Sonic Forces Reviews Thread

[speedfreak]

If they can make Sonic's friends playable in the 3D games in the same vein as the classics then I'm fine with that. I definitely never want to see completely different gameplay styles ever again though.  They can't even get one gameplay style completely right. 

[Indigo Rush]

11 minutes ago, Jar Jar Analysis 1138 said:

His friends were just throwaways in Mania. Didn't affect the gameplay in any way or adding new things to them. 

Tails' flight and Knuckles' climbing/shorter jump/gliding/wall breaking abilities are a master class of how different characters make a difference in how the game is played. This opens up options for not only general play, but branching and intertwining paths and shortcuts, mostly exclusive especially in Knuckles' case; if you removed these guys from the game Mania would fundamentally be a lesser game because of it. There'd be less replay value, less level to explore, and overall less game to play. 

[Shadowlax]

1 minute ago, speedfreak said:

If they can make Sonic's friends playable in the 3D games in the same vein as the classics then I'm fine with that. I definitely never want to see completely different gameplay styles ever again though.  They can't even get one gameplay style completely right. 

I think they can do different gameplay styles

As different video games. 

I would buy a well made game staring tails piloting  a mech, that would be badass. 

I would buy a character action game staring shadow

I would buy a knuckles game about treasure hunting, Heck I would watch a TV show just about knuckles going on treasure hunting adventures. 

 

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

1 minute ago, Indigo Rush said:

Can I call 911 on this person?

Can I call 911 on this person?

Can you not say things that are obnoxious and add nothing to the conversation?

[SonicLegends]

It's at times like these with mentioning other characters I really wish that Heroes would have been the style that they would have done going forward and improving upon it like with the controls because learning curve for those is high. I actually hated the game as a kid because I couldn't get a handle of the controls, but after revisiting and as a more experienced gamer I actually like it more than the Adventure games, especially since it has aged better (that isn't to say the game doesn't have its problems like Egg Emperor's bs charge when in the middle of launching threw the air to move on making for a cheap death).

[UpCDownCLeftCRightC]

7 minutes ago, Jar Jar Analysis 1138 said:

His friends were just throwaways in Mania. Didn't affect the gameplay in any way or adding new things to them. It's easy to not criticize this feature because their design were just copy n' pasted from the past games for Nostalgic effect.. As we have seen with other Nintendo titles that were more or less the same yet get away with it.

As the saying goes; If it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

Knuckles was not a throw away in mania. In particular he had one of the best levels in the game and many unique routes in many others accessible with his abilities only. You may not be overly impressed with Mania but don't overly reduce what was cleanly executed.

Also, the entire point of Mania was to reintroduce a precise, unique style that had been absent for 20 years. Nostalgia and "copy paste" were the main selling point because many had forgotten what the original gameplay was like. It was even part of the advertising for the game. Remembering what made Sonic great. 

You're also severely underselling Christian Whitehead''s retro engine. He didn't just port the game's physics over; he and the Team literally recreated everything from scratch and added a crapton of new content. It's why it's sitting at 86% on metacritic right now...as opposed to this.

[Dr. Mechano]

5 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

Can I call 911 on this person?

Can I call 911 on this person?

Tails' flight and Knuckles' climbing/shorter jump/gliding/wall breaking abilities are a master class of how different characters make a difference in how the game is played. This opens up options for not only general play, but branching and intertwining paths and shortcuts, mostly exclusive especially in Knuckles' case; if you removed these guys from the game Mania would fundamentally be a lesser game because of it. There'd be less replay value, less level to explore, and overall less game to play. 

Furthermore, I believe this is the ideal blueprint for how to offer variety of gameplay in a 3D space as well. Instead of the old "genre roulette" approach, why not just have selectable (and optional) characters that you can choose between for the same levels as Sonic? The stages would be the same, but how you approached those stages would be greatly affected by who you were playing as.

Or hey, look at how Super Mario 3D World allowed different characters with different abilities to play the same stages. I'm not saying Sonic should copy Mario beat for beat, but they kinda nailed having multiple characters who play differently in the same 3D levels (Mario's balanced, Luigi jumps high but has bad traction, Peach floats, Toad's fast but can't jump very high, etc.). You could easily have a 3D Sonic game where Sonic and his friends are traveling around together and you get to select which character you want to be for each stage. The story would just show them all accomplishing their goals and going on an adventure simultaneously.

[Jar Jar Analysis 1138]

16 minutes ago, Super Mechanio said:

"Didn't affect the gameplay in any way"

Flying didn't affect the gameplay? Climbing and gliding didn't affect the gameplay? Knuckles getting entirely new routes in his stages, and sometimes different stages/bosses altogether, "didn't affect the gameplay?"

