SimonM7

Well, I dunno what to say to that. To me, good controls is when you can come to grips with it and suddenly it just clicks and you feel in control. Good controls isn't when it's so forgiving you just pick up the pad and mess about and you essentially never die. A lot of the reason why I persevere with Sonic is because I love Sonic (hint in my signature pic) but the reason I say it plays well isn't because I'm blinded by my love for the character and universe. I do feel that people generally misunderstand the way some parts of Sonic games are designed though. They quote trial and error as a problem - a flaw - when racing games never let you take a curve perfectly before you know it's there. EG said the worst thing ever when reviewing Sonic Rush: "Sonic isn't its own genre". That's possibly the single most ignorant statement in regards to games I have ever seen, and it's evidence of extreme narrow mindedness. The reason you miss platforms, fall to your death, run into enemies in Sonic games is 9/10 times because you don't know they're there, and this usually happens further into the game where the difficulty ramps up. That said, this iteration is still very forgiving, with a lot of things streamlined to protect players from cocking up too much. Things like the homing attack working on all kinds of rails, catapults and spring-thingies. The failure to control the game, and this game more than any of the 3d sonics, is a matter of adjustment, not bad controls. The reason it's immediately more difficult to come to grips with is that it's sort of by definition faster than every other 3D platformer, and that's not something that's bound to change.

Tons has changed, they just don't really have a reason to care about the things that have, when the presentation for the most part is horrible. I've done essentially all of it now (I delayed my review some to be able to comment on Shadow's episode aswell) and I'm writing my review now. Not that it'll tip over the average on Gamerankings in answering whether it's a good game for everyone, but I might touch on things that make some sense. I can say this though; it's a game for people who want to play a Sonic game that plays well and tells a good story - it's not for people simply looking for the next good game to buy.

While I agree that 9 wouldn't have gotten on people's tits as much, there are two factors to consider. Gamespot don't really decide what to give a game, they just put in scores for different aspects of it and the final score is generated based on that. Sure you can tweak individual categories to get closer to a 9.0, but aren't you sort of reviewing games for the wrong reason then? Second; Gamespot don't need to pretend to do stuff to generate site interest. It's well big enough as it is. It's perhaps unfortunate though - that Zelda is essentially a Gamecube game on the Wii with in some cases a convoluted way of using its unique capabilities and possibly also hardware performance - but also that this is reviewed back to back with PS3 games, bound to dazzle people with its visuals and HI DEF-ness and put 480p Gamecubeness in rather unflattering contrast. Especially for Jeff, who's a bit of a graphics nut. One can only think that TP would've fared better on Gamespot had it remained a Gamecube game, is my conclusion.

On the contrary! Despite all odds, that conference gave these stuffy fucking number-crunchers some actual cult status. Giant crab, massive damage, ridge racer - these are things no PR department in the world could conjure up, and more than anything it helps create a "language" for Sony fans and a sense of goofy community. Brilliant!

Yeah, the action stages are good fun here, but the things you mention about the details are what bothers me the most about this game. It simply disregards of all of that. Chao gardens, NiGHTS pinball table cameo, things that really made SA1 memorable just don't have an equivalent here at all. Even the names of the stages and the stages themselves used to be really distinct, and in this game they lack real personality even though they're very playable. However, I loved the Knuckles story in SA1 too, with the Tikal bits and sort of.. making the story deeper like that, and you get a similar thing playing as Silver here. Definitely stick around for Silver and Shadow episodes, that's where the real cutscene-y goodness is.

