Lost World: Discussion, Impressions and Fan Reviews

[MegasonicZX]

Ugh, I think my biggest problem with the story in this game isn't any of the subplots, but the fact that none of them really go anywhere. Tails acts jealous because Sonic trusts Eggman, and yet it's never brought up again beyond that one cutscene. The game makes a big deal out of Sonic fucking up and feeling bad about it, and yet at no point does he show any development by not making those same mistakes. Tails is almost turned into a robot, but then they go ahead and and show us him reprogramming the machine, destroying any tension the next cutscene where he confronts Sonic might have had. There's absolutely no explanation for the Lost Hex, the Deadly Six and why they're so "Deadly," the cacophonic conch, nothing. They're nothing more than characters for Sonic to fight and are never expanded upon at all. At the end of the game they're beat in a boss fight before disappearing with absolutely no sendoff whatsoever, despite being the main villains of the fucking game. The marketing for this game hyped up the alliance between Sonic and Eggman so much, but he never actually does anything. We're given a vague explanation for why they need to team up, but Eggman "dies" before ever actually doing anything, and Tails later shows that he was perfectly capable of doing it by himself, making Eggman, despite how much others praise his character, completely irrelevant to the plot of this game. And then he's shoehorned into the final boss role anyway despite how fucking useless he was! What in the actual fuck?

 

Also i still think Tails is a massive bitch in this game but I mostly chalk that up to the jealousy subplot* having no buildup whatsoever.

*Single cutscene

I guess after looking back through it, it was more the interaction with the characters than the story was really good, the story itself is actually pretty darn bare of alot of things.

[Autosaver]

The only time I found Lava Mountain Zone 2 particularly hard was getting the Red Rings. :V

Honestly, most of the levels are fairly easy if you just try to go straight to the goal. I'm guessing a lot of people are having difficult times when a Red Ring is clearly visible but in a hard to reach area. The constant trial and error in getting these rings may spill off to the rest of the game.

[WhoWhatMan]

Welp, I finally somewhat 100% the game (I didn't got all the red rings) of SLW 3DS so here my probably lackluster review of Sonic Lost World 3DS!

 

GRAPHICS

 

I wouldn't say this is the "MOST AMAZING GRAPHICS LIKE OH MY FUCKING DICK" on the 3DS, but it nice and colorful to look at.

 

MUSIC 

 

Really hit or miss.

There is a couple of good tracks in this game (Tropical Coast act 3, Sky Road act 3, Silent Forest act 2 and 3 and FROZEN FACTORY LIKE OH MY GOD)

But there is couple of forgettable ones though (Silent forest act 1, Desert Ruin act 2, Tropical act 1).

 

STORY

*SPOILER WARNING*

The writers really hit the bulleye with this one!

The character interaction is great and the jokes actually made me laugh.

 

But the overall story feel really... underdeveloped.

 

The story try to bring up these buildup that doesn't go anywhere, like that subplot of Tails being jealous or the game making a big deal about Sonic screwing up or even Lost Hex! You know, where the game take place? Tails just mention Lost Hex one time and that it. They can put Sonic on some random planet and it still wouldn't effect the story.

 

And the Deadly Six... I don't hate them or anything, but they are so stereotypical:

 

Zavok: Evil guy

Zazz: Crazy guy

Zik: Old master guy

Zomom: Fat guy 

Zor: Emo guy

Zeena: Generic Teenager

 

They seem to be interesting characters but some of them barely have any screen time that I forgot about them.

 

Also there no point of having Knuckles or Amy, they are just... there.

They only show up in 4 cutscenes and Knuckles only have like 3 or 4 lines in the whole game.

And on the thought of some of the characters being pointless: the Wisps are irrelevant story wise, they are just power ups. They don't explain why they are there at all.

 

The writing is good, but the story is... meh.

 

(Oh yea, the 3DS version cutscenes are awfully compressed and some of the scenes are missing which make the disjointed story, more disjointed.)

 

GAMEPLAY

 

Well, for this game, they changed up Sonic gameplay... again.

 

When you hold forward or in any direction, Sonic just jogs, but if you hold the R button, Sonic will run, which also let you do the game main feature: Parkour, and I'm gonna say this: I love the parkour! Some of the levels are really fun to speedrun through with the parkour, but I do have couple problems with it:

 

- There are some walls where you can't parkour on it which means that you are gonna die a lot if you didn't know this beforehand.

