General Sonic The Hedgehog thread

@25197 Why are you even comparing Sonic & Knuckles to Sonic Boom? Wanna throw Sonic R in there while you're at it?

Pretty good.

Useless Game Grumps Sonic Boom Update: Arin broke the game like 10 episodes ago with Knuckles' Super Jump glitch, and they're now in an area they're not meant to be in. Arin and Dan are complaining like crazy - most complaints being somewhat reasonable, but at the same time I think a major source of their confusion and lack of bearings is because they blatantly sequence broke the game.

It's 30% annoying as balls, but still a solid 70% hilarious.

On another note, Knuckles' Super Jump glitch reminds me of a glitch from Jak 3, where you could acheive infinite flight with an unlockable cheat and 2 storyline Light Eco powers. Good stuff.

edited 25th Dec '14 6:59:14 AM by MrMallard

So hey, I got Rise of Lyric for Christmas...guess I have a chance to experience the madness firsthand now

...Couldn't they have just given you coal instead?

Oh hush, they don't know much about video games and I'm sure the guy at Game Stop was sick of seeing it on the shelf

...I'm gonna be completely honest, while RoL is a bad game, its badness isn't remarkable in any way (and it's certainly not as bad as 06). The gameplay isn't filled with bugs every time you step forward, the story isn't absolutely ridiculous and crazy, the dialogue isn't incredibly cheesy or silly... it's just your average licensed game bad, with simply annoying dialogue, a just lackluster story, and only subpar gameplay. Compared to stinkers like Shadow and 06, it's completely unnotable (screw it I'm making that a word now). People just exaggerate it because it's Sonic.

edited 25th Dec '14 7:16:57 AM by PhysicalStamina

I'm kind of sad because it reminds me a great deal of Jak and Daxter. The open worlds and the way Amy swings on those things, mainly, but it still hurts a little.

The upgrade menu reminds me of The Lost Frontier though. Makes me think of trash.

The game seems extraordinarily broken, but I agree that it's widely reviled because "OHMIGAWHD IT'S ANOTHER BAD SANIC GAME". Usually it'd just sort of... fade away, but the fact that it's the familiar Sonic crew going through this poorly made 3D environment, with these unremarkable side characters, gives the game a reason for people to focus on it.

And some of the things people say about it - "Why didn't they just give you coal for Christmas instead of this game?" and "My sister wants Shattered Crystal, what are better games to give her?" from this thread alone, just sound really awful and overreactionary. It's a bad game, Shattered Crystal not being terrible (but apparently not being great either - kind of like Sanzaru's last licensed game, Sly 4), not a death sentence.

Is that an opinion I see? Can't have that.

You did not just say Rise of Lyric is better than Shadow and 06. Blast you for making me defend 06.

• Sonic Boom has a lot of bugs if Google is being truthful.
• Shadow the Hedgehog, to my knowledge, was not full of glitches. I never had 06 glitch on me. There were some odd moments where I could have sworn the game was f'cking with me, but I never had a character phase through a wall, or had dialogue not match up to the subtitles.
• Rise of Lyric is remarkably bad, in that they tried to reinvent Sonic and make this adventure extraordinary, when it turned out to quite possibly be Sonic's most unnecessary, lackluster adventure thus far - with a bare conclusion!
• Rise of Lyric's dialogue is incredibly silly and cheesy compared to 06 and Shadow. Rise of Lyric is only better than Lost World and Unleashed in this regard because these are "supposed to be" new takes on the characters.
• The game tries to be Lighter and Softer with its Adventure-Friendly World, yet Darker and Edgier with its villains. Shadow the Hedgehog and 06 attempt to go Darker and Edgier and they stick with it - they maintain a consistent tone.
• Sonic 06 had a mystery, and while the plot could be seen as convoluted, it has twists and turns, yet doesn't leave any particular holes. Shadow as well - it concludes his character arc. Rise of Lyric leaves several things unanswered, and Sonic is the only one who develops at all, because in this new continuity he's supposedly a jerk who needs to learn about friendship.
  • Time-traveling hedgehog wants Sonic dead? Okay, sounds interesting. Iblis trigger, what's that?
  • Sonic and his friends visit an undiscovered land where an evil snake named Lyric wants to use the "Chaos Emeralds" to power his own robot army? How original.
  • F'cking Shadow cameo.
• Rise of Lyric has poor pacing, boss fights, and enemies. Shadow and 06 treated Eggman as a legitimate threat. He's a complete joke in the Boom!universe.

