Why is Sega incapable of creating a good Sonic game?

[OrangeCrush980]

Sega has released several Sonic games over the last decade and most if not all of them are widely considered to be terrible. Many people consider Sonic 2006 to be one of the worst games ever made. You would assume that Sega would put a lot of effort into their flagship series, but instead they've turned it into one of the biggest jokes in gaming.

[Skynstein]

They're not incapable, because Sonic 3 & Knuckles (IMO the best platformer on 16-bits) exists. But that's old.

Generations isn't too bad, though.

[secondworld]

This topic feels very outdated.

[NoNameAtAll]

Sega has released several Sonic games over the last decade and most if not all of them are widely considered to be terrible. Many people consider Sonic 2006 to be one of the worst games ever made. You would assume that Sega would put a lot of effort into their flagship series, but instead they've turned it into one of the biggest jokes in gaming.

You also have to remember Sonic Team as they once were during the Genesis/Mega Drive days aren't the same as they are now.

Yuji Naka, Naoto Oshima, Hirokazu Yasuhara and others aren't part of Sega or Sonic Team anymore.

And, of course, you have the usual shit communication between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. SoA actually does give a shit, but they don't really have the power to just take the franchise and do their own stuff. But some things like the mobile versions of Sonic 1, 2 and CD are really great, in part due to some help from the likes of Taxman and Stealth.

[Jedi]

Someone seems to forget Colors, Generations and Lost world. Not to mention thAdventure games, Heroes, and many of the advanced games, Sonic Battle Sonic Rush.

So this thread is horribly not accurate and is made by a crybaby

[kingddd]

Sonic Team has a tendency for experimenting their games compared to a lot of other game companies with established franchises. It's why you see during their Dreamcast days, they have created a lot of significantly new IPs. The problem with the newer Sonic games is that they have so many different gameplay elements that it lacks focus and they are ultimately not refined as they should be. At the same time, many of the developers that helped managed Sonic Team back then are no longer there anymore and Sega or Sega Sammy is very pushy when it comes to the development of the games. Forcing really harsh deadlines and causing the games to be rushed in development.

Personally, Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations were great games as they had a pretty big development time and they had two different teams working on each specific games at the time.

Sonic Lost World was unfortunately a game that had a lot of potential but the atrocious level design killed the game for me.

[Garnef]

The Sonic series isn't dead. Saying they're incapable of making good Sonic games is an insult.

I haven't played Sonic Lost world, just going to point that out before I speak, since I don't know if that game's good or not:

Here's my list of opinions on the Sonic series.

- The Sonic franchise has not died at all.

- Sonic Heroes is awesome. The idea of playing as 3 seperate characters at once allows the level design to be more fresh, and the mission objectives of all 4 teams are unique enough to be really good.

- Shadow the Hedgehog is great. Multiple endings, the gameplay, the bosses, and the level design were all really good. The only majors problems with the game were the dark undertones and the whole bringing guns to the table thing, which in my opinion, while guns is a terrible idea for Sonic, they still played really well.

- Sonic Unleashed is one of the best games in the series. The Werehog stages are well designed, and the Daytime stages are extremely well designed. Overall, it's my 3rd favorite game in the series.

- Sonic Colors was absolute shit, compared to the Daytime stages in Unleashed. The gameplay was majorly butchered, and glitched to the point of where the game was not fun at all. The wisps were also a worthless addition to the gameplay.

- Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is better than Sonic 2, even without the Knuckles expansion.

Simply put, the Sonic series is still going strong today. The only majorly terrible game in the series was Sonic '06. You have to remember though: Every franchise has at least one game that's pretty bad.

Sonic has '06.

Mario has all those Educational games, and New Super Mario Bros. 2.

FE has Shadow Dragon.

Final Fantasy has the entire FF13 series.

Castlevania has Castlevania 2.

The list goes on and on.

That said, Sonic Boom honestly isn't looking so good.

(Remember though, this is still just my opinion.)

Edited July 26, 2014 by Nexas

[kingddd]

New Super Mario Bros. U.

