Sonic Boom (Games) Megathread

I dunno, it's a pretty accurate depiction of what I'd look like if I tried to wake up in time to watch the show.

 

I'll try my best to be there, unfortunately, my internet speeds aren't the best and it tends to struggle a lot when watching livestreams on Twitch. Let's hope for the best, I'm a big fan of you guys and your LP's so I expect it to be a lot of fun to watch.

I'm guessing they will, but it will probably be brief just like all of their other Boom mentions. Who knows, maybe they'll have it released as soon as the Direct ends.

 

Yacht Club win. 

I thought it was very funny :P

 

Lololol a million? Good luck. Least they're being, well, more realistic

In all seriousness, why are they bothering with the wii u? Instead of dividing their resources to make 2 mediocre games, why not make 1 good 3ds game? It's worked fine for Kirby for years.

 

Direct's over. It's up now.

 

I...

..holy shit it actually happened. I'm a little new to Nintendo Directs, do they just upload them to YouTube afterwards?

 

Yeah, they also upload the single trailers if you don't want to watch the entire thing for a single game.

 

Just gave the demo a go. Not bad. It was actually kinda fun. Idk if I'll spend $40 on it, and it's definitely not my sanic of ol, but it could be a fun $20 time waster down the line.

 

My first impressions:

That certainly was a video game. Like Lost World, it feels like it was created for people who don't like Sonic games. Unlike Lost World, it feels like it was created by people who KNOW how to make anything else. It's competent. It might even be kind of fun, though I'm pretty concerned with repetition and artificial padding. The level took me about 20 minutes to complete, and I felt like I was doing the same things over and over again by about the halfway point.

But still. The fact that basically, I spent the first five minutes of playing this year's big Sonic title piloting a little submarine around should tell you all you need to know.

 

Yeah, I feel about as lukewarm towards this as I thought I would. I just got frustrated with how much shit there is to keep track of between the face buttons all doing different shit and four characters to dick about with. The gameplay doesn't really feel too satisfying either.

Well, hopefully the kids like it or something.

 

Alright, my consensus:

It's a game that's better on paper than in execution.

I feel like this game's trying to be a Metroidvania with a Sonic skin over it, in the vein of (as Josh said) a game for people who don't like Sonic. Now, if you take out the skin, what do we have? A platformer with 4 characters that play relatively the same (this is a good thing) with one or two differences to their gameplay (also a good thing), but none of which really add anything to the gameplay outside of situational hazards or obstacles (this is a bad thing). Mainly because there were so many damn blocks everywhere, I rarely felt the need to switch to any character but Sonic. His airboost was pretty useful, but only because of, again, the friggin blocks. It was nice to be able to boost up and then jump a third time though. That can get you to some high places.

The other characters are a puncher/digger, a slow-faller with bombs, and a character with a homing missile. There's really not much else to what they do outside that. And when I say "puncher," I mean SINGULAR punches. Which right NOW are really useless because every enemy can be destroyed with a homing attack, the attack EVERY CHARACTER HAS, and if I remember right a boost. If that won't work, just use an enerbeam and they're down, and I don't think Knuckles can punch an energy shield away.

Almost every action feels like it's completely halting the previous one because it takes a half second to transition from one act to another. The only action that doesn't feel this way for me is the swinging, and even then that feels a bit slow. And speaking of slow, HOLY BALLS THIS GAME FEELS SO ANCHORED. Like seriously, I'm not going to complain about lack of speed for a sonic game because that's been said enough, but the boost feels very bogged down, and Sonic's spindash is near useless to outright obtrusive. If you tap X, it takes a full HALF SECOND for the spindash to even *START.* Then it goes off leisurly and you wonder why the hell does the spindash exist if the boost does the same thing but better. Like it'd make sense if the spindash shot you off much faster a la Generations, or if the spindash inflicted damage but not the boost, but no. The boost does damage. SO what the hell.

I have to brb but right now I'm so damn confused.

 

I wonder why they didn't map run to a shoulder button and the attack button to Y. Their weird button layout caused them to make pressing the jump button do the same height regardless if you have it held down or not, which is extremely weird for a Sonic game. The multiple characters setup also comes across as pointless when everyone controls so damn similar. I felt the game would've worked better and felt more fluid if they just had one character be able to do everything. The whole basis of this game's setup just comes across as not well executed and the first level felt really repetitive, which is a really bad sign, especially with a 20+ minute level. A Sonic game with multiple characters and Metroidvania influences sounds good to me, but not in this execution. Considering how this is the Sonic Boom journalists seemed more interested in, that really concerns me about the Wii U game. Here's hoping the Wii U version will be a pleasant surprise? Because the demo for Sonic Boom's 3DS version pretty much killed my interest in this game. Also, lol @ the 8 plays limit. Can't see myself reaching that anytime soon.

 

It's as if the developers knew their game was shit and lowered it down so people won't have a Sonic demo sitting there on their 3DS Home Screen.

I don't have a 3DS, but from what I've seen, this doesn't really look all that impressive. The music isn't all that fascinating either, save for Tropical Beach's (or whatever it's called) theme, which is ok.

And now we wait for the Wii U version. Too bad there's no demo.

 

Having played a demo at NYCC, I already knew I wasn't a big fan of the game, but I wanted to see if this demo had anything new that could make me interested. I was wrong. I was still just as bored playing this as I was with the NYCC demo. I mean, I could tolerate Lost World when I played it's demo, but I didn't bother playing past the first level. Like I said before, I'm sure kids will eat this up, but for older Sonic fans that want to try this, I'd say they should stay away.

 

All right, I've played a bit more.

I tried speed running the main level. It did NOT go well. There's no sense of flow whatsoever. One thing I will praise is the way falling in a pit just throws you back onto the last solid ground you were on and knocks away your rings. It seems like the kind of thing that might be good to implement in a casual or practice mode in the main series.

The race was pretty bland, but at least had SOME sense of speed. Reminded me a bit of Sonic Colors' multiplayer.

And the worm boss was kind of fun. It's sort of like Lost World's auto-racing sections combined with a dash of boost gameplay. It was VERY easy, but I could see it getting more fun and challenging.

I bet this game is going to catch some flak from reviewers for not being a 3D game, after Lost World 3DS just did it.

 

Just gonna sum it up quick: I found it to be boring and just... average. Nothing really stands out honestly. The game's not even really bad, but I wouldn't drop money on it, especially at this time of year.

 

Let me put it like this: it takes quite a bit to make me quite bored within 10 minutes of playing a video game.

Boom 3DS lasted eight minutes before I just didn't care anymore and deleted it from my SD Card. Only other Sonic game to do that?

Sonic Chronicles.

At least I'm not on deck to review this game or I'd have bombed it harder than GW bombed Lost World. That was just plain boring.

 

I doownloaded this last night on my boys 3DS and tried it last night and wasn't impressed at all.

I deceided to show my boy (8 years old) this morning that I'd downloaded it and let him try it while I watched how he played it.

His exact words were 'it's not that good daddy' I asked why he thought that and how he felt playing it and he said 'just don't like all the moves you have to do, it's not that fun'

This was my exact thoughts too - having to remember to bash different buttons when in mid air etc is just NOT fun, the games pacing also feels way to slow - on the level I tried sonic was running at litterally a walking pace.

Sonic colours and lost world were enjoyable where as this just feels frustrating to play!

I hope the wii U version is better!