Good Things About Bad Sonic Games.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

40 minutes ago, Failinhearts said:

Sonic Free Riders: I like the soundtrack and the game is nice to look at.

This, and I know its an unpopular opinion: but I enjoyed the kinect controls. I like the idea of using motion sensors to play the game and I had a pretty good time with it.

[WakanoBaka]

Only thing I liked from Free Riders were the graphics.... dancing like a fucking idiot in my ho,e was fine, then my brother moved in....haven't picked up the since... 

[baba_944]

Don't know if I posted here, but here's mine (yes I'm serious):

 

"Sonic 3 & Knuckles": The music (PC version), Blue spheres and story. 

[CottonCandy]

I know alot people will shit on Rise of Lyric entirely but the game has a few pretty decent things. I thought the story behind Lyric and his reasoning to wipe out organic life was interesting. Again, the game didn't flesh it out well enough but the concept was decent. 

Also, I don't think Rise of Lyric have a bad ost. Yes, it's different for a sonic game but it's not terrible. I think it really fits the tone and gameplay style. 

 

 

 

 

[Hyp3hat]

SMH at everyone who says that 'Sonic 06 had good music!'

This is literally a keyboard preset.

That and the fact that half of the tracks barely have melodies - Kingdom Valley appears to be stitched together from about 7 interludes of different songs, there's no 'theme' to it. Aquatic Base is just... ambient looping nothings. 

Ok, my turn....

The central mechanic of Knuckles Chaotix is really cool, and is stymied by the boring level design/weird design choices of the game. If an Indie Game came out with that mechanic in local multiplayer, it would be the new hotness on Steam or something, like Freedom Planet was with classic Sonic mechanics.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

Sonic the Fighters, while not amazing, is still a game I definitely enjoy. A fighter with Sonic characters is just plain fun to me, and I love the colorful, cartoony, comedic aesthetic complete with stretch and squash effects. They also thought of some pretty fun moves to give the characters, such as Tails flying characters into the sky and dropping them (a real killer move!), the debut of Amy's piko piko hammer, and much more. I also appreciate its introduction of Bean and Bark and its inclusion of Espio.

Sonic R is another such not-great-but-still-fun game for me. The idea of a Sonic racer on foot where you can use the character's abilities is a pretty fun one, the levels look pretty cool, it's very colorful, it introduced Tails Doll and Metal Knuckles, and it had a great guilty-pleasure soundtrack.

[E-122-Psi]

If Sonic R had more tracks (or even just a Reverse mode for the actual racing) it would have been a pretty addictive game despite it's flaws.

Adding onto Knuckles Chaotix was the variation of playable characters. All of them had a nice variation of moves while still being loyal to the Sonic mechanics. Some of the sprite work was great too (especially Vector's, probably the most expressive of the MD/Gens character sheets). It's a shame none of them were reused for another instalment, though I can understand how some like Charmy wouldn't work the same without the ring mechanic.

[ShadowSJG]

Sonic 06 had some decent voice acting with Griffith as Shadow and Dan Green as Mephiles. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Guilty Pleasure time. I like Sonic R, and I've completed it 100% multiple times.

...

...

Alright let me explain. I understand the issues. I honestly do. The controls for most characters suck. The tank controls for a racing game is pretty much shooting themselves in the foot. The lack of additional characters/tracks is a huge limitation on the game, and more. Yet, I still like the game. The graphics were really good for the time, the soundtrack has grown on me a great deal, to the point the only track I dislike is Can You Feel the Sunshine. My personal favourite tracks being Living in the City, Work It Out, and You are my Number One.

As for the gameplay issues, there's one reason I find fun in it, and it's a cheat that allows you to bypass the annoying tank controls. That cheat, is Knuckles the Echidna. No seriously, if you choose Knuckles, and glide, he doesn't have to deal with the tank controls, the game allows him to turn normally, and at an higher speed than running. If it weren't for Super Sonic, he'd be the most OP character in the game,

Now onto a game I despise. Free Riders. Fuck Free Riders. Hate everything about Free Riders. Motion controls sucked so hard that I couldn't even control the fucking menu let alone the game. The tracks seem to just be Riders tracks again. The story is lazily represented through still images in the guise of news broadcasts. I just can't stand the game. Only good thing I can give it is the soundtrack, and graphics are pretty good.

