Sonic Colors stealing Sonic 4's thunder?

How can one expect to be surprised?

 

I would wait till event to speculate.

I followed TSSZ's sources. Andriasang.com reports: "The final lineup, both for Sega and its partner companies, will likely increase beyond what's shown here. As an example, Sega's current lineup fails to mention the new PlayStation 3 Yakuza game which has already been confirmed for a Tokyo Game Show reveal." (Source)

Also, has their been other occasions where Sonic 4 wasn't announced in a line-up, yet appeared anyways? Secondly, Sonic 4 is a downloadable title -- does it get special treatment because of this? Also, it could perhaps be a surprise, though doubt it.

To add, it makes no sense to me on why both games wouldn't be on display, unless the old Sonic 4 is a demoing mess, and no new build is available to be displayed. Gaming conventions like this are an excellent way for developers to present and showoff and hype their games to maximize their sales.

 

maybe because everyone's tired of the same fucking splash hill demo that's been at every event for the past 6 months, and lost labyrinth isn't ready to be demo'ed

 

Eh... I am not too excited for either at the moment. Sonic Colors just makes me think of Unleashed 360, which I find to be extremely frustrating, whereas Sonic 4... just seems not all that long-term-fun-ish at all, to me.

 

I don't understand why a company would be worried about having two games of the same franchise receiving so much attention, but Sega isn't really famous for making successful business decisions or PR, besides the guerrilla marketing from the older games. As much as hype is good, marketing won't do much for these two games at this point - if Sonic 4 is bad and gets bad reviews, people will not buy it. The super-hardcore fans will buy it anyway. And since at this point everybody knows S4 exists, their main worry should be the quality of the game, not the marketing. It's, in a way, one of the many things the company's been doing so wrong in the past few years. Sonic Colors attention is actually pretty good if they manage it right.

As for the fans, this is all good. It's been a while since there were two Sonic games people could look forward to, even if you're disappointed at S4 and/or don't enjoy Sonic Colors genre/style.

 

I don't think that the writer of the editorial really thinks that there is some kind of conspiracy going on, and that Sega really want one of their games selling less - for whatever reason. I think it's a more metaphorical comment, trying to show how the situation is absurd, and the expectations of Sega in relation to their fans is completely fucked up.

That said, I have to say I quite liked the gameplay of Sonic Unleashed (despite the Werehog). Not exactly a perfect transition from the classic 2D gameplay, but it's fun in its own right; I can easily identify it as something Sonic-ish. There is no other game on the market that offers the kind of satisfaction that I have when I fly through the levels of Unleashed at the speed of sound. (This does not mean that I think the game is perfect, of course.) So Sonic Colors is clearly the winner in the race. It is basically all that Unleashed was good at in a new game, only better. While Sonic 4 is basically all the classic games had in a new game, only worse. Well, kind of. Anyway, the point is that it isn't difficult to decide between them. What is strange, is to see that Sega does not (seem to) understand this.

 

Sure is Wall-Of-Text in here.

Sega does pull some dumb shit, but they wouldn't sabotage one game for the sake of the other. They're trying to sell both. If they weren't, they'd just cancel one of them, that way the remaining one sells.

 

I've thought about that, but then I think about how fun it was to just run around in Sonic Adventure, even in the hub worlds, without me ever wondering what the hell was wrong with the camera. Then I wonder what people were bitching about. Was the camera that frustrating at times? I suppose it could've used some tightening, but I'd have to play it again to notice it. Even if I did I won't expect to be raging by the end of it unless you force me to play as Big ten times or something. Besides, I'd hate to ruin an otherwise good game over a technicality, extraneous playable characters notwithstanding. That's just me.

Well, people have asked me that before, and I always tell them the same thing.

 

I feel the same way about most of the crap people complain about Sonic 4 on a daily basis. Like the walking on walls crap, how the game uses the Sonic Rush engine... I went back and played Rush and it turns out, yes, you can sort of "walk on walls", and people scream bloody murder about it, but I honestly can't see how it's that big of a deal. I just for the life of me can't.

And I can tell that my and a select few others' experiences with Sonic 4 are going to be largely the same. We'll play through it and enjoy it while everyone is going on about how the physics are shit and how this and that and the other thing is bad, and it won't be until after the fact that we notice it and say "So what's the problem?"