NSMBU was considered the best of the NSMB series. NSMB2 is considered the worst.

[Garnef]

NSMBU was considered the best of the NSMB series. NSMB2 is considered the worst.

Well, that's odd, I actually often heard the opposite. .-. Well then, editing my post.

[Nightmare]

Someone seems to forget Colors, Generations and Lost world. Not to mention thAdventure games, Heroes, and many of the advanced games, Sonic Battle Sonic Rush.

So this thread is horribly not accurate and is made by a crybaby

Whoa whoa whoa now, hold your horses there. Let's not go into calling each other names because we don't agree on something.

The games you've named, you may like, but they're not exactly shining examples of the series. They have actual problems, most prominently with outdated/bad design and glitchy interface (Sonic Adventure 1 and Sonic Heroes come to mind the most), and then the other games are mostly suffering from design all too typical, making them dull (Colours, GBA games, Rush).

I will, however, agree with Sonic Adventure 2 and Generations (I haven't played Lost World). They're both actually fun games, and while Adventure 2 in particular suffers from some problems (again, design related, and also Knuckles/Rouge), it managed to be good enough to be enjoyed. Haven't played it in a while though, so my evaluation may be rose-tinted. Generations, however, is a legit great game, as it got rid of Colours' flaws and also had that extra dose of nostalgia I suppose.

All in all though, Sonic Team hasn't been especially impressive the past decade, but you'd think this all started in the later years of Sonic's life...I think it was all there since Sonic 2, only exacerbated in more recent games. Sonic 3 & Knuckles gets a lot of praise, but it too, is plagued by many bad design decisions, mostly concentrated in the Sonic 3 half (I legit like Sonic & Knuckles, minus Mushroom Hill).

The only thing about this thread is that this person seems to be a little late to the party. This topic would have been more relevant back in 2007.

Edited July 26, 2014 by Nightmare

[Esau of Isaac]

Someone seems to forget Colors, Generations and Lost world. Not to mention thAdventure games, Heroes, and many of the advanced games, Sonic Battle Sonic Rush.

So this thread is horribly not accurate and is made by a crybaby

Those are all examples of poor use of the franchise comparatively. Sonic games used to be exemplary titles that pushed the boundaries of their genre. He was a competitor with Mario for several years.

The reason they're poor is because all of the talented people that made these earlier titles left the company, and the fanbase of the series has become such that it will prop up even the laziest of efforts because of the strength of the brand name. The process of Sonic releases has become so predictable that it's almost comical at this point: The creators state that they're going back to roots, footage is released that leaves people hopeful, the game is released and is mediocre, and the cycle begins anew.

[deleted35362]

Sonic Lost World was unfortunately a game that had a lot of potential but the atrocious level design killed the game for me.

what was wrong with the level design?

[ZemZem]

and then the other games are mostly suffering from design all too typical, making them dull (Colours, GBA games, Rush)

I honestly don't see how the GBA games were dull, but to each his own.

[kingddd]

what was wrong with the level design?

It's a bit difficult to explain unless you actually play the game itself. Gameplay footage unfortunately won't help you analyze the problems.

For me though, the problem with the level design was that they experimented too much with it. The game has 2D and 3D levels like Sonic Generations however, the gameplay mechanics do not work well with the levels they have designed for it.

The 2D levels issues are mostly a control issue but it still has some bad level designs. Sonic controls even more stiff in 2D than in Sonic the Hedgehog 4 and Sonic Colors in these 2D, as he has little to no momentum and the jump physics are very stiff. There are many levels that involved random flying segments and Donkey Kong minecart like level designs that are incredible dull and with bad jump physics on them. The Parkour system can screw you up easily since it's binded to the same button as the run button therefore many of the 2D sections can screw you over when you want to jump over a wall only for you to be running on the wall and accidentally jumping off the cliff. There are hardly any alternative paths and are way more linear than any 2D levels in the entire Sonic series.

