+xisumavoid wait that was 40 minutes?...oh wow...it is 40 minutes. It didn't feel like 40 minutes to be honest. That must mean he's doing something right maybe...
The ear-destroying sound design is a problem that cropped up in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the GCN, and only got worse with further re-releases. On the Dreamcast, this problem almost doesn't exist. ...almost.
Actually the Gamecube version of Battle was just like the Dreamcast original. Oddly enough, it wasn't until the HD ports on PS3 and 360 where the sound got REALLY bad.
Lmfao. Pumpkin hill theme used for Knuckles in sonic boom. Also. The only good thing that came out of Boom is Amy's design and Sticks. And Eggman's mustache.
1:38 I think you missed the mark of what the first level really does... at least in many of the well-designed Sonic games. Sonic 1 admittedly did things differently, but it was the ONLY classic game to really fully lean into more linear puzzle-platforming, especially in Marble Zone. Being "skilled" at a good Sonic game all comes down to mastery of the physics and controls, and admittedly a lot of rote memorization, as well as experimentation to find what the best routes are. In the first level, you don't really NEED any of that. You can mostly just hold right and jump while EXHILARATING things happen, showing off how fantastic the engine, the momentum, and the speed all feel. This serves two purposes. For one, the first zone needs to get its hooks in you and make a good first impression. But also, it gives you a taste of what it FEELS like to be skilled. The game stops letting you breeze through it after that. But when you play enough and GET skilled, stages like Mystic Cave, Red Mountain, Final Rush, and Generations' Crisis City don't just match that initial feeling, they become way, WAY more exhilarating than Green Hill ever could be, because now, you're EARNING that speed. The point isn't just to get through the game, it's to play it enough that you blaze through it with this weird manic grace. There's no other platformer quite like it, and I think that contributes so much to Sonic's lasting appeal, even through all the ups and downs and all-arounds. EDIT: At least, that's how I play Sonic. Your mileage may vary, because ANOTHER part of the wider appeal of the classic games is that they can ALSO be played more experimentally, exploring all the different routes and gimmicks and looking for hidden stuff. Sonic 2's level design didn't push this as much, while CD's levels were MUCH more inclined toward exploration and 3&K struck a nice balance. If you're trying to collect the Chaos Emeralds, you'll tend to be doing more of this. George, from your description of Mushroom Hill, I think this may be more your style. EDIT 2: ...and it seems like by the time you got to Generations, you'd figured out exactly what I was trying to say here, and articulated it better than I did, anyway. xD
Yea, with all its issues, I cant find that feeling in other platformers and thats why I call sonic like a subgenre of platformers. Its mostly because of slopes + physic + alot of gameplay elements in sonic games are just there for the spectacle of moving through it and some will require skills (mostly by moving faster in it) to use the thing to gain new heights. And the games start getting way more fun when you are good at it and start doing combo of gameplay elements with style. Its a good template with flaws that can be pushed farther and fixed.
would as many people hate sonic unleashed if they made the night time and day stages come in equal amounts, changed the werehog to knuckles, and called it "sonic and knuckles: return to angel island"?
maybe if the brawling portions weren't so sluggish and didn't play like ass, but then again it would amount to "if sonic unleashed was not sonic unleashed" at this point
@@Cavs191 4 months later but when the sonic franchise is being bashed on the only good thing they mention is the music. Not just from the classic times.
The last one I put any time into was Unleashed. The werehog stuff is rancid but, yep, the running bits were great - especially if you go for the speed runs. Turns it into a white-knuckle run of good timing, learning the levels, and high precision movement. More arcade racer than platformer and that's fine by me. I'll have to give Generations and Colors a go one day.
+Game Maker's Toolkit If you liked the running in unleashed i REALLY recommend generations at least, because it's all the good parts of unleashed but enhanced, and good level design in addition in a lot of levels, especially modern sonic which has like a lot of alternate routes. Story is mostly there as an excuse but most levels are great (except maybe for planet wisp but even it's frustrating aspects are at least somewhat entertaining...)
Pretty good analysis of the evolution of the Sonic franchise. I mostly agree, except on some critiques about the Genesis episodes. You seem to expect speed everywhere, but a lot of the best parts of those episodes were actually pretty slow. They are overall slow games, the fast parts were simply an occasional cherry on the cake. And that's probably the reason why you stumble upon so much ennemies that stop you from running, you just want to go fast when you shouldn't. Plus, if I may point something out, all the obstacles that you encounter in these playthough are very easily avoidable by simply rolling, which you don't seem to be willing to do. You should roll as soon as you get speed, that's one of the first things you learn while playing. x) Actually, it sounds as if you played those games to demonstrate a point that you had already established, that no good game can come if its orginal intent was to make money or sell a console. Thus, I also disagree with the conclusion, there can be good Sonic games IF they get back to slow level design.
Thank you! This misunderstanding about Sonics gameplay is why recent titles have had very hollow speed where SA1 & 2 had very meaty and rewarding speed. It’s like Style in DMC or E-Extreme stealth done perfectly in MGS.
@@Kanic12341 just because you have good momentum doesn't mean you're going fast. Sonic definitely is a game about speed but if you're good at the game you'll hardly have to slow down and platform.
Godr Ludwig it really isn’t. Shadow may be edgy but the only good level in sonic heroes is the first level. In shadow there’s a bunch of levels that are fun.
So Sonic is basically the child that Sega raised solely and poorly to fight a family feud based on a competition. When they lost that competition, they literally found no other use for Sonic than to just be part of the family. They would support him as any parent would with just enough to keep it alive and thriving, at least within legal standards, but it would never suffice to support the child. After its angsty teen years, awkward phases, and shitty friends and fans come and go by, only when it turns around 19-20 does Sonic realize it can do better, and tries its best to bring itself into the public light again. Those dreams come crashing down when Sega makes it blatantly obvious that they never really cared, give it just enough money for rent at another developer, and kick it out of the house. I'm sorry, I need to go for a walk.
Brimblam They kind of are, but the sonic characters and human characters look like they're made by two completely different concept artists. The humans look like they're from a kid friendly 1990 education game
The whole artwork in Unleashed was great. Actually, let me rephrase that: The whole of Unleashed was great. Yes, even the werehog parts. It made the game varied and those were actually decently made. I find Generations, with its lack of gameplay variety (sorry guys, but classic Sonic is just pure nonsense. There was absolutely no need for it) to be much more boring and one-dimensional. Generations was nothing but a nostalgia trip.
Fernando Gil No, no, those damn human designs looked so painfully awful. The werehog sections, while it keeps things varied, over stay their welcome (there's actually more night stages than day time stages). It's platforming is barebones simplistic and the beat em' up is also uninteresting. It felt like I had to force myself to play through the night time stages. Honestly, the game is a mixed bag. I want to like it, but it's damn werehog stages just bore me out. Well, at least you enjoyed it.
+Juan Cruz Nicolas Maciel Now I'm sad that we aren't in an alternate dimension where Sonic games worked out. Imagine a world with "Sonic-maker" and youtube videos of how Mario failed...
After watching some of the show, I'm so angry that sonic boom itself is so bad. They could've incorporated the silly light-hearted humour with proper gameplay. I disagree with the way knuckles is, but even that can still be humorous.
Agreed. The show was actually kind of funny. The first time I found out that little bit of info I had to take a 3 hour shower to make sure I was feeling okay. Unfortunately, the game is an atrocious flaming shit that comes out of your ass after a mean helping of Taco Bell.
I will concede Sonic adventure doesn't hold up that well today but I will say it absolutely blew my mind when I first saw it at a demo kiosk at Media Play in 98/99. Biggest 'next gen' feeling I ever had.
Why does no one talk about Sonic and the Secret Rings? Of all the Sonic history videos I've seen, this is the first to mention it at all. Oddly it didnt get a First Level explanation for this video. As I'm writing this comment I also noticed the skip of Sonic and the Black Knight. Both Secret Rings and Black Knight are, I believe, still worth studying in terms of level design. So what gives?
the wii version of unleashed might warrant a look too imo. I played the ps3 version a few years after initially playing the wii version and the werehog sections were horribly worse.
I am going to make some criticisms and ask some questions here, if you don't mind - What's wrong with starting a game with a boss fight? You never elaborated on why you think that's a bad thing to do - I find it odd that you think Sonic's acceleration is too high in Sonic Adventure, especially considering that you admittedly enjoyed Sonic Heroes, a game that has much higher acceleration, a fact you neglected to mention in it's own section. I also find it odd that you failed to mention the great controls Sonic Adventure has going for it (though I suppose the latter is a matter of opinion, so you may not have thought so, and that is fair enough if so) - Lastly, I feel that your skill level is what makes you unable to keep your momentum in Green Hill Zone rather than the level design, the latter of which is what you appeared to be blaming. If you were talking about Marble Zone for example though, that I could understand The rest doesn't sound too far off-base though, if we're looking at your critical analysis and ignoring your personal opinions. Not too bad :)
+DarkChaos I'll try to rebuttal, because you bring up some good points. - A boss fight is a very poor way to introduce someone to the game. There's already a pressure to learn the game quickly so you can overcome what, at a glance, is brought up to be a daunting obstacle (although once you get into the fight you realise that Chaos is a pushover). I do think Bunny should have elaborated on that point, but I can guess as to why. Boss fights do not reflect the rest of the game, it's a poor decision because it doesn't show you what you're getting into. It's like the first chapter of a book, if you don't have something that grabs the reader, then they won't want to read the rest of your story. The same is true for a game. If you don't grab the player with interesting level design and unique mechanics they won't feel interested and will struggle to enjoy your product. Chaos 0 was mostly a wake up call to classic fans to force them to figure out what the homing attack is, and from a certain standpoint you can see why, but a boss is such a poor way to introduce such an integral mechanic. There's so many ways they could have done it, in a level, to illustrate it to that point. I think you actually have to be killed by Chaos to get Tikal to tell you what the devil the homing attack is. - On your second point, I have to side with Bunny again. In the adventure games, more often than not Sonic gets more and more slippery the faster you go. I could never get behind it, and often avoided speed boosters so I could comfortably go at a brisk pace versus being forced to dash like a madman. I have this same opinion of Heroes, which is just as slippery, but it can be overlooked more because the flight and power characters, who make up the other two thirds of the gameplay, are not as slippery, introducing a factor of speed and control which kind of works in a stupid way. - Your last point, however, I take issue with. I think it's pretty disingenuous to write off an argument because of someone's skill. I contested the point, so I went ahead and played the first Sonic game to figure out what he meant, and yes, I can completely agree. To jive with the game's high speed philosophy, you have to constantly hurl forward and run into offscreen obstacles you only have a short moment to avoid. I can understand where he's coming from, because I experienced the same hiccups in my game experience. It takes a borderline mastery of enemy placement and tactics to avoid certain obstacles while going as fast as the game encourages you to go, a mastery that Joe Average doesn't have the time nor the will to go through. Ultimately, I think it's a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things, but I can certainly get behind it.
