under APPRECIATED Sonic games

[castell-neath]

Ok, what games to people say are Sonic games that are under appreciated?

 

I ask this as I was having a "nostalga fest" and thought that Sonic 2 on the Master System was superb, and is often "overlooked" for the Mega Drive Version when most people think "Sonic 2".

 

Other Sonic games that I think warrant this title are: Sonic Heroes (Ps2 version) - I never played the xbox or gamecube version to compare it, but I thought it was very,very good back when it came out, if not perfect; Sonic Chronicles and Spinball were also pretty good (and for the most part enjoyable) as "departures" in the franchise too. Another game I think gets a rough deal is Shadow - I think its fun to play simply for its "multiple path" approach and the freedom to allow a player to decide what course of action to take during levels. (replay value is added too).

 

 

Maybe some of these are games that are "on the margins" of Mainstream thought in Sonic fandom prehaps? I know Sonic 06 could also well deserve this title too - a large amount of people I know like it (for all its faults) and could argue its case too.

 

What do people think? Are there any others?

Edited August 24, 2013 by castell-neath

[Lady Soniko]

Sonic Heroes (PS2 Version) Is not under appreciated as it deserves all the hate it gets, it's a shoddy, half assed port with cut off dialogue, terrible frame rate and sometimes the music for a stage doesn't even play, not to mention the graphics look even worse on it for some reason.

 

If you wanted to give Heroes a fighting chance, then the version on the Gamecube is the way to go.

 

As for under appreciated games, I'd say Advance 3 and Battle merely because SA3 get's blamed for the start of bad level design in games and cheaply placed enemies, which shadow it under it's prequels, it's also quite divisive due to it's locations in game, like in SA1/2 they all sort of go together, but in SA3 there's shit like a Toy Kingdom? A futuristic Tech stage? It just doesn't gel well with the rest of the game and makes it a bit random, but I can't hate it since it offers decent music and I love the hell out of Cyber Track despite it's frustrating level design, to me it was just incredibly challenging compared to it's prequels.

 

Battle also gets a lot of flack due to how slow the game starts off, when Emerl is really shit with basic, slow moves, and it's got that whole get beat up and lose to gain better moves to fight sort of gameplay which drives away a lot of players, it also has an insane learning curve and can feel a bit repetitive, but there is a really nice game under all that.

[Semi-colon e]

Sonic Rush Adventure definitely. So much variety in the levels despite the boost formula, character development from the guys and girls, very original locales, awesome two screen bosses, and a lot more content than the first Rush. While the sailing was padding, it was still, to me, pretty damn fun. People do appreciate Rush Adventure, but I think not as much as I do, and I find this to be easily Dimps's best game so far.

 

I mean seriously, Pirates' Island is just an amazing level.

[spinny]

Sonic Heroes' PS2 version is dreadful compared to the GCN and Xbox with the piss-poor framerate and additional glitches. This is coming from someone who adores Heroes, too.

 

Anyway, in my opinion?

 

Sonic Rivals 1 and 2.

 

Yeah, I said it. These games are nowhere near as bad as the other shit that SEGA spewed out at this time (to me, Rivals was the best Sonic in 2006). Decent gameplay (albeit the level design is a little trial-and-error) with a massive amount of replay value regarding the collectable cards.

[Blue Blood]

Sonic Rush Adventure definitely. So much variety in the levels despite the boost formula, character development from the guys and girls, very original locales, awesome two screen bosses, and a lot more content than the first Rush. While the sailing was padding, it was still, to me, pretty damn fun. People do appreciate Rush Adventure, but I think not as much as I do, and I find this to be easily Dimps's best game so far.

I mean seriously, Pirates' Island is just an amazing level.

SRA is just one of those games that sadly gets forgotten. It's an improvement over the first game in most areas, but it was just too similar that it ended up getting overlooked. I think it sold somewhat poorly, and that resulted in SEGA nixing all future stand-alone handheld titles and instead giving us handheld versions of the console games. A shame, really.

