How Sega Ruined Sonic the Hedgehog 108
The always entertaining RetroGaming with Racketboy has a long post up railing against Sega for ruining Sonic the Hedgehog. The blue, spikey hero has had a rough time of it of late. Outings from the series like Shadow the Hedgehog, and even the next-gen title simply named Sonic the Hedgehog, have gotten simply terrible reviews. He longs for a return to simple, fun, not-creepy play. From the article: "As the new generation of platforms emerged, Sega used Sonic as a way to show off their newest graphical technologies. There is no doubt that the new Sonic the Hedgehog for the XBox 360 looks nice, but as the abysmal reviews indicate, graphics are not everything. In order to push its cutting-edge graphics to the limit, Sega, in their infinite wisdom, felt the need to bring Sonic and his friends into a more realistic world, filled with life-like humans. As you can see from this video, there is something creepy about some giant hedgehogs interacting with humans. My point is that Sega doesn't seem to know what it wants to do with Sonic. It seems like Sega assigns various quick-and-dirty development projects in order to see what ideas sticks with consumers. Unfortunately, Sega fans have had to suffer through this process."
Profit (Score:4, Insightful)
Today Sega's games are (pretty much) released 'on schedule' whether or not they're complete or not; this means that Sonic the Hedgehog and Shadow the Hedgehog are terrible games that never stood a chance of being good in the first place.
Giant hedgehog = win, Cheesy plot device = lose. (Score:4, Insightful)
Boy, I bet Disneyland is going to give you a heart attack.
Actually, it'd be really funny if we could have a "Grand Theft Sonic" game, or Ico with Sonic, or "Metal Gear Sonic". Putting a giant blue hedgehog into a realistic, serious game = comedy gold. I'd love to see Sonic beating up hookers or sneaking up on a guy and snapping his neck.
Seriously, though, the clip looks like they combined Sonic with Final Fantasy and Dragonball Z. WTF? The realistic humans I don' care about, but it looks like they took some of the cheesiest parts from the "kid's anime epic playbook" and put it in Sonic.
And despite what the title of the video says, no Sonic does *not* get an erection in the clip. That's his hand, maybe his thumb, which is on the other side of his body. Too bad, it'd be *awesome* if it was
Re:Start the video at 00:34 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hope for the Wii version (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd go further than that - Sonic Rush is the Sonic game all these people have been waiting for. It's amazing to me that so many people complain about the current Sonic games and hardly any of these people have bothered playing Sonic Rush. It's rarely even mentioned in any of the talk about recent series entrants.
Sonic Rush is a much more natural evolution of the Sonic series than any of the recent 3D games on home systems. Ironically, Sonic Rush is 3D, in the same way the Klonoa series is - the graphics are mostly cel-shaded 3D, the gameplay basically 2D. This lets the old-school gameplay that Sonic fans want shine through, while still adding some new 3D elements and the fully 3D boss battles.
One of the big sites - it was either GameSpot or GameSpy - called this game the "most significant" Sonic game in many years. I would agree with that if only more people had played it. It is an example of what Sonic games can be in the modern age, although unfortunately for all concerned, it didn't sell particularly well. What lesson does Sega take from that?
If you want good Sonic games, buy the good Sonic games. If you don't buy them, Sega won't make them. And that's what's happening now; Sega is unsuccessfully searching for a new formula, having apparently been convinced that the original formula no longer works in the marketplace.
Re:Super Mario Brothers forever (Score:3, Insightful)
Revisiting old video games while minimizing the impact of decade+ old prejudice yields fascinating insight into the mechanics of electronic entertainment from the past. The original Sonic the Hedgehog games were very tightly designed, fast-paced action games with emphases both subtly and distinctly different from Nintendo's action roster. A non-verbal, edgy-looking character in a surreal universe having to balance his strengths (i.e. going really, really fast and being nearly invincible when attacking) with the demands of the game world in which he lived (sometimes having to be patient and waiting for an opening) made for memorable and challenging experiences. Initially the addition of new characters didn't detract significantly from the gameplay; it was sorta cool for Sonic to have a sidekick, and both Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 allowed you to get rid of the little guy if you wanted to. Playing as Knuckles forced you to re-evaluate old choices and visit parts of levels previously inaccessible - in a way, it was like getting a new lease on the same old game.
But ever since the last Genesis and Game Gear games (including the Sonic & Knuckles pack, which took the entertaining Sonic 3 and turned it into a weird little epic), the series has completely lost its focus. This is somewhat surprising since one of the series' original founders left Sonic Team. bersl2 pointed out [slashdot.org] that a good deal of this is due to the desire to balance the needs of young and older gamers. Frankly a choice should have been made a long time ago: cater to the needs of younger children by rounding out characters in squeaky-clean fashion, or just go abstract and sophisticated, introducing complex new techniques and making the games artistic little masterpieces of old-school design with creative new wrinkles.
Compromised game designs lead to compromised games. It's not complicated.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Start the video at 00:34 (Score:4, Insightful)