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Sonic Colo(u)rs: Ten Years Later.

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Sonic5993, Nov 11, 2020.

  1. Laura

    Laura

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    To be fair, I really like Colors and especially Generations, but I really hate Unleashed. I think it's far more of a problematic transition title than Adventure is. Adventure 1 has many flaws, but it's a very fun game and doesn't have many glaring problems compared to Adventure 2 aside from its awful lip synching and animations. The voice acting is equally terrible in both.

    Unleashed has the werehog which immediately drags it down into the bottom tier of Sonic games. I consider it a far, far greater problem than the alternate playstyles in Adventure 1 and 2 because it's painful to play. But I think the problems are much more severe than that.

    Unleashed has really poor controls compared to Colors and Generations, especially with how they mapped the boost and homing attack to the same button, which is one of the worst decisions ever made in a Sonic game's control system. That in itself makes Unleashed far inferior. But its levels are also far more trial and error and frustrating with a bunch of death pits. Neither Colors or Generations has that problem.

    This may also be an unpopular opinion but I think the story in Unleashed is one of the worst in the franchises' history. Chip is definitely the worst character in the series: he has horrendous dialogue and absolutely insufferable voice acting in every scene he's in. The story is lighter but still very melodramatic, without having the intensely serious charm of the "so bad it's good" Adventure 2. Colors is cringe-inducing at time and Generations' story is virtually non-existent, but I'd take both over Unleashed.

    Unleashed has a lot of great ideas but it has a really botched execution. Which is why I consider Colors the first true realisation of the Boost gameplay. Unleashed is more like Hitman Absolution than it is like Demon's Souls.
     
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  2. XAndrew

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    Have you forgot about Princess Elise?
     
  3. Pengi

    Pengi

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    That one still absolutely baffles me. If Sonic Unleashed ever gets ported to current systems (a compilation with Colours & Generations would make sense for the anniversary) then that's an easy fix that would make the game magnitudes easier to play.

    His character design was pretty awful too. Everything about him was an unwelcome throwback to the insufferable sidekick characters in 1980s cartoons. He's a Godzooky, a Snarf.

    The story didn't leave much of an impression on me and the dialogue was weak, but the tone and direction felt about right, particularly after Shadow and Sonic 2006. It was a grand globe-trotting adventure. A bit DuckTales. DuckTales is a decent tone to land on for Sonic.
     
  4. Sid Starkiller

    Sid Starkiller

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    I'm glad I never replayed Unleashed I guess, because it means I've completely forgotten about Chip other than what he looks like. I don't remember his voice or a single line of dialogue from him. And after this thread, I'm going to keep it that way.
     
  5. Josh

    Josh

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    Thanks for that. At this point, it's refreshing to read a take on Unleashed that DOESN'T treat it as "the last good Sonic game," and I'm saying that as someone who always at least LIKED it. :P

    And that reminds me of another title a sub-sect of the fandom used to hype up as "the last good Sonic game." I always kind of thought of Unleashed as Sonic Adventure 2 on steroids. Both for me personally, and in terms of its reception. Personally, both games featured a core gameplay style that I couldn't get enough of (the speed/daytime stages), and a bunch of time-filler of varying quality that I was perfectly okay playing through once so I could get more speed stages. I say it's "on steroids," because I enjoyed Unleashed's daytime levels significantly more than any form of 3D Sonic gameplay to that point, but the time-filler in Unleashed was so bad, it was more of a time KILLER. It took me two years to finish Unleashed even though I played it all the time, because instead of making progress, all I wanted to do was replay day stages.

    I think for a long time, I assumed that I loved Unleashed based purely on that, and I'd kind of forgotten what it was really like. Especially once that mod came out, I think I went years without ever touching the disc. But trying to play through the original game again last year... oof. I remembered why it took me so long, and I think I have a more nuanced perspective than I did in 2008 on why it, even MORE than SA2, was so divisive. Like SA2, most people at least saw SOME merit in the core Sonic gameplay, but how highly you thought of the game as a total package tended to come down to how much you could tolerate everything else about it. I think most of us could agree it was at least a step in the right direction, and that mainstream critics who rated it WORSE than 06 were being ridiculous. But beyond that, it was a REAL love-it-or-hate-it game.

    Even as someone who still probably falls more on the love-it side of that, I think your arguments hold water. Sonic's movement isn't anywhere near as precise as it would be in Colors and Generations, and even as much as I've played it, I still sometimes careen into bottomless pits if I don't arc my drift JUST right. The level design gives you a fantastic sense of speed and spectacle when you reach rote memorization, but it's WAY too unpolished and even unfair for a first-time playthrough. I think that's one reason games like Unleashed or Rush are so divisive; Players who like them enough to stick with them end up underestimating the impact of their trial-and-error level design. And especially after Generations, Unleashed has always come across as a little too barren to me. The levels in Unleashed tend to be MUCH longer, but they're nowhere near as interesting. There are long, LONG stretches of Jungle Joyride where you really are just holding down X while awesome things happen, and as visually impressive as that IS, it's not nearly as compelling as Generations' more intricate level design.

