Some more details from Ruby: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=167288626&postcount=476 Those actually are some pretty good improvements.
So everyone's just admitting the Enerbeams were BRB's desperate attempt at making Ratchet and Clank (amongst other desperate attempts) and ignoring them? That's good news to me
It's not being a Sonic fan that's the problem, it's the way SEGA go about doing business and making games nowadays. It's not even just Sonic, it's just the company as a whole. They don't have a clear direction to head in, so they just do whatever they fancy at the time. Everything is a massive experiment to them. There's no real acknowledgement of heritage, and it's not patriotic. Whilst they do release retro titles now and then, they're completely disparate from the modern SEGA. Even their UK website has NO acknowledgement of SEGA's history as a company, or the brands they own the rights to. All they have is acrappy little section titled "Brands", which list the following: 1) Sonic The Hedgehog 2) Total War 3) Football Manager 4) Aliens 5) Company of Heroes I mean, what the fuck? Where's the history of SEGA in the 80's and information on their arcade divisions and titles? Where's the information on their Home Consoles of old during the late 80's and 90's, which they heavily live off today through various ports and emulated Plug 'N' Play consoles? Where's the information on other more recent titles like Crazy Taxi, Super Monkey Ball, Bayonetta, Phantasy Star Online? I actually hate SEGA of today. They're a bland, boring company, who I imagine employ people who sit around empty, boring boardrooms in black suits with no idea of their past, clinging to the more recent series they have purely because they literally don't have any staff left who know much about anything else. They could do great things. They have acquired excellent outside help recently via the community, like RubyEclipse, Stealth and Taxman, and they have a following of extremely talented fans, some of whom should really be head hunted to help produce new ideas and projects. Pelikan13 is a prime example. How his 90's Arcade Racer hasn't been picked up by a large company is beyond me. They could axe the crappy clones and release a fully functioning, high quality Plug 'N' Play Mega Drive at little cost and live off the vast library of excellent retro titles they have. They could do what other premium brands do and make their history interesting and novel. People buy in to brands - look at Apple. Hell, there's even high-quality fan books out there about SEGA, and officially endorsed items such as the Mega Drive Collected Works - people are looking for interesting stuff about the brand, but get little from SEGA themselves. They could release an up-to-date multi-platform compilation of updated and enhanced older titles to play 2P over the internet. I've wanted to do this for a while but don't have Xbox Live. I could list a hundred things SEGA could do to make their brand stand out and make it viable and interesting for consumers nowadays, but I think I've got my point across. Sonic is just a metaphor for SEGA nowadays. Trying to be hip and interesting, whilst doing the minimum to achieve the results.
@SpeedStar - I think your right. It really pains me to say it but Sega kinda remind me of Atari now. IMO I think what's really needed for Sonic is a MUCH much stronger art direction and focus on keeping things simple. That would be a good start. I applaud Sega for listening to the fans in regards to Sonic games but are they listening to the right ones? I mean just looking though most YouTube comments and the majority of fans haven't a fucking clue on what would make a good Sonic game.
SEGA don't give a shit about 'the fans'. There aren't enough of us to make it worthwhile, which is why they are always trying to reinvent the wheel. They couldn't care less about what a handful of nerds on Sonic Retro think, because the kiddy demographic they're targeting is much larger. Therefore they do whatever they think might work, claiming it's for the 'fans', and then blame 'the fans' when it all goes tits up. Sadly the audience they're targeting are all screaming "faggotnigger" at each other on CoD and GTA. A good game appeals to everyone (See: recent Rayman games), but SEGA are too risk averse to spend the time and money to make something decent.
The problem is that they're not going to break the cycle until they release something worthwhile, like they did with Sonic Generations in 2012. I look forward to seeing what they've got under their sleeve for the main series.
