What gameplay features would you want in the next 2D Sonic game?

I never said every Sonic game has to be a 10/10. What I'm saying is, a series as high profile as Sonic shouldn't frequently be releasing 5/10 games. They should aim for 10/10, and if the end result is an 8/10 or a 7/10 that's fine. A 5/10 should be an egregious anomaly.

Sega has acknowledged that they've released too many sub-standard Sonic games. Aaron Webber, on a Sonic live stream, acknowledged that they've released Sonic games where the quality wasn't where it should have been. This isn't a fringe opinion, the company that makes Sonic games knows that they've released too many crummy Sonic games.

I never said they should never get super experimental with 2D Sonic in the future. I said that now is not the time to do that. Sonic Mania is the best received game the series has had in a long, long time, in a sea of poorly received games. Now is not the time to go in a completely different direction with 2D Sonic. Now is the time to maintain that direction with the 2D games, while Sega gets their act together with the 3D games.

They can go weird and off-beat after they've put out all the fires.

This is exactly what I said earlier:

Every Mario platformer is good.

 

The thing about Mario is that it has a good enough name in the eyes of the gaming public that people overlook its worse games. Like, there are far more mediocre Mario games and even outright bad Mario games than most gamers would like to admit, but everyone just collectively pretends they don't exist. Imagine a world where 10 years after it released, people still would not shut the fuck up about Mario Tennis Ultra Smash and Sticker Star being bad every single time Mario gets mentioned, and you have Sonic's situation.

The sole Mario subseries that has even begun to approach a reputation like that of Sonic's is Paper Mario, and it took two godawful trash-heaps out of six games to get to that level, and people still have higher hopes for Paper Mario than Sonic.

 

Just about every Mario platformer gets seen as "good", yes, but the entire NSMB franchise is kinda loathed and/or ignored these days by anyone but normies for being derivative and samey of it's last release. Just as Mario Galaxy 2 was nagged at for being a level pack, and Mario 3D World (as much as I love it) was considered at it's time a step back from it's previous entries considering it didn't seem to innovate far past the 3DS title released prior to it. And don't even get me started on Sunshine's current reception, if we're gonna act like they're all loved without question.

Meanwhile the series' more experimental titles (SMB3, Mario 64, Galaxy, Odyssey) get immense praise for pushing envelopes and throwing new spins on the series in ways previously undone.

Anyways, that's not even to mention that on subject of quality, Mario games are made under a pressure cooker with 2-4 year dev cycles, extreme talent handpicking, and all the budget they need to make their visions come true. Most video games in the industry don't have that kind of luck, ESPECIALLY Sonic, so why are we still bent to this day on expecting Sonic to be the same? I mean I'd absolutely love it to be, but I'm speaking in realism, not ideals.

So just let Sonic do what it desires, as long as it makes a good game in the process. Why lock possibilities behind some kind of expectations? It's not like said expectations haven't been shattered for years now.

 

True, but there's a critical difference. Mario's had some absolute trash games over the years, especially in his early years (pun intended). Mario is Missing, Mario's Time Machine, Yoshi, Sports Superstars, Ultra Smash...

Likewise Sonic, even from the beginning, had its share of mediocre or even outright poor titles: Chaotix, Spinball, R, Labyrinth, Drift, Blast...

But critically, none of these were mainline titles. As long as the core series was healthy, a few clunky spin-offs and handheld ports wouldn't persist in the popular consciousness long enough to damage the brand. The problem Sonic encountered in his second decade was that in a sense, the script was flipped: The handheld titles and spin-offs were often still well-regarded, but they couldn't make up for the black hole of critical negativity that was Sonic Team's mainline output.

If Mario had that kind of situation, where a string of increasingly poorly-regarded mainline platformers was released, which culminated in a game hampered by so much developmental pressure that it caused Shigeru Miyamoto to leave Nintendo, then yeah, I'm pretty sure people would still be talking about it.

 

Yeah, the difference between bad Mario games and bad Sonic games is that none of the bad Mario ones were mainline. The lowest-rated mainline Mario game on Metacritic is The Lost Levels, which has a 77/100 - just one point below Sonic Colors, which many fans (myself included) consider one of the best Sonic games.

 

I seem to recall Sonic being disliked and treated as a has-been in the mid 90's, back when the series was releasing only handheld games and spin-offs, even though there weren't any bad mainline games yet.

 

Funny that; iirc it was because Sonic 1, 2, CD, 3 and Knuckles in rapid succession had people fatigued with the same thing back to back, thinking it to be a one trick pony by the time S&K released. Granted part of it was also due to no 3D game, but still.

 

I think the issue then was that the original trilogy looked increasingly passé in an industry that was hyper-focused on 3D as the new standard, and Sonic just... wasn't making the leap yet. Sonic Team instead spent the generation making NiGHTS and Burning Rangers; X-Treme was cancelled, while a Genesis game made by a third-party was hastily ported to the Saturn in its place. As the face of the company, Sonic's reputation was intrensicly tied to Sega's, and when the Saturn couldn't get off the ground, neither could he.

However, Sega had little issue building hype and anticipation for Sonic Adventure a few years later. "The blue blur is back!" they said, and people were receptive. Sonic was down for a few years, but he was still respected, and it took more than one mediocre game for that to erode. A late as the pre-release period for Heroes, I've found mainstream publications calling Sonic Team "one of the premiere development houses in the world."

EDIT: And yeah, what @Azookara said, too. In less than 3.5 years, approximately as long as we've had Sonic Mania, Sega put out all five mainline 16-bit Sonic titles. It's likely that a hiatus did him some good at that point.