+DokturProfesur - I do see what you mean, and while that may be a bad thing to do in some video games, I don't think that's a bad thing to do in this game because it has only two buttons, only one of which is needed to beat Chaos 0. Experienced gamers will push all the buttons, see that one of them lets you jump and gets that "aha" moment (while running away from the blob moving very slowly towards you). They'll jump on Chaos 0s head and figure out how to beat the boss in matter of seconds. They probably won't even have to homing jump, but if they figure out how to do it, bonus points to them. Not to difficult, really. The only ones I can see having difficulty with this would be the ones who haven't played many video games before who need their hand held. Unfortunately, I don't share your opinion that the beginning of the game needs to show you what the majority of the game will be like. If you picked up this game, even way back when, when it first came out, you'd know what it's about. If I remember correctly, it had it's fair share of advertisement, probably more than the others. To those who already knew what they were in for, the game pulled us in with a narrative, and you know what? It actually worked. It got us invested. It left us asking questions, and we wanted answers. - Fair do's. That's your opinion and you are free to have it, I just don't agree with it. I have played both games more times than I can count on both hands however, and I feel even in the slower formations of Sonic Heroes, the acceleration is far, far above any of the characters in Sonic Adventure. I couldn't possibly count the amount of times I fell to my death in Sonic Heroes as any formation due to that. - Once again, unsurprisingly, I disagree with your stance on my point. To blame the game for one's lack of skill is something I find most unpleasant, and disrespectful to all those put in the time and effort to do as well as they did. It is comparable to scrubs complaining about certain combos in a fighting game because they cannot perform them, or people complaining about Dark Souls because they weren't paying attention. The game is not based on speed per se, but momentum, and you need the skill to keep that momentum throughout the entire level. Looking at it after having played it so many times, I'm guessing it was designed with speed runs in mind, which means in order to do the best you possibly can, you'd have to have played the game many times over. That's part of the charm of the game. There is always room to improve. The thrill I felt when I could finally get through this zone in one go was immense. Now, if the complaint was about Marble Zone, that I would consider a valid complaint. The game's main strength is that momentum, and Sonic is all about "going fast", but then you're dropped into a stage where there is waiting, and that is not one of Sonic's strengths, not in this game.
Nobody answered me when I asked aloud in my house, which might be cause nobody besides me is here, so I'll ask on this: Why the hell would you pump a sub-machine gun like a shotgun? Why?
Damn you George, I wanna be mad at you but you're incredibly precise about your criticisms and never come across as spewing bile towards the series as a result of bias or disinterest. I guess I should say SA1/2 are guilty pleasures... but I still think there is a case to be made for the games not being nearly as bad as their overall presentation.
I think you summarised the video really well there! It shows how George is really good at being an unbiased critic and journalist! And that's why he love him, because that is exceptionally rare! Yeah the thing with Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 is that you really have to get used to the way they play. Once you do they're a lot of fun, but you can see why people less well-versed in Sonic games have trouble controlling them
+Lion Day (Lion-Oh-day) I think ProJared was on the money in his review of Sonic Adventure 2, where he says that people put up with the less good elements of the game so that they can get things for raising their chao!
***** Yeahp yeahp. Though Escape from the City IS just a really fun level. Honestly most of the sonic levels are. It's the other levels that aren't so great.
he also misses at least half of the sonic games and NiGHTS. :/ with it being 40+ min long I at least wanted to see a few of the actually legit better sonic games instead of a clusterfk of vertigo that is the majority of the 3d games. and... doesn't even play "sonic boom" sonic boom sonic bewwwwwwwwwwm save the planet from disaster!
33:40 you do know sonic lost world has a run button, right? Also some points don't make sense or they have legit reasons for why that design philosophy is used, but overall a great video. Also Chip is awesome, don't diss with Chip.
I don't hate SH, but there are flaws that keep me from wanting to replay it. Perhaps the biggest issue for me is the simple fact that you have to play the game 4 times in a row, with very little altering between each story/gameplay style (minus Chaotix). Another is just how slippery the characters are. I can't even tell you how many times I've fallen off a platform simply because my character wouldn't stop in time, or how many times I've come dangerously close to falling for the same reason. The boss battles are....alright, but the team battles are atrocious. They don't make the game altogether awful, but they feel so worthless, and they're terrible to play through. And the egg wave battles just drag on and on, especially the second one.
Wait a minute. He thinks the sonic adventure and genesis games have clunky, unresponsive, and slippery control. But, Sonic heroes' control is perfect!? Look, I love Sonic Heroes and think it is highly underrated but still...WTH!?
D R Name one that isn't Sonic 06? I can't think of many that are truly shit. Maybe Sonic Blast on Game Gear, but even that one isn't terrible. Just not good. Granted, I have not played the RPG on DS. I've heard that one is pretty bad.
+Bucketninja I think it's because of the way Super BunnyHop is more critical of a number of aspects of, particularly, the Adventure games that Johnny praised in his reviews (mainly the control and the level design ethos). However, it's just another way of thinking; I get the feeling this person is more of what Roger Van Der Weide described as "The Nintendo way of thinking", rather than "The Sega way of thinking". It doesn't make either person 'right', per se, it's just another angle on the matter.
+DylanYoshi That's because originally Sonic Boom was designed for next-gen and PC, not for the Wii U. When Sega announced the Wii exclusivity deal with Nintendo, most of the game had already been completed. Big Red Button had to spend the time they usually would fixing and polishing the game to port CryEngine to the Wii U and implement Wii U-specific features (like gamepad support). So, yeah, another example of Sega's mismanagement of the franchise.
***** You can easily blame Nintendo for being terrible with third parties, as evidenced by the lack of CryEngine support, and you wouldn't be wrong, but I do think Sega is far more to blame. If you're going to make a huge change to the product like this, the game should be delayed to allow for extra polish. This isn't rocket science, it's basic QA.
+DylanYoshi Yeah, I completely agree, and that's what I was trying to convey. Sega absolutely should have given them more time to complete, or given them early warning that this deal was in the works, or negotiated that Sonic Boom wasn't part of the deal, or... there's a number of ways they could have mitigated this. Nintendo's really just an unfortunate bystander.
+DylanYoshi I'm still not sure how CryEngine apparently doesn't work when Crysis 3 managed to run on the system. It only didn't come out because EA threw a hissy fit over Origin being rejected by Nintendo.
UltimaKeyMaster Cryengine CAN work on Wii U, the issue is that is has no native support for the Wii U. That means the developers have to port over the engine themselves, and that's a very bad thing for any game with a strict release schedule like Sonic Boom.
You need to do Megaman. That franchise has also been similarly mismanaged, though not to the same degree as this. The games are also hard to come by, unless if you use emulators and then they are easy to come by. But Hard to finish, good luck with the difficulty.
Not exactly, The Megaman series has had a very weird run. The signs of mismanagement came when megamans 4-6 were basically the same game. All coming out from 1991 - 1993, well into the SNES lifespan. It wasn't until 1994 when the X series was made, created to take the series into the new generation. But this success was not unnoticed by capcom, who had the team produce Megaman 7 using the X engine. This affected megaman X3, which had noticeably lower quality than MM7. The real decline started with the PS1 era, Sony did not want 2D games on their platform which made megaman hard to market in the US. This didn't stop them though since this was when they started making X4, X5 and MM8. All these games use a very different art style (with bad aesthetics), a very different game engine and all have Kenji Inafune as producer! Then Megaman Legends Happened and you could see a clear split within capcom with some artist wanting to do 3D games (See legends series, Power Stone, Viewtiful joe and Street Fighter EX), Some wanting to keep the classic 2D franchises (see SF3 and MM zero) and others wanting to pioneer whole new genres (see devil may cry and how the game engine was used in all the Resident Evil Remakes). By the time the PS2 came around the only Megaman spin off with legs was the Zero series on the Gameboy Advance. While that franchise squared off against Castlevania, the mainline games had already failed to meet expectations. The team who made Viewtiful joe left to form Clover Studios. Shinji mikami who made DMC now owns Platinum Studios. Resident Evil is now a mega franchise and Street Fighter is taking up too much of their time and budget for them to care about Megaman. No amount of MM9-MM10 releases and hype could save the franchise now. It was too big and too fragmented internally for anyone to take the helm.
Well you really know your mega man, But in order for a video there would probably have to be a new mega man game. Or at the very least compare it to mighty no 9 but hey at least that's better then nothing...
MegaMan games are hard to come by? Almost all of them have been ported on just about every console in the past few generations. There's even been a collection of the NES games released some months ago, which incidentally is a smaller collection than another one that was released 10 years ago. Even without all these ports and compilations, you can still find the original games online or in shops for not a whole lot of money. I'd probably say MegaMan is one of the most commonly abundant video games ever, next to the first three Super Mario Bros.
I find weird how many sonic fans act like portable sonic games doesn't exist. In my opinion, the advance series, the rush series, colors ds and generations 3ds are the true inheritors of the genesis games, and nobody talks about them!
Praise holy mother of Mary, you're the only person who reviewed sonic heroes accurately. That game was hella fun, I don't see why everyone hates on it.
while i will admit playing 4 times and having to play them again getting a A rank or whatever takes fucking forever, its a really fun game and i like some of the later stages.
Are you considering making this a series? "The First Level of Every Halo" or "The First Level of Every Zelda"? I realize that some franchises are going to be harder to work with than others, but I think you're on to something with the whole first impressions matter angle.