Well Tailzo, the GAME is easily the best playing 3D Sonic game, and my issues aren't really with how the game plays at all. The pitfalls 1up speak of is something that gets on the tits of everyone prone to have pitfalls get on their tits, and that means any Sonic game, 2d or otherwise. EG gave Rush a right ripping for its insta-death mentality, and that game is utterly brilliant, apart from maybe some presentation rigidness. If you're just concerned with how the action plays, there's nothing to worry about here. Unless of course you found the nature of the SA games abominable at the concept stage. Load times, inconsistent graphics, crappy human characters (including Elise, bleh), way too big city maps with nothing to fill them with, and a lack of anything approaching the casino stage and stuff like that in terms of charm is the bigger deal breaker for me, personally. I agree with a lot of the points 1up raise, but I feel that the core action makes up for it more than they do, apparently. 5.5 seems harsh too I think, although don't expect any dizzying heights from my score either. Edit: Ah, I read your post a bit up. If you liked the demo and you're okay with some narrative/town stage weaknesses, at least initially, you'll enjoy the game. Enjoying the combat saves the whole game, no matter how many load screens they try to beat you to death with.

It makes me physically ill to read comments like "Sonic Heroes is the best 3D Sonic" and "get rid of the goofy characters and keep Knuckles and Tails" when this is clearly the best playing 3D sonic by far, and a lot of it is thanks to the mechanics that Shadow and Silver enable. I'm prolly gonna get round to writing a review later today. I can say this though, as far as production values and overall feel to it, Sonic Adventure 1 is still the most complete Sonic game to me, with a charming and endearing universe. It has a charismatic set of extra characters like Chaos and Tikal, too, and it just never has you doubting that it was a labour of love. Even though the story here kicks off proper when you play Silver (and perhaps Shadow too) with cutscenes that actually carry some emotional weight and a more coherent plot, it just takes too long to get there. There's like a vacuum between starting the game and actually getting into stuff that grabs you. That's worsened by throwaway characters (apart from the main cast) and a world that feels empty and synthetic. The whole kingdom thing is just so pointless, and it just never connects at all. Anyway, review soon, will explain all then.

To play Sonic the way you remember it you can just play the Sonic you remember. Why make the same game over and over? Anyway, time for my fourth and today's final update. My eyes are totally sore and I think they might just be coming out of their sockets. Thanks for the kind comments, by the way.

It happens way less, because controls are smoother now and less twitchy. It sort of changes the controls slightly depending on what you do, and it takes some getting used to but it's ultimately a better playing game for it. When you're going in halfpipes and stuff really fast it changes so that you just go left and right by pressing left and right, instead of having you turn and shoot off into space. I just tried out Shadow (being about 50% through Sonic's story alone and having played it more or less since I got it it seems pretty big too) and all I can say is that.. If there was any concern about the other characters being less fun to play I can just put those to rest right now. Playing Shadow feels even more like playing PS2 Shinobi (yes that's a good thing) than playing Sonic did. Shadow basically stays afloat after a dash attack, and the more sequential attacks you do, the fancier his attacks get. He can also throw *daggers* (chaos control fancyness) to stun opponents before attacking them. I've only just sniffed a bit at his first level so I haven't driven any vehicles or anything, but he seems a blast to play aswell. I always thought his controls were wonky in Heroes and ShTH, but here he's not like that at all. About the camera, the demo gives you a fair impression. In fact, the demo gives you a fair impression of everything except the general quality of levels, which is way higher in the actual game. I thought the camera was great in the demo and I think it still works great. Oh and it controls faster on the right stick now, different from the demo's surprisingly slow response. You'll still want to just center it when you're in the middle of fighting baddies, and wanna see what's in front of you, though. edit: (I'll just add some of this to Update #3 to be consistent)

This shit is easily the best Sonic since SA1, and gameplay wise it's vastly superior to even that. *writes update #2*

