Topic: [sonic slicer] about Sonic

[Phi]

The gameplay always looked like [parasitic bomb]. The new videos are bad, just like the videos before release.

Seriously, Chris.

[Satoryu]

The game has actually surpassed my expectations. In that it's worse than I imagined it would be. Calling Rise of Lyric the next Sonic 06 sounds about accurate.

I hear the 3DS game ain't bad though. I just picked it up, I'll see how it is. The show isn't too bad either. It's better than a lot of the stuff on Cartoon Network at least.

[OBJECTION MAN]

Are we going to rename the thread back to [sonic slicer] About Sonic now? Seems like Sonic is back in the [parasitic bomb] filled gutter, worse than ever before.

[irgpie]

Unless Sonic Team manages to severely [tornado fang] up their next main game, I think saying things are as bad or worse than '06 is some pretty silly exaggeration.

[Blue Valkyrie]

Sonic's major issue now is that the franchise lacks that rival that pushed Sega to make the awesome games of the past so they could compete with franchises like Mario, with just being a third party developer now they have little reason to really put effort into their titles and can just coast on the popularity of the franchise alone because lets be honest, fans will buy anything with the brand name on it.

Even if the game is or isn't as bad as 06 I'm baffled how the quality dropped so much after Colors and Generations. I hear the TV show isn't to bad though?

[OBJECTION MAN]

Sonic's major issue now is that the franchise lacks that rival that pushed Sega to make the awesome games of the past so they could compete with franchises like Mario, with just being a third party developer now they have little reason to really put effort into their titles and can just coast on the popularity of the franchise alone because lets be honest, fans will buy anything with the brand name on it.

Even if the game is or isn't as bad as 06 I'm baffled how the quality dropped so much after Colors and Generations. I hear the TV show isn't to bad though?

Yeah, I don't know what happened after Generations. They just forgot they did it right and now are back to their old tricks.

And I think the fanbase has about had it with Sonic. It's really at the tipping point I think, ESPECIALLY because Colors and Generations were so good. It's just reaffirming the fact that good Sonic games CAN exist in the current day. We got the taste again, and now we're not going to take this garbage anymore.

Personally, the only game I've purchased in the franchise in a long time was indeed Generations. Good Sonic, and on PC? GIMMIE. I haven't played Colors yet, not for any reason in particular other than I keep forgetting to go buy it.

[Blue Valkyrie]

Sonic Colors may not be the best sonic game but it is a fun game. Generations is better in my opinion but you could do worse than to track a copy of Colors.

[VirusChris]

The gameplay always looked like [parasitic bomb]. The new videos are bad, just like the videos before release.

Seriously, Chris.

It looked pretty fun and good beforehand, but now seeing it... lacks diversity and everyone plays mostly the same on the Wii U version, with some special tricks only accessible to Knuckles, Amy, and Tails but even though they watered-down Tails' flight ability and Knuckles and Amy have hardly anything special to do after those short segments required of their abilities is over.

The 3DS version is at least better, but even though I don't like how the portray Knuckles... he's gullible, not an idiot. It's very insulting to his character and even though I've gotten used to his Sonic Boom look, I feel like that really messed up his character a lot.

And it's shocking that a Sonic game has POOR music! Well the Wii U version at least, the 3DS one has some of the good old Sonic music we love.

This game is more "rent it" then "buy it" now. I do hope the next main Sonic game is really good and I hope they make the story at least betters, Lost World's story was too childish at times.

I really wanted to see another Sonic Storybook game, like one based on Feudal Japan or other culture like Irish lore. I really did enjoy Black Knight.

I really think the Adventures game nailed what a 3D Sonic game would be like with platform and speed segment for Sonic and I did like the different playstyles for the characters as well. True it had some glitches and bugs that needed ironing out, but I still prefer them as the best 3D Sonic games around along with Colors and Generations. They were great!

