getting a little tired of Sonic games by S3&K. I've read and seen discussions from more than a few people from places like EGM, Gamespot, etc. who claim that S3&K was the game where "the Sonic franchise started to go down hill".

Again, the times have changed, and Sonic has changed with the times. Mario changed! Compare Super Mario World to Super Mario Galaxy.

Yeah, maybe if you're on the PSP where there isn't a second stick.

 

You still stated "nobody" does that anymore, I play some handheld FPS' like that.

 

Yeah, but I think it's safe to assume that when he said "nobody does that anymore," he meant that an overwhelming majority of games do not use shoulder buttons to control the camera.

Granted, I prefer the shoulder button camera setup, but that doesn't mean the gaming industry does.