The 3D levels are much better but there are a lot of problems with it. The first is that majority of the 3D levels are flat terrain. It does not seem like it with its tubular design but the majority of the parts are literally flat platforms with no interesting platforming mechanics added into it. Not to mention that they made 3 levels with the same level but with small added very very minor tweaks to it. Basically they actually rehashed a level twice. It also had one of the worst 3D levels in the entire game which is the video below. However it at least sticks with the Sonic Formula with its alternative paths

The 3D levels were generally ok but the 2D levels were not fun. If Sonic Lost World had sticked with the 3D levels, I think it would have been great but it was plagued with design problems that cannot be explain until you play the game. I will say right now, the first level of Sonic Lost World is the best level in the entire game. I'm not joking. I had more fun replaying that stage than the rest of the game.

Overall though,

Pros

- The presentation is great

- The dialogue and cutscene is awesome

- Very smooth 60 fps gameplay

- 3D levels can be fun and have many neat alternative paths

- Sonic feels great to control in the 3D world

- Music is great

Cons

- Sonic feels stiff in the 2D levels and doesn't feel right for some odd reason. It's same issue in Sonic Colors but even worse.

- 2D levels have no unique alternative paths

- The story is very basic so don't expect anything great

- The difficulty does kind of spike up a bit in later levels

- Bosses are really easy. Each last almost 10 seconds.

- Parkour abilities is iffy and there are times where I accidentally activate it because of the ZR button

- Wisps were just there. No purpose.

I really wanted to like the game but it felt flat.

[Zeithri]

I think it's a bit subjective.

I never really played all that much Sonic except for emulators but all I really usually hear from people is how much they absolutely hate every new Sonic game.

I can understand that some of the stories are just dumb beyond understanding but is the gameplay bad? I don't know.

The thread just made me think of that one creepypasta game though x_x

No clue if this is the game but not about to find out because I am very sensitive to such stuff.

Though, would this make a better game than what the Sonic team makes?

[Phoenix Wright]

imo sonic has never really been fun aside from the magical beauty that is sonic adventures 1 & 2

[Alertcircuit]

Generations and Colors are usually highly regarded, so Sega has it in them.

[NinjaMonkey]

Mario has all those Educational games, and New Super Mario Bros. 2.

How is NSMB2 a bad game, exactly? All the reviews I've seen have given it scores of 80%+ (which is more than I've seen any recently-released Sonic game get).

Edited July 28, 2014 by NinjaMonkey

[kingddd]

How is NSMB2 a bad game, exactly? All the reviews I've seen have given it scores of 80%+.

NSMB2 is considered the worst in the NSMB series by the majority of the people who have played all four of the games in the series. It was a mixed reception to many of the hardcore 2D Mario fans.

Now due note, I am usually very generous when it usually comes to judging Mario games and I have played every major 2D Mario game but NSMB2 was one of the biggest trashed Mario experience I ever played. As someone who actually got it for free, I actually wished someone actually paid me to play this game.

The level designs were one of the worst in the entire game and they are all extremely easy. It literally required me no effort to blaze through the levels the first time I played. They were even shorter than NSMB1. They were very boring and majority of the graphical assets used were just taken from New Super Mario Bros Wii. Because of the resused assets, the 3D effects were barebones at best and made the game look even uglier than before. The main game is even shorter than the previous entries with only 6 main worlds. Sure in NSMB1 you only need to travel through 6 worlds and you can skip them with canons but I could not stand any of the levels.

The coin gimmick had little to no purpose but to give you 500 lives and the theme that the coins you collect will give you something special really wasn't. The reward was meh for collecting them. The gimmicks offered nothing new as there were no new powerups other than gold power ups which just made more coins appear.

Coin rush mode was bleh could not care about it. It's only good if you are a high score maniac which I am unfortunately not part of. Not to mention the DLCs of the game are focused on this pack. I didn't buy any of them so I can't fully judge them.

The music are the exact same songs from the two NSMB but all they did was add more bahs into the song which made it worse. Granted NSMBU had reused the same songs but they were higher quality and it had an actual new main overworld theme song. NSMB2 did not.

