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Sonic Boom (Games) Megathread

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by TimmiT, Oct 2, 2013.

  1. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    If only this was the case in all aspects of life. Yet movies, TV shows, books probably, it's all marketing, the scummiest shits on earth all for the pursuit of the all mighty dollar.
     
  2. JaredAFX

    JaredAFX

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    No matter what media it is, 10% of it makes the other 90% look like crap. Not every game is going to be a Mario World or Sonic 3. Not every film is going to be Gone With the Wind or Shawshank Redemption. Not every book is going to be the Diary of Anne Frank or... the Bible... whatever. I'm not saying it's an excuse for the game to be meh, but that's unfortunately how this will probably end up. Do I think it'll be a Sonic 06? No. I think it's going to be a fine game that will probably happen to be thrown into bargain bins for years to come, but they're making this entire alternate universe and they're just throwing a bunch of half-baked ideas at it. Throwing a bunch of half-baked ideas around is how 06 came to suck so much in the first place. At this point I just hope it doesn't hurt them too bad. At the very least maybe it'll get them to work on the next main series title a little more quickly.
     
  3. Lambda

    Lambda

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    I think we are. Marketing is great at making quick bucks at release, but actual good games continue to sell over time because they don't need a zillion TV commercials to draw sales. Word of mouth takes over.

    But everyone wants an explosion, not a slow burn.

    At-least, that's what always seemed to be the case to me... I'm no industry insider.
     
  4. GeneHF

    GeneHF

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    Dead on. Game companies look at how Skylanders and Call of Duty sell and are more focused on releasing massive sales right out the door instead of a well-selling sustained experience. Ever notice how not too long after the new AAA flavor of the month game comes out, it starts getting traded back in to GameStop almost in bulk? That's dreadful of a business model to expect giant bursts at the start.

    It'll pop eventually and then there will be another drive to change the business model.
     
  5. Felik

    Felik

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    Psychonauts?
     
  6. Spinksy

    Spinksy

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    I don't even know what to say anymore about this, literally the more you see of this the worse it gets..............
     
  7. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Well least with Bayonetta 2 and Smash for Wii U and 3DS, I'll happily skip this... thing

    Oh ya and Hyrule Warriors I'll fetch that at some point. Plenty of Vidya to happily avoid this.
     
  8. Endgame

    Endgame

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    From the sound of things - dare I say it - could this be the return of the dreaded Sonic Cycle, back with a vengeance? But only this time it's with an entire subsection of the Sonic franchise!
     
  9. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Things looked even worse when we first saw footage of this game though. I don't think the game showed any hope to begin with.
     
  10. EmerlForgotten

    EmerlForgotten

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    Actually, it looked better when it was first revealed than in its current state. I thought it had legitimate potential to be something surprisingly good. It went to shit around the time Sticks was announced and they revealed more footage. Plus, the whole E3 demo disaster didn't help.
     
  11. LockOnRommy11

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    I was talking to someone about SEGA earlier, and how throughout their history- moreso since the end of the Mega Drive- they haven't ever focused on actually revisiting their decent games and series and expanding and improving their formulas, they just like to fuck up until they're forced to try harder for a while, and then go back to resting on their laurels. In this case I wanna try and focus on Sonic but I can't help but bring their other series in to it too.

    Take the Mega Drive for example, one of the greatest consoles of all time and still loved the world over today. It had SEGA-specific series like Sonic The Hedgehog, Streets of Rage, Shinobi, GoldenAxe, Hang-On, ThunderBlade, Space Harrier, Altered Beast, Virtua Racing, Ecco The Dolphin, Comix Zone, Kid Chameleon, Fantasy Zone, Phantasy Star and more that I can't think of right now.

    Jump forward to the Saturn and barely any of those series made it on, and any that did made it in half-assed iterations, like Sonic R, the only new Sonic game to appear on the Saturn, but not even a continuation of the series previously, bearing little resemblance at all.