    To be honest, I rarely even thought about Colors until I became aware of this wave of backlash against it. Unleashed was always the game that kicked off the renaissance for me, Generations perfected the formula, and Colors just kind of quietly happened in-between these two games I liked more. I enjoyed Colors' story and aesthetics a ton, I always wanted to like it, and in 2010, it was SO refreshing just to see a 3D Sonic game get such a positive reception for the first time in nearly a decade. But being confronted with a bunch of negativity and cynicism always tends to make me want to go in the other direction, haha. I don't think I ever really came to appreciate Colors as much as a lot of fans did until earlier this year.

    Colors always had its detractors, and I was kind of one of 'em back then, but it wasn't anywhere near as divisive (at the time, anyway), complicated, or padded as Unleashed. It did a LOT of things people had been begging Sonic Team to do for ages, in addition to actually following up and improving on the most well-regarded part of the previous game. I think I used to slightly resent Colors because I felt like too many people were overlooking Unleashed in favor of it, but especially looking back now, I totally understand why.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2020
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  6. Antheraea

    Antheraea

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    hahahhahahahaa bounce and light speed being bound to the same button in SA2......seems like they didn't learn.
     
  7. Josh

    Josh

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    I think the idea with Unleashed's control setup was supposed to be consistency. It was the first "modern" Sonic game, not in terms of design or aesthetics, but in controls. The Adventure games tried to map too many actions to just two buttons, in a clunky effort to maintain the simple control layout the Genesis games employed. Unleashed was the first title that actually used every button on the controller to do something different. Given that overhaul, A always ascended (jump, fling off swinging bars, fire upward out of cannons), B always descended (stomp, slide), and X always moved forward (boost, homing attack, fire cannon forward). It makes sense on paper, but the problems were:
    • After a decade of the homing attack being on the jump button, it was awfully hard for longtime players to overcome their muscle memory, and more importantly...
    • If the player tried to homing attack, but missed the window where they were locked-on, they'd boost instead and probably fly into a bottomless pit. Of course, firing off a homing attack into nothing in previous games could ALSO screw you over, but it wasn't nearly as extreme.
    Even aside from Sonic, it's INCREDIBLY common for platformers to put some kind of mid-air action on the jump button, so while I see what Unleashed was going for, I think it was absolutely the right choice to revert it for every game since.
     

  8. Tell this to the people who still think SA2 is the pinnacle of writing in the series :V


    A lot of fans who grew up on these games are really attached to them, so it's difficult to separate nostalgia from objectivity in many cases, and that's a significant reason for how divisive the fanbase tends to be. Depending on who you speak to, you can get two entirely different opinions on the same product.

    It's very much similar to how Star Wars fans treat each trilogy; you have fans who grew up on the OT and see that as the definitive experience and look down on PT and ST. And then you have the fans who grew up in the respective time periods of the other trilogies, and that's not even getting into all of the side material that links it all. It makes for a very divided and quite frankly, obnoxious fanbase if the quality isn't up to the arbitrary standards they raised for themselves.
     
  9. Josh

    Josh

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    That's a big part of it, but I don't think it'll stay that way forever. You don't see many OG Star Wars fans who are still unhealthily obsessed with tearing down the prequel trilogy, just like you no longer see a lot of Genesis-era Sonic fans who try to gatekeep you if you say something nice about SA2. Eventually, the same will be true of the current state of the discourse: The part of the fandom acting that way will grow out of it. Let me put it like this.

    I grew up watching Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. At the time, it was THE MOST compelling, serious, dramatic, edge-of-my-seat show that I'd ever watched. The fact that it was actually this incredibly low-budget production full of cheesy acting and hamfisted plots went COMPLETELY over my head. And when I watch it now, I can totally see that, of course, but at this point it's part of the charm. I still love it, but I love it in a COMPLETELY different context from how I did back then.

    However. There was a period of time when I was in my teens, maybe even into my early 20s, when I think I would have been outright OFFENDED if I'd heard someone describe my beloved original Power Rangers as a "cheesy, low-budget production." The fact is, that show meant a lot to me when I was a kid, and I would've taken it at least a little personally that other people seemed to be overlooking it or dismissing it, that they didn't see it the way I did. It took time for me to gain the perspective and the maturity to see that, no, it really was an exceedingly dumb show, that I would NEVER have felt the way I do about it if I hadn't grown up with it, and most importantly, that THAT'S OKAY.