Bobby Blair The Wii U gamepad has a touch screen, 2 analog sticks, a d-pad and twelve buttons. There's no reason they can't dedicate a single button to movement speed when people have been bitching for over a decade that Sonic games are too hard to control. I would have preferred a WALK button instead, but there's nothing wrong with the concept. After all, I never hear anyone complain about the boost or spin dash buttons, and they're more or less the same concept.
So What? Now you have a Crouch Button for ALL 3D Sonic. Managing Speed and slower plateforming or puzzles is not an easy thing. Because of scrubs who onlly want speed we have corridors and Boost and no more exploration :( thank you
We Should Make a Specification Book (cahier des charges in French sorry) to give to Sonic Team and Lizuka you know..? Lizuka is Lost and Fan Boys don't understand and don't know what they really want. (always complaining about story stuff characters Sonic gotta go fast etc.. ) like 3D Sonic issues could be fixed by CGI new characters and voice acting :(( Are you active on SEGA social medias? You seems to be more aware about hat Sonic really needs.
I prefer the classic sonic/sonic adventure 1 gameplay. It heavily focuses on the momentum and getting there from point a to point b as quick as possible by going through different shortcuts rather than blast through the sections in only ONE pathway. And when you go to different pathways, you'll be rewarded with a powerup, a ring box, or a 1 up. I don't really mind the boost as long as it isn't SO linear the stage would be a literal hallway.
I agree with you. Sonic world adventure (unleashed in the west..) did that but in Day stages Sonic was kind of hard to control in slow walk. Actually at that time I was thinking about a trigger button to Walk. There was a The crouch Button to crouch walk wich was a very intersting idea. But All these idea are dropped by Sonic Team and Stolen by Metroid and Metroid odYssey.. Please Sonic Fans;Spread the word on Social medias..!
Michael Romeo The worst offender is definitely Sonic Colors like why is the platforming so god damn slow and its so linear. And don't even get me started with those wisps, who in the right mind would remove Sonic's most iconic spindash and have it as a temporary power up. That's like if Samus can't turn into the morph ball without some sort of alien frog or some crap have Samus that ability for a few seconds.
I dont liked Spinball and Bean mean machine but yes, it haved great spin offs: Sonic 3D Blast (shut up i loved it), Knuckles Chaotix, Tails adventure, Sonic Advance (i dont know if its a spin off), Sonic Battle, Sonic Rush, and probably the most overrated the Sonic & Sega all star racing duo.
Nah, imo the Sonic All Stars racing games are the best Sonic games since the Megadrive era. Sega and Sonic Team wish they could make something so good. All of the other spin offs were pretty awful imo, except maybe Sonic R, that was a flawed gem.
Sonic Adventure was made in 1999! Sure it hasn't aged that well, but knocking it for it's graphics, and bad voice acting is unfair. Sonic Adventure isn't that bad of a game, it just hasn't aged as well as Mario 64. Which is dated by the way. I'm sick of hearing people say that SA was the start of shitty Sonic games. Sure it laid SOME of the ground work that a lot of other shitty Sonic games followed, but it was a very good attempt at a 3D Sonic game, and nobody seems to see that
shit that's what I keep telling people, its stupid. Then there are people that are like "Mario 64 looks better" all the time and its just dumb, thank you for typing out my point 9 months ago so I didn't have to hahah
i did not see nintendo having memory cards that doubled as handhelds. dream cast was ahead of its time. now every one is looking at retro gaming with pies and other emulator micro controllers but dream cast did it back then.let that sink in. sega had a handheld that could save game data and play mini games on or off the console if i recall they were 20$ the pie 20 yrs later is more. even the zero/ zero w is 10$ in 20 yrs if you were to remake the msu would still be about 30$.
Even when comparing SA1 to Mario 64, SA1 had much more ambition with the move to 3D. More story, a cooler overworld that was easy to navigate, multiple playable characters, and rewarding exploration with character upgrades. I’d rather replay SA1 than Mario 64 simply because it had so much more to it.
the game's only good if you're playing it in a way you're just simply heading to the goal. The alternate routes are too damn long up to the point where it can take a half an hour.
How in the world is Sonic Adventure 2's handling wanky? Or the acceleration inconsistent? Unpredictable turning? You can say a lot of things about SA2 but its controls are flawless.
This is the first video of your that I watched. Although your videos never featured my beloved Sonic again, I’m still here for your high quality videos, even when (which is most of the time) when I’ve never been introduced to the content. Cheers, George! I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year looks like.
I'd say Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is the "rock-bottom" of the franchise. Sonic 06, at least, has come good-looking FMV cutscenes (with certain exceptions, granted). Sonic Boom just looks weird and has certain errors in their cutscenes. There are probably other things wrong with Rise of Lyric that make it worse than Sonic 06, but you'll have to ask someone else about those. The reason both of those games did so poorly is because Sonic Team had the developers rush production for a holiday release instead of doing the smart thing and taking their time with it.
The franchise never fully recovered. The ratings never came back up, even when arguably deserved, the general view of the franchise was that it was childish and overly edgy, and the game itself didn't work. Sonic 06 was the funeral, Shadow was the bullet to the head.
What would you call responsive controls? I personally feel that the controls were at their best in Sonic 3. Sonic felt weighty, and needing to gain momentum made the whole game revolve around physics, the feeling of trying to keep a heavy ball rolling, and that was fun to me
20:17 that looks fantastic. Why do they try to rush out sonic games that are incomplete? Imagine how much better 06 would be had they delayed it a year. And yeah, SA1 didn't age well but the soundtrack is amazing, and it built the foundation for other sonic games to improve from. So i consider it a mixed blessing.
When short deadlines like these are held, and games are rushed, it's to reassure investors and shareholders that their company will see revenue and growth at the end of the fiscal quarter. Tight deadlines ensure you get some sales within that time frame, even if those sales are a fraction of what you could've gotten if you delayed the game. Rushed games suck, but their sales can keep your company afloat if those investing are weary of you. Delaying games can help ensure quality, but makes investors nervous, as their investment will take longer to get a return. The worst possible outcome for the business is if they delay a game, and it doesn't sell any better anyway. If you look at psychonauts, it's a fantastic game, but sold abysmally despite numerous delays. This ruined the company's reputation, and caused them to close.
Sonic was never about going fast from the start. It was about being careful, learning the layout and patterns of a stage and then being able to run through it quickly on your next playthrough. The concept of speedrunning made into a game. This idea that Sonic "gotta go fast" from the start is what's killed modern Sonic and made it so laughable. Going fast should be a reward, not the default.
Even though that's true, he was still marketed as "The Fastest Thing Alive" implying fast-paced gameplay. And even though the first few installments were more momentum-based than speed-based, speed is what's defined the franchise, from the character to the marketing and to the gameplay, wether you like it or not. Now I still think Sonic'd games need to have a happy balance between just speeding through long emtpy stretches and tediously platforming and avoiding obstacles, I still feel like Sonic Team struck gold when they hit upon the boost formula seen in Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. It's the closest they've come to having the gameplay actually feel like you're moving at the speed of sound, and even though I woudln't say it's perfect, I'd say it's a step in the right direction and it's goddamned impressive how they managed to make a speed-based character actually go fast and still make the gameplay feel comprehensible and have the controls feel appropriate, sometimes even good. Sonic's speed is a riddle most game-devs can't even begin to wrap their heads around. The very concept of making such a fast character work is mind-boggling because of all the technical limitations along with time and budget restraints, and I'll forever be impressed at how well they managed it on their first try with Unleashed, and Sonic Unleashed is my favorite game in the franchise because of it.
But that's the thing: you have to be careful. Sonic's speed has to be managed by the player while one traverses through obstacles in an act; removing Sonic's speed and mapping it to a *button* is insulting to the player's intelligence.
After watching the whole video, I agree with the major points. My thoughts probably echo a lot of gamers and Sonic fans: It's too bad we can't have the fun engaging lag-free first level designs and all the lessons learned put into the "next" Sonic game. I guess time will tell, but I think it already told us.
My only real issue with this review is that Sonic Boom is a definite spin-off. Not even a partial one like Shadow is. Different gameplay, different developer, different canon. Secret Rings and Black Knight, two games that aren't included, are closer to being main series games than Boom is. Also think it's a shame that Episode 2 of Sonic 4 was skipped, since I feel it's a similar case to Sonic 3 + Sonic & Knuckles, which were treated somewhat seperately here. Sonic 4 Episode 2 had definite improvements over Episode 1 in almost every way other than that camera closeness (but again, I feel Episode 2 threw bullshit at you less often).
+JezMM You tell 'em, Jez. For real though, I think the reason he included Sonic Boom is because (like it or not) it has been the focus for the Sonic series for the past while and is actually more important at this time than any of the previous games. Sure Lost World was the last "main series" Sonic game, but everyone basically forgot that it existed as Sega immediately threw the franchise into weird spin-off land that is so heavily marketed but so heavily mismanaged that the general public has started to forget that Sonic was/is anything but this new spin-off.
Rule 1: make green hill Rule 2: just make green hill Rule 3: it’s green hill Rule 4: alright get green hill, then slap it on the new game Rule 5: so now we have gree- Okay I think you get the point
+Cian Gaffney Yeah I caught that too. It's a result from reading a word, maybe in books or something, and never actually hearing it spoken. Before I heard some one actually say 'epitome' I thought it was pronounced the way it was spelled, 'epi-tome.'
It's been a few years since this came out so I can officially say the comment breakdown is: 35% of people with sonic hate boners saying "lol yeah bad games" on games they never played 35% of sonic die hard fanboys typing college essays about how everyone is wrong on the game they played a million times 30% of people having a fit over how he says cacophony
To be fair to Big Red Button and Sonic Boom, SEGA signed an exclusivity deal with Nintendo to make the Boom games for their hradware. That was after the team started working on the game, which they thought would be released on "Unspecified Next-Gen Hardware". So their engine choice, CryEngine 3, had to be hastily ported to Wii U, as it was never offically intended for the console, and assets had to be reworked under tight time constraints from SEGA. Those working conditions that were made caused a good amount of devs to leave the company before the game was finished. So I don't think the games awfulness has to do with the incompetence of Big Red Button, but of SEGA.
Actually the former made false assumptions that it wouldn't be for WiiU. Sega may have made mistakes in trusting them, & in delaying the deal with Nintendo for as long as they did. We can only really blame the abandonment of the Storybook series of games for delaying that deal with Nintendo.
