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So are Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations not considered good games now?


Detective Kaito

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Everything grinds to a halt because there's no scene progression, the scene is written for the joke and nothing else.

Whereas outside of Heroes level intros and character battle cutscenes, no scene "during" the story in other games are really dedicated to comedy.

In regards to the character thing, it helps "comedy" in Lost World that Sonic actually interacts with other characters before boss fights...so they don't feel like they drag due to it just being Sonic talking.

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25 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

In regards to the character thing, it helps "comedy" in Lost World that Sonic actually interacts with other characters before boss fights...so they don't feel like they drag due to it just being Sonic talking.

And honestly, some of the jokes when he does meet the boss are some of the brighter moments in that game.

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I consider Sonic Colors a good game, but I'm not so sure it's a good Sonic game.  A lot of it seems to be throwing out too much of what was good in Sonic before, in order to reinvent its gameplay, and sadly that reinvention has stuck.

The problems I have with the game are apparent almost immediately after starting it.  Sonic has no spin dash and his boost is at the mercy of a Wisp power-up, so even his most signature abilities are compromised.  Other Wisps are officially stated by Iizuka to be there just so they can broaden the experience without having to return other characters to a playable role, which is almost enough to make me hate Colors and the Wisps out of principle alone.  The flipside is that many of them are quite fun, and there's probably a way to make them coexist with the other characters, but I'm not sure what it would be.   Sonic's movement around levels is badly restricted, even when it doesn't need to be.  There is exploration, but most of it takes the form of very visible paths that branch out all of a sudden based on rails or different heights in 2D; in 3D the game is badly oppressed by invisible walls.

Sonic Generations, meanwhile, might be the best that Boost Sonic has ever been, for what that's worth.  But while the return of Classic Sonic was a fun novelty back then, in an era when Sonic Mania exists to nail how Classic Sonic plays, his flawed physics in Generations get a lot more noticeable.

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You know, I can't help but feel like these games being so controversial comes from a dissonance from how people view the series. Generally, you have some people who are fine with the writing and think that while things can be improved, it's ultimately harmless at the end of the day. And then you have the people who view the writing as a complete betrayal of what the series was before and is just terrible overall. 

And I feel like this view stems from people looking at the series as a video game to be played with the story just being a backdrop versus people looking at it as a series with a large sweeping narrative that serves to justify the gameplay. Or rather; a video game with a story attached to it, or a story with a video game attached to it. With the latter view obviously mostly being from fans who grew up on the titles from 2001 to 2009 while the former can vary from either retro 90's fans or newer 2010 fans. 

To people who just like to play the game, the game is generally benign. It doesn't do a whole lot but it's ultimately a harmless title and charming in some areas. But people who love the large sweeping narratives generally dislike the game since things never really escalate. Its just something I've noticed when it comes to the reception of these games both in and outside the fanbase. 

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I'm a gameplay first type of person. I definitely would not have any problems with these games at all if they backed up their lack of emphasis on storytelling with more depth, content, and player agency to make the gameplay deeper. But these games are steps back in terms of gameplay and content too. 

I just tend to focus on the story more because that's all most of this board is concerned with regarding this series. 

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12 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I'm a gameplay first type of person. I definitely would not have any problems with these games at all if they backed up their lack of emphasis on storytelling with more depth, content, and player agency to make the gameplay deeper. But these games are steps back in terms of gameplay and content too. 

I just tend to focus on the story more because that's all most of this board is concerned with regarding this series. 

Most of the people on this board grew up on the mid 2000 titles, so that doesn't shock me...

 

That said, to shift focus onto the gameplay; while I do understand the shift to just the day stages and toning down some of the trial and error gameplay from Unleashed. I do feel some depth was sacrificed. Having played Unleashed long after these games, I couldn't help but enjoy it more despite it controlling way worse. There was just a stronger sense of satisfaction from beating a level in Unleashed versus these games due to the greater depth in the level design in the latter. 

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I have to say I wouldn’t exactly find Heroes any better than Colors from a quality standpoint given that its scenes are a lot more detached with no decent transition—you don’t know how the characters go from Ocean Palace to Grand Metropolis, or in the more standout case Frog Forest in the ground and suddenly in the sky with the Egg Fleet. Colors solves this by having the player simple select their location on the Map, so the reason you went from Planet Wisp on one end without finishing Starlight Carnival is because by the player’s own initiative.