What are you even talking about?

I made a mistake in the edited response process. That was my fault and I apologize.

 

 

[knuckles20]

 

39 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

I think they can do different gameplay styles

As different video games. 

I would buy a well made game staring tails piloting  a mech, that would be badass. 

I would buy a character action game staring shadow

I would buy a knuckles game about treasure hunting, Heck I would watch a TV show just about knuckles going on treasure hunting adventures. 

 

A Sonic RPG where the characters actually get into action and doesn’t end with a frustrating cliffhanger with no resolution would be amazing.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

38 minutes ago, Super Mechanio said:

Hm, hm, hm.

You know what game came out this year and not only had Sonic's friends, but let them be fully playable instead of just chiming in with interchangable radio chatter? Sonic Mania. And as you'll recall, critics loved that game.

Forces, meanwhile, is a Sonic-only game (well, plus the non-entity that is the Avatar) and the critics can't stand it. The modern games in general have shoved Sonic's friends aside and reduced the few who are still around to nonplayable moral support.

I think the "critics are biased against Sonic's friends" mentality doesn't have a leg to stand on. What they're "biased" against is poor implementation of these characters, as should we all be.

I'd really hate to salt this claim with skepticism, but I think it should be noted that those critics have historically been lenient when it comes to Tails and Knuckles being playable or even being around whereas they blast almost everyone else just for existing.

Sure, it's easy to say they're against poor implementation, and I for one would love to agree with that. But let's not kid ourselves at the numerous clickbait articles that go out of their way to demean simply the very existence of these other characters, because almost everyone here (you included) have been around long enough to witness these very examples, else the claim that critics are biased against Sonic's friends would have never been a thing--in fact, that's how Sonic only became a thing in the first place!

It's only now that people are realizing it's poor implementation--they don't have Sonic's friends playable to use as a convienent scapegoat for the series problems anymore (okay, well there's Shadow getting a playable role after almost 12 years, but even then he hardly plays different enough to be unique), so now they have to actually look at what the problem is. Some still did it until this point. Meanwhile, certain factions of the fandom realized it was poor implementation and execution of the characters long before the critics actually caught on. But we've seen this enough in the past to know that wasn't case with critics, mainly because we've been annoyed with them doing that scapegoating shit for years even after Sonic fans came to this realization. 

[Wraith]

I think it's worth noting that Sonic Mania's Tails and Knuckles exclusive stuff isn't really to the same degree that Sonic 3 did it. Sonic really can explore most of the game by himself because of how the levels are designed to let him get more vertical. There's little that you can reach with Tails that you can't with Sonic. Knuckles has an exclusive level and a few exclusive bits to himself, but it's not so in your face.

The game is pretty much designed so you don't miss much no matter what character you use, so I think you could argue that Tails and Knuckles aren't significant parts at all. Tails himself practically feels like an easy mode for Sonic. I didn't actually ever finish a play-through with him compared to the two I did with Knuckles or the dozen I did with sonic because of this. That's not even getting into how the ONLY new movement mechanic that also happens to smoothen out the classic gameplay a lot is exclusive to Sonic.

I don't think Sonic Mania really addresses the argument of Sonic's friends because it never really puts you in a position where you need to play as them to begin with. Maybe that's the "solution", but it doesn't really feel like one to me. I'd rather sega convince people they're worth having around or try to sell people on them if we're talking what should be done with them.

Their lack of presence in Mania doesn't bother me much though because I'm take or leave when it comes to multiple characters. Still a great game.

[Celestia]

If it were up to me there'd be mini bonus Acts that challenge you on each individual character's abilities. I love how 3&K / Mania / Rush Adventure (of all things...) handle it, but as fun as it is to discover or reach alternate paths they don't do it nearly as often as I'd like, even in Mania. Completely optional levels that are Forces' average stage length about as long as the smaller acts in Colours, are fun but challenging, and really test you on your knowledge of each character would be a extra incentive for people to play as the characters that aren't Sonic.

[Indigo Rush]

13 minutes ago, Monkey Destruction Switch said:

Can you not say things that are obnoxious and add nothing to the conversation?

Yeah

15 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

Tails' flight and Knuckles' climbing/shorter jump/gliding/wall breaking abilities are a master class of how different characters make a difference in how the game is played. This opens up options for not only general play, but branching and intertwining paths and shortcuts, mostly exclusive especially in Knuckles' case; if you removed these guys from the game Mania would fundamentally be a lesser game because of it. There'd be less replay value, less level to explore, and overall less game to play. 

