The Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Megathread

>3:09 rediculous moonwalk up vertical wall

But, hey, we're getting a new title screen.

 

This. So you wanna make Sonic Advance 4 and pretend that it's Sonic the Hedgehog 4? Alright, that's fucking stupid and something as simple as not using that name would have solved that problem, but whatever, it's been a while. For god's sake though, quit pretending that everything in the game is in accordance to the classics when that's clearly not the case; having checkered patterns doesn't automatically make anything you do classic; it wouldn't be so insulting if you just stopped lying about it.

 

As much as Ken Balloon is annoying, you can't really blame him. He's a PR guy doing his job. He may be showering the world with BS but it's probably what he was told to do, hype the game as much as possible, and to a lot of people besides most of the people here think this game is doing a good job at being Sonic 4, Ken included (I think he actually likes the game beyond his simple PR mask, although if he mentions the plot one more time I might scream. There's no plot, yay, now move on). You know, the people who haven't been following the series for the past 16 years in hopes of a game that's at a Sonic 3 level of awesomeness and continuously being personally offended by how bad the new games are.

They are trying to appeal to the older fans with this game yes, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're trying to appeal to you guys. They're easier to win back as they have memories of the old Sonic games but they don't pay so much attention to them that they can write up a physics guide. Episode 1 is mainly serving as a Nostalgia trip. Maybe they'll try to change things in episode 2 a bit more but I really don't think Episode 1 is made for us. It's not our Sonic 4, since at least my vision of Sonic 4 would have been a more direct sequel to S3&K with original levels and bosses (It also would have looked similar to Rayman Orgins and had a soundtrack more in the direction of Sonic Unleashed day levels, but that's beside the point) . That might happen in episode 2 but it's not going to for now.

 

Weird, I could have sworn that they said the complete opposite; y'know, like how this is actually supposed to be a real Sonic the Hedgehog 4 in line with the classics for fans of the classics. It really doesn't look that bad to me, I'll definitely give it a try since I had some fun with some of the newer 2D games, but it's not Sonic 4 at all; it's Sonic Advance 4, they just forgot the "Advance" part of the title.

 

Yes, it's for fans of the classics. That's a broad range of people and we make up a small percentage of that. Many classic fans probably stopped giving a crap after Sonic 3, but if they like the classic games, aren't they still classic fans? It's easier to satisfy what they want, a 2D Sonic game with the number 4 in the title and nostalgia appeal, than what we want, but they can still say they're making the game for fans of the classics since they aren't really lying.

 

Why should I hate him less just because that's his job? By getting/keeping the job he decided that he'd spend most of his time bullshitting people, and I don't think I should feel any better about it just because HE gets money for it. If anything, the fact that he's getting money out of it while I get nothing but lies and bad games should make me even more angry.

Take telemarketers for example. I still hate them, even though calling my house at the most inappropriate times to talk about things I'm not at all interested in is their job. Why aren't they doing something that actually requires brains?

 

I respectfully disagree, at least in part. I understand your reasoning and I've no doubt that that's what they're aiming for, but I think that if that's their reasoning, it's seriously flawed and the number "4" as well as calling it a classic-style Sonic game is purely for marketing.

I wish SEGA had more respect for their fans, but also for their own products; it's sad that they feel the need to lie about a game's identity to get it to sell.

 

I agree that the whole "just doing his job" excuse is total, utter nonsense. That excuse didn't wash with the Nazis and it's not going to wash here. If he's doing a job such as this which requires him to be an out and out lying cunt, he should accept people calling him out for it as something that comes with the territory.

 

^ Good point. But perhaps he actually believes what he's saying. I suppose that doesn't make him any less accountable, but maybe he does think this is a good representation of classic Sonic gameplay. He could fall into that category of fans that stopped caring after 3

^^Here's what I'm hoping for. That they actually listen to the whole "We will fix things depending on what the feedback from episode 1 is for episode 2" thing that they mentioned, and episode 2 features some more original levels and gimmicks, as well as some more refined gameplay and less boosters. If they truly do listen they probably know by now that these boosters aren't making people very happy.

It's too late for episode 1, I doubt those boosters are going anywhere, but episode 2 maybe they'll take what we have to say to mind a little more. I doubt the music direction will change, but I imagine graphical and physics tweaks are more than possible in the future

 

That's not even the problem. The problem is that the developers genuinely believe what they are making qualifies as the Sonic 4 that we want. They are not intentionally making a modern-style 2D game so they could "lie" about it being a classic-style one. As far as they are concerned, Sonic 4 is classic-styled simply because there are checkered walls, badniks, flickies and no new characters. Physics and character design are not part of the equation here.

Godwin's Law FTW, and by that I mean GodWIN.

 

Sad but true. My impression of the situation is that they've been given a list of complaints to fix, however I think that when they see this list that consists mostly of "no homing attack, momentum based physics, no uncurling" they're going to scratch their heads and go "what? Why? That stuff doesn't matter, does it? How do we implement momentum based physics? We don't have time to fix this stuff!"

 

The music definitely needs to be different in Episode II. I don't want Jun Senoue being the sole composer after his work in Episode I, it was awful. Bring in a few other people and split the music duties between them. Sound effects can also be looked at and they can use a different percussion set. Fuck Sonic 2's.

 

I watched that video and it really doesn't look that bad. It looks fun. I didn't see that many speed boosters, and everything seems to play well. I still hate the music, which is too bad, because I usually like Jun's work, but everything else looks totally fine.

 

But consider for a moment that on an unconscious level they know it isn't good enough. It explains why they keep trying to justify releasing it in episodes and thinking (after 16 years) that we want Sonic 4 in "bitesize, easily digestible chunks".

I can just imagine the reaction on release day "Wow, 4 zones. That's just too fucking much for me!"

I'd do the music for free, and I could do it all on a sitar and it would STILL be better than Jun's Sonic 4 work.

His 3D Blast music was all kinds of awesome, what the fuck happened here?

 

Make sure you know who did what in 3D Blast 16-bit.

 

Why not just hope they get their own episode instead of replacing 2's and 3's? I disagree with this highly, I hate both Chaotix and CD's stages, Chaotix is just overcomplicated Sonic 2 stage and CD feels like it has a perspective problem, not to mention it's slow and difficult to control and has an unnecessary time limit. At least 3's aren't timed, they just get faster.

 

I feel like pretty much all of these special stages would work so much better now that we have real 3D, rather than just using some kind of sprite rendering crap that they used for the Sonic CD stages, or not knowing where the items are going to fall in front of you in the Chaotix stages.

Personally I want them to try something completely new. I don't know what but hey, surprise me Sega.

And in response to the Jun commentary about his music, I've never really liked any of his music. This game could have had ok music if he used real instruments or if he didn't try to make genesis sounding music with those damn Sonic 1 and 2 drum samples.

 

Wow... I erm...

Well shit, you learn something new every day don't you? In my ignorance I thought JS was responsible for the entire 3D Blast soundtrack, turns out he's only responsible for what happen to be my least favourite tracks in the game.

It all makes horrible sense now.

 

The Genesis version of 3D Blast's music was alright, but the Saturn/ PC version's blew it out of the water. Get whoever did that to do Sonic 4. If I'm reading the Wiki right they're called Red Book? Rusty Ruin's music was brilliant and I would love to see the same flavor in Sonic 4. JS' score just doesn't sit well with me as a whole, not counting one or two exceptions.

 

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(audio_Compact_Disc_standard)" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(aud..._Disc_standard)</a>