 

- Sonic really like to run up walls if you are not holding the run button which may cause you screwing up your platforming or losing time.

 

But sonic controls feel natural and responsive and I never really die due to Sonic being "uncontrollable" and such.

 

The levels are more puzzle focused, which isn't that bad when you play it in person, plus, if you are good at this game, you can skip some of those puzzles. I didn't find the "defeating X amount of badinks to move on" bit that bad if you know the charged homing attack which helps defeat the bigger robots.

 

The wisps are hit or miss with me: I enjoyed Lighting and Burst and Laser but that pretty much it.

I'm not a fan of asteroid just because it keep moving forward and quake is annoying to play with the gyro (the gyro controls aren't bad, but I prefer buttons).

 

The special stages isn't bad, but I won't go back and replay them again. The special stages are controlled with the gyro so if you miss a orb or something, you have to TURN your whole body AROUND to get it which ruins the portability.

 

The multiplayer is fun, but the online mode lags in some stages (TALKING TO YOU SKY ROAD!).

 

So in the end, Is Lost World 3ds a good game?

 

Ehhhhhhhhhh....

 

Yea.

 

I found myself playing the stages to get a better time or to get the red rings and the multiplayer really add to the replayability and the game does have a cutscene viewer so you can rewatch the whole story.

 

and I don't know how to end this so umm... 

 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't relieved.

It's no doubt that Unleashed would have been blessed with critical and financial success if not for the stupid werehog murdering any chance it had at succeeding. I think Sonic Team is best off just letting their artistic vision flow freely without trying so hard to pander and satisfy specific groups.

But letting their artistic vision flow freely is what gave us the bad concepts of ShTH and (ignoring the glitches) Sonic 06.

 

While I think they shouldn't try to pander and satisfy specific groups, I think their artistic vision needs more structure to go along with that flow so as to deliver things more coherently and within reason and logic of their universe while allowing room for new ideas to sprout.

[MegasonicZX]

But letting their artistic vision flow freely is what gave us the bad concepts of ShTH and (ignoring the glitches) Sonic 06.

 

While I think they shouldn't try to pander and satisfy specific groups, I think their artistic vision needs more structure to go along with that flow so as to deliver things more coherently and within reason and logic of their universe while allowing room for new ideas to sprout.

Yeah, sides I like the werehog, its part of what makes unleashed real fun to play.

[Blue Blood]

But letting their artistic vision flow freely is what gave us the bad concepts of ShTH and (ignoring the glitches) Sonic 06.

Oh contraire, games like ShTH and '06 were trying to appeal to the 'mature' audience copying popular concepts just as SLW does. ShTH in particular could have been renamed "GTA Westopolis" for all SEGA were trying to achieve. Unleashed is where their artistic vision shone through best. You could really tell how much they were trying to give that game an identity of it's own.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

While I think they shouldn't try to pander and satisfy specific groups, I think their artistic vision needs more structure to go along with that flow so as to deliver things more coherently and within reason and logic of their universe while allowing room for new ideas to sprout.

Yeah, it does seem like another one of Sonic Team's issues is that they have no real structure for what they intend to add in, and the things they do add in (assuming they succeed) end up either being horribly diluted or padded out, or worse overused and shoehorned in to the point that people get sick of them, ESPECIALLY when they do it badly.

 

Think about it. They had two relatively successful "dark" stories (for the time, even if it was hilariously stupid at parts in hindsight) with SA1 and SA2, and then they go and start using it progressively worse in Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06, resulting in anything "dark" becoming total taboo for Sonic. You got Shadow, a popular character who had a reasonable ending in his first game, brought back to life in a hap-hazardous fashion and his popularity milked in such a stupid fashion that it resulted in him becoming a total base breaker. We had a reasonable repertoire of new characters introduced during the early 3D era, which slowly began to balloon out of control and with existing characters becoming progressively underdeveloped, and combined with their questionable gameplay styles resulted in people outright hating them for EXISTING! Heck, depending on your point of view, even the recent addition of the Wisps might count as this, with their success in Colors resulting in them being shoehorned in Generations with shoddier controls (although this can slide due to the nature of Generations), and the more recent Lost World, where apparently their controls have become even worse.

 

Seriously, you'd think they would have figured out this kind of thing by now.

