Sonic Heroes Discussion

If Sonic Adventure 2 was the first sign the series was about to nosedive, Sonic Heroes was the confirmation.

Terrible game. Can barely stomach the first area, and usually if I'm in a good mood, I can get to Power Plant before I just go screw this game.

Also it was an ugly game (why are the characters all made of glossy plastic?) with shopping cart on ice physics.

 

If the enemies didn't have a health bar and they didn't shamelessly cut and paste the first half of the level twice to make the levels artificially longer, then it might have been fun. As it stands though it's too repetitive and long.

Now if certain enemies could only be destroyed by power characters, ala Sonic Runners, that's a different story. I'd be ok with that, as long as they don't take multiple hits.

 

It's a good game with bad design choices.

Let's put it this way. I've played Heroes from front to back, multiple times. I 100%ed the damn game once or twice. I'm good at the game, I'm used to its controls and physics, and I enjoy it when I play it. But there's no way in hell I'm going to recommend it to others without warning them how hard it is to control.

So think of it like Super Smash Bros. Melee. That game is difficult to master, but once you've mastered it you can do amazing things... or so I've heard. But I can't say for myself, because any time I pick it up, I spend a lot of my time dying repeatedly and getting angry at the game for how precise and finicky the controls are to me. The difference here, of course, is that there's a veritable army of people defending Melee as the greatest game of all time. :v:

 

The one good trend Sonic Heroes did start was the bang up soundtrack despite the game being trash. Grand Metropolis and Final Fortress

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRUdjM6-iR8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-K6wBMBl1g

Those aren't even the best examples (After all this is the undisputed best), just the overlooked ones imo. And Heroes definitely is not the BEST music in the series, but certainly some good stuff. And its a trend that continues to this day I've noticed. Sega makes good music, but bad games. Keep it up Jun. At least you'll have Crush 40 to lean on when the ship sinks.

 

Well, it did have its flaws, but in the end, I enjoyed Sonic Heroes. I only cringed at a few lines. It's not the best Sonic game out there, but I have seen worse.

 

I like to look at Heroes as the most prominent case in the series of what happens when you take an interesting gameplay concept (teamwork mechanics), twist it until it breaks, and then design what otherwise could had been a good game around it.* Ignoring the paper-thin story, the graphics, artstyle (locations anyway, don't know why they chose the overly glossy depiction for the characters), and music were all pretty solid, and the multiplayer component was also nicely fleshed out-probably moreso than any other Sonic game to date. Shame the controls were slippery and the teamwork mechanics was wasted on combat with enemies with lifebars or engaging in expository key-lock puzzles in extraordinarily linear and lengthy levels. Which the game then required you to do three more times for the sheer sake of having other characters involved and giving a reason to either create new characters -Omega- or resurrect characters from the dead (both figuratively -the Chaotix- and literally -Shadow-).

I say this as someone who holds a fair amount of nostalgia for the game-it was my very first 3D Sonic game and the first time I was exposed to the Sonic rebranding started with Adventure. I also do like all of the other aforementioned characters created / revived (barring Charmy, and even then I don't exactly hate him).

*Lost World would be number 1 if the problems of that game were mostly limited to the parkour mechanics, but the controls and especially the level design also play a large part of dragging the game down.

EDIT: Just realized I already made a post in this thread several months ago....oops, especially since my thoughts about it back then aren't really different from what I think of it now.

 

While Heroes was definately flawed, I always loved its art direction. The stages made me feel like I'm on Mobius again and not in some generic real world location

 

Sonic Heroes was the first 3D Sonic Game that I've finished. One of the things that I really liked was the music. The graphics and the zone themes were very colorful and brilliants, my favorites were Egg fleet and Bullet Station (although Bingo Highway and Mystic Mansion were fun too)

The main problem was that each stage were extremely long and very repetitive. The different teams were a nice touch but there wasn't any difference except the difficulty of each stage. The story was ok except that "Power of Teamwork" thing.

 

Someone want to make a hack that puts the goal rings at the mid point of the levels?

