sonic

[FlipFlopDogDeer]

crossworlds is out soon but let's talk about the world's favourite blue hedgehog who runs fast

[Enbyeon]

My Sonic hot take is that Sonic 1 8bit (for the Master System) is better than Sonic 1 for the Mega Drive/Genesis.

Btw, Shadow Generations was really, really good.

Also, for anyone getting Crossworlds, FYI that the pre-order bonus is Sonic the Werechog.

[Flint]

Ahh I was already thinking of starting a Sonic thread here later today but you were the true blue blur this time around.

I'm a BIG Sonic fan and I'm really excited for Crossworlds! Kind of annoyed though that the bulk of the DLC is going to be random Nicktoons stuff which have absolutely nothing to do with Sonic, so going to avoid the season pass just to keep it 'pure'.

If we're doing hot takes then I'm just going to drop the fact bomb that

Hidden text.

out of the two 2017 Sonic games, Forces > Mania.

[linuxavali]

Honestly I kinda find it hard to get excited for new sonic games. I love the classics though. I cannot tell you how many times I revisit SA2 on gamecube to play a round of metal harbor or final rush.

[FlipFlopDogDeer]

Ahh I was already thinking of starting a Sonic thread here later today but you were the true blue blur this time around.

I'm a BIG Sonic fan and I'm really excited for Crossworlds! Kind of annoyed though that the bulk of the DLC is going to be random Nicktoons stuff which have absolutely nothing to do with Sonic, so going to avoid the season pass just to keep it 'pure'.

If we're doing hot takes then I'm just going to drop the fact bomb that

Hidden text.

out of the two 2017 Sonic games, Forces > Mania.

brave but also fair opinion
i also wish that we would get more sonic/sega characters rather than having nickelodeon kart 4 through the form of dlcs but we'll have to see what the rest will look like (though i do wish werehog wasn't just a pre-order bonus like what enby said, but that's just modern gaming nowadays)

[Beancatte]

my spicy take is sonic good

[Al Baron]

my spicy take is sonic good

Not going to lie, I totally forgot Sega made a entry in their Kart series between Crossworlds and Transfromed haha; Kinda wished they kept it all Sega though since I liked some of the remixed Transformed had.

But as for me I'm totally looking forward to paying s̶c̶a̶p̶l̶e̶r̶single prices for some of the Sonic MTG Secret Lair cards; the bespoke crew seems cool (Especially Shadow) but tbh I want the Weatherlight reskin so I can hum a few bars of Stranger in Moscow when I play it hahaha.

[Ja'aran]

Can I just go off about how awesome and amazing and perfect Team Dark is? And it's one of the big successes to come out of Sonic Heroes for me. The characters just by themselves, I like them, don't get me wrong, but I feel like they each bring out the best in each other.

I've always had a soft spot for a Found Family in stories, they're a group of misfits that formed a trio together and became good friends. This group also has a stronger, and more subtle sense of comradery compared to Team Sonic, at least in my opinion. They do care about each other, they just don't talk about it, and they don't need to because they have an intrinsic understanding.

This team also feels pretty balanced, it's not the kind of group where the leader hogs the whole entire spotlight for themselves. In fact, you can debate on who the actual leader is, where each character can take on that role depending on the situation.

[SlushieCat]

I've got some Sonic hot takes for sure. CD is the best 2d sonic. Sonic Frontiers is one of the best Sonic games in the series. Sonic Adventure 2 is kinda bad. Sonic is asexual and dating Shadow and both of them are dating me.

[Mefurbëtas]

I wouldn't say that SA2 is bad, but it certainly lacks some things that I enjoyed from the original Adventure games which unfortunately brought it down in my eyes.

[EdenCoven]

Sonic Adventure 2 was the first in a new breed of videogame: good videogames. They would not repeat this until the creation of Sonic Adventure 2 2, better known as Spark the Electric Jester 3

[TheGreatMilksteak]

I consider myself a Sonic fan, but the only two games I've managed to finish are '06 and Murder.

I do really like the IDW comics though! Despite being very behind!

[StarlightNecromancer]

I don't have a console anymore and my pc can't run a lot of things (tried playing Sonic x Shadow and it couldn't even load) but I still hold to the fact that for as much as a lot of the Sonic fandom hated the werehog sections in Unleashed, Unleashed was still probably one of most interesting takes in a while. Colors iterated off of it, and later games off of it.

I also liked the werehog sections. I thought they were cool. I think the only part of the game I didn't actually like was the final stage before the Dark Gaia bossfight: Eggmanland. That shit sucked and my best time to this day is still around 1h30m because I was just so bad at it.

[Enbyeon]

People saying nice things about Sonic Forces here gives me life.

[Moot]

i'm not a big sonic fan by any means and i definitely am not a fan of any of the 2d ones but i truly do not get all the backlash for Forces lol, it seemed fine to me AND you get to put your own guy in it? which seems like an easy selling point for any of the billion sonic fans who made an OC for themselves at some point

like damn. thats me circa 4 years ago

still though, its a 3d sonic where the movement doesn't feel twitchy and strange to me so that automatically puts it fairly high on my own list

[DarkOverord]

*Fumbling multiple archipelago multiworlds where I'm running SADX and SA2B* Hi I like Sonic you'd have never known

My hot take is SEGA should let me have chao in games again

[EdenCoven]

Forces just feels like it fell victim to a certain amount of inertia. Well it's Sonic so we have to hate it. And it's about Sonic having goofball friends which we've been whining about since the late 90s.