Edited November 6, 2013 by Wonder ED

[Briraka]

Oh contraire, games like ShTH and '06 were trying to appeal to the 'mature' audience copying popular concepts just as SLW does. ShTH in particular could have been renamed "GTA Westopolis" for all SEGA were trying to achieve. Unleashed is where their artistic vision shone through best. You could really tell how much they were trying to give that game an identity of it's own.

So why am I supposed to have God of Wars, Mario 64s and Zeldas in a Sonic game?

[Blue Blood]

So why am I supposed to have God of Wars, Mario 64s and Zeldas in a Sonic game?

Because Yoshihisa Hashimoto (director) insisted on it, despite protests from other staff members, I think including Sachiko Kawamura (art director). Note that I did say "they were trying". The game's world, characters, and daytime gameplay were all very well designed to offer a unique experience. The Werehog was something that many of those working on the game weren't so keen about.

Just gonna go dash off and see if I can find the specific interview that's the source of this. IIRC it was on Sonic Channel.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Oh contraire, games like ShTH and '06 were trying to appeal to the 'mature' audience copying popular concepts just as SLW does. ShTH in particular could have been renamed "GTA Westopolis" for all SEGA were trying to achieve. Unleashed is where their artistic vision shone through best. You could really tell how much they were trying to give that game an identity of it's own.

I hardly think that's any different since they allowed their vision to flow so far to even think those two games were even a good idea towards those concepts in their attempt to appeal to a different audience.

 

Unleashed is a good example of doing so with structure, and I'd actually like them to continue with that foundation they built.

[Narukami07]

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't relieved.

It's no doubt that Unleashed would have been blessed with critical and financial success if not for the stupid werehog murdering any chance it had at succeeding. I think Sonic Team is best off just letting their artistic vision flow freely without trying so hard to pander and satisfy specific groups.

 

Along with medal collecting, automation, trail & error level design, obnoxious QTE, etc.

[Blue Blood]

Okay, too much broken English and Google Translate to get through at 2am. But here's an Unleashed blog that I think has gone largely forgotten. IIRC, there's some info on there about the Werehog's conception, and how there was some disagreement. There's also an interview at Destructoid:

 

Destructoid: We've all seen The Werehog, and it has been greeted with a mixed reaction from fans. How are you feeling about fan reception to the character?

Hashimoto: The current reactions were something we had expected. When we first started the Sonic Unleashed project, I created a concept document with the Art Director Sachiko Kawamura on a single piece of paper. At that point, Kawamura and I remember saying that "There will definitely be mixed reactions from Sonic fans!" However, I took it as receiving mixed reactions is not [necessarily] a bad thing, since it will bring discussions and also bring great impact as well. I personally feel that Werehog’s design has come out very well. It has some degree of cuteness inside the wildness and while we can tell that it is Sonic, there are some appearances that he is not Sonic. Also, I feel that the gameplay has become very fun.

 

Kawamura was much more apprehensive towards the idea of the Werehog. Anyway...

 

____________

 

Along with medal collecting, automation, trail & error level design, obnoxious QTE, etc.

 

Oh come on. You know those things were largely overlooked by the reviewers, and the game would have been received much more favourably without the Werehog bogging it down. Yes those factors were detrimental to Unleashed, but even collectively they weren't as much of as issue as "the slow, boring fighting and puzzle gameplay based around a character with a stupid design and story, which takes up at least 50% of the game that's otherwise incredibly fast and fun".

 

____________

 

So uh... Lost World, anyone?

Edited November 6, 2013 by Blue Blood

[Sami]

Along with medal collecting, automation, trail & error level design, obnoxious QTE, etc.

All I remember hearing in reviews and large majority of sites that talked about it was "wow if half the game wasn't complete shit the awesome half would have made a lovely game".

I'm still extremely bitter at the complete bonehead move to include the werehog as an attempt to grab the GoW audience. The game might have been one of the series' best, otherwise.

[Dejimon11]

Did anybody else watch brainscratch comms impressions video yet?

[JezMM]

All I remember hearing in reviews and large majority of sites that talked about it was "wow if half the game wasn't complete shit the awesome half would have made a lovely game".

I'm still extremely bitter at the complete bonehead move to include the werehog as an attempt to grab the GoW audience. The game might have been one of the series' best, otherwise.

 

I thought it was more a kids thing?  Kids were getting more into "general" action games, and old school Sonic jumping on platforms just wasn't cutting it.

