…you recommend Forces, Frontiers, and Superstars for newcomers? Those poor souls. And I say that as someone who actually didn’t hate Forces in the small amount of time I spent with it, and who likes Superstars a lot.
Recommending Forces and Frontiers is just... I mean, I guess technically those are more functional and accessible (IE not needing emulation or decomps) than most other Sonic games, but I can't imagine they'd be sold on the series when playing it. If we ever reach a point where fans are genuinely nostalgic for those games, I might walk into the sea.
It's really no big deal. Superstars is just the next classic game after Mania, and if a player has already had to deal with S2 Death Egg, by that point there's not a lot of shit it can pull that they haven't already seen. Forces is better for newcomers than longtime fans, since the disappointment with its shallow mechanics or the parts of the story that piss people off require an expectation that isn't necessarily present without an established history with the series. It has a brisk pace to its campaign and a deviantart OC-creation tool built-in. It's empty popcorn fluff entertainment, and that's fine. Time is already in the process of massaging its reputation the same way it already has for the Sonic games that are actually bad. Frontiers, dogshit cyberspace controls notwithstanding, was fun when it came out and is still fun now. The modern games at their jankiest are still less jank than the port-rot that the unmodded Adventure games have undergone. Origins and Superstars still overall contain more balanced design-sense than Advance or Rush, even if I like those games better. It's not about delivering the deepest, most-perfectest possible experiences, it's about getting a good feel for the series in a format that doesn't innately piss newbies off. It's the same reason I recommend Zero Mission over Super Metroid or Fusion, or Bioshock over System Shock, or David Tennant Doctor Who over Peter Capaldi Doctor Who. To be clear, I recommend each of these with the expectation players are playing each one I mention, not just picking them out of a hat.
I'm sure we'll get those eventually, just like we have people who actually like, and are nostalgic for, Sonic Adventure 2 or Sonic Heroes or Sonic 06 or Sonic Colors. It's okay. But even if Sonic Forces was a fantastic game, I think it wouldn't be much of a good entry point to the series. It references so much outside of itself, and its whole premise being a big what-if scenario that only has any impact at all if you know what the status quo is supposed to be, that it ends up being something of an in-joke for those who have actually played any other Sonic game before.
I find the character creator in Forces extremely cute. It's not good per se, I just really like the idea of people messing around with it. Yeah, make that oc. As for recommending games , I have some thoughts (not recommendations for this thread) The main factors in recommending games are 1. What the newbie is expecting to see 2. (And I think people don't think about this) what kind of a fan the recommender expects the newbie to become.
It is exactly because of that second factor that I’d never recommend Forces or Frontiers. Because the experience those game brings are ones that do not well captures the appeal or strengths of the series. Recommending newbies “empty popcorn fluff entertainment” (which also applies to much of Frontiers’ content in the open world or even the entirety of the game depending on how you configure it) is pointless and wasting their time. Also, the death egg robot is one boss. That’s honestly relatively short. At the end of the game. In an era where they’re not playing a version with limited continues, because there is no reason for them to. Superstars has numerous bosses I could easily see making for a lot of tedium and boredom to outright misery. I can easily see the bosses alone ruining that game for people. And it is still ultimately more glitchy than it should be.
That's why I draw a distinction between 2D and 3D. I don't say all this to "I had a Genesis in 1995 and..." or "i play Sonic Adventures 1 2 whats next" comments. I would never recommend Forces to someone who wants a game like Sonic 3, but I think most young noobs can pick that game up and have an okay time with it. And let's be honest, they're gonna be the ones making reddit threads asking how to get into a series. Adults over the age of 25 are more likely to venture in blind or learn to google "best Sonic games", and younger kids will probably just play whatever you put in front of them. That being said, I do hate when someone is getting into a series and the first thing they ask is "which parts are skippable?". Our collective trauma from shonen anime filler has unfortunately conditioned multiple entertainment industries to chop off any part of their media that doesn't objectively explicitly forward its own plot hurtling toward a climax. Convenient how we only have to make eight-episode TV seasons now, even though they're still way more expensive and take three years to come out. How about skip your internal biases. How about skip your urge to rush through media without actually engaging with it. How about what if the world is actually beautiful and you need to take the time to see that for yourself. That entirely depends on what you think "the appeal or strengths of the series" actually are, or indeed whether other Sonic games even embody them. Personally, I think Sonic at its best is what we see from 3K, and there is absolutely not a single 3D Sonic game that even comes close to that. I like the Adventure games, Colors and Generations, and Forces, and none of them give me that, they give me different thrills and challenges. Forces is a watered-down version of those, sure, but it's not one so devoid of any value that it shouldn't be allowed to sit next to its friends. Not like Unleashed, whose day stages can individually body most of Colors or Forces, but which is such a bloated chore to play that I would never, ever recommend it to a newcomer, despite seeing people do that all the time. You know what kind of fan someone who starts with Unleashed becomes? An exhausted one, that's what. It's two bosses actually, the latter of which without a set pattern to learn, that you have to do without taking a single hit, and no checkpoint between them. That can absolutely cause every negative emotion you're projecting here at once. Superstars has overlong bosses, but only a couple of them are frustratingly punishing the way Death Egg's difficulty spike is. Not a single boss in Superstars is an insta-kill on every attack. Objectively, only one of these examples is demanding perfection from players.