    I'm not saying anyone will ever just STOP loving the stories they grew up with, nor should they. But in time, I think most people gain enough perspective to own their own nostalgia, y'know?

    I still love SatAM and the early Archie books, the same way a 20 year old fan now might love SA2 and Black Knight. That kind of appreciation can inspire wonderful things! The current run of Power Rangers comics WORKS because it portrays the series in a way that can make an older fan feel the way they did watching the show when we were kids. Sonic Mania never would have happened if fans didn't absolutely adore the games that inspired it to the degree that we do.

    Nostalgia will give you an appreciation for your formative experiences that nobody else has, and that has value. But you'll love them in a way that no one else WILL, and that's OKAY, but it often takes time to find that balance.
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2020
  10. Have you seen the fall out from The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker?
     
  11. Josh

    Josh

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    I've never been a Star Wars fan, but it's noisy enough that I'm not unaware of it. I prefer to keep some distance, haha. It makes what happened to us in the wake of Sonic 4 look like polite, nuanced discourse. :V
     
  12. Exactly. You'd be surprised by how insane some fans get when they feel like something they cherish is being threatened by a third party; there's a reason Star Wars fans are quintessential nerd stereotype. Honestly, that might actually explain why Sonic fans get such a bad rep, they're the Star Wars fans of the gaming community.


    *sigh* It's all so tiresome. Part of me envies smaller, more niche franchises that don't have to deal with this and just stay self-contained to their own little hub.


    Anyway, to bring this back to Colors; I feel like this was point when Sonic Team started to concede on purely 3D gameplay, but also had no real idea on how 2D gameplay work. So we got this awkward hybrid of the two that just doesn't feel right for anyone.
     
  13. Laura

    Laura

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    I think Chip is actually worse. Elise is mostly sub-par and dull. Her most dumb scenes aren't a problem of her character per say, but the fact they tried to make an awful romance between Sonic and a human. Chip is outright infuriating as a character.

    I feel very similarly. I liked Colors but always thought of it as just an enjoyable Wii game but not much more than that. I think of it in the same way as Mario Kart Wii, New Super Mario Bros, etc rather than say Mario Galaxy. I've only ever played it once and don't have the same affection to it that I do with SA1 and SA2. I only talk about it as much as I do because I find it baffling that so many people have such an intense hatred for it. And I do understand that it has problems. There is too much simplistic block platforming, it would be better if it had more expansive 3D platforming, and the comedy can often be very childish. But I go to bat for it because I think a lot of the less valid criticisms of it come from people who unironically liked the melodramatic stories of 2000s Sonic and never wanted them to go. They like Shadow being edgy, Sonic fighting deity-esque monsters, and the story resembling a bad anime. They criticise the game more for its story and tone than its gameplay and presentation. I think that's why Colors is far more detested than Generations, since Generations barely has a story. They don't like that either, but don't take it to task for completely shifting the series' tone. And it's fine to want a more mature story in a kids game, I know some have expressed hope for Sonic to be more like Epic Mickey for example. But honestly, I think a lot of people just want Sonic stories to go right back to SA2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Shadow's Story in Sonic 2006. I do really like SA2 and enjoy it's story, but I'm also aware it's really dumb. I don't think Sonic Team have any talent in that area.

    Criticism of Generations is a lot fairer I think, revolving around the broken physics, scripts, spindash, wonky movement when Sonic is going slower, etc. I know that some people like @Blue Blood have criticised Generations for not catering to the full-speed thrills of Boost and going for an awkward middle ground in stages like Sky Sanctuary and Seaside Hill. While I don't entirely agree because I do find those stages fun, I do know what he means. Generations' movement is really awkward when doing precise platforming and isn't as good as Adventure in that respect. At its heart the Boost is more like a racing game than a platformer, but the level design in Generations, which I think is pretty good, doesn't really mesh well with the gameplay style.

    Actually, I've noticed that Generations gets bashed a lot less now that Forces has come out. I always had the impression that people criticised Generations more for its use of Boost and now that Forces is the most shallow Boost game, it's used as a symbol for everything wrong with the style. Most critics of Boost now leave Generations as a game which they know has its fans but they just aren't fond of personally. It's fair enough. While I still like the game, I'm definitely not as strong a defender as I used to be. It's almost ten years old now and is starting to show its age.

    I do agree with people that the Boost style is inefficient in developing games, pretty shallow, and we would be better off with a new approach.
     
  14. Generations seemed to always get the least amount of flak out of all 3D games as I find it has the least amount of vocal critics; while people have problems with it, I think the consensus that everyone agrees that it is a good game, if missing out in some of its potential. The Adventure fans generally ignore it because it has no story to criticize, so they probably don't get that same sense of betrayal they had with Colors and Lost World.