Wait, I can control Shadow the Hedgehog really well. So, either people are terrible at controlling games they don't like, or I am the one person on Earth that can tame that edgy beast. Or, it could be the fact that I'm one of the few people who likes that game, and thus got used to the controls. But I'm sticking with my theory that I'm special, somehow.
Huh. Me too. Also, everyone harped on about how Sonic free riders for the Kinect had such awful controls, and, after playing the tutorial worked fine for me. Maybe my beige wall is a slightly different beige than the typical wall beige color and that helps the kinect? Maybe the planets lined up every time I played? But seriously, you can get used to almost any controls. People didn't like the Mako in Mass Effect 1. I have no idea why- it drove just fine. It seems to me people should stop whining and endure 10 min to get familiarised.
Shadow controls perfectly fine on Gamecube, I've heard rumors that the PS2 controls for the game weren't as finetuned though. I'm only familiar with the game on Gamecube although the controls are rather easy to master. Either there's truth to the rumors of not all Gen6 Consoles were created equally or people aren't even trying to control Shadow & complain because it's not the SA2 Controls.
Great analysis, man! I definitely think the first half of Sonic Heroes is way better than the latter half of the game. I still enjoy Sonic Adventure and SA:2B, but they have flaws, especially with the Big levels and the Knuckles/Rouge levels. The tails/eggman(SA2) and tails/knuckles(SA) levels are massively underrated imo, since there are so many things you can do to improve your time on levels. You really get to understand the mechanics of the game, which I don't think many people understand at all, spin jumping being the main thing people don't get. I suppose that's the main reason I always enjoyed sonic games, the thrill of speedrunning and beating your previous bests. I've always thought the only reason to explore in a sonic game was to find a faster route to get a faster time, so I've never had a problem with areas in a sonic game not having collectibles or coins or whatever. I've played through SA, SA2, and Generations probably about 5 times each though and really got invested in the mechanics, so perhaps my opinion comes from looking at the games from a different angle. I mean fuck, even sonic 06 is a great game for speedrunning, because once you understand the glitches and mechanics, the game becomes awesome and actually makes sense. To be fair though, I haven't actually speedrun 06, just taking darkspinesonic's word on this one. I also think Lost World gets a bad rap, I think if they made Knuckles the protag(so you're ready for a slower game) and changed a few mechanics (sonic specific stuff for knuckles stuff) then the game would feel much better. Just a thought though, obviously the game had much more potential.
Grunting Skunk there is a CLEAR bias on display throughout this video. The successes of good levels are downplayed and many wonderful Sonic games are excluded all together. If Sonic Rush does not count, Sonic Boom should not count.
"Sonic is the most mismanaged franchise in history"
Oh boy this video was 3 years before the Sonic movie trailer too.
This quote will never be outdated
Pokemon: hold my moomoo milk
@@steel5897 please, stop.
The remake of sonics modell better be fucking good
And before Forces
I will never understand why the 18 wheeler is wider than both sides of the street and both sidewalks combined.
Me neither fam.
I never understood why he didn't realise that in sonic colors you have to press a button to run, instead he decided to spindash
cause its da gun truck!! XD
Yeah, but it’s really impressive how it turns without destroying all the buildings
Because it's a ginormous cartoon truck meant to destroy?
"Anal bead level design"
I laughed way more than I should've. It was completely out of the blue and caught me by surprise.
I had to pause the video, couldn't stop laughing
Camerooni
What shit?
*****
I am confused. The last two Sonic games that I consider bad were the first two Boom games.
When did he say that? I missed it
out of the blue and caught you by surprise? sounds like sonic
The video in my recomended that has refused to go away for 3 years.
Hoggington the Fourteenth same
1:00
THAT FUCKING CORNER. EVERY TIME.
Funny seeing you here -Starfox- Lythero
+Lythero Finally someone who shares the pain.
Watch this from beginning to end and never once got bored, very rarely can a youtuber manage to do that.
Agreed. George is a great content creator
You held my attention for 40 minutes! Fantastic video :-)
+xisumavoid He usually holds my attention for half a playlist O.o
+xisumavoid wait that was 40 minutes?...oh wow...it is 40 minutes.
It didn't feel like 40 minutes to be honest. That must mean he's doing something right maybe...
holy... it's Xisuma
Fancy seeing you here ECKS-AHH-SOOMA-VOD
wait x i zuma void lmao
The ear-destroying sound design is a problem that cropped up in Sonic Adventure 2 Battle for the GCN, and only got worse with further re-releases. On the Dreamcast, this problem almost doesn't exist.
...almost.
Actually the Gamecube version of Battle was just like the Dreamcast original. Oddly enough, it wasn't until the HD ports on PS3 and 360 where the sound got REALLY bad.
Lmfao. Pumpkin hill theme used for Knuckles in sonic boom.
Also. The only good thing that came out of Boom is Amy's design and Sticks. And Eggman's mustache.
boom eggman is great
The cartoon was pretty great.
I loved the disco-ey music in the Rouge levels in Sonic Adventure 2.
They were a pain in the arse though.
And Tails. Although everything he says is close to cringe.
And Knukles
1:38
I think you missed the mark of what the first level really does... at least in many of the well-designed Sonic games. Sonic 1 admittedly did things differently, but it was the ONLY classic game to really fully lean into more linear puzzle-platforming, especially in Marble Zone.
Being "skilled" at a good Sonic game all comes down to mastery of the physics and controls, and admittedly a lot of rote memorization, as well as experimentation to find what the best routes are. In the first level, you don't really NEED any of that. You can mostly just hold right and jump while EXHILARATING things happen, showing off how fantastic the engine, the momentum, and the speed all feel.
This serves two purposes. For one, the first zone needs to get its hooks in you and make a good first impression. But also, it gives you a taste of what it FEELS like to be skilled. The game stops letting you breeze through it after that. But when you play enough and GET skilled, stages like Mystic Cave, Red Mountain, Final Rush, and Generations' Crisis City don't just match that initial feeling, they become way, WAY more exhilarating than Green Hill ever could be, because now, you're EARNING that speed.
The point isn't just to get through the game, it's to play it enough that you blaze through it with this weird manic grace. There's no other platformer quite like it, and I think that contributes so much to Sonic's lasting appeal, even through all the ups and downs and all-arounds.
EDIT: At least, that's how I play Sonic. Your mileage may vary, because ANOTHER part of the wider appeal of the classic games is that they can ALSO be played more experimentally, exploring all the different routes and gimmicks and looking for hidden stuff. Sonic 2's level design didn't push this as much, while CD's levels were MUCH more inclined toward exploration and 3&K struck a nice balance. If you're trying to collect the Chaos Emeralds, you'll tend to be doing more of this. George, from your description of Mushroom Hill, I think this may be more your style.
EDIT 2: ...and it seems like by the time you got to Generations, you'd figured out exactly what I was trying to say here, and articulated it better than I did, anyway. xD
Yea, with all its issues, I cant find that feeling in other platformers and thats why I call sonic like a subgenre of platformers. Its mostly because of slopes + physic + alot of gameplay elements in sonic games are just there for the spectacle of moving through it and some will require skills (mostly by moving faster in it) to use the thing to gain new heights. And the games start getting way more fun when you are good at it and start doing combo of gameplay elements with style. Its a good template with flaws that can be pushed farther and fixed.
UP DOWN ALL-AROUND, DON'T KNOW QUITE WHAT TO DO, TO GET THROUGH!!
I thought I was the only one who liked Sonic Heros xD
Roly that game was great
Roly i like sonic heroes
I dont like it
I LOVE IT
Yep
as long as you only play team sonic and call it a day
"Tutorial child fighting for audio dominance" still cracks me up to this day.
would as many people hate sonic unleashed if they made the night time and day stages come in equal amounts, changed the werehog to knuckles, and called it "sonic and knuckles: return to angel island"?
Now that's a brilliant idea!
No.
You should work at Sega. You actually know what the fuck you're doing.
n
maybe if the brawling portions weren't so sluggish and didn't play like ass, but then again it would amount to "if sonic unleashed was not sonic unleashed" at this point
"If there is a low point of the sonic series, it is shadow the hedgehog."
Sonic Boom: "Hold my beer."
The general consensus seems to think so as well. People believe Shadow the Hedgehog started the 1st downfall of Sonic.
Shadow is the Poochie of Sonic
He even goes into space
@@Abdega You mean Pucci?
Supersquaboon The Almighty
Technically that too, but I was talking about “Poochie” from the Simpsons
boom wasn't developed by sonic team
nice work son
+Jagh Haringenamn That's what my dad said when I leaked out the anal fluids before the cops arrived.
+Jagh Haringenamn Decades from now on his deathbed Miles "Tails" Prower will say "-ic!"
XD
28:43 "This time the camera is far back enough to see"
*Still misses all the rings*
he didn't say he was good at it lol
"Also the sound track is the DreamWorks of music...so let's fix that."
*Turns on Pumpkin Hill*
My comrade of African heritage.
interesting way of saying ni🅱🅱a
Literally came to comments to see who else caught that. SA2:B has the greatest soundtrack in Sonic history.
Justin Friedman people actually like the rock pop music from the new sonic and sonic adventure games? I thought everyone hated their music
@@Cavs191 They're very well loved.
@@Cavs191 4 months later but when the sonic franchise is being bashed on the only good thing they mention is the music. Not just from the classic times.
The last one I put any time into was Unleashed. The werehog stuff is rancid but, yep, the running bits were great - especially if you go for the speed runs. Turns it into a white-knuckle run of good timing, learning the levels, and high precision movement. More arcade racer than platformer and that's fine by me. I'll have to give Generations and Colors a go one day.
+Game Maker's Toolkit If you liked the running in unleashed i REALLY recommend generations at least, because it's all the good parts of unleashed but enhanced, and good level design in addition in a lot of levels, especially modern sonic which has like a lot of alternate routes. Story is mostly there as an excuse but most levels are great (except maybe for planet wisp but even it's frustrating aspects are at least somewhat entertaining...)
Go for PC version of Generations, then look up the Unleashed Project mod. Now you get all the good stuff of Unleashed and Generations.
