Worst sonic Move/Gimmick ever

[Blue Blood]

Grinding.

Basically used to advertise the failed Soap shoe label, but did SEGA leave it there?

Sure it's gotten easier over the past decade, but it's still a pain in the butt to line yourself up to automatically attach to a rail when you get close enough, and when you do get on, you have t be extremely careful not to over do it or you'll fall off. That's especially true when you're trying to turn around and head backwards.

no thanks, no thanks

Uh, nope. SA2 had grinding and the SOAP label was used to advertise that, not the other way around. It's not been difficult to to land on rails since Unleashed where they were given a large catchment area (even less so in Generations not that you can HA the rail ends). It's difficult to turn around, but that's more to do with the Sonic controls. It shouldn't be too easy to turn around. Personally I think grinding has gotten progressively worse and more pointless in every subsequent game after SA2 because it's become so much easier, to the point where they're auto-control sections where you may occasionally have to quick step.

[midori]

Besides Sonic's slowpoke mode in Labirynth I don't like the spindash in 3D games. Mostly because of my talent of spindashing out of the stage.

[batson]

The Werehog. The Werehog gameplay is pretty much the opposite of the kind of gameplay that a Sonic game should have, and yet it makes up probably about 75% of Unleasheds playtime. That's just unforgivable, and no matter how much fun the Sonic sections of the game are, i feel that the onslaught of boring, repetative Werehog sections drags the game as a whole down so much that i feel it can at best be described as mediocre.

It's such a shame that the first Sonic game in years that featured decent 3D Sonic gameplay had to be plauged by a bad alternative gameplay like that. Oh well, at least it seems that whatever lesson Sega didn't learn from the reception of the disaster that was Sonic 06, they finally learned from the reception of Unleashed, which led to the main Sonic series long awaited true return to quality gaming in Colors.

[Milo]

Certainly the overall gameplay in S&TBK. I mean....

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WAGGLE

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WAGGLE

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WAGGLE

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Look at that! I won!

LOL this fits your avatar very well XD

I agree with the somersault and the majority of alternative playstyles/gameplay. And to an extent the boost and HA (mainly applies to 2D gameplay).

[Sonictrainer]

Uncurling

Seriously, who actually thought this was a good idea?

[The Tenth Doctor]

I thought home attacking rails was introduced in 06. For all the problems the game had, I hardly remember any about grinding, cept it was slow.

Least favourite... has to be the somersault. yes SA2 is my favourite game. This is just that I am sick of the slide move. It carried on from Adventure 2 and has stayed till this very day. Simply put, it has taken away our Sonic in a ball form.

[Alluusio]

Slide. It is nothing but a reaction test and it's not even used properly. Why do you need it when all you use it for are the completely random bits of wall that have a small gap between the wall and the floor. You can never see it coming and you just end up running against the wall for a few seconds. These walls don't even make any sense. Why are they there? I remember back in Shadow the hedgehog when a door wasn't properly shut and you had to slide under it. That made sense. But random walls that aren't even linked anywhere and are curiously floating above the ground? Seems pretty pointless.

[Dantemustdie00]

Uncurling

Seriously, who actually thought this was a good idea?

[Double Agent Motobug]

You seem to have forgotten Heroes. Grinding could be unreasonably difficult in Heroes if you weren't really careful.

EDIT: Oh, and don't forget '06.

It was actually pretty good in Shadow...easy to switch rails, IIRC.

[Ravenfreak]

I guess i'm one of the few that actually liked Sonic Labyrinth. :V Anyway I have to say I really hate the hang gliders in Sonic 2 8-bit. They're kind of a pain in the a*s to control, and when I first played it I got stuck on SHZ because I didn't know how to control it. >.>

[Celestia]

Dude what? o_O I don't think you can actually lose balance and fall off of rails in Sonic 06... I don't remember ever doing that in Sonic Heroes either... You have a point with turning around, but I figure you're not supposed to turn around while grinding anyway... Switching Rails basically blew until Shadow, then sucked again for 06 and especially Secret Rings, but as I recall, after that it got insanely easy (in a good way).