You can still see them being used as nothing more than swinging vines in some of the footage. But yeah, they've taken a backseat and aren't even present on the character designs. The cartoon has used them all of twice, showing them to be more like one of Tails' devices than anything else. And in SC, Sticks had one for no explained reason. They've be better off scrapping them outright because they're just a kind of lame mechanic that's never taken off. That said, having a lasso to perform tricks with in speedy gameplay sounds like it could be really fun. But nope; Sonic Boom.
They do look like they're genuinely learning and Aaron is doing a great job of communicating this. If you're reading, great work Ruby. As usual I'll wait for reviews to come in, but if these promises ring true it might be worth a buy.
No disagreements there. Unfortunately. To the first point, I'd argue the contrary; their intention reinvent the wheel with every other damn game is the result of not enough existing fans to "make it worthwhile", namely because all that does is drive away a lot more longtime fans than it does pick up new fans. To the second point, while the kiddy demographic they're aiming for may be larger than the fanbase, that doesn't seem to have done them any favors, as Sonic games are now failing to even crack one million units nowadays (even if one points out the elephant in the room that is the Wii U install base, you'd think the 3DS Sonic games would be hauling in much better sales than they have been currently doing). Maybe instead of trying to keep fishing for new fans at the expense of pushing away older fans, they could adhere to basic marketing principles and actually make an effort to meet the needs of their existing base, lest they end up pulling more Rise of Lyrics and produce games that appeal and sell to absolutely nobody. ... Oh right, this is a topic about the Boom 3DS sequel. Hmph. I really don't particularly care for it and I really doubt it will be any better. than the first 3DS game. The previous game was released only seven months ago, and this game literally looks like the first game with a new character and a very gimmicky powerup theme tacked onto the existing base design. I find it hard to believe that the game will tote the improvements it made to the gameplay and level design, when it literally looks like Shattered Crystal: The Hailfire Peaks Remix, featuring Amy from the Sonic Boom series.
I'll be real cynical right now - remember how much they learned after S4E1 and how Aaron did a great job of communicating it? And remember how that turned out? Hard to argue that E2 wasn't better, but not still not easy to argue that it was actually good. Aaron is simply too good at his job. He's actually got me thinking that F&I will be halfway decent, and really I should know better. They've clearly fixed up some things about SC already. No more in-level loading, streamlining the gameplay and increasing the number of levels are all marked improvements. I'd say the graphics look better too (apart from whatever the fuck this is). Plus there's the fact it now looks like a proper TV tie-in, rather than the weird middle-ground that SC was between RoL and the cartoon. But gameplay still looks at it's heart like it's mostly the same experience as SC. There's some janky run button and you just switch characters to tackle the specific obstacle the game throws at you, except now there's the arbitrary fire and ice thing thrown in too. And I have to use the term "obstacle" loosely, because it's very much just "press x to continue". The whole fire and ice thing looks really, really unnecessary on top of it all. "This obstacle is fire, therefore you must press ice". Maybe they'll get creative with it? Probably not. Not once during SC did they attempt to do anything interesting with any of the four characters' abilities. If that trailer is anything to go by, they've gone so far as to plaster symbols like flames, snowflakes and hammers on top of every obstacle telling you exactly what you need to do. They've fallen into the easiest, biggest pitfall of any game where you control an entire team at once... again. But it's for the kiddies. I doubt SEGA is all too bothered, because if we all like the game it's just a bonus compared to if it actually sells to it's target market.
I wish I could be this optimistic...I think the days of a real sonic game are done. From my understanding Generations didn't sell all that well...or else we would have another game similar to it by now.... Have they even announced a main game? last I knew Sonic team was jacking around with Sonic Runners... I hope your right and I'm wrong though...
Well, no, Generations has sold about 3 mil. (But that figure is from VGSales, so accuracy may not be on the nose) which is still better than both of the Sonic Boom games combined. So that rationale is inaccurate. The more logical reason is that they want to make titles with lower overhead to maximize whatever profit they can make. It's obvious F&I is being developed quickly cheaply. It sucks, but I at least understand the business aspect of it. Most people don't understand what makes good Sonic games good (see Sonic 4 reviews) so in their minds, why put the extra effort and dev time into something when they can schlorp something out quick and dirty and make just as much cash. Doesn't explain why they won't let Taxman take a crack at a new entry in the franchise, but I'm sure there are a ton of biases in play there.