Pretty good analysis of the evolution of the Sonic franchise. I mostly agree, except on some critiques about the Genesis episodes. You seem to expect speed everywhere, but a lot of the best parts of those episodes were actually pretty slow. They are overall slow games, the fast parts were simply an occasional cherry on the cake. And that's probably the reason why you stumble upon so much ennemies that stop you from running, you just want to go fast when you shouldn't. Plus, if I may point something out, all the obstacles that you encounter in these playthough are very easily avoidable by simply rolling, which you don't seem to be willing to do. You should roll as soon as you get speed, that's one of the first things you learn while playing. x)
Actually, it sounds as if you played those games to demonstrate a point that you had already established, that no good game can come if its orginal intent was to make money or sell a console. Thus, I also disagree with the conclusion, there can be good Sonic games IF they get back to slow level design.
Still cant believe he didnt know there was a run button in lost worlds
I'm surprised he didn't take note how Shadow pumped a full-auto foregrip like a shotgun.
+Moses Cen Yeah, immediatly recognised this too =P
+Moses Cen Let's get the obligatory Edge joke out of the way.
Wake me up inside,
Can't wake up.
Featuring Dante from Devil May Cry.
+Moses Cen He's pumping up his testosterone level.
+Moses Cen Maybe it's the only way his gloved sausage fingers can operate the charging handle.
+Moses Cen Shadow the Hedgehog is the Sonic fandom in game form.
"NICE WORK SON-"
IC
The gap was the same
Airton Senna UNDERRATED COMMENT
Also I really hope "anal bead level design" is a term that becomes more popular in the future.
THRILLHO
No.
Yes.
Balls
2D Sonic wasn’t about speed, it was about momentum. Speed was a reward for mastering the levels and avoiding the hazards to keep the momentum going.
Thank you! This misunderstanding about Sonics gameplay is why recent titles have had very hollow speed where SA1 & 2 had very meaty and rewarding speed. It’s like Style in DMC or E-Extreme stealth done perfectly in MGS.
mommentum = mass*velocity. Sonic's mass is static so if it's about mommentum then it's about speed. Checkmate
Sonic 3 & knuckles managed that REALLY well in hydrocity zone and angel island zone!
@@Kanic12341 just because you have good momentum doesn't mean you're going fast. Sonic definitely is a game about speed but if you're good at the game you'll hardly have to slow down and platform.
@@Kanic12341 r/iamreallysmart
Sonic Heroes is my favorite Sonic game, honestly
I love the theme song...I'm surprised he thought it was bad.
I like singing it but I know that it's super cheesy like All Hail Shadow
Lyrics are cringy but the song itself is pretty good indeed
EternaMidnight why not
That game was dope I spent hours getting to the true ending
"If there's a low point of the series, it's Shadow."
Video posted March, 2016
Oh, that explains a lot.
royalscoot shadow the hedgehog really isn’t that bad. Sonic adventure and sonic heroes are miles worse than shadow.
jimbojambo_2000 sonic heroes is way better than shadow
Godr Ludwig it really isn’t. Shadow may be edgy but the only good level in sonic heroes is the first level. In shadow there’s a bunch of levels that are fun.
fun is opinion not factual
mike thegamerguy24 prove it
So Sonic is basically the child that Sega raised solely and poorly to fight a family feud based on a competition. When they lost that competition, they literally found no other use for Sonic than to just be part of the family. They would support him as any parent would with just enough to keep it alive and thriving, at least within legal standards, but it would never suffice to support the child. After its angsty teen years, awkward phases, and shitty friends and fans come and go by, only when it turns around 19-20 does Sonic realize it can do better, and tries its best to bring itself into the public light again. Those dreams come crashing down when Sega makes it blatantly obvious that they never really cared, give it just enough money for rent at another developer, and kick it out of the house.
I'm sorry, I need to go for a walk.
Sonic starts green hill zone:
"Aw shit here we go again"
33:17 Oh Man George, you have a Ruuuuun button. How did you miss this?
I actually think the characters in Unleashed looks the most fitting with a cartoon hedgehog.
Brimblam They kind of are, but the sonic characters and human characters look like they're made by two completely different concept artists. The humans look like they're from a kid friendly 1990 education game
The whole artwork in Unleashed was great.
Actually, let me rephrase that: The whole of Unleashed was great. Yes, even the werehog parts. It made the game varied and those were actually decently made. I find Generations, with its lack of gameplay variety (sorry guys, but classic Sonic is just pure nonsense. There was absolutely no need for it) to be much more boring and one-dimensional. Generations was nothing but a nostalgia trip.
Fernando Gil
No, no, those damn human designs looked so painfully awful. The werehog sections, while it keeps things varied, over stay their welcome (there's actually more night stages than day time stages). It's platforming is barebones simplistic and the beat em' up is also uninteresting. It felt like I had to force myself to play through the night time stages.
Honestly, the game is a mixed bag. I want to like it, but it's damn werehog stages just bore me out. Well, at least you enjoyed it.
They looked way better than anything done before.
Realistic humans with cartoon animals look fucking bad.
Cough SA 1 and 2 Cough
Brimblam ...Can't argue with that. Could had been done better though.
>Been under the flu >Wake up >40 minute superbunny hop
You just made my day, thank you so much!
same af
+Zusk >greentexting on youtube
holy coincidences, me too!!
the fucking flu is fucking everywhere
+AndalusianLuis >implying greentext
ROLLING AROUND AT THE SPEED OF SOUND!
GOT PLACES TO GO
GOTTA FOLLOW MY RAINBOW!
can't stick around gotta keep moving on
don't know what lies ahead only one way to find out
"The Sonic Heroes theme song is hot garbage"
stopped watching, unsubscribed, reported to the FBI for international war crimes
Also the fact that he used the Ocean Palace background music for Seaside Hill siadufaisdfgah
don't forget him saying sonic adventure sucks
The singing kind of sucks in it and the "SONIC HEROES" part is just plain awful.
I used to have nightmares of that theme
This whole video is a "swing and a miss"
When I started watching, I was like "Jesus fuck. 39 minutes??" and by the end I was like "Aww, it's over already?"
+Juan Cruz Nicolas Maciel Now I'm sad that we aren't in an alternate dimension where Sonic games worked out. Imagine a world with "Sonic-maker" and youtube videos of how Mario failed...
Pause4011 I do like the idea of Sonic Maker, though.
After watching some of the show, I'm so angry that sonic boom itself is so bad. They could've incorporated the silly light-hearted humour with proper gameplay. I disagree with the way knuckles is, but even that can still be humorous.
Agreed. The show was actually kind of funny. The first time I found out that little bit of info I had to take a 3 hour shower to make sure I was feeling okay. Unfortunately, the game is an atrocious flaming shit that comes out of your ass after a mean helping of Taco Bell.
I will concede Sonic adventure doesn't hold up that well today but I will say it absolutely blew my mind when I first saw it at a demo kiosk at Media Play in 98/99. Biggest 'next gen' feeling I ever had.
Why does no one talk about Sonic and the Secret Rings? Of all the Sonic history videos I've seen, this is the first to mention it at all. Oddly it didnt get a First Level explanation for this video.
As I'm writing this comment I also noticed the skip of Sonic and the Black Knight. Both Secret Rings and Black Knight are, I believe, still worth studying in terms of level design. So what gives?
This is my complaint as well. Maybe he didn't play them.
the wii version of unleashed might warrant a look too imo. I played the ps3 version a few years after initially playing the wii version and the werehog sections were horribly worse.
Sonic 06 2.0 spin off
No one really talks about the book series, even the riders series as well.
Ikr
I am going to make some criticisms and ask some questions here, if you don't mind
- What's wrong with starting a game with a boss fight? You never elaborated on why you think that's a bad thing to do
- I find it odd that you think Sonic's acceleration is too high in Sonic Adventure, especially considering that you admittedly enjoyed Sonic Heroes, a game that has much higher acceleration, a fact you neglected to mention in it's own section. I also find it odd that you failed to mention the great controls Sonic Adventure has going for it (though I suppose the latter is a matter of opinion, so you may not have thought so, and that is fair enough if so)
- Lastly, I feel that your skill level is what makes you unable to keep your momentum in Green Hill Zone rather than the level design, the latter of which is what you appeared to be blaming. If you were talking about Marble Zone for example though, that I could understand
The rest doesn't sound too far off-base though, if we're looking at your critical analysis and ignoring your personal opinions. Not too bad :)
+DarkChaos I'll try to rebuttal, because you bring up some good points.
- A boss fight is a very poor way to introduce someone to the game. There's already a pressure to learn the game quickly so you can overcome what, at a glance, is brought up to be a daunting obstacle (although once you get into the fight you realise that Chaos is a pushover). I do think Bunny should have elaborated on that point, but I can guess as to why.
Boss fights do not reflect the rest of the game, it's a poor decision because it doesn't show you what you're getting into. It's like the first chapter of a book, if you don't have something that grabs the reader, then they won't want to read the rest of your story. The same is true for a game. If you don't grab the player with interesting level design and unique mechanics they won't feel interested and will struggle to enjoy your product.
Chaos 0 was mostly a wake up call to classic fans to force them to figure out what the homing attack is, and from a certain standpoint you can see why, but a boss is such a poor way to introduce such an integral mechanic. There's so many ways they could have done it, in a level, to illustrate it to that point. I think you actually have to be killed by Chaos to get Tikal to tell you what the devil the homing attack is.
- On your second point, I have to side with Bunny again. In the adventure games, more often than not Sonic gets more and more slippery the faster you go. I could never get behind it, and often avoided speed boosters so I could comfortably go at a brisk pace versus being forced to dash like a madman. I have this same opinion of Heroes, which is just as slippery, but it can be overlooked more because the flight and power characters, who make up the other two thirds of the gameplay, are not as slippery, introducing a factor of speed and control which kind of works in a stupid way.
- Your last point, however, I take issue with. I think it's pretty disingenuous to write off an argument because of someone's skill. I contested the point, so I went ahead and played the first Sonic game to figure out what he meant, and yes, I can completely agree. To jive with the game's high speed philosophy, you have to constantly hurl forward and run into offscreen obstacles you only have a short moment to avoid. I can understand where he's coming from, because I experienced the same hiccups in my game experience.
It takes a borderline mastery of enemy placement and tactics to avoid certain obstacles while going as fast as the game encourages you to go, a mastery that Joe Average doesn't have the time nor the will to go through. Ultimately, I think it's a minor gripe in the grand scheme of things, but I can certainly get behind it.