[Fxeni]

I'm one of those weirdos that didn't like Generations half as much as everyone else, so to say that this isn't a surprise to me wouldn't be saying much.

[Phi]

I'm one of those weirdos that didn't like Generations half as much as everyone else, so to say that this isn't a surprise to me wouldn't be saying much.

You're not the only one. Generations was average, at the very most, for me.

I did really like the ability to play whatever music track you wanted in the zones, though. That was fun to mess around with.

[Amatiramisu]

Colors was a masterpiece. High point of last gen Sonic games. Generations was a bit worse, but I'd still consider it "good".

I said this before. Sega knows taking risks is bad for the series. They didn't take risks after Unleashed and instead the next two games played similar to the Day stages of Unleashed, and they were some of the best, most well-received games in the series. Then they started getting creative again. Trust me, Lost World COULD have been good. It really could have, but it felt slow and clunky because they changed too much. From what I hear, Rise of Lyric suffers from that as well, except dialed up to 11.

Seems like the 3DS version isn't bad, but after playing the demo I felt like it falls under the same level of mediocrity of all the portable Sonic games (aside from Rush/Adventure).

[Flame]

Generations was a fun game, but for an anniversary game, far too short, (as a sonic game far too short) and far too little content. Should have been chock filled to the brim with old stages. And a stage select probably wasn't the best way to do it.

[Amatiramisu]

Generations was a fun game, but for an anniversary game, far too short, (as a sonic game far too short) and far too little content. Should have been chock filled to the brim with old stages. And a stage select probably wasn't the best way to do it.

Eh, at least the PC version is moddable.

[Nexus]

Colors was a masterpiece. High point of last gen Sonic games. Generations was a bit worse, but I'd still consider it "good".

I said this before. Sega knows taking risks is bad for the series. They didn't take risks after Unleashed and instead the next two games played similar to the Day stages of Unleashed, and they were some of the best, most well-received games in the series. Then they started getting creative again. Trust me, Lost World COULD have been good. It really could have, but it felt slow and clunky because they changed too much. From what I hear, Rise of Lyric suffers from that as well, except dialed up to 11.

Seems like the 3DS version isn't bad, but after playing the demo I felt like it falls under the same level of mediocrity of all the portable Sonic games (aside from Rush/Adventure).

Sonic Boom is something so un-Sonic I could probably get away with saying it might as well not be Sonic. Only the rings, the main characters, and the speed sections of the Wii U version are Sonic. Take those away and replace the rings with, say, the green orb stuff from Jak & Daxter? You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and a Jak or Ratchet & Clank clone in terms of first games. Combine that with the complete lack of polish due to the developers working with the hellish Cryengine 3 and Big Red Button losing most of its employees back in June/July, the failure to try to be a prequel of any sort due to conflicting with the 3DS version and utterly doing nothing with its premise of character development or setting up the main cartoon, and the utterly dull, average and boring sort of stuff you'd expect from a licensed platformer, and it's not Sonic '06 bad but it's the closest since then. Hell, there's evidence that it wasn't meant to be Wii U-only, which may be why it's so unpolished if the Wii U can't handle the engine, and that entire portions of the game were cut and/or replaced, seeing as there was obviously meant to be more with the time travel but the game just does it casually as a one-off thing for a single 'level' and never cares again.

The 3DS version is also mediocre and not that great, and the cutscenes are all pretty lame altogether besides the three CGI scenes in the entire game. It's more Sonic-y but only at a base level, with 10-20 minute long stages that basically want you to 100% them to get all the badges so you can continue. Yes, you need to do objectives in the levels to get badges, and if you don't have enough, the game locks you from progressing just like Sonic Unleashed did with the damn Sun and Moon Medals. There's no flow, there's no feel, the game's more like a licensed platformer knock-off of Donkey Kong Country than a Sonic game as well.

[Blue Valkyrie]

There is one thing that makes it easy to tell this Sonic game apart from the Jak series, Jak and Daxter is actually a good game. 