EDIT 2: It's almost exactly equivalent. Sonic 1 to Sonic & Knuckles was 1,213 days. Sonic Mania to now was 1,209!

 

Why does a desire for a couple more Mania-esque games with original zones and new level gimmicks somehow imply eternal stagnation for the entire franchise?

 

Because I've already had five other games almost exactly like Mania in structure? Ones I've played over and over for 20 plus years?

I would appreciate one more game like this for sure (one with all original stages at least), but I don't get the mentality that Sonic doesn't need to move away from this for the rest of his days either. As if we've cracked the code on how to make a Sonic game, no more experimentation beyond what conveniently slips into the existing template.

 

They're all good games. They were all well received. Most of them were very well received. Several of them are considered among the very best the genre has to offer.

A Sonic Mania sequel wouldn't require 3-4 years or a massive budget and the team is already established. That's one of the reasons why it would be a good idea to make more games like that.

 

Dude I cannot give a single bit of a care about how well-recieved these games are, as if that's gonna be the be-all-end-all that makes me decide if I care about a game or not. LOL

We seem really bent on that in here. If I or others found a game dull or clumsy, regardless of what a critic-approved metric offers, why should we change our minds? Same if we found a game enjoyable! I don't know why we speak as if critical reception speaks for a majority here. Is it to justify our own biases? Because it really seems like it at times.

Yeah, and making nothing but these sequels in between the time of Mania and something new would probably burn people out on the same scale that 1-3K did back to back. Even without coming out as fast as they did, just simply making more your only answer for a new title would leave people's enamor with it to fade.

Consistently good games or not, I'd say it's worse to burn out than fade away.

 

This thread is making me dizzy. Depending on your desired definition, it has been either 26 or 19 at this point since a string of Classic Sonic games have released. The most recent, standalone, release was over 3 years ago now. If you're bored of Classic Sonic then perhaps this thread, or potentially the heart of this whole community, is just not for you.

I cannot fathom how anyone could be concerned with the series suffering from stagnation when we haven't even been granted a stream of releases unless you count re-releases of games we've had in our collective posession since the 1990s. If/when we get a Mania 2 and the cycle of getting trickle-fed information blasts off for Dr. Eggman presents Sonic Mania Third Strike then I would see the potential worrying arise. That honestly depends on the quality of content delivered in Mania 2 though.

 

And I'd appreciate a couple more. You also didn't answer my question. You just said you personally are tired of playing classic Sonic games. How does me wanting a couple more games like that imply that I want the franchise to stagnate indefinitely?

 

I feel like I can say that if the last games you truly liked before Mania were in the mid 90s, then this series is not for you. But I suppose I am on Retro.

Because it seems any suggestion of a new idea past what they and Mania offer is shot down with a reason why that is hard coded. Noones really got the imagination to see something work that they haven’t seen before. Would love to be proven wrong, but have I yet?

 

Your post was about how those Mario games were received by others.

"the entire NSMB franchise is kinda loathed and/or ignored these days by anyone but normies"
"Mario Galaxy 2 was nagged at for being a level pack"
"Mario 3D World (as much as I love it) was considered at it's time a step back"
"And don't even get me started on Sunshine's current reception"

That's what we've been discussing.

As I said earlier, everyone's tastes are valid. There is no objective good or bad for a video game.

But a video game publisher cannot rely on one single person's opinion to get an idea of what people thought of their game. They need to look at the bigger picture.

When a bunch of Mario games get great reviews and great word of mouth, that's something Nintendo can take into consideration. And yes, "It's a great game, BUT..." is also feedback they can take into consideration.

When a bunch of Sonic games get poor reviews and bad word of mouth, that's something Sega can take into consideration. When a Sonic game gets the best reviews and best word of mouth the series has seen a very, very long time, that's definitely something Sega can take into consideration.

It's about reading the room, knowing the audience.

You're allowed to dislike a well received Mario game. You're allowed to like a poorly received Sonic game. That's absolutely fine.

 

I just don’t think it’s wise to take critical reception as word of god, is my main thing I want people to take away from this.

Because I clearly want Sonic games to be good, and me and critics agree more than disagree, but I think following their word as structure for future titles doesn’t ensure anything unless your biases run with them.

 

I think if Sega knew what they were doing with the series then they should just run wild. But they don't know what they're doing with the series and running wild led to some of their worst creative decisions. So they should let the team that does know how to make good Sonic games keep on making that kind of Sonic game while they get their own house in order.

 

So what if they don't get it in order? What if Sonic just never puts out the quality of titles that you want him to, should we just be subjected to Mania sequels for the rest of our days?

What's funny about this is that you have people who liked Mania, but consider it inferior to Sonic 3 & Knuckles for a variety of reasons. So it's not like Mania has dethroned 3&K as the magnum opus of 2D gameplay either.

I get it, you guys are drunk on the critical reception of Mania, finally got that validation you've been looking for that the series doesn't "suck", but this is the same type of validation people had when Sonic Colors came out. So are we going to go down that same path of letting this one game dictate the direction of the series until we inevitably get tired of it, and the community subsequently turns on it?

I love Mania, and I wouldn't mind getting more of it; but I think it says a lot about this site that some of you are so willing to put all of your eggs in a basket for a game that barely surpasses one from 1994. Nobody is saying that Mania needs to be abandoned, but to be more just a bit more open-minded.

 

Subjected to Mania sequels? Drunk on its critical reception? If these are the kinds of arguments you have to make, if this is what you think of people who aren't happy with Sega driving its star franchise into the ground, then there is nothing more of value to be gained from this thread.