    The Dreamcast tried to revive SEGA's rotting corpse by having an actual Sonic game, a few recognisable games like Ecco and Phantasy Star, and actually marketing it's newer fresh series like Jet Set, Crazy Taxi and the like. However this wasn't enough, and even I remember reading the Argos catalogue back in the day and seeing little resembling the SEGA I loved a few years prior, which surely didn't help it's appeal.

    So then jump to late 2001 when SEGA jumped ship (mostly to Nintendo) and ported the Sonic Adventure games to the system, as well as revived the 2D series with the excellent Sonic Advance series. Things were looking up. We had a number of decent titles consecutively up until 2005; Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Sonic Advance, Sonic Mega Collection, Sonic Adventure DX, Sonic Advance 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic Battle, Sonic Advance 3, Sonic Gems Collection and then...

    Shadow The Hedgehog. A game that tries so hard to be different it skimps on some of the fun and adds frustration. Then it got worse with Sonic 2006, a game so barely playable that even I couldn't get past that stupid dock level where you had to just fight all the robots in the time limit. SEGA obviously felt that the reason the game got bad scores was because of it's concept of play, and not because the game was a shoddy, buggy, dirty mess with little going for it, thus they overhauled the Sonic series again to make it "fun". Then there was Sonic Unleashed, which was met with mixed to positive reception. Sonic 4, the revival of one of the greatest game series to hit the earth then arrived in October 2010, and was wierdly not that great with it's rehashed run-of-the-mill stages and poor physics. Things became a little clearer with Sonic Colours and then expanded upon with Sonic Generations, the best NEW thing to happen to Sonic since the Advance games 7 years earlier. Sonic 4 Episode 2 was also much better and was what Ep I should have been all along. Could it have been that SEGA were starting to get what made the series great!?

    No. So then, instead of listening to fans saying how great both games were and how awesome it was to be able to play as Classic Sonic again as well as the now refined Modern Sonic in Generations, SEGA threw this out for Sonic Lost World, a game which had a lukewarm reception for the fact it was too unfairly difficult, and didn't know if it was trying to be Sonic or Mario and had far too many dull and pointless mini games in it. A sequel to Sonic 4 Episode II is basically not looking like it's ever going to happen now either, and we've still not got Sonic 1 or 2 remade for the big screen.

    Instead we get this, another average attempt to be "out there" and try and make Sonic (pretty much at this point a metaphor for SEGA) something he's not again despite the backlash from fans, and it really seems like SEGA don't really know how to manage their own creations which pretty much equals them saying "Hey, we want money, but we don't know really what to do for you to give it to us, so how about this? Is this alright? If not, we'll try something else soon and see if you like THAT instead, and if not, we'll repeat the process until you really like what we're doing!".

    TL:DR: SEGA have no effing clue how to manage themselves as a company, let alone a game series.
     
  12. Lambda

    Lambda

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    I agree, this is the problem. Iteration is INCREDIBLY important in game design, and some of Sonic's best outings (Sonic 3K and Sonic Generations, I'm looking at you) were great because Sega had 2+ games to mess with their formula until getting it right (Sonic 1 & 2, and Unleashed and Colors, respectively).

    In my opinion, something that propagates these strange development patters is Sega's drive to follow current trends. Almost to a fault.
    Playing something like Jet Set Radio or Crazy Taxi today makes me just think "Yeah! It's like the early 2000s all over again!", even though I actually haven't played them until recently. The music, the saturated visuals, the EXTREEME tone, they all reek of their era. Is that a bad thing? Not in essence. I love both of those games, and it brings me back, but it sort of ...illustrates, if you will, Sega's desire to be timely.

    Heck, that's why Sonic's gotten 3 redesigns over the years. He was designed to be trendy in the 90s and he's been changed periodically to keep up ever since.
    Mario's looked the same since Mario Bros. 3. (I hate comparing the two, but he's my best reference for this.)