How about instead we respect peoples’ time and money by not recommending them garbage that people generally don’t like? There’s always going to be exceptions…. Dear God there is always going to be exceptions if this fandom has taught me anything. But I’m not going be mad at someone if they decide they’ rather play/engage with the better aspects of a series (or another series, there’s plenty) rather than playing Forces, Lost World, 4, 06, Frontiers, a good majority of the spin-offs, or even if they want to skip stuff like the adventure games, Unleashed, Heroes, or Shadow. I mean, you can make them AWARE of stuff like this. Because who knows, they might love ALL this stuff. (There are plenty poor souls who do.) But I’m not RECOMMENDING them this stuff because, frankly… Not everything is worth engaging with.
That's what I'm already doing. Maybe it's not something you personally consider worth the recommendation, but that's not my problem. The point of what you're quoting is that viewing art as a set of things to strip down to the barest essentials without meaningfully forming an opinion on them is a vapid and cynical way to go about consuming media, not that you have to force yourself to experience every possible avenue of a medium just because. The opinion can still be "I don't want to play this", you just shouldn't enter looking for ways to avoid things on-purpose. It's entirely separate from the thing about Forces, which is one game out of seven that I'm telling people to play because I think it's fun.
Make no mistake. I understand what you’re saying. I just don’t agree. It is kind of messed up to the “artist”, (this is a company whose goal is to get your money. More relevantly, in Sonic Team’s case, that kind of starts to feel like all it is more often than it should be). And true, you will rob yourself of experiences thinking like this… …But I honestly don’t care. It’s still a perfectly valid way of thinking in my eyes. Probably a personal thing. But when I start something, a show, a game, a movie, or whatever… GENERALLY I tend to stick with it to completion. And that tends to include even stuff I don’t like. (I don’t know. Maybe I think things will improve) And in the end, when I look back on it, there have been plenty of times where my main takeaway was, “I just wasted my time.” I don’t like doing that. So I tend to not be quick to jump on things.
I'm increasingly unsure that you do understand what I mean. I'm literally not saying you should force yourself to experience something you don't think you'll like. I'm just saying that entering onto a new story with the mindset of leaving as much out of it as possible without examining whether it's worth that from the very beginning is stupid. I am referring to a specific phenomenon in which people are intentionally not thinking for themselves. If you see a Sonic game and think "I don't want to play this", I'm already not talking about you. I still haven't bothered with any of the Mario Olympics crossovers, for instance, because I looked at them and decided they weren't for me. I think the criticism of someone who can't muster up enough effort for that is totally deserved.
You’re right. I was misunderstanding you. Got thrown off by a few things you said earlier about media in general. But honestly… Even then I don’t really take issue with that in itself True, if someone is literally, solely just going off what others say in determining their views about something, not doing so based on their experience with said thing, I’m never going to take them seriously if they decide to discuss and share such views on this stuff. In fact, that is one of many common sources of annoyance I have with this fandom. The parroting But outside of the criticism and sharing aspect of that, if someone decides they want to avoid unpopular aspects of a franchise based on hearsay, deciding they just don’t want to get involved with all that… So what? I don’t care. It’s a videogame. And maybe they’re right. Stuff tends to be disliked for a reason. Even if it’s not a good one.