[Sakura Leic]

Well the DS game is supposed to be an alternate continuity of the Wii version if that's supposed to make sense.  I would have considered getting it, but I don't really like 100% completion games and long Sonic levels in a game that's not even Sonic like.  Also not being able to play as Amy was a huge negative for me, I really wanted to revisit being able to play as Amy since I liked her play style in Sonic Adventure and Sonic Advance, still prefer Tails and Knuckles though, but I don't own a Wii U and even if I did I wouldn't buy either game since they are not really good. 

Also I really couldn't stand the writing of the Wii U game, even though writing is definitely not the selling point of any Sonic game, though I still felt they did a really good job on Lost World in my opinion, it was to the point that it was uninteresting and even cringe worthy.

[Quickman]

Okay, so according to a Sonic Boom clip I saw a little bit ago, Knuckles has glasses, but he can't read.

The fact that Knuckles has glasses amuses me the most.

[Satoryu]

Apparently, in the cartoon Amy's love for Sonic is a secret. Is Boom an alternate continuity, or did they just forget Amy's only defining trait?

[Sakura Leic]

Boom is a spin off so it's an alternate continuity. The Sonic Boom Games are a prequel to the Cartoon but the games themselves are alternate continuities to each other as in the the DS and Wii U games are not connected.

It's weird.

[Nexus]

Boom is a spin off so it's an alternate continuity. The Sonic Boom Games are a prequel to the Cartoon but the games themselves are alternate continuities to each other as in the the DS and Wii U games are not connected.

It's weird.

It's worse because the cartoon basically has no continuity, the episodes are all 11-12 minutes each and basically 'this gag/thing an episode'. The games, which fail to be prequels to begin with since they explain and do absolutely nothing with the concept (i'm not kidding, Sonic and friends know everyone but Lyric, including Sticks), do little to tie in to the cartoons besides give Eggman his robot controlling device from Lyric...

.. that works differently in the cartoon anyway. It's obvious the writers for the games, and the writers for the cartoon, wrote and worked all the continuity separately between all these products with little correlation between one another. And apparently Sonic Boom was originally 'Sonic Origins' but got heavily restructured to tie in with the cartoon concept, so more than likely the prequel ideas were just holdover notes from early development that everyone kept falsely spouting for the sake of PR.

[VirusChris]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/19/sega-discusses-issues-with-sonic-boom-development


Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and its 3DS counterpart Shattered Crystal failed to set the world on fire when the pair of Nintendo exclusives launched last year. This has led SEGA to call into question the viability of the franchise, including whether or not we'll see any more solo adventures staring SEGA's blue mascot.

As for why these two games turned out to be such a major disappointment, former SEGA producer Steven Frost cites over-ambition as the primary culprit.

"The biggest mistake in Boom was trying to cram too much into the game," he explained on SEGA Nerdcast. "Not only were we trying to make just a really good Sonic game, we were trying to add more to it. We overextended our grasp in some ways. We're trying to add in a bungee mechanic, and we're adding combat, and we're adding puzzles, vehicles, hopefully a more compelling story and a bunch of different environments. And it's just a lot, you know? If there's any lesson for me, it's that being too ambitious can be bad."

Frost then went on to discuss the future of Sonic, and how single-player games starring the blue hedgehog just aren't viable anymore. "Solo Sonic games, I don't know how long that can last - there isn't enough variety to sustain it. The future of Sonic games needs to be co-op," he explained. "It worked really well in Sonic Boom, community and online play, that sustains it. In general, you need to do multiplayer and add online multiplayer aspects. That will sustain and keep the franchise alive."



Well I'll have to admit SEGA has made some dumb decisions over the years and a lot of mistakes and I've heard a lot of idiotic things, but this...?

They can't be THAT stupid, right?