Okay, or ALRIGHT! as Sonic would put it. I've spent about three hours with Sonic The Hedgehog and I feel confident enough to write a few paragraphs of essentially what I'm thinking right now. Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog were both honest attempts at good games from someone somewhere, and the only reason the relative crappyness of those didn't quite taint Sonic is that they weren't *really* Sonic games. Or if they were, you sort of let them slide conveniently into Luigi's Mansion style "spinoff" folders in the Sonic history cabinet. Well this is it then. THE it. Sonic THE Hedgehog. There's no hiding now - no excuses. Three hours in I'm hardly qualified to write a review, so I don't want you to take anything I say right now as a definite statement on whether the game is good or bad. It starts off reasonably well, without explaining too much about why Sonic is in a Kingdom of whatever. From what I can tell this is just where he lives now, he doesn't seem transported to another world or anything as speculated pre-release by some. You're immediately dropped off in a "town stage" (think Sonic Adventure 1) and it's striking how incredibly bland the place looks. It's sort of like a Crazy Taxi 1 district without the people and the cars and the driving and the fun. Anyway, you figure out you need the light dash thingy, and you need to buy it from a shop, so you accept a mission from one of the townsfolk to jump through some red rings, presumably as part of some basic movement training. Ka-ching, you got 100 rings for the mission and you're ready to acquire the dash to reach the first real action stage - the Emerald Coast lookalike. The game plays exactly like the demo. Some people were pissed that you couldn't do the homing attack really fast in succession, and you can't here either. From what I understand there might be something you can do with the on screen gauge that fills up when you destroy enemies, or perhaps you can buy upgrades or summat. At this point I don't know, but don't expect that to be a "bug" that's fixed. It's simply how it plays, and I'm fine with it. At one point in the stage, Sonic grabs on to the fin of a whale and tells Tails (say that fast!) to push a switch to close a gate, so that the whale doesn't take Sonic with him out to sea! Suddenly you control Tails briefly, and you get to direct him to said switch and take out some enemies along the way. This is a very small portion of the stage, but I'm really thrilled how they managed to use different characters without forcing them on you too much. Of course all the other extra characters apart from Silver and Shadow are presumably handled the same, and I think that's fantastic. Speaking of Silver and Shadow; the episodes are separated. For those of you lying sleepless at night, worried you'll get the other two hedgehogs shoved down your throat during your personal Sonic time - you can stop that. The extra "campaigns" are there for you to pick once you've *unlocked* them, Sonic Adventure 1 style. Oh and I haven't seen much of Silver yet, but he's REALLY cool. Graphically the action stages look pretty great. I played a desert stage (carrying Elise actually, which doesn't look as awkward as you'd think) and the lighting looked absolutely fantastic. I don't say that in comparison to something like Gears - which I haven't played yet - I'm saying that in relation to how it looks. How Sonic looks, and what kind of signals my brain are recieving. It's warm, colourful, and you just want to fondle him - particularly in cutscenes. Her I mean. Obviously. Ahem. (She's like 16, so it's creepy anyway!) That's the action stages though. In the town (more sections open up as you go) things are gray, drab, choppy and boring. People look really weird, the draw distance on shadows and some objects is absolutely laughable, and the physics look stupid a great deal more than they look good. Walking into a bunch of apples (after breaking a barrel or something) usually kicks them right out into space. Weirdly - even though it looks absolutely blandtastic, the framerate has real trouble being steady. It's just a mess. It would be easy to disregard of said blandness if the game didn't insist on having "missions" set in town, too. This makes it a REAL mystery why more effort wansn't poured into making it half appealing. Usually you walk up to someone and this someone says "argh, my cat's gone missing!" or something to that effect, and asked whether you want to accept you get to answer yes or no. You'll be answering no a lot. Not because the missions themselves are particularly difficult, but because the game needs to slap a loading screen onto your face twice - once for loading the guy explaining the "mission" in detail and one for the actual mission. It's just a damn hassle and no fun whatsoever. Wrapping up this mess of a write-up, I'm not sure whether I like it or not yet. I'm just completely neutral, because for each thing that's awesome (the high speed bits of some stages are nuts! ) there's something about it that slaps you right on the testicles. Nothing game breaking - mind. This is certainly not a Shadow or Heroes level of badness by any stretch, and it could really come out on top after all is said and done - but it's enough to remain sceptical. I'll return with more thoughts as they strike. UPDATE #1 Okay, I've played about an hour more, and the action stages are really really fun. The combat was something I really enjoyed in the