I'm sorry, but putting 06 and Shadow below Rise of Lyric is just awful in my eyes. Shadow, at least, was complete upon its release, and has some of the most badass music in the series. 06 managed to keep everyone's personalities intact and didn't have terrible moments like Knuckles trying to figure out which way is left.

I mean look at 06's plot:

• In the distant future, a time-traveling, manifestation of evil named Iblis destroys the world.
• Silver is tricked by Mephiles to go back in time and stop said creature by killing Sonic.
• This is all part of Mephiles's plot to set events in motion and merge with Iblis.
• Sonic and Shadow are entangled in those events.
• Elise is the MacGuffin tethering the villain's power.
• Eggman kidnaps Elise.
• Eggman abuses time travel.
• Silver makes attempts on Sonic's life to change the Bad Future.
• Shadow and Silver inadvertently create a time loop, which causes the creation of Mephiles and Iblis.
• Mephiles kills Sonic, causing Elise to unleash Iblis, which was sealed inside her due to the aforementioned time loop.
• Sonic is revived, and ensures that none of the events ever occurred. And so once again, the day is saved.
  • Albeit, Elise should still be scheduled for an Egg-napping because of her chaos emerald, but hey, Sonic showed up on the same day.

It all wraps up, with a few jaunts (Amy being in Soleanna) and stupid, contrived side missions in-between.

Boom? Take a look:

• Sonic and friends are randomly fighting Doctor Eggman.
• Eggman apparently discovered an ancient temple.
• Said temple is somehow connected to Sonic, so Eggman led him there.
• Rather than build his own army, Eggman hijacks an ancient army of robots.
• Sonic and gang fight said robots en route to Lyric, who Sonic incidentally frees.
• Sonic and gang learn that Lyric was actually evil and set off to stop him.
• Sonic and Tails travel back in time and incidentally (and unknowingly) cause a time loop, which leads to their previous meeting with Lyric.
• Abandon all mention of the Ancients, Sonic and friends race to find another crystal.
• Eggman teams up with Lyric.
• Sonic and friends find another crystal.
• Eggman breaks up with Lyric.
• Sonic and friends find another crystal.
• Eggman tries to get revenge on Lyric, but rather than follow convention and go Lets You And Me Fight Him, decides to fight Sonic, and loses.
• Sonic and friends find another crystal.
• Lyric sets a trap for them and kills Sonic.
• Sonic's ghost and the gang go after Lyric who has all the crystals.
• Lyric tries to reactivate his army of suspiciously pod-shaped death machines.
• Sonic and friends bypass his massive, incredibly challenging defenses and steamroll Lyric, after Eggman saves them at the last minute.
• And so they left Lyric there to stew on all of the bad things he'd done and... hid the crystals somewhere and went to watch fireworks?
• Eggman steals more ancient technology despite literally having it turned against him in the same game.

And in-between, Sonic and the gang help random people for mostly ridiculous reasons.

edited 25th Dec '14 9:27:02 AM by FOFD

I still say 06 is worse.

But yeah. Boom's actually kinda bad.

I also don't recall 06 wigging out anywhere near as badly as Boom in its opening cutscenes.

It's not that Boom isn't a bad game - it is a very poor 3D platformer, the fact that they cap you at 100 rings and throw thousands more at you is ridiculous, and the speedy sections where you can slow to a walk is very reminiscent of Sonic 06. Not to mention the constant talking.

But at the same time, it's just a really bad 3D platformer. Given that games just as bad and/or worse would usually just sink to the bottom of the bargain bin, it seems like a massive exaggeration to have people screaming "worst game ever" at it. As a Sonic game, it's certainly not very good - I think I'd even call it one of the worst, no worse than Sonic Labyrinth but no better than Sonic the Fighters - and as a 3D platformer it is certainly not very good.

But at the same time, it's somewhat together. It might be held together by sticky tape and the wishes of children who believe in Sonic, but it's usually functional at the base level. Getting stuck outside a forcefield, admittedly, is a very broken thing - kind of a special kind of bad - but that sort of badness is present on a ton of shovelware that time has forgotten because it didn't have a well-known character in it. There are some people who take the badness of these new games too far and come off as very overzealous and crazy - and while I'll agree that it's a bad game, I wouldn't call it the worst in the series, nor the worst game of all time.

