The Energon Pub

I was watching X-play onm G4 the other day and they were revewing the new Sonic the Hedgehog game for Xbox 360 and the Ps3. I waited impatiently for the reveiw because I've been a Sonic fan since the days of the Seg Genesis. I watch the reveiw and the game sucked horribly worse than Shadows Videogame. It got a one out of five. Ive seen bad games get two's. Sonic hasn't had a good game since Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and that was a remake of a Dreamcast game. Not to mention Sonic X also sucks.
What is going on with the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise? Has enyone else noticed this decline in a gaming icon?

This belongs in the video game section

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But the function is broken and I cannot move it right now.

One of the biggest problems could be that we're not dealing with the same guys who made Sonic what it was. There's no quality. It's a rush to put out the next Sonic game every few months. On Genesis, it took 2-3 years to pull out a Sonic game and in Genesis that was the equivalent of the release of a Mario game during the days of NES and SNES. That was a big thing. I think Sega droppping out of the console race has made them more reliant on turning out more of their flagship franchise to to make money.

Other problems incude story interrupting gameplay in the middle of the stage, Sonic 3 got away with this to an extent but not to the point of more recent games. They made some cutscenes in three more like transitions from stage to stage or being taken to the next part of a stage.

Oddly enough I I think they tend to rate the 2D Sonics higher. Really I think Sonic is somethingt hat should never have gone 3D unless they used the new SMB approach.

Ever since they made Sonic 3D I thought it sucked.

I agreew with Zuko to a degree, SA was ok, and SR is in 3D sorta.

They have the new sonic game at my college rec room. I beat the game and i would just like to say that I subjected my self to several hours of pain for nothing. The ending sucked, the gameplay was horrible there were meeiningless side games, and it had the plotline of a bad anime. I would personally do an angry nintendo nerd video about this game if i had the chance it was that bad. Sonic Team needs to fire it's current staff and rebuild the series following it's roots not trying to add new aspects every ten seconds.

SuperSaiyajinSasuke wrote:I agreew with Zuko to a degree, SA was ok, and SR is in 3D sorta.

Sonic Rush was one of the best current sonic games I've played in a long time. I only kinda disliked the music.

This is the formula sega should go far: have sonic in 3D, but keep him in a side scoller. It worked 10 years ago with normal side scrollers, it'll work now.

I think sonic adventure and sonic adventure 2 were good games its just there constant craptastic releases. The franchise is loosing its credentials at an alarming rate. Do you think someone will step in and finally bring sonic to his full again?

I believe someone will, but "when" is up to Sega. There's plenty of people who understand what it takes to make a good Sonic game. Good sonic games are stll being made just not the the mainstream systems.

When someone does they need to do some stuff:

1. Clean house of characters. Keep only Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Mecha Sonic, and Dr. Eggman/Robotnik. They were all around when Sonic was good. If they want to bring any chars in for pets sake bring in Sally. Sega kept her alive in the comics because they ahd plans for her but never followed through, she's still considered a far more popular choce for Sonic than Amy ever was, despite being a Comic character and what has curtrently transpired in the comics.

2. push for deadlines that allow quality work. A Sonic game during the genesis days took 2-3 years to put out and they were generally excellent.

3. For gameplay, take the New SMB/Megaman X8 approach, 3D chars in a 2D environment. Sonic is best in sidescrolling games.

4. Stop throwing too much story in. Sonic was about gameplay rather than story, though there was a premise and setting which was detailed in the manual. Now the story gets in the way of gameplay. Mario still does a good job of putting gameplay first before story.

5. No Voice Acting. Sonic was better when he was the silent protagonist. He's quite annoying when he talks.

6. Make sidegames worthwile. I'd like collecting chaos emeralds to turn into Super Sonic again.

7. No more Death Egg a.k.a Death Star ripoff! The fact you had to destroy that thing three times in Sonic 2, 3 and S&K was enough for me.

They should take the rivals formula:

3D Graphics
Sidescrolling
Viewtiful Joe-like style: 2D controls paired with 3D loops, bends, and turns.

Take out the racing part and add voice acting, maybe custscenes, and it'll be great.

Also, Sonic Advance 1, 2, and 3 got higher scores than any other Sonic game on IGN. I'm hoping that Secret Rings will be great, since it's like a 2D game but with 3D graphics and it's really fast-paced.