Personally, I could not stand it. It was one of the most unoriginal game I ever played. NSMB1, NSMBWii and NSMBU all offered at least new experiences with the levels designs that it created. If NSMB2 had at least tried to create new graphical assets or some good level designs I feel it could be good but unfortunately it didn't live up that expectation. As a huge Mario fan, I do not recommend it at all.

[solrocknroll]

I had this long explanation all typed up, but I accidentally hit back, so alas, I'll just rank them.

Amazing:
Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic Adventure 2 (despite the mechs, i love the treasure hunting and i love rouge), Sonic Colors

Great:
Sonic Generations, Sonic Adventure, Sonic 2

Good:
Sonic Heroes, Sonic 1, Sonic Unleashed (amazing if the werehog didn't exist)

Bad:

Sonic 2006, Sonic Lost World

Terribad:
Sonic CD, Shadow the Hedgehog

[Randoman]

I only played the GBA Sonic games (all 5 of them), but I found them all to be quite enjoyable (though this is coming from someone who's never touched the Genesis games). I'll admit, Sonic Battle was quite the grindfest, though. As for Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis, people often say that the game is so much slower than the original, but I didn't have a problem with the game's speed (I'll admit it's much slower than the Sonic Advance games). Of the Sonic Advance series, I like the first one the best since the level design felt the most fair there, especially with the Chaos Emeralds being much more fair and easier to obtain and falling to your death being much less of an issue compared to Sonic Advance 2 and 3.

NSMBU was considered the best of the NSMB series. NSMB2 is considered the worst.

Well, that's odd, I actually often heard the opposite. .-. Well then, editing my post.

Where'd you hear about NSMB2 being the best and NSMBU being the worst Nexas? Every site I've been on considers NSMB2 to be the worst, or at least the most lowly ranked compared to the other NSMB games (NSMB2 gets scores in the 70%-80% range, while the other 3 get scores in the 80%-95% range).

I also consider New Super Mario Bros. U to be the best in the series, due to the much more hectic and dynamic level design and Challenge Mode, which easily gave me around 5-10 times more play time in regards to 100%-ing everything compared to 100%-ing the main story. The sheer amount of versatility in the Challenge Mode objectives and the difficulty in getting Gold for all Challenges (especially the Boost Mode challenges, which are really hard to do solo controlling both with a Wii Remote and making platforms with your pointer finger) easily make it the most new and innovative of the NSMB games.

[Rapier]

Sega has released several Sonic games over the last decade and most if not all of them are widely considered to be terrible.

As far as I know, both Generations and Colors are highly acclaimed (I don't like Colors very much, though), and Sonic & the Black Knight and Sonic and the Secret Rings were also considered good. Sonic Team doesn't seem to be in such a tight spot even though we see crap like Sonic 2006 and Sonic Boom from time to time.

I may sound like an oldschool wannabe here, but I believe they lost the grip on the essence of the series. I can see that even in games like Colors, Unleashed and Secret Rings: Too much focus on speed and little focus on actual platforming and level design. Generations was the only Sonic game that I really enjoyed because level design and platforming matter much more than speed in the game.

[Alertcircuit]

Sonic Boom has the potential to be the spiritual successor to Sonic Adventure if done right I think. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing depends on if you think a game the level of Adventure is quality enough.

[Magical CC]

I had this long explanation all typed up, but I accidentally hit back, so alas, I'll just rank them.

Amazing:

Sonic 3 & Knuckles, Sonic Adventure 2 (despite the mechs, i love the treasure hunting and i love rouge), Sonic Colors

Great:

Sonic Generations, Sonic Adventure, Sonic 2

Good:

Sonic Heroes, Sonic 1, Sonic Unleashed (amazing if the werehog didn't exist)

Bad:

Sonic 2006, Sonic Lost World

Terribad:

Sonic CD, Shadow the Hedgehog

Uhm....how about Sonic Free Riders?

[RJWalker]

Somebody post that JonTron video.