...Seriously, Sonic Labyrinth is just the worst. So is that early Game Gear racing game.

I'll cap this all off with a mention of the worst game I have ever played - and no, it's not Jak and Daxter: the Lost Frontier. It's called Daemon Summoner - published by the masters of crap, Midas Interactive, cobbled together in 6 weeks and with the most ridiculously broken second level in the history of the PS 2. Calling it trash would be more than just an understatement.

I'm not going to be the usual turbo-nerd I usually am and push this until the argument becomes circular, so I'll end it here. Sonic Boom is a bad game - probably worse than Shadow and more bland than Sonic 06 - but even then I think people go overboard when they call it the worst game in the series, or of all time.

Maybe you're thinking of Sonic Drift?

Anyway, I still need to pick up Rise of Lyric and play it for myself. I mean, I enjoyed the hell out of 06 and Shadow, but they're both clearly flawed. Shadow had awful vehicles, and while the guns were mostly good, they could be a bit better. Although I had the Gamecube version, and at least according to our trope page, the PS 2's guns didn't work as well. I know it had lag issues in general since it used the Heroes engine, which didn't actually work as well on the PS 2 as the Gamecube. So I can understand Shadow not working as well on there.

As for Shadow's plot, I remember it had a small plot hole or two, but it wasn't severe. 06 doesn't have major ones, it's more the fact that time travel and the storylines had to work off of each other and accomplish entirely different goals. Time shenanigans meant that some events were erased just because. And no, it doesn't make much sense either. Mephiles' actions did make sense. He's a manipulative and horrific person. Just winning isn't nearly as fun as toying them along. Considering he was the brains of Solaris, he made all that decision just because he wanted to. He could time travel at any time as well, so it's not like he couldn't kill Sonic in one blow. His old plan did not work. I think the real issue is why he didn't know his old plan would fail, considering he's a master of full out time travel(Shadow doesn't even have that. He has time slow powers). Either he couldn't directly predict the future, or didn't bother to because he was having too much fun manipulating people. We don't know for sure on his prediction powers. If he could predict it, he'd know he would lose too later. So it's likely that despite his powers, he likes to see things play out or literally cannot predict outcomes and has to see them for himself at any moment. Which doesn't make much sense either, so... yeah, I can see why people take issue with his actions here. It is confusing, and it feels like he wasted his time with Silver. It's not really unjustified to be annoyed by this plotline. It's really that oddly designed. Thankfully, a giant reset button was hit and all of that was undone. And as much as I loved the game and characterization, the story was not done as well as it could be.

I've seen this argument before and tbh I don't think it holds much weight. the experiences with Sonic 06's glitches vary, but one or two people's personal experiences do not invalidate several people's experiences of running into glitches during casual play.

That's debatable. I'd argue it's so poorly-executed that it veers into Idiot Plot.

i haven't seen pretty much anything of Rise of Lyric, but Sonic 06 is an abomination, that much I know.

I don't need to see Rise of Lyric to know calling it the worst game of all time is hyperbole. Anyone who says that is being disingenuous or just has an incredibly shallow reference pool when it comes to bad games.

edited 25th Dec '14 9:07:06 AM by wehrmacht

Fair enough. Shadow, however, was not glitchy - someone's going to need to upload a Youtube video to convince me of that. And I think you will hear far more complaining about the glitches plaguing Rise of Lyric, versus those in 06. Biggest complaints about 06? Sonic falls in love with a human and EW SIDE MISSIONS.

Side missions, above all else, always seem to bring everything down.

Worst game of all time? No. That's not fair when there was some work put into it. Worst Sonic game? Some will argue Sonic R or Sonic Labyrinth, maybe even Lost World. I say its ROL. They had a bunch of lincoln logs, built a decent house with'em, and then some turd came over and kicked the hell out of it.

edited 25th Dec '14 9:16:04 AM by FOFD

...Sonic never falls in love with a human. Elise falls in love with him. He's just her friend. That weird side mission about it doesn't even affect the rest of the story and just unlocks a song. People need to let that go, as it's actually false with what happens in the real game.