But it’s not hard to see what Heroes has that Colors lacks. You have some semblance of characters interacting outside their usual circle and offering other dynamics and a more meatier story—which in turn lies the irony, because the whole reason Colors lacks all of that was because people complained about the mere existence of these other characters.

Probably doesn’t help Heroes’ case, however, that it forces you to replay the exact same levels in the exact same order four times with those other characters, which in addition to the above detached scenes of its story, makes the characters fight each other mostly for little to no reason beyond a suspicion that they neglect to sit down and talk about—or in the worst case, fight each other despite telling each other they have the exact same goals.

There is definitely more to feel from Heroes than Colors, but I wouldn’t put it too highly when it has plenty of faults that Colors lacks.

It’s really more of a pick your poison.

I’d honestly stick to using the Adventure series as the better standard when it comes to the compare and contrast. That or Unleashed, as it does a much better job of what Colors should have done with storytelling.

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Yeah, I would definitely go with Heroes between the two. As the game that had to introduce me to the Chaotix, establish Omega, re-establish Shadow, and sell me on Team Rose being a thing I feel it got a lot of mileage out of that.

I'm a huge Chaotix fan because of that game and how their characters were presented to me while playing. The story in Heroes didn't have much in terms of focus on plot but it was dripping with character, thats for sure. Just re-counting all the different reactions to the frogs that summon rain or the weird shit in Hang Castle makes me smile.

My cartoonish hatred of Sonic Colors' story has died down a little bit however my opinion on it remains the same.

Its scenes were constructed with a joke in mind and they didn't care much if sometimes the joke didn't make sense (Eggman forcing the Taxi Driver reference when there WAS someone else there) or went on too long (they ran the Sonic talking to robots joke into the ground) or they had to explain the joke (because Cubot is an idiot I guess).

There was some character to Sonic and Tails explored there but it felt in service of something that was mostly annoying. Any scene they took serious felt like mood whiplash and I couldn't take it seriously despite really wanting to.

Neither game is perfect on this front but I do find Heroes had way more to offer me. I'm a huge Chaotix and Omega fan for a reason.

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4 hours ago, Conquering Storm’s Servant said:

I have to say I wouldn’t exactly find Heroes any better than Colors from a quality standpoint given that its scenes are a lot more detached with no decent transition—you don’t know how the characters go from Ocean Palace to Grand Metropolis, or in the more standout case Frog Forest in the ground and suddenly in the sky with the Egg Fleet. Colors solves this by having the player simple select their location on the Map, so the reason you went from Planet Wisp on one end without finishing Starlight Carnival is because by the player’s own initiative.

You cite those with the "Gotta travel fast to find Eggman/complete the mission" setup and not Sonic going from a Wile E Coyote cartoon to the Beach.?

4 hours ago, Conquering Storm’s Servant said:

But it’s not hard to see what Heroes has that Colors lacks. You have some semblance of characters interacting outside their usual circle and offering other dynamics and a more meatier story—which in turn lies the irony, because the whole reason Colors lacks all of that was because people complained about the mere existence of these other characters.

 

There was Colors DS. 

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On 12/28/2019 at 12:05 AM, Kuzu said:

You know, I can't help but feel like these games being so controversial comes from a dissonance from how people view the series. Generally, you have some people who are fine with the writing and think that while things can be improved, it's ultimately harmless at the end of the day. And then you have the people who view the writing as a complete betrayal of what the series was before and is just terrible overall. 

And I feel like this view stems from people looking at the series as a video game to be played with the story just being a backdrop versus people looking at it as a series with a large sweeping narrative that serves to justify the gameplay. Or rather; a video game with a story attached to it, or a story with a video game attached to it. With the latter view obviously mostly being from fans who grew up on the titles from 2001 to 2009 while the former can vary from either retro 90's fans or newer 2010 fans. 

To people who just like to play the game, the game is generally benign. It doesn't do a whole lot but it's ultimately a harmless title and charming in some areas. But people who love the large sweeping narratives generally dislike the game since things never really escalate. Its just something I've noticed when it comes to the reception of these games both in and outside the fanbase. 

I don't really like this characterization, I think it a bit too close to the strawman that people who demand better writing from Sonic don't care about gameplay or are somehow enjoying the series the wrong way. I think it would be better described as a division between people who see Sonic as purely a game with some window-dressing attached and those who see it as an aggregate of mediums, including gameplay, which can all be made to bend in service of the greater experience. 