Now what gets my vote? I'm going to pick 3, if I may...

 

Yeah, the entire Advance trilogy. They're masterpieces by nobody's standards, but they're lovely Sonic games that tick all the right boxes.

 

Advance 1 was a typical classic Sonic affair (albeit, somewhat slow) that was the perfect return to form after there'd not been a new and accessible 2D Sonic game since S3K. It introduced Amy into the 2D games to really shake up the gameplay. I think that "Amy Mode" would make a really fun hard mode in lots of games.

 

Then there was Advance 2. Seemingly Dimps and SEGA took the comments about Advance 1 being too slow to heart, and set out to make the fast Sonic game to date. It was shallow on the surface, making the entire game seem like a "hold right to win" affair, but that couldn't be further from the truth. This was before the days of the boost button, so you really had to try to earn and maintain your speed though collecting rings and utilising tricks. It wasn't until you mastered the game that you learnt about just how huge the stages were. It was quite excellently designed.

 

And to finish it off was Advance 3. Attempting to hit a middle ground between the speed and patforming focuses of Advance 2 and 1 respectively, Advance 3 didn't quite hit the mark when it introduced a deluge of useless and/or overpowered team moves, with level designs that clearly had very little play testing. But it was still fun to play.

 

Oh blimey, all that talk of the Advance series reminded me of this lovely number:

 

 

 

I just adore the simple, button-mashing goodness of Sonic Battle. The story was trash, the setting made no sense at all and it was unbalanced to say the least. It was just so much fun though! A huge cast where everyone played their role with a personality both in and out of battle. Good stuff right here.

 

The GBA was a pretty awesome platform for Sonic (mostly). Sadly though, the games get none of the appreciation they deserve nowadays. I think most people have forgotten they existed, likely due to them being somewhat unremarkable even if they were good.

 

The Rivals games get a special mention here as well.

 

They're not great (what are physics?) and yet they're not bad either. Thing is though, they're often disregarded or forgotten completely. Heck, Japan can't even appreciate the series because it was never released there!

 

That's all, folks!

Edited August 24, 2013 by Blue Blood

[Scott]

Sonic 06 (fuck you haters )

 

I was hyped for this game on the January of 2006 and drooled a fountain-worth after seeing the gameplay trailer. That glorious detail, that realistic setting, Kingdom Valley. I suddenly knew what I wanted to move to from my Gamecube - an Xbox 360. Eventually my birthday arrived on 17th December of that year and the game wasn't long released. While I didn't have a 360 at the time, I did use my birthday money to purchase the game. I just wanted to own it, even if I had to wait to play it. It was a decision I'll never regret.

 

A week and a day later, Christmas rolls around, I have enough for a 360. I bought one eventually and enjoyed every moment of the game. Where my disappointment from earlier titles was placed, this game remedied it for me. It played like Sonic Adventure, Eggman looked pretty cool in the realistic tone,  the music was superb and I enjoyed the gameplay for each character. I haven't played the game in about a year or so but it was my reason for getting a 360 and I loved it.

 

also, I'm a fan of the gritty Sonic settings :3

[DarkXZA]

The Advance series and Rush Adventure defiantly.

[Tara]

Yeah, the entire Advance trilogy. They're masterpieces by nobody's standards, but they're lovely Sonic games that tick all the right boxes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Advance games are actually pretty decently, if not extremely well, received by the fanbase and are often considered some of the best modern 2-D games.  Well, the third is kind of hit-or-miss, but I wouldn't call them under-appreciated by any means.

 

But yeah, I'd agree to Sonic Rush Adventure.  Though most people at least find the actual stages fun, there seems to be a bit of division when it comes to the inclusion of the various ships and vehicles that you "construct."  I'll admit that I don't like the system you use to upgrade it.  It basically amounts to nothing but repeatedly playing the stages over and over and over again until you get just the right amount of a certain material, which is just dull and dreadful.  But I loved actually using the ships and water vehicles.  Many of them reminded me of the Sky Chase subgames in SA1.  Though frustrating at times, I loved racing Johnny to get the emeralds, and I loved the map and the hub world and... I don't know.  I think it's a great game, overall.  Not a perfect game, mind you, but a great one.