[TheBlueRenegade]

The only positive aspect of Sonic 06 I can find in my opinion was the music, especially the likes of Crisis City, Kingdom Valley, Iblis and Solaris Phase 2. As obvious as it may be to state, 06 was my least favourite Sonic title for a while.

Same with Sonic Lost World, I really liked tracks such as Sea Bottom Segue, Honeycomb Highway and even Sky Road Zone 1. The graphics are pretty nice to look at as well, really gives the cartoony feel of Modern Sonic. Everything else to me was meh and Lost World is just average for me.

This was difficult to think of but the only positive from Sonic 4 Episode 1 is, as mentioned before in the topic, Super Sonic mapped to a different button. With episode 2, I liked how they tried to make the zone tropes and bosses (while the Eggman ones were boring asf) more unique and some music tracks sound nice despite being stuck in a soundtrack with dying ducks and 17 second loops.

Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric has little to no positives. I will say that the voice acting is a tiny bit better and the occasional banter wasn't a bad idea but the amount of bullshit in the game clearly throws those into the dust. RoL is my least favourite Sonic title of all time.

 

[sMy_PANCAKES]

I always thought the powers you acquire in Shadow after maxing out your good or evil meter were really thrilling. Especially the one you get from being heroic, you feel like you're going Mach 5 through the whole level. Sometimes the collision detection would freak out and launch you out of the map, by hey, you take the good with the bad. : P

[MetalSkulkBane]

One more game that comes to mind: Sonic Battles

I'm not sure if I can call it "bad" game; it looks good, sound is good controls are good and idea of fighting with all those characters is really sweet. However I wouldn't recommend it to not-sonic fans for one thing: fighting is sorta garbage. It's just spamming power pove, then the other one. It's boring, repetitive and tedious.

HOWEVER, there is one really good thing about this game: It has one of the best stories Sonic ever had. Light heart tone, all my favorites characters interacting (except Metal) and great emotional finally. (Spoilers) I like Gamma more then Emerl, but I consider Emerl death way more tragic due to connection he made with all characters. And all of this was made with very simple graphics, that done much better job then say Rush & Rivals series cuteness (heck, better then most of Sonic main games cutscenes).

[sMy_PANCAKES]

Sonic 3D Blast probably has my 2nd favorite soundtrack out of all the Sonic games. (1st being Sonic 3 & Knuckles)

Diamond Dust Zone being my particular favorite:

 

[Dr. Detective]

I've always contested that Shadow the Hedgehog had my absolute favorite character roster in terms of who showed up and how their contribution to the game had them all around various parts of the world, trying to help along the situation with their own personal missions. An idea like that really did a lot to help me view them as heroes in their own right, with some of them taking upon impossible tasks by themselves with the added incentive of their undertaking being a mission they would have attempted to complete whether Shadow had showed up at all. It was especially impressive concerning the child characters (Tails and Charmy) as the missions they were undertaking sound positively insane when outlined as solo endeavors and probably was a heavy contributing factor towards the two of them landing in my top 5 favorites. Although, Cream ended up suffering on that end due to the fact that she was used as a prop for Amy's mission.

Another thing about Shadow that I appreciated was the wordly crisis feel that could have done a lot to send my heart all a flutter had it been capitalized upon correctly. That feeling I initially got when I worked my way through the dark pathway to discover that I had basically doomed the world was incredibly heart-wrenching and I look back on it with fondness. Especially because of the music that played in the scene before the final level. It was an event piece called "Brief Relief" where the mood was centered on an incredibly small and brief amount of rest and contemplation of the dire situation right before the Black Arms invaded to bring the invasion to a close. 

The idea that there's all these people around in different parts of the world, working together with their own problems that we as the traveling hero stumble upon and get wrapped up in allowed for the world to feel more open and together then it usually did. It's a feeling that I got from a lot of the games from 2005 and under actually. It's similar to that really great feeling you feel when you team up with your friends or parties who share similar interests as you to take down a larger then life foe. 

It's basically what I love seeing happen all the time with One Piece.

[Rexeljet]

I think Sonic Heroes is a terrible game, but its soundtrack is one of my absolute favourites. It's so diverse and upbeat, it's just a shame it was wasted on such a rubbishy game. You can say that for a lot of Sonic games however, so I'll mention that I like the aesthetics. Very colourful and- for the most part- not too gaudy. A lot was done to make the level art pop out at the viewer, and for this reason I enjoy watching other people play the game or looking at screenshots. Can't face the idea of actually playing the damn thing though.