demo aswell, and here it's even more obvious that it's one of this game's main strengths. The music is cool, the bits where you get to control Tails aren't annoying (yes, that was a concern!), and the levels just look and feel really nice. I've decided I'll keep updating this post, so check back for more. Update #2 I've had what can only be described as an epiphany. Thankfully, the dreadful chore of the first bit of city is nowhere near something you'll have to endure on a regular basis (less and less it seems), and the action stages are truly fantastic. I've played a snow level that was deliciously open, and running through the snow with Sonic feels incredibly good. The action is fast and awesomely fluid, and right now it's like it finally makes sense. It's finally the game it IS. The framerate, unless you're in the middle of tons of explosions and physics bits flying, holds up really well, and it all sounds, plays and looks sooo nice. The realtime cutscenes are also starting to get eye-poppingly good. Brilliant stuff! The story is also kicking into gear. Robotnik is different here than he's been for a while. More menacing and less goofy. Shadow and Rouge have just showed up, and their presence makes sense too, which was another concern of mine. Anyway. I'll keep playing and updating! Update #3 I just tried out Shadow (being about 50% through Sonic's story alone and having played it more or less since I got it the game seems pretty big, too) and all I can say is that.. If there was any concern about the other characters being less fun to play I can just put those to rest right now. Playing Shadow feels even more like playing PS2 Shinobi (yes that's a good thing) than playing Sonic did. Shadow basically stays afloat after a dash attack, and the more sequential attacks you do, the fancier his attacks get. He can also throw *daggers* (chaos control fancyness) to stun opponents before attacking them. I've only just sniffed a bit at his first level so I haven't driven any vehicles or anything, but he seems a blast to play aswell. I always thought his controls were wonky in Heroes and ShTH, but here he's not like that at all. Update #4 I didn't want to start the Shadow episode without finishing Sonic, so I went back to playing the Sonic one again and I think I might be nearing the end of that. I met a guy in town called "Sonic Man" with a Sonic t-shirt and plastic spikes on his head and raced him. I feel more at ease with the missions now that I know for certain that 95% of them are entirely optional, and I think there might be some secrets in some of them that I'll be happy to approach once I'm done with the story. The biggest thing I've come to grips with in this update is that there are some really significant upgrades to buy. The stuff that's *required* to buy is the usual bounce moves and stuff like that, but in addition there are all kinds of awesomeities. For instance, there's one powerup that you can purchase that lets you slow down time. Another gives you the ability to run really fast whenever you like. There are more, and it seems that all of these are enabled by pressing the d-pad to left or right and a tiny icon will change next to the gauge thingy. Pressing R will trigger whatever it is you have selected. Running towards someone with mentioned power-up, sliding into them by holding and releasing X, then flicking over to the slo-mo thingy to finish up by bouncing on them in mid air feels really cool. I can imagine the combat just gets better and better the more you play around with the different upgrades. Like I said earlier, you sometimes get to control Tails in mid-level. The same is true for some other characters aswell, and so far I've gotten to play Knuckles and Silver aswell during Sonic's story. Knuckles FINALLY has some decent fucking fighting to do, and it doesn't disappoint getting to beat the crap out of stuff. After two games of varying degrees of shit treasure hunting he's finally a proper part of clearing a stage. I also got some hands on time with Silver through Sonic's story as mentioned. Silver is pretty cool because he doesn't just play like a watered down Psi-Ops/Second Sight game. His sections are also well paced even though he's obviously the slowest of the main hedgehogs. Oh and he can catch projectiles in mid air and send them back at enemies, lift cars, bend context sensitive bits of the environment and just generally feel like a really unique character right out of the box, unlike to some extent Shadow, who had some identity to acquire - gameplay wise - when he first appeared in SA2. Pretty much a Sonic palette swap back then if we're being honest. Uuuum... Yeah, that's prolly it for now. Summing up, all three characters seem just about equal amounts of fun to play, and even when you're playing Tails and Knuckles, the focus is on action and proper progression. I'm warming more and more to this game really, and just about the only real problem I'm having now is that none of it has much in the way of personality. The levels are cool and everything, but they don't stick out, nor do they have any obvious characteristics like SA1 levels did. This plays better than SA1, that's like.. that's not even debatable.. But SA1 just oozed personality, whereas none of the 3D Sonics since have had that same memorable quality about them. I'll prolly swing by with a few more updates tomorrow, and then I'll process all of this in my mushy, somewhat dazzled brain, and try to review it.