A lot of people keep pondering why SEGA keeps trying to "reinvent the wheel", and keeps doing all these weird crazy things that seem to make no sense. And why they keep seemingly changing everything every time they release a new game, even if it's a good one like Generations. Truthfully, I think the real problem here is the eternal view that people, and especially the Media/Game Journos have, that Sonic is eternally shit because it's not Sonic 2/3&Knuckles exactly, and if a Sonic game isn't either the GOTTA GO FAST Sanic that modern kiddies came to adore, or isn't exactly 1 to 1 perfect Genesis shenanigans like I know some like to be silly about, then it's like the annual Frankenstein's Monster angry mob going out to do their thing. After all, I'm sure you've all noticed how many reviewers, "fans" for lack of a better word for some people that act silly in this fanbase, and so forth just LOVE to bash the blue hog whenever a new title is out for every tiny thing that "isn't right for Sonic", or "is shit and 'doesn't belong' in this game", or a gorillion other things that I doubt me and my dumb mind can think of at the moment, because I'm currently likely doing a dumb rant at the moment. :v: If SEGA is even trying to listen to anyone for what to do with the series, I can see why the state of the series is, to be blunt, a massive clusterfuck. You would also feel unsure what to do when reviewers, fans and so on are telling you a billion things a minute on how to "make Sanic gud", and why this is shit, those ideas are awful, and all these other things that would make even the most positive guy likely not give a shit eventually if he had to put up with it and his bosses for over 2 decades at SEGA. After all, surely we never complain about dumb things about Sonic in any form, am I right? :v: Truthfully, I'm unsure where this dumb rant is or was going. But still, I can at least see why SEGA either isn't/wasn't listening to us, or at least why they stopped by now. And likely why things seem like a silly mess after all this time. Maybe things will change when we can all on the internet finally agree on a compromise on what a "gud Sanic game" should be like (when hell eventually freezes over), but for now, all we can do is watch and see where this goes. And at least hope F&I is decent, obviously.
The main point I'm getting from your rant seems to boil down to "Sega does/should do what they want with Sonic because the fanbase is unpleaseable either way". Which would make sense, if we were going to believe that the entire fanbase just woke up one day and, in a collective fit of mass hysteria, decided that they had absolutely no idea of what they want the series anymore.
I don't think the problem with SEGA isn't so much them not listening to a vocal minority on the internet (face it, that's what we are) but more just the general quality of the games. Sonic games are often rushed and have either bad mechanics or levels that were made to make the game last longer. That is, when they're not buggy or have issues with the controls. The other issue of course is that Sonic Team tries to change the formula too much, with new mechanics that are either not fleshed out enough or are just plain bad ideas. This all might not be a problem if they got the time to make the game though. Meaning that if anything, it's might be for the best that SEGA doesn't listen to what people on the internet want. I see a lot of people online hoping for a big PS4/Xbox One game by Sonic Team to be announced for release this year, while really it would be better if they took the time to make their next game properly. We could end up with a much better game as a result of the developers getting one or two years of extra development time.
The issue with that though is that you could make the same case for people who think Sonic Team should go back to Sonic 06 and "fix" the game, or make nothing but 16-bit mission pack sequels of 2D Genesis games, or just make a third Sonic Adventure without actually clarifying for what they want in such a game outside of the title. And they've been around much longer than those asking for a grandiose 2015 multiplatform Sonic Team title. From that perspective, you might as well not listen to the fans, ever; and that type of mentality is arguably responsible for some of the more questionable design decisions of Sonic games of past that had nothing to do with the fans. Fanboys with unrealistic (or what most people would perceive as such) demands will always be with us; Sega/Sonic Team just needs to differentiate the quality input from the garbage.