    Sega needs to settle in on something that works, iterate upon it over time, and let it morph piece-by-piece instead of always diving head-first into uncharted territory. They'd be better off for it.
     
  13. Aerosol

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    Sonic (?): Coming summer of 2055...?
    Diving into uncharted territory isn't the problem by itself. It's blindly jumping into uncharted territory. If you're trying to break new ground you really should have your pedigree on the case. Unleashed is widely regarded as a great game, Werehog aside, and it broke terrific new ground. This, however, is some outsourced trash that Sega is throwing at the wall, along with other related trash, to see what sticks. It stinks of desperation.
     
  14. Machenstein

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    I hear that a lot, but I don't see what trends Sonic was trying to capitalize on in the 90's. Yeah, he has spiky hair, but that's because he's a hedgehog. Him being a hedgehog only served to introduce rolling as a gameplay mechanic. He has bright red sneakers, but their minimalist design and big golden buckets don't seem to reflect popular shoe designs in the 90's. The only 90's trend I can see Sonic capitalizing on was the surge of cartoons starring anthropomorphic animals back then. The white gloves, the spaghetti arms, that big mono eye, all reflective of cartoons from the 1930's which would later be revisited in the early 90's.
     
  15. Aerosol

    Aerosol

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    The attitude, man. Sonic was the dude with the 'tude. How could you have missed that 'tude?
     
  16. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    American Sonic definitely tried to roll with the 90s. Even Adventure Sonic tried to be "extreeemmmeee dudeeee." This Sonic on the other hand is trying to be rugged and adventurous, like the many rough looking antagonists from games like Jak and Daxter, Uncharted, and what have you.

    Japanese Modern Sonic at this point is essentially the main Sonic though. He's kind of like Mario in some aspects. The adventure designs were refined over time, some classic elements were brought back into the mix, and it's a sort of cross roads design that isn't trying to be extreme anymore, just trying to make the 2nd redesign as ascetically pleasing as possible. I don't consider Sonic Boom Sonic to be as much of a redesign due to the spin off nature of the series. To me, this is SatAM with a more drastic take on making Sonic different from his Japanese counterpart, and this game is Sonic Spinball in that it's based off that and it'll likely develop some kind of cheesy nostalgic following in years to come.
     
  17. Lambda

    Lambda

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    Don't get me wrong, I love the classic design. It's my favorite version of Sonic, and it actually aged pretty well.
    I honestly think all of his redesigns over the years have been fine, but they certainly were following current trends.

    The Western cartoon animal mascot craze of the 90s, the anime craze of the early 2000s, and now the return of a more Western approach of today.

    'Tude was very in then. Surprisingly, Sonic's lost that over time. Now he's just kinda dorky... which isn't that bad. I always kind of liked the idea of a Sonic who's cool, but thinks he's a lot cooler than he is. He's lacking in the former, but abundant in the latter as of late.
     
  18. I actually thought so
    It can only work in case you know how successful promo campaign was. Otherwise, this idea lifts you off the ground completely, depriving of any objective evaluation. In case of the very same game, if you like it, you can say that it sold bad because of bad marketing, and if you don't like it, you can say that it sold good, following a wave of hype. The point of judging game by its sales is an assumption that majority of sales is made by non-internet people who judge aesthetic direction of the game by its commercials and cover.
     
  19. Machenstein

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    Don't get me wrong, I wasn't implying that correlation equals causation. There still are occasions when good games sell good and bad ones sell bad. I just wish the masses would vote with their wallets more. Unfortunately, the non-Internet public don't yet seem to realize that they're part of the voting process. While we were lucky enough for our parents to buy us good games as kids, the rest of the world didn't have that luxury. That's why we wish to preserve what we loved as kids while everyone else simply isn't interested.
     
  20. Bobinator

    Bobinator

    My thoughts on your posting Member
    Remind me, wasn't the cartoon supposed to be out this month? Gotta admit, I'm still actually looking forward to that.