 

Well, obviously physics extend to more than just walking on walls. It also influences gameplay (bouncing, running, building up speed), difficulty, and the distinctiveness that is old-school Sonic the Hedgehog. It also shares mutual influence with the actual design of the game. Also the older games I consider far more fun than Rush, but that's not to say Rush is totally bad. I just personally don't enjoy the series much, and am not really looking forward to Rush 3 or Colours DS. That's about it.

 

Oh, I'm not saying Rush is the best Sonic game in the world, but it's definitely no where near as bad as people make it out to be.

 

Perhaps not, but remember all those promises of momentum based gameplay? That doesn't exist in Rush and hasn't been added to S4.

 

Yeah that's pretty much what I've been saying all along about the media blitz. If they they worked half as hard on making Sonic 4 a faithful sequel as Ruby Eclipse and his time spend trying to convince us and themselves that this is the ultimate true sequel, it might actually have lived up to the hype. I found Jun's story about not being able to find a complete Megadrive dev kit especially telling. A big company like SEGA and they couldn't get a hold of a fucking terradrive for him? Or at least do a few basic google searches about Megadrive sound fonts or something? Please!

 

Almost makes me wonder what happened to Sega when the Fans can out do the company they're a fan of.

 

Must suck for a company's morale. Though you could attribute Sega's "fall" to problems much more detrimental.



So to simplify things for us, SEGA is going to separate restrooms.……hmmm.

When a franchise doesn't meet expectations, fans tend to want to take the reins. The problem with listening to an audience too much is that opinions and circumstances change over the course of a video game's development. You'd think the higher ups would have caught on to that by now.

I too blame a lot of Sonic 4's reception to it's distractingly awkward add-campaign; audacious yet hypocritical, mature yet childish, inexpensive yet cheap, charming yet insulting- no wonder the patrons are nervous. It's as if SEGA maintains a sense of professionalism when they keep their trap shut.

I do not expect any company to have a throne returned to them due to the success of one or two titles, especially not with a greenish crew and all, but hopefully these games will build a foundation for something, be it experience, reputation, or better connections. In the meantime, the folks in charge could stand to retake Human Psychology 101.

 

Or restructured management. Either way, SEGA's got a long history of poor decisions and unprofessional business relationships that have tarnished its success, and we certainly haven't seen the last of it as of recently. We can only invest the slim hope that things will change and the games will be good enough to keep us on board. In the mean time, they're fucking games. I like playing games. Games are fun. And so are cartoons and comics. Yeah.

 

Yes! I am far more excited about Sonic Colors than Sonic the Hedgehog 4. When I saw Sonic Colors, my first impression was "What the heck!?" But now, after looking into what they've been revealing over time, I've come to find myself waiting for it to finally arrive.

My first impression of Sonic the Hedgehog 4 is still the same as it is now. "LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE!!!"

As long as Sega makes sure that the level maps of Sonic Colors aren't linear like Sonic Unleashed and Sonic and the Black Knight Has a story that isn't downright stupid (like both of those and Next-Gen) and/or including Sonic beating up an innocent girl for his bias opinion *cough*I feel so sorry for merlina*cough*, and the new actors (Roger Craig Smith & Kate Higgens) can do their roles well, I will most likely not complain.

 

Honestly, after the whole physics thing was found out, Sonic 4's already terrible criticism became a lot worse, and for good reason. I think that this should serve as a lesson to Sega. They can do a modern 3D Sonic game right if they try- because Colors seems to be that- but they've surely lost their flare for classic-style fun that pleases the actual target audience (and thus has to abide by the Classic fans' very, very strict expectations which are there for good reason- because they expect a game to be as good or better than what they remember if it's going to be a sequel to their treasured trilogy).

That, or Sonic 4 was just under-budgeted and limited in resources, dedication and time to make a truly good product in the first place. I honestly think Sonic 4 should have been given a much bigger budget and made into a major release disk game, rather than DLC that's cheap and severely budgeted in production.

 

I don't even think it needs a disk release, they just should put as much time and effort into it as companies do the average XBLA game. It shouldn't only be comprised of 4 levels, there should be 7+ like the classics with at least 2 acts each.

 

Derp, month-old news. Just seen this topic. So apparently, we're supposed to look forward to Sonic 4 because Colours isn't for us, it's for the under-12s. Man, they put a hell of a lot more effort into pleasing that audience! Honestly, having played both games I know which I'd rather buy and it doesn't rhyme with "chronic bore".