Does this not count? 

[Dr. Mechano]

6 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

I'd really hate to salt this claim with skepticism, but I think it should be noted that those critics have historically been lenient when it comes to Tails and Knuckles being playable or even being around whereas they blast almost everyone else just for existing.

Sure, it's easy to say they're against poor implementation, and I for one would love to agree with that. But let's not kid ourselves at the numerous clickbait articles that go out of their way to demean simply the very existence of these other characters, because everyone here (you included) have been around long enough to witness these very examples, else the claim that critics are biased against Sonic's friends would have never been a thing--in fact, that's how Sonic only became a thing in the first place!

It's only now that people are realizing it's poor implementation--they don't have Sonic's friends playable to use as a convienent scapegoat for the series problems anymore.

But I mean... they were badly implemented prior to Unleashed. And I say this as someone who doesn't like the boost games at all. I think that the boost formula was a bad response to those criticisms.

But we should remember that Sonic 06 had a mess of characters with disparate control schemes and gameplay styles, many of which were half-baked and unpleasant to play as. The Adventure games, even though I personally enjoyed them, are still games that lack cohesion and a solid identity due to everyone playing so drastically differently from each other.

You will recall that during this era, none of these critics complained about the Advance games or Rush having other characters besides Sonic. Those games were criticized for many things, but "Sonic's friends" weren't among them.

I think what it likely is, is that this series has historically had a problem with alternate character gameplay styles in 3D. The 2D games - yes, even the modern-styled ones - were not subject to these critiques. The friends themselves were never the issue. Critics had no problem with Amy, Cream, or Blaze - all characters who were playable in the handheld games and all characters who aren't Tails or Knuckles.

[Celestia]

3 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

Yeah

Does this not count? 

Yes, that's why that part wasn't quoted.

[Indigo Rush]

22 minutes ago, Celestia said:

Yes, that's why that part wasn't quoted.

Hm. My apologies. 

Maybe this isn't the place for me anymore.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

16 minutes ago, Super Mechanio said:

But I mean... they were badly implemented prior to Unleashed. And I say this as someone who doesn't like the boost games at all. I think that the boost formula was a bad response to those criticisms.

But we should remember that Sonic 06 had a mess of characters with disparate control schemes and gameplay styles, many of which were half-baked and unpleasant to play as. The Adventure games, even though I personally enjoyed them, are still games that lack cohesion and a solid identity due to everyone playing so drastically differently from each other.

You will recall that during this era, none of these critics complained about the Advance games or Rush having other characters besides Sonic. Those games were criticized for many things, but "Sonic's friends" weren't among them.

I think what it likely is, is that this series has historically had a problem with alternate character gameplay styles in 3D. The 2D games - yes, even the modern-styled ones - were not subject to these critiques. The friends themselves were never the issue. Critics had no problem with Amy, Cream, or Blaze - all characters who were playable in the handheld games and all characters who aren't Tails or Knuckles.

Literally no one is denying they were badly implemented prior to Unleashed--that was half of my point!

The other half was that the critics either didn't know or didn't care whether it was poor implementation and so used these other characters as a convienent scapegoat to blame a lot of the technical problems on them instead of actually calling out the poor implementation of these characters--essentially saying, "these characters suck, so if they were gone and we played only as Sonic, the games would be good." Now the characters aren't playable, and they still have problems, and it's now that they recognize that it's the implementation of the characters as opposed to the characters entirely.

But Sonic fans recognized this before the critics caught up, and were it not for that misinterpretation of the series problems we wouldn't be in this era of Sonic-only. Whether that would lead to better implementation of them is unknown, but let's not try to paint over the blatant bias that was "Sonic's Shitty Friends" & Knuckles that fans have had issues wih for years. Sure the critics didn't complain about Advance or Rush, but you're talking two obscure handheld series over several major main entry ones.

[dbzfan7]

17 hours ago, knuckles20 said:

 

A Sonic RPG where the characters actually get into action and doesn’t end with a frustrating cliffhanger with no resolution would be amzing.

I've wanted an Alpha Dream Mario & Sonic RPG staring Mario, Luigi, Sonic, and Tails. But I fear it may not work considering the two games that had 3 or more characters at once had problems. PIT for having confusing Bro items which get more confusing as the different red and green colours breeze by the screen, screwing up my timing, as well as being super linear without really making the linearity fun. While Paper Jam isn't really let down by gameplay, but more a story that plays it waaaaay too safe. I'm near endgame I believe and the Paper Mario/Mario crossover has pretty much sucked as a storyline. I'd hope if Alpha Dream, Nintendo, and Sega could come together, we could get a game that has a story like the first 3 games (4 was alright at best), and the Paper Jam circle thing that helps you not get lost with 3 characters, but for 4 when dodging.