[Emmett L. Brown]

The Werehog. The Werehog gameplay is pretty much the opposite of the kind of gameplay that a Sonic game should have, and yet it makes up probably about 75% of Unleasheds playtime. That's just unforgivable, and no matter how much fun the Sonic sections of the game are, i feel that the onslaught of boring, repetative Werehog sections drags the game as a whole down so much that i feel it can at best be described as mediocre.

It's such a shame that the first Sonic game in years that featured decent 3D Sonic gameplay had to be plauged by a bad alternative gameplay like that. Oh well, at least it seems that whatever lesson Sega didn't learn from the reception of the disaster that was Sonic 06, they finally learned from the reception of Unleashed, which led to the main Sonic series long awaited true return to quality gaming in Colors.

That.

As for the worst gimmick, I gotta say the giant sucking eye balls in End of the World in Sonic 06. I'm watching the final parts of Pokecapn's legendary Let's Play right now, and I'm feeling the pain all over again.

[hmes9698]

Treasure hunting was a massive pain in the butt.

[Phos]

I feel like picking a worst overshadows how terrible pretty much all of them are. How was it that they managed to screw up all of the time for ten years now? Adventure's extra characters were one thing (most of them ended up being fun in spite of not really working), but they added the light speed dash which served to be nothing more than a "blue key" puzzle, except for the time I used it to skip part of Ice Cap. Didn't save any time, but it was easier to do than the normal way. It also introduced the homing attack, but didn't make me hate it yet.

Does the 90's swooshiness introduced just late enough to be passe rather than irrelevant count?

Then Adventure 2 managed to make alternate gameplay modes that previously ranged from unoffensive to pretty fun and make them terrible, introduced the heavily scripted/set pieced gameplay that won't fucking go away, introduced grinding which basically served to make replaying levels even more same-y, and a bunch of stupid moves no one cares about or outright hate, changed the light dash from a blue key into "rails but more fiddly", and added the bounce bracelet because we can't have a Sonic game without a blue key puzzle that also lets the player break the game (Want an A rank in metal harbor? Just use the bounce bracelet to extend your combos and bounce your way to victory).

That reminds me, the ranking system is a pointless gimmick. A "*-rank" based on what? I give it an F. In Generations, you basically get an S if you don't die, and in colors you get an S for drilling around in a circle for half an hour.

Heroes was made of this sort of stuff, Crush 40 told me so.

Wait, this whole Crush 40 thing, counts, right? Seems pretty gimmicky to me.

Then they made Shadow the Hedgehog which was nothing but what these sorts of things.

06 was basically Adventure 2 only with more stuff that didn't work.

Unleashed brought us a move for making sharper turns and for moving sideways. No word on if they understand what an analog stick is for.

Thinking about it, the worse gimmick really is sort of a metagimmick, the focus on speed at the expense of everything else, and to add insult to injury they didn't make the games that much faster. Heck, they didn't make them faster at all until Unleashed that that's really just on average.

Wait, does using the Hedgehog Engine even though they turn off Fresnels and specularity (and probably a bunch I haven't been able to pick out) count? That seems like it really should.

[azoo]

I'm just not gonna want to rant this come-around and just say that the somersault from SA2 (and all forms of sliding as well) are completely useless. They do every single thing rolling does, but rolling does it better with all of its momentum-gaining perks.. it's just that the somersault stands out even further because it also completely kills your movement by sending you to a near halt when it's used.

..You know, the one thing you don't expect to happen whenever you press the spin button while running down an incline.

..okay, I promised I wasn't gonna rant this time around. So there we go. Somersaulting and sliding were always really redundant. So there.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Azukara

[Shoot em up Capbusta]

For me it has to be the time gimmick from sonic cd. Playing cd for the first time about a month ago and I really don't like it.

Also the double jump from colors it did more harm than good.

[HunterTSF]

Eeeyyy, fark you guys, the Magic Hands were amazing. Best way to get revenge on those Golden Beetles for being such sneaky mofos is to trap 'em helplessly into a little magic ball, stare it down with your gigantic green hedgehog eyes, and then throw them into a deep dark black pit that leads to a hellish endless eternity of oblivion.