 

A more controversial opinion would have to be Sonic and the Secret Rings.  A lot of people just don't like the controls.  I honestly don't see it.  For the most part, they were fluid and responsive.  (Though I'm not going to deny that there are some parts that just don't work as well as they should, but I could say that about any game)  I can understand that it's not everyone's cup of tea.  Some people don't like motion controls and that's A-OK by me, but I don't see how that amounts to the game being poorly designed as opposed to just being a matter of preference.  Also, the soundtrack was great and the story, while not exceptionally well done, boasts of some highly memorable moments and a surprising wealth of emotional depth.

[Blue Blood]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Advance games are actually pretty decently, if not extremely well, received by the fanbase and are often considered some of the best modern 2-D games.  Well, the third is kind of hit-or-miss, but I wouldn't call them under-appreciated by any means.

 

If you read the whole post, you'd see what I mean by "under appreciated"; they're looked over and forgotten. And I'm not just referring to the immediate Sonic fanbase, either.

Edited August 24, 2013 by Blue Blood

[Tara]

If you read the whole post, you'd see what I mean by "under appreciated"; they're looked over and forgotten. And I'm not just referring to the immediate Sonic fanbase, either.

Ah, sorry.  Must have missed that.

Edited August 24, 2013 by Akito

[Marcello]

Sonic Advance. I love that game and it's new additions to Sonic, Tails and Knuckles' moves. I still often pop it into my DS and play through it.

[TheOcelot]

I think Sonic 3d Blast (Genesis) is under appreciated.

 

It's a game which visually looks interesting - if a little strange - with the isometric viewpoint. The graphics are nice and the soundtrack is probably the best of all the Genesis games. The controls, using the d-pad to move Sonic in full 3d direction, is easy to adapt to. The gameplay isn't that much different from the other games. I've never found defeating enemies and picking up Flickies to be a chore (even if you get hit). The special stages are straightforward and the bosses are well designed-a decent challenge. 

 

Admittedly I don't play the game much, but I think it was a decent effort back in 1996.

Edited August 24, 2013 by -Bender- Wolverine

[Kuzu]

Sonic and the Black Knight...if only for the plot.

People tend to hate the characters are implemented when that game was the only one to make it completely optional and unobtrusive while still being unique in their own right.

[Zavok the SpinningSilver]

I'll go out on a whim for this one. Ahem:

 

From this ever so graceful period of 2001 - 2010: EVERY. SINGLE. GOD. DAMNED. HANDHELD. SONIC GAME. It started with Sonic Advance and ended after Colours DS.

 

Each and every one was fun in their own rights and offered new content for those able to play them.

 

The Advance series gave us a very classic feel, and added in some new twists such as a expanded partner system.

 

The Rush games introduced the Boost formula, kicking up the speed and excitement by a large percentage. Even with the new moves and different locales, they still had an element of the classics while being enough to stand well on their own.

 

The Rivals series had taken the multiplayer ideas of Sonic 2 and  Sonic 3 & Knuckles and ran with it. Even if it might not have been the best attempt in terms of how they played, they were still fresh and offered some pretty cool rewards in the form of the digital cards.

 

Even when Dimps stopped making their original series of games and had to make a handheld version of Sonic Colors, there was still some good charm with it. The controls and concepts of it's console big brother blended quite well with the Rush formula, and gave us even MORE content than the previous Rush games had. (Relatively speaking anyway, the jury's still out on whether it tops Rush Adventure in terms of content)

 

They all looked great, and as expected with this series, there are a wealth of great tunes in all of them.

 

And WHY are they ignored? Because they're on a handheld of course! Handhelds apparently don't count when regarding Sonic. They might as well not exist at all!

 

I know a lot of people here can see the quality of many handheld Sonic's, but the majority of people that I know of Sonic fans or not don't give two fresh pieces of cow manure about any of them.

