Sonic Boom (Games) Megathread

I'm using Audacity to do these (which of course is free). Feel free to edit them with your paid-for software by all means

 

I thought that, seeing as I've watched a few playthroughs of the game and seen first-hand how bad this game is, that I'd leave a review of the game on Amazon UK. I'm buying it for my collection, but I wouldn't want other people to randomly buy it, thinking it was a good game.

That proved to be a disastrous affair as more people seem to like the game (willingly giving it 5 stars) than see how bad it is. Hell, my review has been marked as unhelpful by 2 people already, with no-one agreeing with my comments. This is painful to watch.

What makes it worse is that the same thing is happening on Metacritic; the reviews are clear as day in the majority that it's a bad game, yet some user reviews are ignoring these issues and giving the game a 10 based on silly points such as "Although there are a few frame rate and bug issues, those aren't that annoying and are usually exaggerated", "This is a different Sonic game that we are used too, but it is also one of the greats." and one of my personal favourite: "To counter all the hate towards this game, I will give an in-depth review. I must say that this is a great improvement on the Sonic games of old.".

Dear god, what has happened?

 

Quality of any media is subjective, you know. If something delivers genuine enjoyment to someone, it might be viewed by him as a good product.

You sound like a "stop liking what I don't like" kind of person. Just saying.

 

Not only is that not my point, but that's not what I'm like at all. I've no problem with people liking the game for genuine reasons. I'm more annoyed that people are outright ignoring the issues that are right there in front of you and blindly giving this game a 10/10.

I quoted those comments from Metacritic for a reason; users outright ignoring glitches and frame rates issues as if they aren't an issue, saying it's a great improvement over the Sonic games of old and saying it's great just because it's different. That's not me getting annoyed that they like it and I don't; that's me getting annoyed because they feel they can overlook issues and rate the game highly for no discernible reason.

I can see how someone could find fun in this game. If you enjoyed the Ratchet and Clank series, Jak and Daxter series or like slow, methodical platformers in general, then there might be something here for you. But I can't see how looking past issues that severely impact gameplay is an acceptable thing to do.

 

There's a group on tumblr that's basically all about liking everything Sonic even if it's bad. It's quite possibly one of the saddest cases of brand-based Stockholm Syndrome I've ever seen. Like, it's fine to like the brand, but you have to have some standards and demand that the brand you like release quality goodness.

I know I can't be the only one that's made this comparison, but it's like how in the '80s, people who liked Coca-Cola voiced extreme displeasure when Coke decided to change its formula to something a little different. New Coke bombed because customers hated it, but it gave the company perspective on where to go. Coke didn't just shut down its brand, as everyone seems to be TERRIFIED of happening if Sonic doesn't sell IN SPITE of terrible quality games.

You want this fanbase to not be treated like a bunch of slobbering autistic mongrels (real talk, that's what most outside of here view everyone of us as)? Then develop some standards and stop trying to do "positive campaigns" because people are bombing a bad game. It won't make a bad game be any less bad. However, DO expect better things of Sega. Be like a parent who is critical of their kid's grades. Would you be happy if all their report cards came with D's with MAYBE an occasional B? No. You'd zero in on that D and expect to raise expectations.

But perhaps I'm just talking to a brick wall and people will continue to this beaten-housewife acceptance of mediocrity to just plain awful.

 

Nevermind what I requested earlier, I did it myself;
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmRUvdmf7cA[/media]

 

While I do agree that we should be more strict with the Sonic series, I also believe we should also accentuate what we liked about it. We've spent so much time pointing out what we don't like that we often forget to point out the things we do (or did) like. We can tell Sega to "get rid of this" and "get rid of that" but then they are left to fill the gaps with more content we don't like. When people make requests for Sonic games, it always seems to be stuff like "less characters" or "no boosting" when the mere absence of those things didn't necessarily save games like Sonic 4 or Lost World. Any other requests are just fans throwing around names such as "Sonic Adventure 3" without saying what a game like that would entail.

 

Would you honestly give this game a 1/10? How come you are not upset that it gets an overwhelming amount of 1/10s from players as well? How is that fair? Don't you think that if some people can negatively overreact to it then it's not crazy to think that other people can overreact in a positive way?