 

The only way I think I could end up enjoying Sonic Heroes is if they ported all the stages to SA2 or something. At least it'd control reasonably well then.

The game's controls, mechanics, design decisions, storytelling, and whatever else make it probably the second most unbearable Sonic game I've ever played. I mean yeah I used to like it as a kid, but that opinion faded fast as I got older. It's just tacky, wonky, obnoxiously loud and overall... well, bad. In every conceivable way except for environment design and music.

 

I wouldn't mind the assets being used to make a Generations level, but the levels themselves likely still wouldn't be that fun to play. They'd likely have to be redesigned anyway though, considering how different the mechanics are in the games.

 

Yeah, true. I mentioned SA2 only really because I imagined Heroes' stages would work better with a game that doesn't have a boost, but even then I still imagine it'd have it's wonkiness, given it being SA2 and all.

Honestly Heroes only really had the stage visuals and music to go for it and everything else was absolutely unsalvageable. I've heard a decent few people say that they'd want a remake of Heroes, but I honestly can't find a single reason to think it'd ever be a good thing. I mean, you'd basically be making an entirely new game. What's the point?

 

Heroes had the perfect amount of plot for a Sonic game, and the way they treated the small cutscenes before each stage was just enough to give it character, but not enough to be intrusive. That, besides the music, is really the only good thing I can say about Heroes.

 

I just wish there were more proper Eggman bosses, instead of fighting other teams or several waves of his badniks. I really liked fighting Egg Hawk, Egg Emperor, and Metal Overlord.

 

I just started replaying it recently, for the first time in 4 years or so. My first impression of the game was "completely mixed bag". I remember thinking the music was good, if not really outstanding; the graphics were pretty standard 6th-gen fare; the controls were somewhat annoying but still completely workable; and that the game felt very polished in certain aspects but not others. Overall, though, it was such a slog-fest, starting from Rail Canyon- Heroes is probably the most sluggish of the main 3D Sonics, even more so than Shadow the Hedgehog (which, for all its faults, didn't force gimmicky team mechanics that didn't work some of the time).

The stages just took too long to finish, upwards of 10 minutes each. I was tired of them after the 3 minute mark or so. When the same problem resurfaced with a vengeance in Lost World 3DS, I immediately thought of Heroes. Come to think of it, Lost World 3DS borrows quite a few of its problems from Heroes, from gimmicky gameplay to long-ass levels to multi-hit enemies and even some of the music.


Replaying it recently, a few things have changed. Now that I'm older and a better gamer in general, the game's difficulty no longer poses much of a threat. The levels don't feel quite as interminably long as they used to, which is a good thing. That said, the game still feels much slower than any other Sonic game, and the forced combat sections still suck. The controls are quite slippery, but surprisingly I find them more responsive than the most recent stuff from Unleashed to Generations; I think it's just that I prefer Adventure-style gameplay and Heroes still has that. The music has grown on me and I can't stop listening to some of it; the voice acting has not. Most importantly, I can tell that Sonic Team really cared about the game and tried to appeal to classic fans: the surprise inclusion of Metal Sonic, the Chaotix, and Special Stages.

Overall, my verdict is that Sonic Team tried very hard to spice up the franchise with their new, ballsy teamwork gimmick, and their effort shows; however some problems are simply a product of the game's age, a time when Sonic Team didn't have any clue of the franchise's crash and burn in the coming years. It's a sincere, polished effort with fundamental problems that they couldn't possibly have foreseen. For that, I give this game a thumbs-up.

 

Yes. The same prototype had what would become Sea Gate's music for Ocean Palace, and I remember people at the time were excited that it looked like Sonic 3's remixed Act 2 music was coming back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVh6x8zk4Us

Something about the way it's mastered and isn't using an obnoxious percussion style works really well, and you can hear the violin synth better. That, and using some file swaps, I got it playing Ocean Palace proper and it fits perfectly. Seaside Hill itself had a similar treatment and remains one of my favorite versions of the song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4brZWUjm4s

It's like how I much prefer the instrumental Trial version of City Escape since it's a much simpler song. The lyrics really do nothing for the song except be extremely awful to the point I swear people love it because it's so bad.