[Dr. Mechano]

1 minute ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Literally no one is denying they were badly implemented prior to Unleashed--that was half of my point!

The other half was that the critics either didn't know or didn't care whether it was poor implementation and so used these other characters as a convienent scapegoat to blame a lot of the technical problems on them instead of actually calling out the poor implementation of these characters--essentially saying, "these characters suck, so if they were gone and we played only as Sonic, the games would be good." Now the characters aren't playable, and they still have problems, and it's now that they recognize that it's the implementation of the characters as opposed to the characters entirely.

Sure, but I'm saying - again - that these characters weren't criticized in the 2D games of that era. Because there, they implemented at the very least satisfactorily. 

So even if some reviewers said, "Ugh, Sonic's friends are horrible" they only said them in regards to games where that was actually true. These scathing criticisms were conveniently absent from reviews of the Advance or Rush games, which had alternate characters galore.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

2 minutes ago, Super Mechanio said:

Sure, but I'm saying - again - that these characters weren't criticized in the 2D games of that era. Because there, they implemented at the very least satisfactorily. 

So even if some reviewers said, "Ugh, Sonic's friends are horrible" they only said them in regards to games where that was actually true. These scathing criticisms were conveniently absent from reviews of the Advance or Rush games, which had alternate characters galore.

I edited my post, but even then the Advance and Rush titles don't carry the same impact as the big budget 3D entries by comparison.

That's not me belittling that they work, that's just a simple observation of how they've looked at things--if what you were saying were the case, those same critics would've made a bigger note of that as opposed to vocalizing the whole Sonic Shitty Friends meme every chance they had, would they not?

[Diogenes]

The implementation of a character is the character. If the implementation sucks, time after time after time, then the character sucks. That doesn't mean the character can't not suck at some point, if actually implemented well. But no one is obligated to like the character or advocate for their use when they have not been sold on the character's value.

[Dr. Mechano]

2 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

I edited my post, but even then the Advance and Rush titles don't carry the same impact as the big budget 3D entries by comparison.

That's not me belittling that they work, that's just a simple observation of how they've looked at things--if what you were saying were the case, those same critics would've made a bigger note of that as opposed to vocalizing the whole Sonic Shitty Friends meme every chance they had, would they not?

That's fair, but even if they used an unfair and inaccurate meme, they still only used it for games where it actually did apply as opposed to just blindly bashing alternate playable characters whenever they were implemented.

I do believe that if a 3D game ever does implement alternate characters in way that doesn't deviate too heavily from core Sonic gameplay, they'll be better received.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

 

1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

The implementation of a character is the character. If the implementation sucks, time after time after time, then the character sucks. That doesn't mean the character can't not suck at some point, if actually implemented well. But no one is obligated to like the character or advocate for their use when they have not been sold on the character's value.

Which isn't even remotely the point being discussed...

Just now, Super Mechanio said:

That's fair, but even if they used an unfair and inaccurate meme, they still only used it for games where it actually did apply as opposed to just blindly bashing alternate playable characters whenever they were implemented.

True, but could you blame anyone for thinking they're blindly bashing alternate characters when they don't make a decent note of the bad implementation? Given how much of a shorthand that meme became even on the mere mention of other characters regardless of their playability, it's really not hard to see where the whole "Critics are biased against Sonic's friends" gets its leg from.

Just now, Super Mechanio said:

I do believe that if a 3D game ever does implement alternate characters in way that doesn't deviate too heavily from core Sonic gameplay, they'll be better received.

Well we'll have a long while to see that day come...

[Celestia]

Regardless of why reviewers were saying it, SEGA got the wrong message, so I understand peoples' frustrations. And to be fair, fans were complaining about all the characters too, at least as I remember it. Hell, Unleashed (sort of)/Colours were celebrated for it at the time, but of course we all assumed they'd build up to making other characters playable again. Which...sort of happened, actually, just not in the way we expected. Especially after how much they had been playing it safe pre-Forces.

[LongcrierCat]

39 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

Hm. My apologies. 

Maybe this isn't the place for me anymore.

Okay look. They were criticizing the tone of your joke. They're not saying you can't joke. 

Anyways. 

Oh boy. I didn't expect lower than 6s in terms of review scores. This is not looking good for Sonic Team. I'm a bit relieved that my problems with Boost Sonic have finally come to light, but all the same, I kind of wanted those problems to be fixed more quickly instead of persisting. 

Yikes.