Not that it has zero problems but I could never see any reason to consider it especially bad. It's cool. There's Shadow DLC......

[Moot]

the impression i get as a non sonic fan is that the community hates the last game that came out and loves the one that came out before that, no matter what it actually is/was

like to paraphrase, i've definitely seen people saying that sonic 06 "wasn't all bad" recently which is definitely not how i remember critical reception of it lmao

[EdenCoven]

I quite like Shadow Generations and really dislike Frontiers, making me the legendary anti-fan

[FlipFlopDogDeer]

the impression i get as a non sonic fan is that the community hates the last game that came out and loves the one that came out before that, no matter what it actually is/was

like to paraphrase, i've definitely seen people saying that sonic 06 "wasn't all bad" recently which is definitely not how i remember critical reception of it lmao

pretty much, sonic fans in general are rarely satisfied, only time i recall recently where pretty much every sonic fan was satisfied was with sonic x shadow and even then, the complaint about the re-writing in sonic generations got extremely tiring, especially considering how ian flynn being brought on for writing was seen as a god-send a few years prior.

[EdenCoven]

Honestly I am the person who dislikes the rewriting a lot but I don't read the comics or anything so I don't know what Ian Flynn does. I think this is the thing you have to keep in mind that the different opinions could be held by different people right. We're old and not fandom people so we like the jokes more than the dry recitation of wiki facts. This is kind of also the weakness with Shadow Generations too but it's got fantastic gameplay backing it up

[FlipFlopDogDeer]

i'm one who, honestly, never had much of an issue with the writing in sonic games. hell, even sonic 06 and forces are generally seen as having "bad writing" that i don't think is that bad and colours' writing is still absolutely fine

[Flint]

I'm a big fan of Flynn's writing and direction, and never really understood how or why he's become such a controversial character. Frontiers and the IDW comics are among the best written Sonic ever. There's a little bit more nuance and a little bit more actual emotion in there, without forgetting the feel-good, spirited nature of this being a bunch of vivid cartoon animals. I've also enjoyed all the tweaks to the character personalities over the past few years.

like to paraphrase, i've definitely seen people saying that sonic 06 "wasn't all bad" recently which is definitely not how i remember critical reception of it lmao

I guess I fall in the "Sonic 06 wasn't all bad" category. I hadn't actually played it until last year - I missed it the first time around because I didn't have the right consoles at the time of release and I just never went back knowing its reputation, until I felt that gap in my personal knowledge was too big to ignore. And don't get me wrong, it's not a good game - its sheer technical messiness and glitches can't be ignored, it's full of aborted features and haphazard ideas, and as a gameplay experience it's just very awkward for most parts. But I always have a soft spot for things that are clearly ambitious and try to reach far and high, even if they completely tumble on their feet trying to do so. It's almost like a B-movie where it's clear the whole production has issues, boom mics are visible in half the scenes and at one point the set just falls over but they had no budget to re-shoot, but the vision is there and I end up sympathising with it.

I'll always root for a aims-high-crashes-hard failure more than I do for something that's just creatively uninspired and completely bland, which is why I think Sonic: Lost World is the worst game in this entire series (out of the big mainline entries) instead of '06. At least with '06 I was interested to see what was around the corner even if I cursed audibly when a glitch ruined my day - plus I actually genuinely enjoyed Silver's campaign, a genuine highlight that almost functions smoothly compared to the other two, far clunkier and half-baked campaigns. The sheer power rush of being a psychic god stopping missiles in air and firing them back at the robots that fired them (and then lifting those robots up to use them as makeshift missiles of your own) was just so much fun. It's such a shame Sonic Team seem to be scared of utilising Silver properly since '06 because there's so much potential in him as a playable character.

[EdenCoven]

Is Ian Flynn controversial I thought I was the only one who does not think his work on the games has been good at all (but I can't speak to the comics which is where he actually got his thing going on). I just don't like Fandom as a concept so writing that's mostly based around appealing to Fandom is boring to me. I suspect he knows what to do to actually sell the stuff which makes him good at his job. Plus he apparently wants to make Amy an actual character which honestly yes good on him, good decision.

My favorite Sonic writing is mainly in Shadow the Hedgehog (2005) which has some issues but largely rejects the framework of continuity.

[ElTipejoLoco]

I'm gonna peek in here to say that a lot of 2006's current increased stomach-ability might be that the Xbox 360 both has since been updated to allow installing data from the disc (it didn't have this capacity when the game was originally released) AND has also become better to emulate.

Sitting through loading screens during a time when the console could potentially still suffer red-rings-of-death with a higher frequency definitely contributed, in my opinion, to its infamy. I feel like it's inevitable that more modern players will be unable to replicate the exact circumstances.

The fact that news of the devs' misfortunate circumstances and horror story was circulating at the same time also deffo contributed. That news is old now, and Sega now has at least one union amongst its employees at present.