+DokturProfesur - I do see what you mean, and while that may be a bad thing to do in some video games, I don't think that's a bad thing to do in this game because it has only two buttons, only one of which is needed to beat Chaos 0. Experienced gamers will push all the buttons, see that one of them lets you jump and gets that "aha" moment (while running away from the blob moving very slowly towards you). They'll jump on Chaos 0s head and figure out how to beat the boss in matter of seconds. They probably won't even have to homing jump, but if they figure out how to do it, bonus points to them. Not to difficult, really. The only ones I can see having difficulty with this would be the ones who haven't played many video games before who need their hand held.
Unfortunately, I don't share your opinion that the beginning of the game needs to show you what the majority of the game will be like. If you picked up this game, even way back when, when it first came out, you'd know what it's about. If I remember correctly, it had it's fair share of advertisement, probably more than the others. To those who already knew what they were in for, the game pulled us in with a narrative, and you know what? It actually worked. It got us invested. It left us asking questions, and we wanted answers.
- Fair do's. That's your opinion and you are free to have it, I just don't agree with it. I have played both games more times than I can count on both hands however, and I feel even in the slower formations of Sonic Heroes, the acceleration is far, far above any of the characters in Sonic Adventure. I couldn't possibly count the amount of times I fell to my death in Sonic Heroes as any formation due to that.
- Once again, unsurprisingly, I disagree with your stance on my point. To blame the game for one's lack of skill is something I find most unpleasant, and disrespectful to all those put in the time and effort to do as well as they did. It is comparable to scrubs complaining about certain combos in a fighting game because they cannot perform them, or people complaining about Dark Souls because they weren't paying attention. The game is not based on speed per se, but momentum, and you need the skill to keep that momentum throughout the entire level. Looking at it after having played it so many times, I'm guessing it was designed with speed runs in mind, which means in order to do the best you possibly can, you'd have to have played the game many times over. That's part of the charm of the game. There is always room to improve. The thrill I felt when I could finally get through this zone in one go was immense. Now, if the complaint was about Marble Zone, that I would consider a valid complaint. The game's main strength is that momentum, and Sonic is all about "going fast", but then you're dropped into a stage where there is waiting, and that is not one of Sonic's strengths, not in this game.
Nobody answered me when I asked aloud in my house, which might be cause nobody besides me is here, so I'll ask on this:
Why the hell would you pump a sub-machine gun like a shotgun? Why?
Either because G.U.N created an MP5 with a pump cocking mechanism, or Sonic Team isn’t well versed in firearms.
I could not stop laughing when chip dropped the ice cream then Sonics arm stretched but it was like cracks it is just to funny for me
Really objective and fair criticisms man, Didn't even realise I sat here for 40 minutes.
some criticisms were fair yes but this wasn't "really objective"
Damn you George, I wanna be mad at you but you're incredibly precise about your criticisms and never come across as spewing bile towards the series as a result of bias or disinterest.
I guess I should say SA1/2 are guilty pleasures... but I still think there is a case to be made for the games not being nearly as bad as their overall presentation.
I think you summarised the video really well there! It shows how George is really good at being an unbiased critic and journalist! And that's why he love him, because that is exceptionally rare!
Yeah the thing with Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 is that you really have to get used to the way they play. Once you do they're a lot of fun, but you can see why people less well-versed in Sonic games have trouble controlling them
SA1/2 are made fantastic games just from the Chao Garden.
The Glitches make those modes BETTER!
+Lion Day (Lion-Oh-day) I think ProJared was on the money in his review of Sonic Adventure 2, where he says that people put up with the less good elements of the game so that they can get things for raising their chao!
***** Yeahp yeahp.
Though Escape from the City IS just a really fun level. Honestly most of the sonic levels are.
It's the other levels that aren't so great.
+Lion Day (Lion-Oh-day) that's right!
After Sonic and Knuckles, he didn't even talk about the zones, but the game mechanics themselves.
he also misses at least half of the sonic games and NiGHTS. :/ with it being 40+ min long I at least wanted to see a few of the actually legit better sonic games instead of a clusterfk of vertigo that is the majority of the 3d games. and... doesn't even play "sonic boom" sonic boom sonic bewwwwwwwwwwm save the planet from disaster!
"The Edge is adorable."
Not sure what to say about that...
I couldn't help but just smile at that of how funny it was.
Sonic retrospectives on RUclips are a dime a dozen nowadays. But I gotta say this is the best one I've ever seen.
He committed
33:40 you do know sonic lost world has a run button, right?
Also some points don't make sense or they have legit reasons for why that design philosophy is used, but overall a great video.
Also Chip is awesome, don't diss with Chip.
Nice work, Super Bun
+Klarden
-ic
.........................ny
"The theme song is garbWHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN!
17:46 This is why I love your writing George
Sonic Heroes is one of my favorite Sonic games of all time, I never got all the hate for it.
Agreed
me too. love the game
I don't hate SH, but there are flaws that keep me from wanting to replay it. Perhaps the biggest issue for me is the simple fact that you have to play the game 4 times in a row, with very little altering between each story/gameplay style (minus Chaotix).
Another is just how slippery the characters are. I can't even tell you how many times I've fallen off a platform simply because my character wouldn't stop in time, or how many times I've come dangerously close to falling for the same reason.
The boss battles are....alright, but the team battles are atrocious. They don't make the game altogether awful, but they feel so worthless, and they're terrible to play through. And the egg wave battles just drag on and on, especially the second one.
Same here
Afro'd Avenger Music Reviews I loved the game but looking back at it now the story doesn't even make sense :/
Didn't expect a 40 minute video on this franchise.
I'll take it.
19:00
Oh so THAT’S what it is
I remember spending nearly half an hour trying to find the last alien
Wait a minute. He thinks the sonic adventure and genesis games have clunky, unresponsive, and slippery control. But, Sonic heroes' control is perfect!? Look, I love Sonic Heroes and think it is highly underrated but still...WTH!?
Kelsi Nicholson Sonic has had some truly shit games.
D R Name one that isn't Sonic 06?
I can't think of many that are truly shit. Maybe Sonic Blast on Game Gear, but even that one isn't terrible. Just not good.
Granted, I have not played the RPG on DS. I've heard that one is pretty bad.
"I still can't believe that I actually exist"
Demon maker
So then diappear.
Neither can George
I hope SomecallmeJohnny sees this.
+MrDrProfessor4 George is dead, then
why?
+MrDrProfessor4 Dude, that's exactly what I was thinking.
+Bucketninja I think it's because of the way Super BunnyHop is more critical of a number of aspects of, particularly, the Adventure games that Johnny praised in his reviews (mainly the control and the level design ethos). However, it's just another way of thinking; I get the feeling this person is more of what Roger Van Der Weide described as "The Nintendo way of thinking", rather than "The Sega way of thinking". It doesn't make either person 'right', per se, it's just another angle on the matter.
+Bucketninja Johnny might be the biggest non-furry Sonic fan on RUclips.
... Did you intentionally mispronounce "cacophony?"
Lol nah he mispronounces stuff all the time.
Reminder that Sonic Boom was made on CryEngine.
You know, an engine that doesn't support the Wii U.
What the hell.
+DylanYoshi That's because originally Sonic Boom was designed for next-gen and PC, not for the Wii U. When Sega announced the Wii exclusivity deal with Nintendo, most of the game had already been completed. Big Red Button had to spend the time they usually would fixing and polishing the game to port CryEngine to the Wii U and implement Wii U-specific features (like gamepad support).
So, yeah, another example of Sega's mismanagement of the franchise.
*****
You can easily blame Nintendo for being terrible with third parties, as evidenced by the lack of CryEngine support, and you wouldn't be wrong, but I do think Sega is far more to blame. If you're going to make a huge change to the product like this, the game should be delayed to allow for extra polish. This isn't rocket science, it's basic QA.
+DylanYoshi Yeah, I completely agree, and that's what I was trying to convey. Sega absolutely should have given them more time to complete, or given them early warning that this deal was in the works, or negotiated that Sonic Boom wasn't part of the deal, or... there's a number of ways they could have mitigated this. Nintendo's really just an unfortunate bystander.
+DylanYoshi I'm still not sure how CryEngine apparently doesn't work when Crysis 3 managed to run on the system. It only didn't come out because EA threw a hissy fit over Origin being rejected by Nintendo.
UltimaKeyMaster
Cryengine CAN work on Wii U, the issue is that is has no native support for the Wii U. That means the developers have to port over the engine themselves, and that's a very bad thing for any game with a strict release schedule like Sonic Boom.
You need to do Megaman. That franchise has also been similarly mismanaged, though not to the same degree as this. The games are also hard to come by, unless if you use emulators and then they are easy to come by. But Hard to finish, good luck with the difficulty.
The classic series is fine it's the later X games that had the decline
Not exactly, The Megaman series has had a very weird run. The signs of mismanagement came when megamans 4-6 were basically the same game. All coming out from 1991 - 1993, well into the SNES lifespan.
It wasn't until 1994 when the X series was made, created to take the series into the new generation. But this success was not unnoticed by capcom, who had the team produce Megaman 7 using the X engine. This affected megaman X3, which had noticeably lower quality than MM7.
The real decline started with the PS1 era, Sony did not want 2D games on their platform which made megaman hard to market in the US. This didn't stop them though since this was when they started making X4, X5 and MM8. All these games use a very different art style (with bad aesthetics), a very different game engine and all have Kenji Inafune as producer! Then Megaman Legends Happened and you could see a clear split within capcom with some artist wanting to do 3D games (See legends series, Power Stone, Viewtiful joe and Street Fighter EX), Some wanting to keep the classic 2D franchises (see SF3 and MM zero) and others wanting to pioneer whole new genres (see devil may cry and how the game engine was used in all the Resident Evil Remakes).
By the time the PS2 came around the only Megaman spin off with legs was the Zero series on the Gameboy Advance. While that franchise squared off against Castlevania, the mainline games had already failed to meet expectations. The team who made Viewtiful joe left to form Clover Studios. Shinji mikami who made DMC now owns Platinum Studios. Resident Evil is now a mega franchise and Street Fighter is taking up too much of their time and budget for them to care about Megaman. No amount of MM9-MM10 releases and hype could save the franchise now. It was too big and too fragmented internally for anyone to take the helm.