A similar thing could be said for Sonic CD, though that's more a personal taste than an objectively awful game. Beautiful level art, an art style unmatched by any other 2D Sonic game, and an amazing (JP/EU) soundtrack. But again, I don't really enjoy playing the game.

You won't generally find me having anything nice to say about Sonic Labyrinth, but I really like the aesthetics of zone 2-1 (Labyrinth of the Sea Act 1). Very few Sonic levels have what you could call a nautical or maritime theme, and this level is possibly the closest in the whole series. The starfish scattered around the level and the coral reef in the background really help to set the scene. I mention act 1 in particular because I feel that the pink and purple make for a more subdued colour scheme, as opposed to the blue/yellow and green/yellow of the other acts.

Whilst I prefer Sonic Advance 1 from a gameplay standpoint, the level tropes are a hundred times more inventive in its sequels. Whereas Advance 1 was largely just reused ideas from Sonics 2 and 3, Advance 2 and 3 gave us new and wacky stuff like Music Plant, Techno Base, Toy Kingdom and Cyber Track to name a few. I wouldn't mind seeing more "out there" level tropes in future Sonic games.

Now I was going to bring up Sonic 06, saying that promotional material such as desktop wallpapers convey a greater sense of atmosphere than the entire game itself. Turns out that the image I had in my mind was this, which turned out to be somebody's fanart. False alarm, everyone. Sonic 06 has no redeeming qualities, after all.

[Yoko/葉子]

Incoming sentimentality post:

 

When Sonic 3D Blast came out in 1996, I loved the soundtrack and then confusing gameplay. Anyway, my copy was stolen from me, so I bought a boxed copy online, as I remember getting my first one new from my now-deceased grandma. She may be ashes, but my memory of that moment now has been reignited in physical form with that copy. The happiness of having it back shares the beauty of a lavender colored flame. I even did a speedrun on the anniversary of her death with my old copy, out of respect for the deceased.

[SilJeff]

1. Sonic 06 had a good soundtrack

2. Sonic Unleashed has great graphics and fun daytime stages

3. Sonic Adventure 2 has a good soundtrack and decent controls and good graphics for its time

4. Sonic Lost World has decent level design for the tube levels

5. Sonic Heroes is absolutely gorgeous for its time and has a good soundtrack

There are other games I find bad, but only these five can I think of good things to say at the moment for.

[ShadowSJG]

I think Sonic 06 handled Shadow's characterization better. I think his story wasn't too bad tbh

[The Ao erizo]

I feel that Sonic Advance 3 is much too hated, with people calling it the worst out of the three. I personally prefer it over the first, which people deem the greatest of the series. Now, I can see why they'd say that about the first one, but I just feel that things like the variety of the level design in terms of aesthetics, the sense of breaking the sound barrier you get when achieving top speed, the different abilities the character you're playing as gets depending on who you pick as your teammate, chao hunting, the soundtrack (which mind you, is what I believe Battle was directly inspired/pulled themes from), the hilarious banter in the very sparse "cutscenes" you get when encountering a new playable character, unique boss designs... Oh! And speaking of bosses, the mood that sets once you get to the final showdown with Eggman atop the master emerald altar....hoo man! I got chills once that serious, melancholy music started playing. I could go on and on about this little gem of a cartridge game, but I think you get the picture.

[Agie]

Honestly, the redeeming points of Sonic Riders just made it more painful.

Of the sixth console generation Sonic games, it probably had the best graphics.

What I managed of the story? Not awful. Certainly not the best Sonic plot, but the series saw worse, too.

The Babylon Rogues? I welcomed them with open arms. In fact, I'm glad they pop up every now and then.

The gameplay's concept also could have worked if they hadn't botched it up. Unfortunately, no matter how good the idea is, execution is everything, and it was poorly executed.

And that's the painful part; for all it had going for it, the controls sucked so bad, it dragged down the whole game. I agree with those who defend it from critics calling it a Mario Kart ripoff...because calling it a knockoff implies Mario Kart had awful controls, which it did not.

[Green Eyes]

I really like the idea of team-based gameplay, as seen in Sonic Heroes and Rise of Lyric, I think more closely resembling something in Sonic Heroes, which I do think was pretty fun to go through once at least .

I like the idea of swapping between the characters different powers and personalities, seeing them interact and go through the story together.

