I wonder what Sonic Team thought about Sanic when they first heard of it. Also, making memes official outside of vague nods is how you kill them. Good job.
Uhm...? Anyone know what the deal with this image is? I saw it posted on 4chan with no context. edit: disregard, turns out it's a mod on gamebananna. thought it might have been a model that was actually in the game.
Two weeks ago, Forces debuted at #6 on the Switch eShop charts (taking Mania's spot from the previous week), with Mania dropping down two places to #8. One week ago, Forces was able to hold onto the #6 spot, with Mania dropping down another two slots to #10. This week, Mania continued its steady descent down the charts to #12....and Forces plummeted down to #18.
For what it's worth, Mania is still at #8 in the European eShop charts (that's one above the evergreen Mario Kart 8 Deluxe at #9) and Forces is nowhere to be seen. These are digital sales for a single platform only though, and anyone who shops around will discover that is cheaper to buy a physical copy of the game than a digital one. Still though... I look forward to finding out about the platform to platform sales for Forces, as well as its overall performance compared to Mania. I still don't doubt that Sonic performs best on Nintendo platforms generally. The Nintendo exclusivity deal a few years ago went sour because the "highlight" of that collab' was the mediocre Lost World and the Wii U had a pathetically small user base. I don't want to see another exclusivity deal, but I do think that Forces will have a disproportionately high number of sales on the Switch despite the fact that it's the worst version of the game.
It's also going to be difficult to do direct sales comparisons due to no-one releasing numbers for digital titles.
Those are robust and solid chart positions to a certain extent but also underwhelming and disappointing ones too given this is a major Sonic release and the first in four years. Forces is definitely underperforming compared to Mania. Steamspy has Sonic Forces at a very disappointing 21K in sales whilst Mania stands at 126K having rocketed to 100K in a matter of days. That said money talks so at least Mania's super success and Forces being commercially disappointing will hopefully steer Sega in the right direction moving forward i.e. Sonic Mania 2. Silver linings and all that. Appreciate your posts by the way Yeow. You always contribute to threads with interesting and insightful info. Love seeing your replies.
Not seeing the Sanic T-Shirt on the UK store (PSN) yet, delayed release or is the meme staying contained in America? Ghost Town's music is also growing on me. Not sure I wanted that to happen...
It's a damn good track. Especially if you fancy the early/primitive FM synth style like Aero Blasters. It's a shame that none of the other tracks are of the same level.
It's also a shame that it doesn't actually fit the level theme or the visual style of the game whatsoever. Going the chiptune route for Classic Sonic was totally wrong.
Sonic Forces was totally wrong. Seriously, whoever's idea it was to attempt to cater in more or less equal measure to 3 disparate portions of the fanbase instead of doing one thing so well all of those portions would be forced to acknowledge its quality is responsible for the constant erosion of the brand's value.
Well, they've been doing that since Sonic Adventure. They went through great lengths, including creating a completely new playable character with the ability to shoot to please fans who wanted Sonic to carry a gun. It is now constant to read SEGA or Sonic Team saying that with every new game, they try to please very different people with one game. Jack of all trades, master of none.
Definitely agree on both counts here. I'm enjoying the track more now I'm listening to the Forces music outside of playing the game. I feel like Ghost Town would be a 10/10 track for a 2D side-scolling beat-em-up or shooter. Sadly in the context of where and when it's presented in-game though, it's almost a parody which is a damn shame. Casino Forest would also be a fantastic piece of music for something like Dynamite Headdy imo :v:
Forces has one art style for the entire game, and that artstyle doesn't work well with 16 bit music. The level theme is a problem once-thriving city being bombed to pieces by giant robots, which isn't very well conveyed by this track. The games visuals and artstyle came along before the level music. I think that both Sunset Heights and Park Avenue get the tension and feeling right with their music, but Ghost Town doesn't. It's subjective. The Classic Sonic tracks also don't really sound much like Sonic music from the Mega Drive. I'm not sure if it's the instruments, the compositions, or other factors entirely, but aside from Casino Forest they sound as they belong to other games. And Classic Green Hill is still awful.
They were better off using the Sonic LEGO Dimensions Green Hill-alike music. In Forces and Generations they are making the mistake that Classic Sonic = Cute/Silly Sonic/Sonic CD animations. They don't want badass classic to show up Sarcastic/slap stick/Couldn't be bothered Modern Sonic. All of it could have been forgiven had Forces been a game worth playing (and listening to). Don't even get me started with Tails. They have erased his growth and independence. Funny that the story of Infinite was all Shadow's fault though.
Oh god. Like, look, I'll even defend the current writers in some instances. I like Sonic's stupid personality and I like how they write for Eggman. But Tails. Jesus Christ what did they do to Tails. He's annoying and useless and only serves to play narrator at best as he runs around with that odd looking iPad of his. Like, at this point just kill off Tails if he's going to be this useless and annoying.
I found the characterisation the strangest in Unleashed. Sonic has a cute/naive sidekick to sound off of who flies around behind him while he runs about on adventures and there's a second gameplay mechanic based around climbing and punching, so... create a new character and make Sonic a werewolf? They're solutions to problems that never existed! I'm fairly sure if you replaced Chip with Tails and the Warehog with Knuckles the game wouldn't exactly be fundamentally different, but I imagine it would be better received. Not that I'm ever that bothered about the story in a Sonic game - it would be nice to get something similar in tone to the OVA, but since generally the story in a Sonic game tends to amount to "Go here, fight boss, collect mcguffin, repeat" I tend to just go with it. Honestly I have such mixed feelings on Forces. It feels like a game that will either be great or terrible in its second half, but instead you fight a robot and it just ends. Some of the compositions for Classic Sonic were reasonably good if not great, but they never felt like they matched the level themes, and tended to sound "16-bit" in a way that was half-arsed. I'd be happy with completely modern music over what we got, but I'm amazed it seems no one in SoJ can remember how to program Mega Drive music? I think using some real MD synths alongside recorded music would be a genuinely neat thing if they decided to keep 2.5D Classic Sonic around for any reason. And the only crime that the fishing gameplay made was being unable to use the Dreamcast Fishing Rod. + - And only being there so Sonic Team could show off that the Dreamcast could actually do transparencies