Well you really know your mega man,
But in order for a video there would probably have to be a new mega man game.
Or at the very least compare it to mighty no 9 but hey at least that's better then nothing...
Lol, true. He could review Azure Striker Gunvolt. That is a megaman game right?
I don't really know megaman, just capcom. ;)
MegaMan games are hard to come by? Almost all of them have been ported on just about every console in the past few generations. There's even been a collection of the NES games released some months ago, which incidentally is a smaller collection than another one that was released 10 years ago. Even without all these ports and compilations, you can still find the original games online or in shops for not a whole lot of money. I'd probably say MegaMan is one of the most commonly abundant video games ever, next to the first three Super Mario Bros.
I find weird how many sonic fans act like portable sonic games doesn't exist. In my opinion, the advance series, the rush series, colors ds and generations 3ds are the true inheritors of the genesis games, and nobody talks about them!
How many times have I seen this video, and "anal bead level design" still catches me off-guard.
great work super bunny
hop
+ectofrost
Wooow. Edgy. Spunky. Sassy. Good job there. You are up there with Sanic.
furyberserk thank you
+Lenny Hallal Nice work SON
+Nojical thanks ma
Praise holy mother of Mary, you're the only person who reviewed sonic heroes accurately. That game was hella fun, I don't see why everyone hates on it.
only the first levels though. SONIC HEROES is a slog in the later game.
only the first levels though. SONIC HEROES is a slog in the later game.
while i will admit playing 4 times and having to play them again getting a A rank or whatever takes fucking forever, its a really fun game and i like some of the later stages.
Rail Canyon, Mystic Mansion, Casino Park...
the game is mediocre at best past the first level
You seem to talk about how bad or good the game is more than the stages
Can't like this comment on phone but here take this comment as a "Like"
+Poopa Scoop idk how
+Poopa Scoop I don't see no like button nowhere, so how exactly do *you* think you're supposed to like comments on mobile?
no it only marks answer or spam
***** Except the "Like" option doesn't even show up on the mobile app, dude...
The way this video essay ends gets me everytime i watch this.
i'm sure someone already pointed this out but i get the feeling you didn't realize lost world has a run button
Are you considering making this a series? "The First Level of Every Halo" or "The First Level of Every Zelda"? I realize that some franchises are going to be harder to work with than others, but I think you're on to something with the whole first impressions matter angle.
+Christian Hansen i like this idea
Uh... You know Lost World has a run button, right?
I know right? He didn't really take the time to learn the controls.
WAIT WHAT A RUN BUTTON I DON'T THINK IT'S SONIC
It's Sonic! It shouldn't NEED a run button!
Bobby Blair
The Wii U gamepad has a touch screen, 2 analog sticks, a d-pad and twelve buttons. There's no reason they can't dedicate a single button to movement speed when people have been bitching for over a decade that Sonic games are too hard to control. I would have preferred a WALK button instead, but there's nothing wrong with the concept.
After all, I never hear anyone complain about the boost or spin dash buttons, and they're more or less the same concept.
Um......
City Escape is the greatest 1st level in the entire franchise.
angel island is really good too
sega thinks its green hill apparently
I personally think either Emerald Hill or Leaf Storm. But that's just me.
I wouldn't say it's the greatest, but I do like tropical resort
sega: aaah no You guys must be having a snooze crooze!
that's metal hill zone.
33:12 Something tells me you don't know that there is a run button on the ZR trigger.
So What? Now you have a Crouch Button for ALL 3D Sonic. Managing Speed and slower plateforming or puzzles is not an easy thing. Because of scrubs who onlly want speed we have corridors and Boost and no more exploration :( thank you
We Should Make a Specification Book (cahier des charges in French sorry) to give to Sonic Team and Lizuka you know..? Lizuka is Lost and Fan Boys don't understand and don't know what they really want.
(always complaining about story stuff characters Sonic gotta go fast etc.. )
like 3D Sonic issues could be fixed by CGI new characters and voice acting :(( Are you active on SEGA social medias? You seems to be more aware about hat Sonic really needs.
I prefer the classic sonic/sonic adventure 1 gameplay. It heavily focuses on the momentum and getting there from point a to point b as quick as possible by going through different shortcuts rather than blast through the sections in only ONE pathway. And when you go to different pathways, you'll be rewarded with a powerup, a ring box, or a 1 up. I don't really mind the boost as long as it isn't SO linear the stage would be a literal hallway.
I agree with you. Sonic world adventure (unleashed in the west..) did that but in Day stages Sonic was kind of hard to control in slow walk.
Actually at that time I was thinking about a trigger button to Walk.
There was a The crouch Button to crouch walk wich was a very intersting idea.
But All these idea are dropped by Sonic Team and Stolen by Metroid and Metroid odYssey..
Please Sonic Fans;Spread the word on Social medias..!
Michael Romeo The worst offender is definitely Sonic Colors like why is the platforming so god damn slow and its so linear. And don't even get me started with those wisps, who in the right mind would remove Sonic's most iconic spindash and have it as a temporary power up. That's like if Samus can't turn into the morph ball without some sort of alien frog or some crap have Samus that ability for a few seconds.
Sonic Riders was amazing even though it wasn't a platforming game
It was amazing! A lot of the spin-offs are good. Spinball, Rush, Advance, 3D Blast, I loved them all.
I dont liked Spinball and Bean mean machine but yes, it haved great spin offs: Sonic 3D Blast (shut up i loved it), Knuckles Chaotix, Tails adventure, Sonic Advance (i dont know if its a spin off), Sonic Battle, Sonic Rush, and probably the most overrated the Sonic & Sega all star racing duo.
Nah, imo the Sonic All Stars racing games are the best Sonic games since the Megadrive era. Sega and Sonic Team wish they could make something so good. All of the other spin offs were pretty awful imo, except maybe Sonic R, that was a flawed gem.
Sonic Adventure was made in 1999! Sure it hasn't aged that well, but knocking it for it's graphics, and bad voice acting is unfair. Sonic Adventure isn't that bad of a game, it just hasn't aged as well as Mario 64. Which is dated by the way. I'm sick of hearing people say that SA was the start of shitty Sonic games. Sure it laid SOME of the ground work that a lot of other shitty Sonic games followed, but it was a very good attempt at a 3D Sonic game, and nobody seems to see that
DomnoSaur yeah but tbh mario 64 also looks like shit today.
I'm not buying the "it's old" excuse when Crash Bandicoot and Mario 64 look better and generally had better design.
shit that's what I keep telling people, its stupid. Then there are people that are like "Mario 64 looks better" all the time and its just dumb, thank you for typing out my point 9 months ago so I didn't have to hahah
i did not see nintendo having memory cards that doubled as handhelds. dream cast was ahead of its time. now every one is looking at retro gaming with pies and other emulator micro controllers but dream cast did it back then.let that sink in. sega had a handheld that could save game data and play mini games on or off the console if i recall they were 20$ the pie 20 yrs later is more. even the zero/ zero w is 10$ in 20 yrs if you were to remake the msu would still be about 30$.
Even when comparing SA1 to Mario 64, SA1 had much more ambition with the move to 3D. More story, a cooler overworld that was easy to navigate, multiple playable characters, and rewarding exploration with character upgrades.
I’d rather replay SA1 than Mario 64 simply because it had so much more to it.
Kinda missed half the games but okay.
Wait a minute... you do know there's a run button in lost world right? There's no need to spindash everywhere.
why tf is there a run button in a sonic game
Roll control
@@TailsTheFox32 Don't forget that this review is made by a guy who complains that Sonic's acceleration makes him unresponsive.
no joke, i actually LOVE shadow the hedgegog (the game), its so nostalgic to me!
Gyro Fox I just remember all this commercials for it and thinking he was soo cool
why? I thought it was way too easy
Sometimes, games can be so bad, they're good
the game's only good if you're playing it in a way you're just simply heading to the goal. The alternate routes are too damn long up to the point where it can take a half an hour.
Same 😅
CACK-a-phoney? Seriously?
It's *_kuh-KOFF-a-nee._*
iteachvader yeah, I noticed that too. It’s really annoyed me.
Must describe a loud noise of some kind. Maybe it's the noise a CACK-a-demon would make. Checkmate, athiests.
Nevar done heard no cackadeemun round hee, see? You get goin rite nah
THIS
He probably didn't hear you over the CACKaphoney of Sonic Adventure's best level
How in the world is Sonic Adventure 2's handling wanky? Or the acceleration inconsistent? Unpredictable turning?
You can say a lot of things about SA2 but its controls are flawless.
This is the first video of your that I watched. Although your videos never featured my beloved Sonic again, I’m still here for your high quality videos, even when (which is most of the time) when I’ve never been introduced to the content. Cheers, George! I can’t wait to see what the rest of the year looks like.
I think this is your best work. It's well researched, well considered, and fairly presented. I love it.
Uh...why isn't Sonic 06 the "rock-bottom" for the series as opposed to Shadow the Hedgehog? At least the latter is playable.
*DO YOU REMEMBER ME CAPTURE YOU AND SET YOU FREE I AM ALL OF I AM ALL OF ME*
I liked shadow the hedgehog.
I'd say Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric is the "rock-bottom" of the franchise. Sonic 06, at least, has come good-looking FMV cutscenes (with certain exceptions, granted). Sonic Boom just looks weird and has certain errors in their cutscenes. There are probably other things wrong with Rise of Lyric that make it worse than Sonic 06, but you'll have to ask someone else about those.
The reason both of those games did so poorly is because Sonic Team had the developers rush production for a holiday release instead of doing the smart thing and taking their time with it.
The franchise never fully recovered. The ratings never came back up, even when arguably deserved, the general view of the franchise was that it was childish and overly edgy, and the game itself didn't work. Sonic 06 was the funeral, Shadow was the bullet to the head.
@@pinkwings8036
Never came back up? Apparently, you didn't see reviews of Sonic Colors.
Love the "Mr Roboto" music in the background
Mudkip971 I was about to comment the same thing.
SECRET SECRET I GOT A SECRET
I didn't notice this until you pointed it out
but what does it have to do with corporations?...
huh i was just listing to this song
If there were a Modern megaman game. IT BETTER HAVE THAT SONG!!!!
