Sonic Next

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What I want in a Sonic game is a game good enough there isn't endless squabbling about whether it's good or not. I mean, you can't really dispute Sonic 2 did something right, but these days, every new game is "Well, it's good! ...Or wait, it isn't. Or maybe it's somewhere in-between? God, this game is confusing. Somebody made this part good, this part hideous, and this part meh!"

This is what has been going on; and until I see a game which can impress people who have been hardened against Sonic by these sorts of games, I'm not gonna believe the game to be so good as to buy an entire console for it. Now if it's a game like Shadow the Hedgehog, where I have a console and can pick it up really easily, well, meh, 40 dollars isn't that much to waste. And indeed, I got my paltry 40 dollar's worth out of it.

But this, Sega, is not the reinvention. This is rehash. Re-hash. Nothing to do with new things, unless it's new to add characters, use bottomless pits, and above all, avoid changing the actual feel of the game. (While I have been unable to play it, all the videos I've watched give me flashbacks allll the way back to Sonic Adventure.)

Take my opinion what you will; this is just my two cents. My very, very dissappointed two cents. Sonic was what got me into video gaming; and at this rate, might someday be my reason to stop playing them at all. X_x

 

Yes... in fact, that video shocked me. Here is a list of things taken from previous games:

Sonic Adventure 1
*Vertical Spike bar dropping things
* Ramps with zip things
*Killer Whale
*Walking sideways on the wall
*The sideways loop-de-loops
*The boardwalk structures
*The goal Gates
*Leaping from one wall to another
*Springs which (uncontrollablt) move you ahead
*Light dash trails (of rings)
*The lighthouse

Sonic Adventure 2
*The bars you spin on
*Grinding bars
*The gates you need to spin under
*Places where you homing dash from one enemy to another
*Some spring styles
*Piles of boxes

Sonic Heroes
*Trading off scharacters
*Inane in-stage mini-tasks
*Obnoxious help circles
*Ring bombs

Shadow the Hedgehog
*Characters screaming at one another various commands
*Mission objectives (as opposed to just moving through the stage
*Sci-fi style enemies

New to this:
*Horribly long load times
*Uncontrollable running sequences through obstacle courses (frustrating)
*Strange, slippery sliding across water things
*More opportunities to fall to your death
*Lack of alternate paths (I saw the occasional one, but they seemed... unusable)

All in all, not just a rehash, but a bad one. Sure, reuse what you want (they did it across the 2D Sonics), but create a new 'feel', perhaps something innovative. Everything I've seen so far is a regurgitation of cliches from past games. The few new twists only seem to make it frustrating instead of more exciting. And I've read the story; needless to say, that's not much of an improvement either.

I agree with most of the media outlets; this looks tedious, not fun.

 

<!--quoteo(post=155388:date=Dec 18 2006, 02:45 AM:name=Blazer)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Blazer @ Dec 18 2006, 02:45 AM)

 

For those of you not insane/insecure enough to act as if my opinion threatens your standing as a Sonic fan, I present a shortened version of my post: "WTF? Why are we fighting over opinions on silly video games?" (I thought I'd offer this, after torturing myself by looking at old arguments in the archives, which cause me to scroll by at brain-destroying speeds)

I don't need to look cool, because I'm just stating my mind. You, on the other hand, may be trying to look cool by standing up to an opinion which only wishes to be understood, and disagreed with, rather than ad hominem attacked when I have no reason to fight you, nor you to attack me directly. I don't care if I look cool, neither do I need to. I can see where you would feel the way you do, but honestly, you're wasting your breath. Whattaya gonna do, rip apart a random lurker with an opinion like me? It won't make any difference.

Furthermore, I don't want to seem cool to people who lash out to neutral posts with accusations like that. What next? You yell at a man who says "Ice cream for sale" for attempting to impress you with his ability to shout, and that he secretly wants to freeze your toes?

Those elements are unique to those games, and hardly reused between them until just about now. You don't see most of the SA1 things in SA2, even less SA2 things in Sonic Heroes, and so forth. It's one thing to borrow content from the previous, and another to rely entirely on it, thus making a rehash. Had they put it in a container where they showed those things, and then EXPANDED on it, thusly making the experience better and/or new, then I would consider it forgivable.

But when the entire stage is made out of homages to old games with no originality, I draw the line. If you call that stupid, then you haven't SEEN the other posts in this thread, honestly. And if you still think I'm dumb after them? Eh. I don't care. I have better things to do.

It's just that I take wish to prove Blazer's posts wrong for claiming not only the game is good, that we should like it, but also that I somehow I don't know how to play Sonic, that I am angry at a part of a game I haven't played because I suck at it, and finally that I am, apparently, not much of a fan for liking the originals and disliking one of the lesser sequels in an already troubled 3D series.

I'm not going to say I'm the greatest at anything, but I can say I've played through almost every game since I began playing at 6 in 1994, and beat Sonic 2 at the age of 7, proceeding to beat each and every game I could buy after that, getting all of the emeralds in Sonic 3 and Knuckles, all the emeralds in Rush, finishing SA1, SA2, Sonic Heroes, and even suffering all of Shadow the Hedgehog to get Expert Mode (via all A-ranks and all other stuff), to then somehow magically suck at a rehash? The issue is that Sonic is so easily swerved off the 'correct' path that the camera flies by him, and BAM! You lose. That would be frustrating, wouldn't it? Defeated by an imprecise control scheme rather than an actual mistake?

And the Genesis games are NOT easy. They can be very hard. However, they are not pointlessly so. The holes are well-presented, used to add difficulty in NEAR-ENDGAME stages, where the game decides to challenge you. In the 3D games, however, they appear constantly, and become a place to fall in over mild controlling errors, rather than of actual bad timing or accidents. That in mind, Sonic 3D Blast also sucked, and I called that out for what it was; and I doubt Chaotix did that well, otherwise it wouldn't have been neglected as much as it is today.

But what I am getting at is that I'm not here to deceive or trick people with my opinion; I honestly think that stage (and that game) are sub-par and not worth buying, and that they, like Shadow the Hedgehog, contribute virtually nothing to the series while taking a lot of stuff from previous games just to make the levels. Now then, I've said my piece; you may mercilessly tear it apart, but I don't believe I need to explain myself any more than I have; this is an opinion, and if it threatens your world view, don't read it. Just don't think for a minute it is based on bad gameplaying skills, mindless bias, and a desire to hate the game. I very much want the game to not suck, but it defies me at every turn.

*Shrugs and moves on to more important things*