And Shadow is not full of glitches, but it does have them. Sometimes the full room won't load and you can fall through the floor. This isn't common. 06 has a lot of glitches, though. I've fully seen them on Youtube, way more than I even thought existed. Although some could be called "bad physics", like Sonic clinging to a wall. It depends how you define a glitch anyway. But it has some major ones, like a out-of-your-way set of sequences that makes Sonic skip almost all of his story except the first set of levels that are needed to start the glitch. That's a huge one.

And honestly, if people think Rise of Lyric is the worst after playing it and playing the other games, they're free to that thought. Objectively speaking, it's pretty hard to say what is the true worst. There's many factors, including sales and critic reviews. 06 has far better reviews than Sonic the Hedgehog GENESIS and even the metacritics are starting to prefer it(06) over Rise of Lyric. Shattered Crystal went way better with people, but it didn't have nearly the same issues to them. It worked, but didn't stand out. Not a ton of glitches, especially(I can't say much for the plot though. I only seen bits and pieces. But I have seen the glitches, and Rise of Lyric has some clear issues. It definitely should've had more testing. It has horrible clipping during cutscenes alone. This wasn't too common among a lot of Sonic games either. Not a big issue in the other 3D ones as is. Thus, it's a stand out issue. And they're constantly sequence breaking with Knuckles' jump glitch. That's a pretty big issue to take into account).

edited 25th Dec '14 9:21:42 AM by Irene

Well it's more like those are the most infamous things that everyone remembers. there's laundry lists of complaints everywhere, from the poor art direction, the horrible loading times, the poorly constructed plot, the poor design of soleanna, the uncanny valley-esque NPC's, etc.

I mean it IS certainly possible that Rise of Lyric is more glitchy than Sonic 06. I have no way of arguing that considering how little I actually know about Ro L. It could be worse as a whole, too. I'm just hesitant to say anything too good about 06 since I think Sonic Team did almost everything wrong there.

@25212:

• I haven't seen any bugs that were as bad as 06.
• I never said Shadow was full of glitches. I said that about 06. And I've never had Ro L glitch on me either. All I've heard about is the Knuckles jump glitch which I still have yet to come across. I guess the guy who found it was just particularly unlucky.
• That's not remarkable. It's just below average. Remarkably bad is being able to get shot into space during a boss fight. Remarkably bad is being able to walk on a loop-de-loop and stand upside down. Ro L has none of these moments, at least so far.
• No it's not. Ro L's dialogue is stock and generic. Compare lines like "I shall become the most powerful hedgehog in the universe!" and Mephiles' introduction speech in Silver story in 06 to that conversation between Sonic and Tails in that elevator. The former examples are at least ridiculous to laugh at; the latter is just boring dialogue that wants to make you laugh, but is dragged on for far too long and unnecessary in the first place.
• They might be more consistent their tone, but the execution of the tone is laughably awful.
• Just because it has "twists and turns" doesn't make it better, especially considering said twists are stupid. Also, no one develops in 06 except maybe Elise, even that's a bit of a stretch considering she doesn't have any personality.
• Okay, so Ro L has poor pacing, boss fights, and enemies. And 06 doesn't? Levels that go on for ages? Boss fights make you wait forever until you get a chance to attack? Generic robot enemies with health bars? All of this is better than Ro L somehow?

And honestly, I could not care about Sonic plots if you paid me. Speaking strictly from a gameplay standpoint, Ro L is not worthy of 06 comparisons. It's just not.

My mistake then.

Since you want to talk gameplay, perhaps not. Story and settingwise? It's far below average.

That conversation was one of the few good parts of the script and it happened in an elevator in what was essentially a loading screen. Beyond that?

"I LOVE BOOST RINGS!"

Debatable. I will take Shadow being hilariously indecisive and Eggman dropping some weight, over Shadow being a one-scene wonder and Eggman being utterly incompetent. Sonic 06 tries to be serious with a focus on everyone's attempts to avert a bad future, whereas Sonic Boom wants to be silly, mysterious, meaningful, and edgy with a bullet-riddled plot about time travel and ancient crystals.

That makes it better because the plot isn't predictable, with a shallow message about friendship shoved in at the end.

06 had Elise, Shadow, Silver, and Omega. Boom has Sonic and Knuckles, maybe. Sonic decides to be less of a douche. Knuckles... acknowledges his decreasing douchiness.