Little surprised y'all didn't go into Secret Rings, but my surprise is probably just because it was my introduction to the franchise as a whole.
And Forces's First level, it Holds your Hand and Never Let's go throughout the Game
I ain't gonna let it get to me,
I'm just gon creep
Down in pumpkin hill
I gots ta find my lost piece
legends say knuckles is still pause jumping to this day
Voyager 3.
I'm glad this video exists. The problems that haunt the sonic franchise is one that requires strong dissection to analyze the core of its existence
"Cacophony"
CUH COUGH A KNEE
PUG I was gonna have to point out if no one else did
I cringed tbh
I wish you put a time stamp on this now I have to wait and watch the entire thing.
What would you call responsive controls? I personally feel that the controls were at their best in Sonic 3. Sonic felt weighty, and needing to gain momentum made the whole game revolve around physics, the feeling of trying to keep a heavy ball rolling, and that was fun to me
sonic adventure 1 was amazing.. i got it 9.9.99... when it came out it had no rival
20:17 that looks fantastic. Why do they try to rush out sonic games that are incomplete? Imagine how much better 06 would be had they delayed it a year.
And yeah, SA1 didn't age well but the soundtrack is amazing, and it built the foundation for other sonic games to improve from. So i consider it a mixed blessing.
When short deadlines like these are held, and games are rushed, it's to reassure investors and shareholders that their company will see revenue and growth at the end of the fiscal quarter. Tight deadlines ensure you get some sales within that time frame, even if those sales are a fraction of what you could've gotten if you delayed the game.
Rushed games suck, but their sales can keep your company afloat if those investing are weary of you. Delaying games can help ensure quality, but makes investors nervous, as their investment will take longer to get a return. The worst possible outcome for the business is if they delay a game, and it doesn't sell any better anyway. If you look at psychonauts, it's a fantastic game, but sold abysmally despite numerous delays. This ruined the company's reputation, and caused them to close.
Your best video yet. Great concept, Great execution and it didn'f feel like 40 minutes.
I actually really enjoyed sonic unleashed all aspects of it the story was good the fighting mechanics were fun to me and the speedrunning was amazing
Yea, it is a really great game, only people that really are non-sense talks shit about it.
Its one of the best sonic games.
Not saying it makes the game any better, but you know Sonic Lost World has a run button, right? A bit easier than maintaining a spindash.
Gino Ramos Gameplay was meh, but the music was good.
a *run* button
*_S O N I C_*
Sonic was never about going fast from the start. It was about being careful, learning the layout and patterns of a stage and then being able to run through it quickly on your next playthrough. The concept of speedrunning made into a game.
This idea that Sonic "gotta go fast" from the start is what's killed modern Sonic and made it so laughable. Going fast should be a reward, not the default.
Even though that's true, he was still marketed as "The Fastest Thing Alive" implying fast-paced gameplay. And even though the first few installments were more momentum-based than speed-based, speed is what's defined the franchise, from the character to the marketing and to the gameplay, wether you like it or not. Now I still think Sonic'd games need to have a happy balance between just speeding through long emtpy stretches and tediously platforming and avoiding obstacles, I still feel like Sonic Team struck gold when they hit upon the boost formula seen in Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. It's the closest they've come to having the gameplay actually feel like you're moving at the speed of sound, and even though I woudln't say it's perfect, I'd say it's a step in the right direction and it's goddamned impressive how they managed to make a speed-based character actually go fast and still make the gameplay feel comprehensible and have the controls feel appropriate, sometimes even good.
Sonic's speed is a riddle most game-devs can't even begin to wrap their heads around. The very concept of making such a fast character work is mind-boggling because of all the technical limitations along with time and budget restraints, and I'll forever be impressed at how well they managed it on their first try with Unleashed, and Sonic Unleashed is my favorite game in the franchise because of it.
But that's the thing: you have to be careful. Sonic's speed has to be managed by the player while one traverses through obstacles in an act; removing Sonic's speed and mapping it to a *button* is insulting to the player's intelligence.
After watching the whole video, I agree with the major points. My thoughts probably echo a lot of gamers and Sonic fans: It's too bad we can't have the fun engaging lag-free first level designs and all the lessons learned put into the "next" Sonic game. I guess time will tell, but I think it already told us.
My only real issue with this review is that Sonic Boom is a definite spin-off. Not even a partial one like Shadow is. Different gameplay, different developer, different canon. Secret Rings and Black Knight, two games that aren't included, are closer to being main series games than Boom is. Also think it's a shame that Episode 2 of Sonic 4 was skipped, since I feel it's a similar case to Sonic 3 + Sonic & Knuckles, which were treated somewhat seperately here. Sonic 4 Episode 2 had definite improvements over Episode 1 in almost every way other than that camera closeness (but again, I feel Episode 2 threw bullshit at you less often).
+JezMM You tell 'em, Jez.
For real though, I think the reason he included Sonic Boom is because (like it or not) it has been the focus for the Sonic series for the past while and is actually more important at this time than any of the previous games. Sure Lost World was the last "main series" Sonic game, but everyone basically forgot that it existed as Sega immediately threw the franchise into weird spin-off land that is so heavily marketed but so heavily mismanaged that the general public has started to forget that Sonic was/is anything but this new spin-off.
Rule 1: make green hill
Rule 2: just make green hill
Rule 3: it’s green hill
Rule 4: alright get green hill, then slap it on the new game
Rule 5: so now we have gree-
Okay I think you get the point
Rule 6: Green hill but with *s a n d*
But you can't forget pumpkin hill bich!
Rule 7: Green Hill, but it's named BLANK Hill
@@travisdev4098 and it has a different theme.
"Cack-a-phony"
Another word - this time the innocent "cacophony" - bites the dust on Bunnyhop (it's pronounced "ca-cough-en-ee").
+Cian Gaffney Yeah I caught that too. It's a result from reading a word, maybe in books or something, and never actually hearing it spoken. Before I heard some one actually say 'epitome' I thought it was pronounced the way it was spelled, 'epi-tome.'
It's been a few years since this came out so I can officially say the comment breakdown is:
35% of people with sonic hate boners saying "lol yeah bad games" on games they never played
35% of sonic die hard fanboys typing college essays about how everyone is wrong on the game they played a million times
30% of people having a fit over how he says cacophony
To be fair to Big Red Button and Sonic Boom, SEGA signed an exclusivity deal with Nintendo to make the Boom games for their hradware. That was after the team started working on the game, which they thought would be released on "Unspecified Next-Gen Hardware". So their engine choice, CryEngine 3, had to be hastily ported to Wii U, as it was never offically intended for the console, and assets had to be reworked under tight time constraints from SEGA. Those working conditions that were made caused a good amount of devs to leave the company before the game was finished. So I don't think the games awfulness has to do with the incompetence of Big Red Button, but of SEGA.
Matthew Olejniczak also sega rebooted the story during development
An excellent profile picture
Actually the former made false assumptions that it wouldn't be for WiiU. Sega may have made mistakes in trusting them, & in delaying the deal with Nintendo for as long as they did. We can only really blame the abandonment of the Storybook series of games for delaying that deal with Nintendo.
Wait, I can control Shadow the Hedgehog really well. So, either people are terrible at controlling games they don't like, or I am the one person on Earth that can tame that edgy beast.
Or, it could be the fact that I'm one of the few people who likes that game, and thus got used to the controls. But I'm sticking with my theory that I'm special, somehow.
I don't know why, but this comment just made my entire day. Thanks for cheering me up when I'm feeling ill.
Huh. Me too. Also, everyone harped on about how Sonic free riders for the Kinect had such awful controls, and, after playing the tutorial worked fine for me.
Maybe my beige wall is a slightly different beige than the typical wall beige color and that helps the kinect? Maybe the planets lined up every time I played?
But seriously, you can get used to almost any controls. People didn't like the Mako in Mass Effect 1. I have no idea why- it drove just fine. It seems to me people should stop whining and endure 10 min to get familiarised.
Greatness 942 I’m not even that experienced with the game and it controls fine. So yeah, people just suck at it
Shadow controls perfectly fine on Gamecube, I've heard rumors that the PS2 controls for the game weren't as finetuned though. I'm only familiar with the game on Gamecube although the controls are rather easy to master. Either there's truth to the rumors of not all Gen6 Consoles were created equally or people aren't even trying to control Shadow & complain because it's not the SA2 Controls.
WaterKirby1994 Yeah, If it’s not exactly like their favorite game, they freak out
Great analysis, man! I definitely think the first half of Sonic Heroes is way better than the latter half of the game. I still enjoy Sonic Adventure and SA:2B, but they have flaws, especially with the Big levels and the Knuckles/Rouge levels. The tails/eggman(SA2) and tails/knuckles(SA) levels are massively underrated imo, since there are so many things you can do to improve your time on levels. You really get to understand the mechanics of the game, which I don't think many people understand at all, spin jumping being the main thing people don't get.
I suppose that's the main reason I always enjoyed sonic games, the thrill of speedrunning and beating your previous bests. I've always thought the only reason to explore in a sonic game was to find a faster route to get a faster time, so I've never had a problem with areas in a sonic game not having collectibles or coins or whatever.
I've played through SA, SA2, and Generations probably about 5 times each though and really got invested in the mechanics, so perhaps my opinion comes from looking at the games from a different angle. I mean fuck, even sonic 06 is a great game for speedrunning, because once you understand the glitches and mechanics, the game becomes awesome and actually makes sense. To be fair though, I haven't actually speedrun 06, just taking darkspinesonic's word on this one.
I also think Lost World gets a bad rap, I think if they made Knuckles the protag(so you're ready for a slower game) and changed a few mechanics (sonic specific stuff for knuckles stuff) then the game would feel much better. Just a thought though, obviously the game had much more potential.
I love how EVERY sonic critics always miss the sonic games from the master system.
Because they're not worth remembering tbh
Alan Poppy imagine covering Sonic 4 AND Sonic Boom, but not covering the Rush trilogy and not even MENTIONING the Advance trilogy.
GleamingGarmore imagine! Oh, oh my!
Grunting Skunk there is a CLEAR bias on display throughout this video. The successes of good levels are downplayed and many wonderful Sonic games are excluded all together. If Sonic Rush does not count, Sonic Boom should not count.
Grunting Skunk don’t worry, we’re cool!