 

*takes deep breath*

 

Had to get that off my chest. Sorry for the rant guys.

[Kuzu]

Yea, the entire handheld series in general just gets overlooked. I didn't even know Sonic Rush existed until I saw it on shelf one day, not a single promotion.

[Vertekins]

SatSR. Easily.

 

This game really was like a figurative can of air freshener after stink doo-doo's like Shadow and '06 back when it was released. It isn't appreciated today as much as it ought to be for such things as...

 

- Getting Sonic's character back on track and actually giving him the main role after Shadow and Silver shunted him sideways. This game, like it's successor, really characterized Sonic very well and actually made him an interesting character after ShTH's terrible flanderization and the tree that was standing in for him in '06.

 

- Being a game that wasn't a broken mess with glitches up the ass and which was clearly the product of a lot of consideration and effort as evidenced by the way levels are designed and the way the skill system figures into the gameplay. If only the controls were considered more though...

 

- Going some way to showing that Sonic Team care do care about the Sonic franchise. SatSR was dripping with great production values as far as I'm concerned.

 

Sure the game most definitely is not everybody's cup of tea and the controls are seriously questionable but it did stick-out as a decent quality game at least.

[Zavok the SpinningSilver]

Yea, the entire handheld series in general just gets overlooked. I didn't even know Sonic Rush existed until I saw it on shelf one day, not a single promotion.

 

I just chalk that up to bad marketing on Sega's part. Seriously, they need to work on that some more if they intend for their games to sell well.

 

And the funny thing is that as much flack we give to IGN, they consistently rated the handheld Sonic's with pretty high scores.

[Jin.]

Rush series, Black Knight and Sonic Advance 3.

Edited August 24, 2013 by 少佐 Jin H. Kisaragi

[Speederino]

Are we talking about good Sonic games that are more obscure or games that we find good that nobody else really seems to? Because in the case of the latter, there’s only one that really comes to my mind (and I think several of you can guess what it is):

 

Sonic 4 Episode 1.

 

Let me just get this out of the way: I do not care about physics. I never have and I highly doubt I ever will. I honestly place about as much importance in those as I do Sonic’s eye color (not trying to demean anyone who cares about physics or say that it’s on the same level of overall irrelevancy, but it really is an accurate representation of how much they matter to me on a personal level). The closest thing to it that I find truly important is the controls, and in my opinion at least, those are just fine. I certainly never had trouble with them, anyway.

 

So with that established, there’s a lot I like here. The level design is just as divergent and multi-layered as always with a couple exceptions, which adds plenty of replay value. I’m quite fond of the music (just to get another common complaint out of the way: no, the type of synth used has never bothered me in the slightest), and I got a nice nostalgia trip from seeing old bosses return. On that subject, yeah, there certainly is a lot of rehashing of old bosses and level themes in this game, but there’s still a lot here to keep things somewhat fresh. Vine swinging, running on boulders, the card collecting in Casino Street Act 2 (I actually *really* love that level), the level with the torch puzzles; even if you don’t like some of these things, I think we can at least agree that there was some effort put into giving the game some new mechanics. No, it’s not “Sonic 4 as I truly imagined it”, but I find the game to be a fresh and fun trip down memory lane.

 

But of course, there are things I don’t like about it. 90% of the time the game is an absolute breeze to get through. I rarely die and the game gives out lives like candy on Halloween. The only time I came even remotely close to getting a game over was the final boss and his cheap-ass final attack of doom, which brings me to the other major complaint: any actual difficulty in this game feels artificial. If I die, it’s not because some genuinely difficult platforming section or boss is giving me trouble, it’s because there’s cheaply placed bumper that keeps bouncing me into a pit or a spiked bubble robot waiting at the very end of a homing attack chain that I couldn’t possibly have seen beforehand. This isn’t challenging, it’s just frustrating. Lastly, I’m not a big fan of the special stages. I wouldn’t place them down there with Sonic Heroes’ hard to control special stages or say they’re as cheap as Sonic 2’s later ones, but they’re still rather bad and rely too much on complete memorization to get through.

