You know I don't buy that. Black Knight corrected many of Secret Rings' control flaws, most notably backwards movement and charge-jumps. It's noticeably easier to actually SEE in front of you, as well. Over-reliance on track memorization was one of Secret Rings' weaker points.
While it's true that Black Knight doesn't have nearly as imaginative bosses as Secret Rings, that's a relatively minor concern. Black Knight scored poorly for one reason: Because reviewers have to play every shovel-ware piece of [parasitic bomb] to ever be developed for a console, and therefore any motion control without direction recognition is evil and must be buried. Am I the only one who remembers the console launch when this was treated as what it actually was: a minor inconvenience, rather than a game-breaking tragedy? And given that you're working with the premise of Sonic with a sword in the first place, who here honestly thinks that Motion Plus dueling is AT ALL more fitting than plowing through a row of enemies with a buzz-saw attack? Black Knight is by no means revolutionary, but that doesn't make it bad, doesn't mean that it doesn't work. Frankly, there's a lot from the game that Sega needs to remember, especially when it comes to handling player selection. Control, level design, and skill growth were all superior to Secret Rings, as well.
Critical appeal tells us that enhanced ports are somehow only half as enjoyable as the originals, that Heroes is better than the Adventures, that Black Knight is worse than the shovelware "my 3-year-old's first cartoon shop" crap currently out on the DSi's download service, and that the best Wii game of 2008 was a one-trick PC physics puzzle port.
I don't give two shits about critical appeal. And I think that the general gaming populace over-estimates its importance. If you took notice of the journalism community's response to New Super Mario Bros. Wii, you know what I'm talking about.
One hell of an irony that in the wake of this, the "new" Sonic games to follow for that generation looked considerably worse.
Still, graphics alone don't justify all the flak thrown at SA2B. The gameplay was outstanding, and the overall experience is every bit the equal of many native GCN titles.
...singling out small things I said out of all of them instead of replying to my old post? Oh, you.
Let's see what Black Knight had worse than Secret Rings.
- Worse level design, which either put you on a very straight path with a bunch of enemies piled up for you to waggle through, or gave you a few random obstacles without any sort of order.
- Sword attacks on a game where you're always running forward at big speeds = NO
- NPCs to talk to and trade rings with... on levels equivalent to a race track? This is a pretty big what the [tornado fang].
- Worse bosses.
- Aside from having an analog stick to use instead of a vague steering mechanic, the gameplay's worse. Sword attacks are damn stupid to use, either flailing wildly or getting a few QTEs in is all there is to it.
- No big cool unlockable and equippable moveset like in Secret Rings, which pretty much made the amount of quality Secret Rings had.
- Although the graphics look fine, the levels aren't really very attractive, whereas Secret Rings actually had quite a few colors, which was unexpected given the Arabian Nights background.
- Much shorter and less fun game.
Aren't alot of these... you know... main defining points of a game's quality? That brings quite alot into question. Aside from the "moar characters" thing you jizzed all over about, I don't see alot of improvements.
And dispite a few critic mishaps, I do find it VERY hard to disagree with any of the recent criticisms by the press to pretty much all of the Sonic games in the last 7 years or so. The scoring mechanic may be a bit iffy, but the reviews are quite on the spot. But from what you're saying... who is right anyway? Just you and your opinion? I think I'd like to give quite a bit of importance to the major public around. And what was wrong with New Super Mario Bros Wii? It was pretty much another Mario game, same as ever, with included co-op. It's what everybody wanted Nintendo to give them, so they did. It's not by any means outstanding, but it pretty much works. You may not give a [parasitic bomb] about critical appeal, but it's the lifeblood of games. It's what makes them appear good or bad to the general gaming populace. I know sales are the ultimate way games get made, but if even Sonic Team are aware that they've been making absolute [parasitic bomb] and don't tend to deny it in interviews (they even accepted the [tornado fang]ing Sonic Cycle in the last interview), who am I to disagree?
And blame Sega and Sonic Team for all of the new Sonic games after SA2 looking like absolute crap. Heck, I'm replaying Shadow as I type this. It looks like [parasitic bomb], plays like [parasitic bomb], and it's even worse than I remembered it to be. That doesn't mean SA2 didn't have quite a bit of standards to follow through. As good as the game was, it was still deeply flawed in many ways. Sure the rating system sucks, but the points are still made in those reviews.
Back to my original point, the way I was saying Sonic doesn't work in 3D without a homing attack. He doesn't. At least not with his basic set of moves. Jumping towards an enemy normally would require quite alot of cumbersome aiming. Heck, play Sonic Robo Blast 2. It's a pretty cool FPS mod, but ultimately, its gameplay is flawed. Then add the Sonic Adventure mod for it, which enables a homing attack, and look at the game suddenly becoming playable. Sonic just can't work without the homing attack, and it's a mechanic that fits him, so why remove it? As long as they manage to make good level designs in which it fits in, I have no objections. The homing attack is something that actually works in a game where the main mechanic is running forward. As opposed to a [tornado fang]ing sword, for example.