There's an interview Tyler, The Creator did where he talks about how much he hates Hip Hop Twitter, where teenagers make tierlists of different artists and how most of these lists are the same and, and this is how I interpret his words, uncompelling. Some kid putting Tupac in their top 10 doesn't feel right. It feels like kids are compelled to put Tupac on top of their lists cause...well it's fucking Tupac. a lot of personality gets lost in trying to discuss music when everyone defaults to the classics. It's a disservice to how tastes, sensibilities and artistic personalities develop. I share the same sentiment. If a younger fan came to me and said that all their favorite games of the franchise are all the universally beloved titles, I would have a hard time believing them, there are tons of games out there, you're telling me that none of them offered something you really appreciated? None? Nothing? Ironically, I would think they don't have very well developed tastes. It's not necessary to play bad games to appreciate the good ones, but to act like all that is good has been explored in the classics, and the contemporary or the lesser entries have nothing to offer, is just flat out wrong to me. (to provide a recent example, SxSG is based on the most universally hated aspects of the series, it didn't stop people from loving and salvaging something from that era) sometimes you need to put PookieDookie's second album in A tier.
Lol Sonic Frontiers is perfecftly fine to be introduced for new people, it's the game is attracting attention for the most in gen Z and alpha. 4 of my friends that never played Sonic before or have played and not vibed are very interestred in getting Sonic Frontiers to play. It will depend for personal taste, sure. but being a open world game is more enough to drag many people's interest in. And "but there's better open world games" and? That doesn't need stop people having interest in Sonic Frontiers too, consider the fact many young people think Sonic is a very cool characters. Nowdays Shadow Generations is probably a better option for recomendation, but I still think Sonic Frontiers is fine. Sonic Forces I'm not sure, probably debatable, but it's not Sonic '06 or Secret Rings, so anyone who'll play it will survive. At worst, they will just think it's mid or something.
Well, you’re kind of saying it yourself. People don’t have interest in Frontiers as a Sonic game. They have interest in it as yet another open world game. in other words, this is just another example of Sonic Team trend-chasing, except this time it kind of worked. Worked as in getting them sales. Most of it’s content is low-quality, low effort “busy-work” garbage and the game’s is aesthetically unappealing for the most part but that’s beside the point. Yeah, you can recommend it as a game to play. As a game to get into the series however… Again, it is not representative of the series. Not besides the way I just mentioned at least.
I don't think there's any merit in trying to establish what's representative of the series. It's a 35 year old series, it's not like you can reach any kind of average experience. At this point we have the same number of games with open zones as games with Adventure style gameplay roulettes, and we're bound to have more games like Frontiers in the future. Value judgements like "it's just busywork" hardly matter, really.
derailing and going back to the JP vs. US sonic convo for a sec: I always found it so funny how Crash Bandicoot went through the polar opposite of what Sonic went through in the 90's. Crash's character in-game is a sort of wacky endearingly lovable goofball but they very heavily marketed him in the west as this abrasive 'cool dude with attitude' type character. I think it had an impact on how people view him as a character because there are some people who still kind of shrug him off as a lesser Sonic. (don't get me wrong I think this ad was funny as hell) They reworked Crash's design and marketing for Japan and ended up with a version that was ironically way more authentic and game-accurate than the American advertising lol
I think what 3D game do you introduce to a newcomer is a really interesting question. With the 2D games it is easy. You tell them to play Mania. Then play Origins if they are curious to discover the classics. But 3D is harder. I'd want to say Adventure but it's got loads of problems. Sonic X Shadow Generations is probably a good choice but I'm also not sure I'd want to recommend it. It relies a lot on knowing the source material (much more than I think). Also, I just don't think it's particularly memorable in a way which would hook someone if they never played Sonic. It's good but it isn't going to really capture you. Colors not a bad call but honestly it's just kind of dull. Honestly I'd just tell someone that Sonic has never been great in 3D and to play Adventure 1 and 2 if they are curious about a true representation of Sonic in 3D. But very much as a curiosity. And I think if you want to experience Sonic in 3D you have to experience it warts and all. Strange analogy but I have this friend who loves Always Sunny and wants to show it to his girlfriend. However, he's understandably worried she'll hate it because of its problematic content. I always tell him look, the show's just like that, you have to accept it. Sonic in 3D has similar issues with its melodramatic stories and bizarre design decisions. I think Sonic x Shadow Gens is like watching am inoffensive but non memorable Always Sunny Episode. Same with Colors. While Adventure is like the DENNIS system. True representation which will either rub people wrong way or really draw them in. In that respect, I get recommending Frontiers. As much as I dislike the game it feels very authentically 3D Sonic in spirit.