Yeah, Heroes was disappointing on so many levels too. Not only was it a twitch-fest, but it also felt off-puttingly shallow, story wise. Sure, people are on about how we only need Sonic, alone, in a 2D space with checkerboard patterns everywhere, but we're sort of beyond that point, at least for fans that stuck with the whole "universe". After a fantastic story in Sonic Adventure 1, and a not too shabby one in 2, Heroes just felt down-slappingly saturday morning cartoon. Not even with Mecha Sonic as a final boss does it ever approach being the least bit exciting. Shadow on the other hand - like I mentioned earlier - really does play a significant part in shining some light on the overall universe, so actually persevering with that game does in fact offer a kind of reward.

It's pop-litics, so it's a pretty rewarding thing to get into what with people actually caring.

The way I see it it's absolutely irrelevant what MS thinks of it. In fact, I think it was irrelevant to begin with, even at the start of the Wii60 thing, because I remember when people were catching on to the thought that you'd get two consoles for the price of one, and that had nothing to do with influences from Microsoft. I think the Wii60 people are mostly Nintendo fans or Microsoft fans fed up with playing just the types of games that come out for respective system, and because it's suddenly "okay" to like everything but Sony, there's some kind of comfort in Wii60. I think, at heart, every single person would rather be able to play every single game that they could potentially like, but between them and that utopia lies tons of fanboy bullshit brought on in large part by economic limitations. When you're a kid you can't buy everything you like, so you end up with one system and get together with other people with that system and bond with them going "we don't need that there system!" and even though you eventually have the means to buy and enjoy everything, you've got so much fanboy bullshit as bagage you couldn't possibly let down your pals and your sense of origin, and you quite possibly believe your own crap about there not being anything worthy of your time on other systems. Enter Wii60 swooping in, with an entire ONLINE FORCE yelling "WE'RE GAMING IN THE NAME OF GOOD AGAINST EVIL SONY!" and the subsequent sigh of ultimate relief for those captured within their own fandom. This is what's creepy to me, because fandom confined to one plaform is - as I said before - about inclusion. It's about being "us against the world" if you will. Wii60 expands that and becomes a bullying majority. Liking Sony is "evil" whereas liking the 360 and the Wii is "good". Games as a deciding factor completely disappear, and it's so much more alarming than Ninty fans, Xbox fans, or Sony fans on their own.

While it's a bit like chosing between being kicked in the groin or being punched in the groin, Shadow The Hedgehog entertained me more than Sonic Heroes did. Sonic Heroes was just this flimsy, glitchy, spazzy, twitchy MESS of what was once a good idea I reckon (the whole switching formations on the fly, sort of like Panzer Dragoon Orta, but vastly better executed in that game obviously) while Shadow was at least consistently - and thus sooner or later managably - poor. The trick is to not go for the neutral, urban decay path in Shadow, but instead go for either the evil or good paths. You'll come across some really funky looking levels with almost classic Sonic looking casino, circus and ghost house themes, to name a few. One takes place inside a computer and is entirely made up of streams of light and weird nodes. The music is rather spiffy too if I may say. Again, they're both largely terrible games, but Shadow not only posseses the better and more interesting looking levels, it also sort of fits a piece of the story puzzle - if one concerns himself/herself with that kind of thing - into the overall Sonic Adventure *saga*. Heroes just.. sort of.. I dunno.. twitches about I suppose. Oh and shooting works pretty much like the E-102/SA1 or Robotnik/Tails stuff from SA2, so while guns are somewhat silly, they actually work reasonably well into the gameplay. Some vehicles do too, but there are segments where you get to hop into a jeep or something and just kinda.. drive for about 10 seconds until you need to get out to proceed. I'm one of those Sonic fans that'll take just about any kind of abuse to play a Sonic game these days, I admit. Oh and Sonic Riders is easily the best 3D Sonic since SA2 in my honest opinion. It's incredibly difficult though, but once you get into it it's really nice.