 

They of course, were still aiming too high age bracket-wise (they hit the sweet spot in Colours I think) but yeah, I don't think they were aiming for GoW players.  Granted... I'm sure a lot of GoW players are the age they were aiming at even though they shouldn't be.

[SilentDoom]

Did anybody else watch brainscratch comms impressions video yet?

 

Yep.  Waste of 1 hour, 23 minutes and 45 seconds of my time.

[Soniman]

Yep.  Waste of 1 hour, 23 minutes and 45 seconds of my time.

 

Since I don't feel like watching all of it, you feel like condensing the overall thoughts?

[VO.SUPER]

I thought they included the Werehog because they wanted to make the game longer? They thought having daytime Sonic alone would make the game too short?

[Indigo Rush]

They included the Werehog for multiple reasons, including padding, appealing to kids, and the biggest and most franchise damaging brainfart ever.

 

Even though the Werehog looks cool. And the game wasn't that bad.

 

 Shut up, I like Sonic Unleashed a lot okay

 

So yeah, Lost World.

 

If any of you have noticed in the status updates a few days ago, you'll know that I returned the 3DS version. To sum up my post-game thoughts...

 

...it had some good bits in there, but most of it was mediocre and... just plain not fun. I grossly underestimated how tedious the puzzles were. I must have been blinded by that honeymoon phase you get when you play a new Sonic game, and, if I have to be honest with myself, a bit of delusion.

 

I really wanted to love this game, but I can't find myself justifying the $40 price tag. It isn't the worst Sonic game ever, heck, it isn't even the worst Dimps Sonic game ever, but it was not all it was cracked up to be. 

 

I'd have been much happier with another boost game, or Sonic Rush 3 (if we can just pretend that Sonic Colors DS doesn't count, kthanks) or Colors 2, even. 

Edited November 6, 2013 by Indigo Rush

[Dejimon11]

Since I don't feel like watching all of it, you feel like condensing the overall thoughts?

 

Wii U version

 

Johnny- Wait for the review but bottom line he compares it to unleashed. if you just play through the game and dont collect the red rings you might enjoy if and if SEGA decides to keep the style of gameplay he's excited for the future

 

Clement- not the best sonic game but still had fun

 

Ryan-if your a fan of sonic try it out but if not dont bother

 

Ted-Same as Ryan except he doesnt really like the game

 

3DS version

 

Clement-doesnt like it but prefers the special stages than the Red Rings

 

Johnny- Its the worst version and believes its terrible

 

 

 

 

oh and Lewis couldnt say anything since he hasnt played it

[Soniman]

That's ironic because I enjoyed the game more when I was Red Ring Hunting, since I went back to the old levels with improved skill with the controls and was able to explore levels more successfully and do more impressive stuff (especially with that super spin dash).

Edited November 6, 2013 by Soniman

[Dejimon11]

there was one thing that baffled me during the video that they complained about. 100 rings =/= life they said that in the previous games games that never happened even though when ive played shadow, unleashed and colors and colected 100 rings i never got an extra life

[Celestia]

Yeah, I can get why people don't like that you don't get an extra life for 100 Rings, but acting like this is the first game to do it is just silly when Colours did it three years ago.

[KHCast]

What was Brainscratches opinion on the characterization, characters, and to a lesser extent, overall plot?

[Autosaver]

Yeah, I can get why people don't like that you don't get an extra life for 100 Rings, but acting like this is the first game to do it is just silly when Colours did it three years ago.

Let's make something clear.

 

This game tries to be like Mario, and this includes the death system. In Mario, you often die. Since the game gives out lives like candy, it's not that big of a deal. Since levels are short, losing all your lives isn't that big of a deal.

 

HOWEVER!

 

Sonic doesn't give out lives like candy. You can't get lives from 100 rings unlike getting 100 coins. Levels are long so losing all your lives is frustrating.

 

Games like Sonic Colors didn't really have long levels. It was also insanely easy to stack up on lives. The level design wasn't really focused on dying a lot compared to the Mario-like Lost World.

 

Adding the ability to get lives after 100 rings would mean you would have a healthy stack of 1-Ups. There wouldn't be moments of frustration where you would have to start at the beginning of the level. It's a small thing but it solves a big problem.

 

 

There's also the idea of making levels shorter in addition to adding back 100 ring lives.

Edited November 6, 2013 by Autosaver