I'm not saying this game is a 1/10 or 10/10 or any/any really (I haven't played it and probably won't any time soon anyway). That's people's nature. Most of us view their opinion above anyone else so if they see something getting rating significally above or below what they think is fair, they want to impact it in a way they'd call "fair" by giving it 1/10 or 10/10. It's that simple. That's why I despise scoring system and tend to not look at it at all.

Tldr: if you are pissed that the game gets 10/10s you should be pissed it gets 1/10s as well. Otherwise you are hypocrite and no better than fanboys.

 

Considering all the 2/10's I've seen this game get from legitimate review sources (GameSpot, Jared's reviews, Jimquisition), I wouldn't say a 1/10 sounds unreasonable at this point. Certainly a lot more reasonable than this game deserving a 10/10. What good traits does this game have? Judging from reviews, it sounds like the combat is very dull, the speed sections are about as linear and uninteresting as it gets for a 3D Sonic game, the graphics with all their performance issues (especially when playing co-op) looks bad, the soundtrack sucks, and it has one of the worst art directions I've seen for a Sonic game in a long time. Oh, and the game is a buggy, glitchy, broken mess. I can understand why someone would legitimately give this game a 1/10. Some people view bad as the absence of good and there is very little good about this game. The only aspect to this game that gets any praise from a lot of reviews is the fact you can switch between characters with the dpad which is a cool idea, but when the gameplay and everything else about the game is so lousy, it's pretty sad when that's about the only aspect to the game a lot of reviewers liked.

 

My thoughts exactly, that would be like having a group of Zelda fans going "you're not a true Zelda fan if you think Link: The Faces of Evil was shit".

I've really been enjoying the cartoons of Sonic Boom so far but I really don't rate the games. Sorry, it's not my sort of game play.

 

Felik I really get the impression you just like to go around being contrary. It's one thing to offer a different view but you'll even go out of your way to ignore critical details and key points to push an opposing view. Sometimes your argument is just telling people common sense, which is kind of condescending like people are so stupid they didn't consider basic things such as "people are entitled to their opinion" when making their argument, and it also emphasizes just how little you payed attention to or regarded their point or argument. Food for thought Felik, I'm not trying to be rude here.

I agree that 1/10 for Boom is not a stretch, as said above there's WAY more to support that score than a 10/10 score which is far more nonsensical all things considered. As such a 10/10 score is more indicative of a blinded fan than a 1/10.
On top of that, if we want Sega to budge an inch on increasing the effort and quality put into Sonic games, then this should have as low a score as it can possibly get. The louder the message of "THIS IS BAD AND WE DON'T WANT IT", the better.
I get the feeling that people are scared to give this a low score because they believe there are aspects about this game that COULD be good if done right, and don't want Sega to throw everything in the trash forever just because the game itself is done so badly. This kind of goes with what Machenstein said above, that the qualities that are enjoyed need to be voiced along with what things are not wanted.

Bah hahahahaha well done.

 

General rule of thumb is always ignore 1s and 10s. Unless under rare circumstances, no game deserves either. Hell even Sonic 06 has some redeeming quality I guess (music's alright, it's kinda nice looking for an early last gen game.. That's about it). Can't rate this game since I don't own it but it does look stupidly bad, but at the same time I've only been watching the glitchy speed runs. I'm sure it's just a boring game overall.

 

The problem with this is that fans have pitched to Sega generally-agreed recommendations on how to improve Sonic games and they (still) don't really give a shit (Sega of Japan, anyway).

Sega of America held a feedback session at their offices concerning what changes needed to be made for Sonic 4 Episode II following Episode I's polarized reception amongst the fanbase. Physics was the largest point of criticism addressed, yet when Episode II came around it turned out that Dimps tweaked the Episode I engine to include some momentum and improved rolling and called it a day. Music was brought up, and Jun Senoue used a slightly better synthfont. Two years after the first episode for them to actually follow up on the complaints leveled at Sonic 4 (and on the heels of much better Sonic games to boot), and almost all of the "improvements" made towards the game amounted to lip service at best.

If one wants to go even further back, when Sega announced that Episode I would be delayed, they addressed the big elephant in the room that were complaints about Episode I's physics. And they did absolutely nothing about it.

The ingenious portions of the entire Sonic fanbase could commute together and in complete defiance of language/cultural/other barriers draw up a textbook on how to make a good Sonic game in twenty different ways, translate it in entirely fluent Japanese, publish it to critical and commercial success, and personally give a free copy to every member in the Sega HQ from the president to the game designers to the financing accountants to the janitors. And the majority of them would be more inclined to donate their copies to their local pet stores as animal newspaper rather than actually read it.