As for worst move ever? Those freakin' Dummy Rings from Sonic Heroes. Sure, it'd be rare that you'd end up in a situation where you would end up solo as either Tails or Rouge to begin with, but you'd think they'd have something better to work with. Especially considering the effectiveness of Tails' tail whip move from Adventure and Rouge's entire repertoire of kickboxing moves from the previous game.

The only thing on par with them in terms of lameness was their return in Sonic the Hedgehog. Sure, it had a better aiming system and was therefore a more efficient means of attack... but it was still a stupid concept to begin with, anyways.

Edited January 21, 2012 by HunterTSF

[Scar]

None of the gimmicks were really bad.......conceptually at least.

They were just executed in the most awful way possible in most cases. The only exception really being Colours and arguably Generations. Fuck, as much as I hate SA2 and its bullshit alternate gameplay, even the totally shite treasure hunting and mech shooting had the potential to be decent if they were made in a way that wasn't total garbage.

Black Knight's sword could have been so much better if they just had it more like a normal Sonic game, but with a couple extra buttons dedicated to sword slashes and combos. The Werehog could have been a lot faster, with a sort of speedy, fluid brawler (with better platforming and controls). Like a slowed down SA1, with the ability to tear shit up.

Unleashed Day could have been better by being Generations Modern. Sonic 4 and Generations Classic could have been better by actually being classic.

Sonic 06 could have just been a better game, with a better (i.e totally reworked to beyond recognition) story and better visuals.

Secret Rings could have just been a normal Sonic platformer but set in different locations with an interesting idea for a story and setting.

SA1 could have been better by being better made and culling Big's aweful gameplay and making him more interesting than a retarded Knuckles with a frog instead of Master Emerald shards. Heroes could have been better by having better controls and level design. Shadow could have been better by having a different story with less emphasis on using weapons, just having the option to do so if you want (i.e homing attack can kill all standard enemies, and Guns and weapons perhaps for stage-based gimmicks).

Colours could have been better by being in 3D. Generations could have been better by having more curved surfaces and a little bigger levels.

Grinding is fun, when done in the SA2 way. As in working using physics with a more organic implementation, and being a means of accessing different areas rather than just being the only way forward, floating over massive chasms as lane-switching gimmicks.

Drifting could be better by making it a way of turning without losing speed, rather than just being a method of turning at all. Phos, I agree that analogue sticks should facilitate complete 360 degree motion, but when travelling at speed, turning should cause you to lose speed, as per the laws of physics. Drifting should only exist to enable extremely tight turning (i.e U-turns) without losing your momentum.

Edited January 21, 2012 by Scar

[NintendoSoul]

Worst gimmick was Big's fishing, because there was no platforming invovled in any of his levels, something every other adventure style had.

Worst move is Sommersault, completely pointless.

Edited January 22, 2012 by NintendoSoul

[Phos]

Drifting could be better by making it a way of turning without losing speed, rather than just being a method of turning at all. Phos, I agree that analogue sticks should facilitate complete 360 degree motion, but when travelling at speed, turning should cause you to lose speed, as per the laws of physics.

What's this about real world physics? Turning is acceleration perpendicular to the current direction of movement. It has no influence on speed as a scalar because it always remains perpendicular to the direction of travel. Cars have to slow down to take sharp turns because

Drifting should only exist to enable extremely tight turning (i.e U-turns) without losing your momentum.

Does Sonic really need that much mobility? I dunno about letting him turn on a dime quite like that. I also think it's a tad silly that the Generations drift features Sonic spinning even though that doesn't really make much sense. I get the impression that they just did that so Modern Sonic would use the spin animation sometimes maybe.

[SilentDoom]

Running fast and momentum based physics

Who the hell thought that was a good idea? I mean, why should Sonic have something that sets him apart from other platformers. EH SHULD BE A MARIO CLONE!!

...Nah but in all seriousness worst gimmick's probably Big the Cat's fishing in SA1

[Cyrus]

The sword.

[Thirsty Pocket]

Real speed physics.

I want to turn on a god damn dime. I can't play unleashed because of this crap.

[Chaos Warp]

Real speed physics.

I want to turn on a god damn dime. I can't play unleashed because of this crap.

Trolling?

[Indigo Rush]

Trolling?

Possibly. Maybe some people love bumping into walls and not having a consistent flow of speed.

Edited February 16, 2012 by Indigo Rush