Because Metal Sonic in ROL was equally terrible, as were the fights with Lyric and Shadow. Because they didn't break up the fight with the same "knocked into the sky and snark about the landing" sequence.

The enemies in 06 were of Eggman's own design, not just robots he found and decided to use. The 06 machines had a sleek, militaristic design. Egg Cerberus, Egg-Wyvern? Those were some great ideas.

Eggman's only moderately impressive invention in ROL was Metal Sonic.

edited 25th Dec '14 10:57:31 AM by FOFD

Most of the Let's Plays I've seen of Ro L point out that while there are major bugs in the game, most of the more noticeable and game breaking ones are through things the player has to do to intentionally cause them (sometimes going out of their way to do so), not something the player can just stumble across and be menaced by through a normal playthrough - there are a few of those, but the game isn't riddled with them a la 06.

From what I've seen, it does seem like your basic, average bad licensed game, and has the basic, average bad licensed game problems: bad pacing, repetitive gameplay, poorly implemented mechanics, stuff like poor draw distance for objects, half-assed "in-game" cutscenes, all pretty standard stuff. It's actually kind of unremarkable - it's not exceptionally bad or anything.

edited 25th Dec '14 10:21:03 AM by KnownUnknown

• Easy to say for a game that was released last month, as opposed to one that's half a decade old which everybody's torn down and built back up.
• Tons of people have found it; it's a remarkably easy glitch to exploit. There are already comically short speedruns based entirely around it, in fact.
• There have also been numerous sightings of people being able to casually walk on walls during speed segments. And on virtually nothing everywhere else.
• First off, you're misunderstanding the concept of Narm entirely, and secondly, any charm that RoL's quips had are quickly burnt out when they're repeated ad infinitum at the slightest provocation. Well that was a confusing bullet. W/e, then.
• So are we just ignoring Silver's story entirely, or...?
• As a Sonic game? Sure. One of the major inherent complaints about RoL is that it doesn't even accomplish that.

You're correct in this regard, as comparing 06's flaws to RoL's is comparing two fairly distinct negatives: Obvious Beta vs. They Just Didn't Care.

edited 25th Dec '14 5:55:20 PM by Demonfly

The strange thing is is that you can't sequence break easily in 06. The biggest glitch to do so requires you to severely go out of your way for it. It's kind of easy to do with in Rise of Lyric with the Knuckles' Jumping Glitch because exploring everywhere for it isn't something hard to figure out. 06 is really difficult to do this in, Lyric is... particularly easy in comparison.

Both games clearly need better bug testing, though. Even then, Lyric's most annoying glitch is you respawning in the level without everything resetting. Meaning you can't do anything at all. 06 never had this issue. The worst it had is Sonic/etc. falling through a floor. It's actually not full of game-breaking glitches, just somewhat slightly annoying ones. The sequence break is the biggest one, as you cannot unlock Shadow's story if you do that with Sonic to skip all the way to the end. Since the Hub itself has infinite lives, anything you do in there often won't matter. Also, most of the sequence breaking is downright impossible in 06, which fixes that kind of issue(the big one I talked about is the only one possible) too. Notably, few glitches you can perform that aren't out of your way can be beneficial too. Using Silver's box glitch helps you open doors. A godsend, really. As for the Mach Speed section, it actually does not contain glitches at all. It just has horrific physics and it's super easy to die. It was just poorly designed as a whole. You could've lost less than all your rings with a hit. Even 10(like in Shadow, which I very much like how the Ring Counter works in that game. Was very balanced and gave you a good reason to go all out. It arguably is unbalanced because it removes some risk, though).

Actually, Sega fired 06's testers. It's also a part of They Just Didn't Care too. Obvious Beta is pretty clear, though. It was not finished on time for certain parts. Like missing gems for characters. Unfinished ideas that were in the manual...

edited 25th Dec '14 10:39:33 AM by Irene

When did I claim that Ro L's dialogue had any charm? In fact, I could've sworn I had been saying the exact opposite.

I didn't say that.

Nevermind.

edited 25th Dec '14 10:52:34 AM by FOFD

Ladies, ladies, please, you don't need to fight over me! I love you both just the same.

Don't you guys have families to spend your Christmas with instead of arguing which bad game is less bad on an internet forum?