Getting back to the idea of Sonic fans having low standards in the face of extremely low review scores for Boom, the fact that we have people defending some of the worst / most offensively mediocre titles of the series on the basis of it "not being broken" or it being "playable" I think is enough to show that yes, there are quite a few (read: a lot of) Sonic fans who have low standards. Especially considering how common I've heard the phrase "well the series survived 06 so it can survive *insert new Sonic game here*" thrown around a handful of Sonic sites I've visited. That last one gives off this really vexatious message that reeks of a apologist/defeatist attitude, as if to say "well, one godawful game didn't kill the series, so it doesn't matter if the series gets more mediocre/terrible games."

In short, yes I agree with the idea that the 1/10 scores being slapped on Boom are not solely being on the basis of people trolling and/or overreacting with large 'bouts of nerdrage.

 

I saw only a smidgin of it on Twitter, (Specifically about falling through the floor, "THANKS FOR GOING OUT OF YOUR WAY TO FIND THIS AND MAKE THE GAME LOOK BAD".) and it was enough to put a bad taste in my mouth. God I had no idea this was in full force on other sites.

As much as it alienates itself from past Sonic releases, I thought it was going to be a neat game, on a design level. That still doesn't stop me from saying it deserves low scores for widespread technical problems, and poor decisions from top to bottom at Big Red Button that ultimately led to the game's significant drop in quality. Any sane person can tell you that, so we might have a case of 12-year old's desperate to see more Sonic Boom games.

No matter what, though, review scores are supposed to be objective, even if opinions that lead to those numbers are subjective. I'm sure most people will eye-roll at the obvious sock-puppet fanboyism of user-submitted reviews, and skip over them.

To a point, can you really blame them for feeling this way? This was the first time in years that even so much as Tails was a playable character, 2D or 3D; rare opportunity by a non-Sonic Team developer wasted. The talent at Big Red Button was there to make an amazing game, then something happened and now everyone's working at different studios. Hopefully, this big-budgeted fluke doesn't ruin any actual proven studio's chances of developing a decent third-party Sonic game in the future.

 

Holy lord god, couldn't have said it better myself.

This is something that bugs me, because as I said earlier in the thread, I have little doubt Sega will pin the failure of this game on the easiest things to blame that are also the most irrelevant, while avoiding taking any responsibility for their own decision making. Sonic Boom failed? It wasn't because they handed Sonic to incompetent developers, nor was this an isolated incident where all the worst things happened at once, nor was it because the design choices for this game were terrible for Sonic. No, it must be because a western studio developed it. Also let's blame the fans again for good measure, you know, something about the fans don't know what they want or some shit like that.

 

I know you posted this two days ago and have probably got the answer by now, but yeah the glitch is very much doable in the PAL version. You do it by pressing X whilst jumping and pausing before he starts this downwards attack.

 

http://youtu.be/IBgKHjh4uuI

Hate to interrupt you all, but we have another wonderful feature of this game unveiled

 

Blind fanboys are slobbering retards or kids who don't know any better and still have fun. News at 11. :v:

God I just don't fucking understand the priorities of this game. There is just no gameplay direction. They have smash until dead combat and "use special ability here" puzzle solving at walking speed. The fast parts are just slapped on automated gimmicks that they seemed to shove in after they realized that Sonic is the name of the main character and maybe sometimes he should be be moving faster than a snail. Then inexplicably Sonic and the gang just can't run around when they want to and the game forces you to slow down. Water running is like one of the coolest Sonic abilities and that was reduced to a magical ancient powerup that only Tails and Sonic get after running through a special ring, not because they go fast. If you break out of the control of a dash pad they can run around in a manner similar to adventure until the game realizes what you are doing and slows you down to the jog cap. The physics of the spindash ramps are probably the most accurate in any recent Sonic game and yet they are only used every so often to make you switch to Sonic to progress rather than built into the fabric of the levels.

There's obviously some art direction going on despite the Wii U's shoddy performance and stripped down assets, but just the aerial view from the video makes you wonder what the game would be like if they just focused on designing the levels to let you run through it in a similar manner to the steps that are used to activate the glitch. The freaking exploits in the movement look more like a goddamn Sonic game than the intended gameplay for crying out loud.