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Sonic Colors is  just an okay game I wish was better. Sonic Heroes is a trashfire in every department that actually matters, regardless of how well it presents itself. 

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2 hours ago, Bowbowis said:

I don't really like this characterization, I think it a bit too close to the strawman that people who demand better writing from Sonic don't care about gameplay or are somehow enjoying the series the wrong way. I think it would be better described as a division between people who see Sonic as purely a game with some window-dressing attached and those who see it as an aggregate of mediums, including gameplay, which can all be made to bend in service of the greater experience. 

I mean, you're basically saying the same thing just with some sugar-coating. I didn't say people are wrong for enjoying the game a different way, nor do I find anything wrong with expecting better writing from this series if that's your priority. But...Sonic IS a video game series. Some might see it as more than that, but the basis for the entire franchise is that of a video game. This isn't something that's open for interpretation, it's a literal fact. 

 

 

Heroes and Colors...ya know, if I had to judge them as video games, Colors wins out easily. But in terms of Sonic fanservice and all of that shit, Heroes probably wins out. 

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Heroes also wins for me because its the game where Vector says "Who's this broad?" and Charmy says "Holy magical mushrooms". 

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Just now, Dr. Christmas Mike said:

Heroes also wins for me because its the game where Vector says "Who's this broad?" and Charmy says "Holy magical mushrooms". 

 

Just now, Dr. Christmas Mike said:

Heroes also wins for me because its the game where Charmy says "Holy magical mushrooms". 

Wai-ha-hait what? 

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In terms of moment to moment dialogue Heroes is pretty redundant a lot of the time, with the good banter nestled between what has to be hours and hours of Sonic and friends just shouting what the player is doing. There are a few little nods and jokes here and there that I'm sure fans would enjoy but they would have done a lot better using all of that noise as an opportunity to actually dig into who the characters are and what they're thinking about the situation. 

Like, Sonic, Tails and Knuckles pondering about how Shadow is alive is good. I wouldn't have minded if that conversation continued into the stage, instead of a bunch of different 'Tails is frightened' voice clips or the characters vocalizing how the stage is upside down now, in case you missed it. A lot of voice lines are repeated throughout the game so it's fair if they just couldn't record much more new stuff for one reason or another but I'd rather them tone down the frequency of it if the characters don't have much to say.

The Eggman announcements in Colors are an inspired choice as far as in game dialogue though. It's a good opportunity to tell some decent jokes and flesh out the theme park beyond what we see in the game's brief levels. The game never really used it to it's full potential but it's never as grating. 
 

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1 hour ago, DabigRG said:

Wai-ha-hait what? 

Most haven't heard this line of dialogue because it activates when the Chaotix take a short-cut that requires them to use the flying flower in one of the forest stages when most opt to just move forward. The Chaotix will fly past the giant mushroom and comment on it like this:

Charmy: "Holy magical mushrooms! I've never ever seen one so big!”

Vector: “Stop that, Charmy. You're startin' to drool...”

My boy's high on them mushrooms, ya'll. 

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7 hours ago, Dr. Christmas Mike said:

Most haven't heard this line of dialogue because it activates when the Chaotix take a short-cut that requires them to use the flying flower in one of the forest stages when most opt to just move forward. The Chaotix will fly past the giant mushroom and comment on it like this:

Charmy: "Holy magical mushrooms! I've never ever seen one so big!”

Vector: “Stop that, Charmy. You're startin' to drool...”

My boy's high on them mushrooms, ya'll. 

Yeah, I have never heard that. That is hilarious.

Also, a bit out of sequence for that game.

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I feel like Colors was a downgrade from Unleashed  , it removed the Werehog but at the same time replaced it with the Wisps who honestly weren't interesting just inoffensive, the Boost mechanics was heavily watered down and felt less dynamic and at the same time While Unleashed was a compromise between fans of "epic" stories and older fans who didn't like it, Colors picked a side between the two and it deepened the divide in the fanbase, not to mention that while The writing was inoffensive back then , once that style started being used in Lost world and Forces where it was completely out of place it led to a lot of hatred toward Colors for starting that trend 

 

It saved us from Sonic 4 though , Sonic would be in a far worse place if that game didn't get outshined , the fact that Sonic 4 has a better Metacritic score than either Generations or Colors should tell you of how Fanatical Classic favouring Critics were at the time as they championed a mediocre

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/25/2019 at 3:29 AM, Bowbowis said:

In addition to what @Wraith said it's also a question of how the humor is integrated into the script. Before Colors the humorous moments in Sonic games generally arose naturally from characters and/or the situations they found themselves in and were secondary to the story being told. Sonic, being who he is, may drop a quip now and then but it  came and went as just one part of a larger scene, whereas Colors everything grinds to a halt so Sonic can do a minute-long pizza delivery man sketch with only the most tenuous of connections to anything that's going on. In comparison the "low budget flights" line (which is probably the most Pontaffian bit in the series prior to Colors) plays better, both because the scene has a point beyond merely being a vessel for delivering that one line and because the line itself is directly relevant to what's going on in that scene. It also helps that Sonic's irreverence is less overbearing since he's allowed to express a much greater range and intensity of emotions as the stakes are raised. Just compare his reaction to finding out Prison Island is about to blow up to his reaction to hearing that Eggman's Interstellar Amusement Park is about to do the same.

My thoughts exactly. With Colors and onward, it's all comedy for comedy's sake. Not because it's smart/clever, not because it fits with what's going on, not because it fits the character, it's just "we want to shoehorn in as many random, stupid jokes as possible".

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On 1/1/2020 at 5:17 AM, ComeAsYouAre said:

I feel like Colors was a downgrade from Unleashed  , it removed the Werehog but at the same time replaced it with the Wisps who honestly weren't interesting just inoffensive

I think the Wisps being in their own game would be fine, but I don't know if I like them being used in many things since. Sonic Runners let you use various buddies, and it just made me think how it'd never happen in the main games. (I don't mean the obvious collab ones either) Several of the mobile games had you equip Chao and I found that an interesting choice. I had seen some fans talk about the idea of your Chao running with you, but at the least maybe a way to loop it back into gameplay would be a similar optional equip system where you get bonuses based on how you raise them. Honestly though I prefer Adventure's style of power ups. It gives the stages a kind of Metroid replayability where you can go back and find new secrets. I always kind of wish they had some kind of balancing of that instead of Wisps.
 

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the fact that Sonic 4 has a better Metacritic score than either Generations or Colors should tell you of how Fanatical Classic favouring Critics were at the time as they championed a mediocre

Going back to those reviews it's almost creepy how similar they sound. "3D Sonic sucks! Sonic's friends suck! This game is cool because it's not that!". Like instead of praising the game for what it is, all they could say was what it was not, what it was copying. It really shows the difference between what Sega thought fans wanted at the time, and what Mania showed those fans actually wanted.

Back then many people (both fans and critics alike) were saying  just how much they hated Sonic friends. They said it so much I allowed them to sway my opinion at the time, even though I had always liked his friends. Eventually I began to realize that his friends were never the issue, but the flawed attempts at using them. At least to me, Sonic would be a pretty lonely franchise if it had never gone past Sonic 2's cast of characters, minus Tails actually being playable.

I've kind of gone in the complete opposite direction recently, where to me I think the more, the merrier. I'm not saying to cram the game with as many as possible like Heroes or 06, but rather to think of who you want to use and why, and don't be afraid to make a one off character if they have an interesting element to tell (through story and/or gameplay).

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33 minutes ago, DryLagoon said:

At least to me, Sonic would be a pretty lonely franchise if it had never gone past Sonic 2's cast of characters, minus Tails actually being playable.

That's only because those other characters exist.

Consider how Sonic's story could go and it'd just be him interacting with new characters in every story like Sonic Unleashed.

Viola, not lonely anymore.

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There's a lack of nuance in gaming news coverage as a whole that can be particularly damaging to franchises like Sonic that are particularly sensitive and reactionary to feedback. There's not much to be done about it aside from promoting and sharing critics who are more in-depth with their criticism.

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Sonic is kind of an acquired taste as far as franchises go. Most gaming journalists are just going to breeze through the game and put it down before moving on to the next one, it's literally their job to do so.

So if Sonic's friends play badly, their primary caveat would be "This character ruined an otherwise good game" because it's not entirely wrong, but just poorly articulated.

But the blame is kind of also on Sega as well, because they are extremely tone deaf about the series' strengths. Sonic Forces is the most recent and obvious example of this, because the game relies purely on the good will established by Colors and Generations (Which was literally one of their initial selling points) and shallow attempts at appealing to what the fanbase have been screaming about.

 

Both Sega and critics should be more nuanced, but the shallow ans blanket complaints are the most vocal and obvious and that's what Sega looks for.

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