*Re-reads again*

Correction, they ARE that stupid and beyond or the company in general or some of the employees there, but this is "What is this I don't even" feeling that it's so surreal.

It will be a LONG time before Sonic finally goes back to his Classic to Dreamcast era roots, I would love to play another Sonic game like that. I know people bash it and such, but I enjoyed SA1-2, Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog, and Sonic '06 and even the Storybook series ones too.

I'm glad I didn't get Sonic Boom, but I can't take guys like this in SEGA seriously anymore until someone wise up and does something to restore the faith in their fanbase, but the damage is done. Good luck to that.


http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/19/sonic-boom-wii-u-producer-defends-the-game/

The TV series of Sonic Boom may have been a success, but the games on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U have been far from it. Former SEGA America producer Stephen Frost still believes that the whole package has been a success. Frost mentions that there are people that loved the game and appreciate that they were trying to take Sonic in a new direction. Here’s some choice quotes.


Suggestion that Sonic had to re-invent itself because the fanbase was getting smaller. Gives Call of Duty as an example/comparison.

Boom was made to appeal to non Sonic fans. — This is stated multiple times.

Suggestion that people/retailers are bored of Classic – Dreamcast era Sonic.

States you can only do so much with these eras/characters. He does go on to suggest this is from a retailer standpoint.

Claims multiple times that Boom (franchise) is a big success.

Admits Boom (franchise) could have been better.

“Could the games have been better… yes, any game can be made better.”

Suggestion that part of the reason why Boom (game) isn’t that good is because the team didn’t know what Sonic was about/lack of experience.

“In focus tests, we heard all the time, people were sick of speed, Sonic was too fast, they wanted to slow down.”

“People really liked the Co-Op” — Hopes Sonic Team will do that in the future.

“The biggest mistake in Boom (gaame) was adding too many features to it.

“It was too much to ask of the/any development team” — In terms of different characters, combat, features etc.

“I was tasked (by Sega) with creating an experience that appeals to an audience which doesn’t play Sonic.”

“If I could do it again, I would remove features and speed would be the main focus from the start.”

“Speed was shelved because we were under the impression people didn’t want it.”

“Speed is always a Sonic thing, we didn’t focus on that.”

“The goal of Boom was to reach new people.”

“As a branch of Sonic, Boom is a success in many ways.”

Suggests that due to how much content you need to make for a Sonic alone game, it’s too much work. You need additional characters to spread the burden of content.

“Multiple characters resonate well with people”

“Solo Sonic games, I don’t know how long that can last there isn’t enough variety to sustain it.”

“The future of Sonic games needs to be Co-Op, it worked really well in Sonic Boom, community and online play, that sustains it.”

Say’s he’d love to see a Sonic level design game.

“In general, you need to do multiplayer and add online multiplayer aspects, that will sustain and keep the franchise alive.”

Says that the reason for the change in release date was likely a number of reasons, cartoon air date, Nintendo release dates, Sega release dates.

When the decision was made to change Boom’s release date, Sega did not know when Smash was coming out.



It's sad when a Game Developer doesn't realize that a bad game is still a bad game and they don't realize how backwards this is. He got fired of course, but hearing this just puts a damper the spirits, don'tcha know?

[Sakura Leic]

Yeah that dude was stupid, and it looked like he kept contradicting himself.

[OBJECTION MAN]

Solo Sonic games, I don't know how long that can last - there isn't enough variety to sustain it. The future of Sonic games needs to be co-op,

Or, I dunno, how about YOU MAKE A GOOD [tornado fang]ing SONIC GAME. People are HATING the "variety" of broken bullshit and not-Sonic in Sonic games.

Is it that [tornado fang]ing hard??

[Sakura Leic]

Well at least he's a former Sega employee, dude has obviously never touched the Internet before.

[Fxeni]

Pretty sure he knows, but he has to put a positive spin on it so he doesn't burn too many bridges. The contradictions themselves are a hint towards that.