His name is Dr. Gerald Robotnik or some such, and yes, even in the japanese "lore".

Since I already used the term dizzying before, I'll have to go with staggering this time. Staggering amounts of.. a good.. point. Oh and about the graphics thing earlier, I should've phrased it differently because I understood and agreed with what you were saying, and it sounded as if I criticised your point when I was in fact adding to it. Getting back to Wii60, I was actually going to write an article on this for my blog, but now it seems superfluous, after your write up. I think it's a very valid concern indeed, and I actually find it genuinely creepy. I don't think it's neccessarily creepy because MS or Nintendo or anyone is spinning it a certain way, but because as much as people like to think so, Wii60 isn't about inclusion - it's about exclusion.

A dizzying amount of great points. The reason processing power won't so much be a factor is because from what we're told the machines are about equal though. I don't think one should underestimate the graphical superiority of the Xbox contra the PS2 in its relative success, particularly in the west. For me, personally, there was some concern that titles that came out for PS2 were jaggy, aliased and messy compared what they could have been on the Xbox, and the console could've done a great deal more than simply trying to mimic PC graphics to varying degrees of success - evident by games like Phantom Dust and Panzer Dragoon Orta - had it actually picked up some steam in Japan. During the entirety of the Xbox's lifecycle, much like the entirety of the 360's so far, a lot of people want more japanese games for the system. Much like you point out, console bred console gamers are accustomed to the eastern style genres and art direction and they simply feel at home there, much more so than in the monochrome, realistic settings of the west. Despite that I see a great deal of people getting 360's by default (Xbox fanboys for one reason or another) only to begin clamoring for the likes of Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy on there. At some point you gotta ask yourself if you're really sitting there with the right system anymore. I mean my own reasoning for why the Xbox was a better platform in theory was its obvious advantage graphically, aswell as its integrated hard drive/custom soundtracks and its online functions right out of the box. Xbox 360 fans right now seem to use the uselessness of blue ray, the lack of rumble/useless gyro stuff and the price as arguments against the PS3. But really, tying this back to my original statement, quoted by Domstercool - once you actually get over the fact that it's expensive, it's roughly everything the 360 is AND MORE, plus, it has the titles you've been spending ages wanting to come over to the Xbox platforms. I just think it's incredibly weird. If you're really in it for the Bioshocks and the Alan Wakes and the.. well to be a bit unfair and generalising - the PC ports, then the 360 is the obvious choice, but the reasons for not getting a PS2 aren't valid anymore when it comes to the PS3. You're just chosing to sit and mope in the wrong corner - based on your own real preference - complaining about the monotony. As a general argument for or against the PS3, this whole post is perhaps a bit irrelevant, but then the original quote was in regards to a specific audience over at xboxyde that I refrained from posting. It would've upset people for sure.

That would be cool, though I suppose most people these days would go "a Sega whaturn!?"

Well, he's still Robotnik, that's still his name. Eggman is just a nickname Sonic gave him. Oh and he's been "Eggman" in japan for like.. eternity. It's sort of a Rockman/Megaman thing, although he's technically Robotnik in japan too, if you were to look up his actual name.

Well that's sort of my point; when you purchase one and you sit there on a friday with a couple of PS3 games playing the thing, what Sony has said doesn't really play into it, at all. I'm not particularly fond of Sony and their PR machine, and god knows (well Domstercool does anyway) I've given the PSP a hard time - but playing Lumines, it really doesn't seem to matter. I'm not saying we should just smile as they tell us blatant lies, but it's just a realisation that no matter how worked up we get about formalities and the price, if we just get one, in the end we just may wind up being rather satisfied with it. It's a scary thought, perhaps, but there you have it.