I kind of liked the chemistry between Amy and Elise, and Amy and Silver, I think Amy was pretty cute in Sonic 06.

Shadow was a bloody badass in 06.

It actually makes me ponder at the possible implication that Shadow make take Sonic's role as "the hero" as he outlives Sonic, out of the disgust he expressed for evil and some of the Christ-like symbolism between him and Mephiles, suggesting Shadow as a persecuted savior. (OK, I agree Shadow was a bit sue-ish in this game, but otherwise...kind of interesting) It goes to show that Shadow refuses to be pushed back where he started and is ready to wipe the floor with a creepyass evil half-god.

Also I kind of like the idea that they were "going for" with Sonic's character, and his friendship with Elise;

Sonic takes the role of supporting Elise, he seems more openly caring and gives thoughtful advice to her (though kind of awkwardly written) and seems to represent a theme of transience, focus is put on the briefness of Sonic and Elise's friendship and he is associated with the symbolism of wind and cherry blossom. He dies and is reborn. When the story comes to the end, Sonic is there to help Elise let go. He's has always been a character of the moment and of the present, and it's interesting to see it utilised in a way that's a bit more chill and thoughtful, and used to guide another character, rather than just kinda...yolo. It's a shame that this is kind of all they did with him in this game, leaving the rest of his character at the wayside. I do think it marked a shift in Sonic's character though, and that this kind of angle is utilised in SatSR, Sonic Unleashed and SatBK also, where they actually didn't decide to forget the rest of him.

This is pretty cool.

[Lord Raptor]

I love Sonic Heroes Soundtrack, if we can agree on something can it be that sonic Heroes has a kickass soundtrack, who doesn't love Grand metropolis, Mystic mansion or What I'm Made of.

[ChikoLad]

The level design for Sonic's levels in Sonic '06 was actually very good. Please take note of the word "design". I'm aware the game has plenty of shoddy programming that botches up levels, but I'm not talking about the programming, I'm talking about the design. They are completely different things.

Anyway, unlike SA2, I felt Sonic's levels in '06 were a true successor to Adventure 1. They were open ended, chock full of secrets like item capsules and Silver Medals, and it felt like I had multiple ways I could go to achieve an S Rank, rather than having to perform very specific, context sensitive actions like in SA2.

My opinion on this is further validated by a Sonic Generations mod that ports various stages from '06 into Generations, with Sonic's speed toned down a bit (slower than Generations, but still faster than he was in '06). Having some momentum to your jumps and more overall polish to stuff like the collision detection really helps bring out the best in these levels. I have a lot of fun with that mod.

Also, '06 has one of the best portrayals of Shadow as a character in the context of the story.

[574G]

Sonic 2006: Level design, vocal soundtracks

Shadow The Hedgehog: Choose-Based story

Sonic Lost World: an actual story after Colors and Generation

 

[Mad Convoy]

Hm... well, I'm not really as experienced with the bad games as you guys are, but I suppose I can talk about Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric.

I really enjoyed a lot of the concept art behind the game once Big Red Button got past all those weird character redesigns. Especially the level concepts-- I mean, the detailing is amazing on them. Its truly a glimpse into Rise of Lyric as BRB wanted it to be, rather than Rise of Lyric as it is. And what BRB wanted was for RoL to be was beautiful and lush. I appreciate these concepts and consider being able to access them in the game as a definite plus.

I also like some of the dialogue in the cutscenes. The scene of where Knuckles accidentally hits Sonic so hard he loses a ring (and the ring keeps moving around in the background throughout the cutscene) amused me a lot, as did the scene where Sonic thought he had taken a huge fall and had to be saved dramatically by Knuckles when really he hadn't fallen far at all. Actually, Sonic meeting Lyric was pretty amusing too-- the "who, me?" look on Sonic's face is priceless.

I also think the voice actors did the best possible acting considering some of the lines they got handed-- I think Lyric's voice actor deserves a medal for making the character actually sound somewhat menacing despite Lyric getting the worst characterization and dialogue in the game. As does Knuckles's actor, and the NPCs' actors... but mostly Lyric's actor. And of course, Mike Pollock as Eggman is always a favorite.

Metal Sonic's boss fight was pretty good in my eyes too. It had some expected issues with lag, but besides that is challenging without being cheap and unlike the other bosses, I genuinely enjoyed fighting him.