 

So yeah, there you have it. I’m not really expecting many people to agree with me on this (if anyone), but hopefully this is a reasonable enough explanation as to why I like this often-despised game.

 

If you read the whole post, you'd see what I mean by "under appreciated"; they're looked over and forgotten. And I'm not just referring to the immediate Sonic fanbase, either.

 

There is truth to this. How many times have we heard someone from outside the fanbase say "Sonic hasn't had a single good game since the Genesis days"? Yet if you push them hard enough, they tend to sort of throw in the Advance and Rush games as an afterthought. Those really have been forgotten over time, sadly.

[Chaos Incarnate]

Sonic Advance 3. It's got its fair share of design problems, but I still had a lot more fun with it than Advance 2. The partner system adds great replay value by giving you a different experience each time you play, and the boss battles and soundtrack are easily my favorite of the trilogy. I also give Dimps props for making an effort to add a bit more story to this game, and address continuity by sort of having Emerl return in the form of Gemerl.

[Wraith]

 

 

Come on guys, it may have some design problems, but it wasn't complete ass by any means. Not only was it's team gimmick like ten times more interesting than the one in heroes, it also had some REALLY cool level tropes, and awesome soundtrack. The level design was a bit....meh, but when it worked, it worked.

 

 

The other 2 Sonic Riders games may be ass, but this one was legitimately fun. The racing was fast and fluid, with the trick system in particular being fantastic. There was lots of variety as far as the different gear you could use, and mission mode was fun, if not a bit difficult at times. The only thing I hate about it is the lack of tracks to choose from. It could have used a bit more of those. 

[Chaos Incarnate]

In terms of the story department, Secret Rings, Unleashed, and Black Knight are all vastly under appreciated. Everyone holds the story to Colors in such high regard, acting as if it's the best Sonic story since SA2, but I beg to differ.

 

When I see Sonic in those games, I'm truly rooting for him. He is a loveable dork in Colors, but I want to see him fail at points when he's acting too cocky. But in the games I mentioned, Sonic expresses his caring and loyal personality when interacting with Shahra, Chip, the Knights of the round, and Merlina. I also like that the Villain plots are a little darker in the storybook games, and Eggman truly acts like a genius in Unleashed, making the 300 IQ thing credible.

 

The only thing Colors has the advantage on over these games are the Sonic and Tails bromance, in my opinion.

[Kuzu]

Sonic Riders, that game is actually pretty fun and did the cartoony humor right long before Colors.

[Jin.]

I do like the Riders Series, and it should definetly be on this list... Except Free Riders.

Edited August 24, 2013 by 少佐 Jin H. Kisaragi

[Vertekins]

In terms of the story department, Secret Rings, Unleashed, and Black Knight are all vastly under appreciated. Everyone holds the story to Colors in such high regard, acting as if it's the best Sonic story since SA2, but I beg to differ.

 

Colours isn't so much a story as much as it is a disjointed series of poor jokes that force themselves so close to the forefront that plot and character development largely gets punted aside. I've said it before; The game has the same issue as ShTH - It places too much priority on it's tone to the detriment of the characters and story.

 

I agree that SatSR has a very under-appreciated story. Unlike what came before it, it didn't contain in any way, shape or form an idiot plot, actually developed the relationship between the two most prominent characters very well without it looking awkward (No, I don't regard Shahra's and Sonic's pinkie swears and Sonic's final wish even the least bit narmtastic), had intriguing plot development and plot points and a main villain that was diabolical and competent as well as powerful and who also knew how to pull-off the complex plan without the story and characters devolving into idiotic nonsense.

 

I value that so much and still stand by my view that SatSR has the best story. It's not overly serious, not overly light-hearted, it's just very well-balanced in terms of tone and it held my interest from start to finish. Sonic was written quite wonderfully and Shahra and Erazor were very interesting and decently-developed one-shot characters.

 

The fact that is was written so competently is such a contrast to '06 especially since it was released so soon afterwards.