 

I DJ, and I had the opportunity to DJ Phoenix Comic Con one year, when I dropped City Escape the crowd went NUTS! I had already been playing a mix of Old School Hip-Hop, VG Soundtracks, and EDM. That song litreally made everyone so happy, it was alot of fun, I played it again and the crowd went crazy that I acknowledged that they wanted to hear it again. 4 people asked me to DJ another event. Lol, I love that song.

 

Excactly my thoughts It's a real shame, that in most cases in Sonic games duels with other characters (like Knuckles or Shadow) are not too well developed. It's IMO quite interesting concept, but hard to make in practice. And from all "boss-stages" I also enjoyed the most fights with various mutations of Egg Hawk. Or Egg Emperor. Oh, come on, I really liked more the name Ivo Robotnik. Stop throwing these eggs :P


Getting back to subject - I know that I may be a bit too uncritical for this game - but man, it's one of my favourite of all Sonic games. And I know that this opinion is a bit controversial, but overall, I've enjoyed it even more than Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2. They were good games too, but what was a bit sour for me, it was not excactly well realised mixed gameplay - while I've enjoyed Sonic/Shadow levels in SA2 and Sonic and Tails levels in SA, rest of the game was from really mediocre to awful (depending which part we're discussing - but for sure hunting for emeralds and fishing will be the most unpleasant parts). And in Sonic Heroes I've experienced quite coherent and enjoyable content. And I'm totally aware that there are levels which don't have too good opinion, like Railway Station, but after playing so many hours in SH I would tell, that it's rather fault of these awful technical issues, like sudden falling from rails or faulty working "spinning balls" in Grand Metropolis/Power Plant (the situations when all characters should flew from these "glass balls" on adequate distance, but suddenly losing their speed and falling down, too far from the platform/road). For me, the only levels which deserves to be noted as awful "by themselves" were Hang Castle/Mystic Mansion and Casino Park (parts where you're trying so many times to get outside of the pinball table - although it's again partially fault of technical issues).

I really wish that they could polish enough these technical lacks, like control, "physical glitches" or camera. Ok, I know that it wouldn't help with some monotony you'll experience at some point (it would really help if you could end 2 or even 3 scenarios to have the "real" ending. Surprisingly, I wasn't bored after beating three of them (Rose Team, Sonic Team, Chaotix Team), but Dark Team's campaign is far too similar to Sonic's Team, so I felt a bit tired with this one. The greatest solution would be to have two different designs for every level and giving for two teams two different "sets" and for rest two - mixed sets. It wouldn't be so time- and money-consuming as creating four totally different designs for every level, but for sure would help for monotony.

Oh, and this sweet music. Soundtrack from SH is one of the best in whole series (or at least in these "3d-releases"). While in other Sonic games I'm usually choosing some favourites tracks, in this case it's different - there are single tracks which I don't like (Hang Castle/Mystic Mansion, yuck!), overall - it fits for my taste perfectly. Especially two last levels - so epic and dynamic!

I wish that they could also improve a bit multiplayer. Some modes are really nice (like classic "race through level to the end" or bobsleigh race), some of them are rather terrible, if only there could be less modes, but more levels.

I've played for the first time in Sonic Heroes a couple of months ago, but still sometimes I'm launching it to re-play some levels (trying to have all "A", but probably that will never happen). I've obtained all emblems, 1/3 of them on highest rank (A), it's at this moment the game from SOnic series I've played the biggest amount of time (about 45 hours, as far as I remember). It's a real shame, that it never receive some sequel with fixed all annoying issues. Oh but anyway, I've enjoyed this title, it hurts that I must agree with so many minuses of this title (it's hard to oppose the obvious), but still, I would highly recommend this one. Long live Sonic Heroes!

 

That already exists. It's called "playing as Team Rose"