    But yea, Colors` most vocal and loud critics, are easily the toxic Adventure fans who grew up with those games and unironically loved all of the shit they were doing, and felt betrayed when the series shifted away from it. You can generally find them on any Twitter, Reddit, or Youtube video that even mentions Ken Pontac or Warren Graff as they're pretty much treated as the scapegoats, along with rest of the voice actors. Sonic fans are very quick to point fingers at people when they feel like something is wrong sadly.

    The 4Kids voice cast had similar flak when they were brought on in 2005, and now we're seeing history repeat itself, except now these kids have social media and they can harass these people whenever they see fit.
     
  15. BadBehavior

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    I've noticed myself thinking this too, and if I had to pin down a reason why, it's because it's, true to its Japanese name: an adventure.

    Unlike Colors, Lost World and Generations that just have some screen where you go to some levels, fighting some nebulous threat to something or other (something about mind control or falling suns or something?), Unleashed just felt real. Like it was a real place with real people and we were fighting a real threat with real stakes.

    And yeah, the voice actor not sounding like a 40-year-old man, delivering cringe only a few rungs of quality above 4chan doesn't hurt either.
     
  16. You know, I honestly have to wonder what standard are we defining "cringe"? Because I always hear people say that about the current voice actors, but what is considered good then.
     
  17. Vanishing Vision

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    This is another thing; while Colors' story is very different from SA2, Shadow, 06, and the storybook games, is it really THAT different from SA1, Heroes, and Unleashed?

    I've said before how odd it is that Unleashed escapes most of the criticism Colors gets plot-wise, despite being the game that I feel really started the change in the series' tone. Look at the portrayal of Eggman in Unleashed compared to 06. He's much more lively, bombastic and excitable, he's ultimately the main villain (Dark Gaia, despite being the final threat, does not speak, only appears at the very end, and is not an active part of the story in the way Chaos was in SA1), he's accompanied by the sarcastic Orbot ver. beta, and he ends up building an amusement park (albeit a significantly less cheerful one). Also, while a little off topic, I feel like Unleashed was the first game where Mike Pollack really "got" Eggman's egomaniacal personality and confidence the way Deem Bristow previously had.

    Unleashed is the first main series game to have Sonic as the only playable character, and Tails and Amy are the only returning animal characters, with limited roles, particularly the latter. There are no new "mysterious rival" types (Metal Sonic, Shadow, Silver, Mephiles, Jet), and no melodramatic conflicts such as Elise's role with the Flames of Disaster, or Erazor Djinn's relationship with Shahra. Endless Possibility is significantly lighter than most of Sonic's previous themes, and characters like Chip, Professor Pickle and his assistant, and beta Orbot are much more comedy-focused than anything in the previous games.

    The only real difference in Colors are the jokes, but again, why is "Baldy McNosehair" that much worse than Chip as a whole? A character who, as highlighted above, comes off as an awful Scrappy-Doo-esque sidekick with a tired running gag of "I like food". Was there anything like Chip in the Adventure stories? Why is Colors highlighted as when Sonic stopped being "like shounen" when Sonic does a literal Kamen Rider finisher in the last battle while the main theme is playing?
     
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  18. Dek Rollins

    Dek Rollins

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    Nah, I won't agree that Generations is a good game. ;)
     
  19. Myles_Zadok

    Myles_Zadok

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    Is it weird that I don't have a problem with any of the voice actors? I think Drummond, Griffith and RCS have all been good voices for Sonic, and I haven't had a problem with anyone for the supporting cast, either. (Granted, I had Sonic Heroes, Sonic X and Sonic Colors all when I was a kid, so maybe I just didn't grow attached to any one voice actor?)

    The lines they were given, on the other hand...

    "We'll show that creep the real superpower of teamwork!"

    "That tornado's carrying a car!"

    "I'll just stick with aliens if that's OK with everybody."

    Yikes.
     
  20. Then that just makes you a contrarian.



    I think people give Chip less flak because overall, he's a better executed character than Yacker, his direct counterpart. Obviously he's not going to appeal to everyone, because let's be real, which Sonic character isn't divisive in some way at this point.

    But Chip has a character arc that spans the entire game, and its rather touching if you can buy into it and his dynamic with Sonic. Yacker is nothing by comparison, and nobody in Colors really learns or understands anything. Its just a series of scenes with little cohesion between them.

    Its not that Unleashed is a "better" story, more that it actually attempts to have one while Colors doesn't. If you don't care much about Sonic stories to begin with, then it's a moot point.



    Ultimately it comes down to preference, because what fucking doesn't, I'm just giving my take why Unleashed doesn't feel as totally different than Colors.