I think the biggest problem is that the designers of the sonic games are just concentrating on the wrong things. For instance, the goals of Sonic Adventures 1 and 2 (fairly good games) was translating 2D gameplay into 3D. Nowadays the designers are just trying to load graphical quality and useless features and call it a new game. What they need to do is attempt to capture that 2D gaming and understand what made it fun. Then make that 3D and add some quality extra that allow character growth and environmental interactions.

The classic formula with a good plot, that's all it needs...and maybe a little engine tweaking and place the camera behind Sonic. Then it'll be great.

Roadbuster wrote:I believe someone will, but "when" is up to Sega. There's plenty of people who understand what it takes to make a good Sonic game. Good sonic games are stll being made just not the the mainstream systems.

When someone does they need to do some stuff:

1. Clean house of characters. Keep only Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Mecha Sonic, and Dr. Eggman/Robotnik. They were all around when Sonic was good. If they want to bring any chars in for pets sake bring in Sally. Sega kept her alive in the comics because they ahd plans for her but never followed through, she's still considered a far more popular choce for Sonic than Amy ever was, despite being a Comic character and what has curtrently transpired in the comics.

Dear god no, please, no mixing of that series and the archie comics, Alt Universe to the games. You forgot the Chaotix, actualy, Sega even forgets characters in the Chaotix -_- You forgot Blaze the Cat and NegaEggman.

2. push for deadlines that allow quality work. A Sonic game during the genesis days took 2-3 years to put out and they were generally excellent.

General question, how long as Rush in development? Shouldn't take much longer than that.

3. For gameplay, take the New SMB/Megaman X8 approach, 3D chars in a 2D environment. Sonic is best in sidescrolling games.

I fully agree

4. Stop throwing too much story in. Sonic was about gameplay rather than story, though there was a premise and setting which was detailed in the manual. Now the story gets in the way of gameplay. Mario still does a good job of putting gameplay first before story.

They should kill Shadow and Silver. That would be a great story

5. No Voice Acting. Sonic was better when he was the silent protagonist. He's quite annoying when he talks.

Bring back Drummond if you ask me.. and find Knux a GOOD actor who can act 18.

6. Make sidegames worthwile. I'd like collecting chaos emeralds to turn into Super Sonic again.

Nah, I prefer getting them naturaly in game.

7. No more Death Egg a.k.a Death Star ripoff! The fact you had to destroy that thing three times in Sonic 2, 3 and S&K was enough for me.

Sonic and Knuckles is Sonic 3... just longer.

in quote.

That's the big problem with games now-a-days. The developers rush them out too fast. Look at Sega's old school rival Nintendo. Each of their franchises only appear 1 or 2 times in a consoles life time. They take the time to make sure their sequels are great games. Where as other developers don't and their games show it. I'm afraid history will repeat itself and massive amount of poopy games will destroy the gaming industry just like they did back in the days of Atari and Intellivision. Todays console makers should introduce a quality control system just like Nintendo did back then. If a game can't pass the grade, it won't get the seal approval. Oh, how I miss that seal...

The seal is still around, but it has lost all value. Countless horrible games have been released, namely Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots for the GBA.

Nintendo needs to get stricter.

On a note about Shadow: I loved Shadow when he premiered in SA2. But sadly, after that he turned into a whiny goth punk. He was cool, but then raped of his personality.

UltraPrimal wrote:That's the big problem with games now-a-days. The developers rush them out too fast. Look at Sega's old school rival Nintendo. Each of their franchises only appear 1 or 2 times in a consoles life time. They take the time to make sure their sequels are great games. Where as other developers don't and their games show it. I'm afraid history will repeat itself and massive amount of poopy games will destroy the gaming industry just like they did back in the days of Atari and Intellivision. Todays console makers should introduce a quality control system just like Nintendo did back then. If a game can't pass the grade, it won't get the seal approval. Oh, how I miss that seal...

Only problem with that is there are tons more developers now trying to get some recognition with less money to work with. If they have half the amount of money as say Ubisoft would it be fair to not allow their game to be released because it's not as polished?

The gimmicks of sonic games are even getting worse and worse as time goes by. I really dislike the whole BRAND NEW CHARACTER every game idea. It needs to stop.

I really hope sonic and the secret rings puts out some good new (not characters) ideas and gameplay, which it seems to have. Such as maybe "everyone" having cool super modes during regular game play like in sonic 2, not just bosses.

Does anyone know when sonic and the secret rings will be released?

In the US, it'll be coming out February 20th. Only 11 more days! It was supposed to be out on the 27th, but it's shipping early.