Sonic Forces isn't really that bad a game. It certainly didn't deserve 3 or 4's out of 10. Everything about the game works as it's intended to. It's not buggy, the levels don't randomly crash, there's no clipping out the stages...for all intents and purposes it's a okay designed game with some moments of brilliance like Egg Gate, Null Space, and the Infinite level. It really didn't deserve the shit me and others gave it. Is it a great game? No. But is it just an average platformer than got bullied because Mania was far superior and everyone wanted to rub it in? I think so.
Null Space looks pretty, but there isn't much to do. It's mostly grind rails. I know "the game plays itself" has become a cliche, but how much interaction are we actually seeing here?
I didn't mention anything about it gameplay wise. I just thought it was a cool looking scene and memorable. Did you derail my entire post for that?
I mean theres having a preference and then theres assuming that I've not played most Sonic games, or as he later suggested: That I only hated Forces cos YouTubers told me so (which is side-splitting ironic cos I could find 50 youtubers who shit on 06 for every 1 who did the same to Forces) and that I'm not capable of original thought. 06 also had its moments of brilliance (Kingdom Valley for one) and you're more likely to encounter a living dodo than you are to find someone praising it. Am I bitter that everything I liked about the series has been obliterated from the present-day design document in the name of "making sonic great again" but we're still not getting the great games we were promised if we made those sacrifices? Probably
You didn't specify. We're talking about a game, so my first assumption was that you meant moments of brilliance as a game. That was odd, because it's a weak level.
I have seen a good number of people about my age on the Instagrams who unironically like Sonic 06 more than Mania. So take that for what you will.
No. I refuse to believe that. If you said Heroes, or Shadow, or Lost World, I could believe it, but Sonic 06? AKA one of the most infamously horrible videogames ever made? One so bad that people still won't shut up about it 14 years later? No. I refuse to believe they're not trolling.
I feel like saying it's a bad game is pretty valid when there's barely a game to play in Forces. Many bad games have good ideas or good visuals, or don't even have game breaking bugs. Sonic is like, a hallmark of that haha.
To be honest, whether Forces is a bad game or not depends entirely on what your expectations for it were; the fanbase will naturally be harder on it since we generally have higher expectations than the average consumer for this series to succeed. But to a general consumer who probably has no real investment in the series, it's just an average platformer that doesn't ' really do anything good, but is inoffensive enough to not really be considered bad. My reactions after I finished it basically ranged from disappointment to a resounding "meh".
Something I've recently had on my mind quite a lot with this game, is the differences between judging it from a Sonic game perspective and a general game perspective. I disagree hard on the opinion that Sonic Forces is a "mediocre" Sonic game. I cannot agree with that, not with some of the greatest other official games that exist in the Sonic series, Sonic Forces by comparison is not "just mediocre" but actually flat out bad. Now, from a general game perspective, yeah, I can then agree that Sonic Forces is mediocre, considering this is a world where Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing exists. At the same time though, said game is a prime example of why objectivity (And in particular, objective base level game design standards.) is so important. Sonic Forces is obviously a better game than Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, but at the same time, the standards of basic value and quality (From both Sonic game and general game perspectives.) I'd heavily argue should be significantly higher than what Sonic Forces is. It may be mostly technically sound, but by almost every other aspect it's a shallow, unfulfilling mess; confused narrative, inconsistent (And quite oftentimes grating on the ears.) soundtrack quality, weak/generic and repetitive level design with mostly minimal challenge, and visual fidelity/art direction being largely inferior to the atmospheres and environments of prior official Sonic games. Also, I'd like to add that Sonic Forces being a minimally glitchy game under modern-day capabilities (Lack of technical/technology limitations etcetera.) should be a basic expectation rather than a significant point of defense. This would be akin to overly-praising a modern-day DVD for sporting a scene selection menu/feature, despite the fact that's been a DVD standard for many years. This was obviously once a special feature during the DVD format's inception and shortly afterwards (Since it was new, is very useful, not a feature of VHS, etcetera.), but has since understandably ceased to be, and is now a justifiably reasonable expected standard. Apologies if the above text comes across as a tad rambly, I was just eager to dump some additional thoughts on my mind about Sonic Forces. *Shrug.*
I've been saying for years there's a huge disconnect between what fans and the mainstream feels about Sonic, and that's largely why there's so much division. What fans count as a good Sonic game isn't really what mainstream media would count as a good video game. It's why Mania's success was pretty significant, because it not only appealed to fans, it appealed to mainstream media as well. Now sure, a significant reason for that is that it's Classic Sonic, and basically everyone and their mother knows about him. But the general consensus surrounding 3D Sonic games is that they're mediocre and not much else. So Forces is probably just another one for the pile to anyone not familiar with the series. Series has been putting out games what mainstream media have called mediocre for over two decades, so another one isn't really a big deal. We all got our priorities screwed up in what we want out of this series.
Which Wii U/PS4/XBO/Switch era platform games are generally considered to be worse than Sonic Forces? How many of them are from major publishers? (Neither of these questions are rhetorical - I'm genuinely interested.) I don't think that's true. I think the gaming press and the Sonic fandom have largely been in agreement about which games were good and which were bad. I can't think of a single Sonic game that's generally considered good by the fan base, but generally considered bad by the gaming press.
I can think of examples of the very opposite. Heroes and Sonic 4 received decent reviews by critics, and Advance 3 even had great reviews, yet they're considered bad by most fans.
Mighty No. 9 is a good shout. I wasn't really thinking about 3DS games, Zip Lash seems comparable, but it looks like Hey! Pikmin got a lot more positive reviews than Forces? Yooka-Laylee is another one people seemed to be disappointed with, but was overall still considered decent? Better received than Sonic Forces in terms of reviews.
The main one that comes to mind is Sonic Unleashed; while I wouldn't say the fanbase considers it "good", it's certainly better than 3.5 it got from Gamespot. And even then its user score is higher than its critical score on Metacritic. Fallout 76 is another good example.
I was going to mention Yooka-Laylee. It seems like that was better received than Forces, but was considered more of a disappointment because it was hyped up as the true Banjo-Threeie, the grand return of the collect-a-thon genre... and ended feeling more like an elaborate fan tribute rather than the masterpiece people were expecting. A fair comparison in my book.
If the fanbase didn't consider it good and the video game press didn't consider it good, doesn't that show that opinions are generally in alignment? The overall impression I saw from both reviews and fans was that it was a bit crap, but not godawful. It was unanimous that the Werehog brought the whole experience down. The 3.5/10 from GameSpot was the single most critical mainstream review, but that's a really bad example of "the mainstream media just doesn't like or understand Sonic games", since the same reviewer rather liked the Wii version and gave it a 7/10 (the biggest complaint being too much Werehog, i.e. that it wasn't enough of a Sonic game). Is this considered a platform game?
Unleashed was hated by fans and critics alike back in the day, but fans seem to have warmed up to it since then. So the reviewer disliked the Werehog, yet rated the Wii version (which added more nighttime levels and shortened or even removed the daytime levels) higher than the HD version? Makes sense :specialed:
