Which Sonic game were you most disapointed in?

[batson]

Which Sonic game had the biggest disparency between what you expected of it and what you ended up with?

For me, it has to be Sonic Forces. With certain other games, I was weary from the start, as they seemed like experiments that could go either way. But Forces seemed, in terms of gameplay, as a rather safe venture for Sonic Team. They did good with Colors and Generations, so why wouldn't they manage it again with a third similar game? So I was quite excited for the game. But alas, when I got to play it I found that it was of a quality that I can't even call mediocre.

I also have to give a dishonorable mention to Black Knight. I didn't really know what to think of it when it was first announced, but I would never have dreamed that it was going to turn out as bad as it did. It's one of those Sonic games that, to me, is bad to the point of being nearly unplayable. The only reason why I was more disapointed in Forces is because, like I said, I didn't have particularly high hopes for Black Knight to begin with.

[Blue Blood]

I was cautiously optimistic about Forces when it was first revealed. I hated that Classic Sonic showed up right away in the first trailer and that had me temper my expectations quite a bit, but if the game had turned out to be Generations 2 with original levels and an actual story then it would have been plenty acceptable. It quickly became apparent that this wasn't going to be the case however, so Forces didn't disappoint me on release as much as it did meet my low expectations perfectly. The same could be said of Sonic 4 as soon as it was revealed following the Project Needlemouse teases, and Rise of Lyric when we saw real gameplay at E3 (instead of the carefully-crafted reveal trailer that contained loads of things not in the final game). Those games all disappointed me in their own ways, but it became apparent during production that they would be rubbish. I didn't feel cheated after I bought them.

I guess that looking back on it, '06 and Lost World may have been the biggest disappointments for me. I was only  13 or 14 when '06 was released, and SEGA managed to successfully pull the wool over my eyes with it. I greatly enjoyed the game at the time, but that was because I would take anything with Sonic's face on it back then and love it. I fully understood and acknowledged the huge problems with the game (I never did like the story or photorealistic artstyle) and looked past all of them to enjoy it. I was disappointed by how buggy the game was and how was thoroughly trashed by critics, but I did like it myself. Thing is, I knew it was bad when I played it but didn't get that impression from the pre-release material. 

Now on to Lost World. That game sold me on its early screenshots, the reveal of the Deadly Six and the first trailer. This actually applies to both the Wii U and 3DS versions. It was clearly Mario-inspired, but it looked like such a solid game with a strong vision. I even went on a media blackout for the game after E3 so that I could be surprised by everything the game had to offer. The result was... Urgh. Lost World Wii U is all good ideas and horrible execution. On paper, the game sounds amazing and so many ideas from the game deserve to be revisited. In practice though, reach any every one of them was handled poorly. The run button, the parkour, the chained and charged homing attack, the planetoid level structure, the cartoony artstyle, the story, the setting, the Deadly Six... All of it awfully handled. List World Wii U is playable yet deeply flawed and more often that not it simply isn't fun. Lost World World 3DS on the other hand is one of the worst Sonic games in existence.

So yeah, Lost World and '06 are the two that disappointed me the most. Other games have let me know in advance that they wouldn't be any good and not to get my hopes up.

[Scritch the Cat]

06, which might be surprising, but I leaped into that one without looking, as by then I didn’t tend to trust critics regarding Sonic.  I bought it based on it containing things I thought sounded cool, like a return of the Adventure design, nine playable characters, and not being as absurdly dark as it’s predecessor.  Also I was well-acquainted with questionable design choices in the past Sonic games, but never had encountered serious glitches in them; let alone bad loading times. That was a brand new punch in the face.

[Signmeup]

Sonic Jump on Smartphones because it didn't have a story mode like the Java version of the the game.

[Shadow Chaos Control]

Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) and the reason is its Sonic Adventure 3 to me. My issue wasn’t the story or characters, but the massive glitches, game freezing, and load times as you explored the open world.  

[iambitter21]

I've never really been "disappointed" with a sonic game once, the closest I can think of when it comes to disappointment would probably be forces. Overall it's.... fine, I guess. but, I was really expecting something a bit more, if that teaser promised such. it wasn't really special enough, wasn't ambitious enough, wasn't grand in scale enough to reach the promise that teaser was promising. I can appreciate the attempt of trying to reach said goal, yeah, but overall, it was kinda underwhelming. strong kudos to that OC creator though, it was pretty genius.

[Shadow Chaos Control]

A second choice would be Sonic Heroes. I applaud it for its brave gimmick of controling three characters at once. But the story was not on par with SA and SA2 in IMHO, nor was I fond of controlling three characters at once. 

[Nintenboi]

Definitely Sonic Forces. Sega hyped it up so much, and the trailers made it seem so great! So when I first played it and saw just how mediocre it was. I just gave up.

[BadBehavior]

I bought Forces on PC, mostly to have it in my collection again, and to pre-empt anyone saying "you can't criticize the game if you don't own it".

I pretty much hate everything going for it: the story, the playable character selection, the controls, the level design, even the music is low-tier compared to other games in the series. Everything that should have been amazing was neutered either through a vicious development cycle or something, into being average at best. I find it a struggle to have any positive reaction towards it. The closest was when I got to Classic Sonic Green Hill and I smirked at the truly god awful music. (Side note, we all owe an apology to Jun Senoue for the Sonic 4 OST. We didn't know that it could get even worse.)

Most of the time I just feel nothing. And the rest of the time I'm either exasperated at the most baffling of choices like the double boost sections that just play themselves and a whole two sets of collectibles (the numbers and the moon rings) that don't earn you anything except achievements, OR frustrated at shit like the controls in 2D and literally everything to do with Classic Sonic.

Guy who designed End of the World in Sonic 06: I have designed the worst final level in the entire series!

Guy who designed Iron Fortress: Hold my beer...

Speaking of 06, at least the fangame to fix that only had to fix the controls and physics (and bugs obviously). To fix Forces you'd have to tear the whole rotten thing down.

Import the levels into Generations, the game with the superior handling? Well the level design is still actual boost to win hallways when it's not infested with 2D. Conversely, import Generations superior levels into Forces, you have to deal with their shoddy acceleration and how they removed moves like the light dash, wall jump and the drift.

tl;dr: I hate forces, hate playing Forces, hate thinking about Forces and if the next game in the series is anything even remotely like Forces, then I'm gonna hate it even more.

[Austroid]

Probably Lost World. I was pretty hyped for the new gameplay, the return of the more cartoony style, promise of an actual story again, etc. Gameplay was okay, but maybe too easy (its still the only Sonic game I've ever 100 percented.) The overall story really brought down the game for me with its weird writing of the classic characters, the lame new villains, and out-of-nowhere final boss. 

[SBR2]

Hmm. Maybe Sonic Riders. I thought it would be like a Skateboarding game and then I found out about the air gimmick. Chronicles is another one. I was hoping for a Sonic RPG to maybe take the crown from the various Mario RPG's but it didn't even come close.

[Fire-N-Space]

Rise of Lyric should have been much better then it was with people from naughty dog behind it the game was going to have weapons, exploration, flirty goofy Amy, and a villain that's not evil just for the sake of it.

[caitash]

The biggest disappointment for me in a game is missed opportunity, so with Forces I definitely was a little cautious with my optimism but it still disappointed me.  At least with Rise of Lyric I could tell before going in that it was a bit of a car crash so I set my expectations super low and those super low expectations were met. But with Forces I did hope for better and instead got an odd game with clunky gameplay and where my favourite character’s role was replaced by an avatar of all things.

[Sonario]

Lost World. Sonic had some decent momentum going with Colors being good and Generations being great, so I had my hopes up that it was only uphill from there. Unfortunately, instead of keeping the refined boost formula that developed over the course of Unleashed, Colors and Gens, LW tried going in a completely different direction and made it a playable but wonky experience that doesn't really hold a candle to its predecessors in terms of qualiy. The tonally inconsistent writing with more misses than hits didn't help things either. The Deadly Six had some decent potential, but they were watered down into becoming Koopaling expies before being tossed aside in favor of just having Zavok appear in practically every subsequent game with no continuity whatsoever. So yeah, Lost World was a letdown that really dropped the ball after Generations got it rolling.

Forces and 06 were also big disappointments, but not quite as much since I had low expectations for those going in and they didn't come out right after some good hits either.

[Iko]

For me it was Sonic Generatiosn (both versions).

It's not the worst game I've played, it's actually decent gameplay-wise (not perfect but still enjoyable). My issue with the game is that it was a random collection of stages with not much depth nor substance. The story was almost non-existent, it had that "nothing of this is canon" feel that really made the game look like if it was a fanmade mod of Sonic Unleashed. And the final boss (at least in the console version) was and still is the worst final boss (or boss overall) I've ever played in a Sonic game.

While it was decently enjoyable, it was still a very unsatisfying experience for me.

[PaperSonic]

I went into playing Adventure 2 with the best of expectations. I bought it during a sale on Steam alongside Generations.  Ended up heavily disliking it, and I grow less and less fond of it as time goes on. Needless to say, I ended up playing Generations a ton more.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Definitely Forces. The hype it build died as fast as I blinked, and it’s annoying how much they wasted that opportunity among messing up a whole bunch of things in the process.

Its saving grace is that it isn’t a potential franchise killer like 06 nearly was. But that realization doesn’t make it any better.

[Shadow Chaos Control]

On 9/24/2020 at 7:04 AM, PaperSonic said:

I went into playing Adventure 2 with the best of expectations. I bought it during a sale on Steam alongside Generations.  Ended up heavily disliking it, and I grow less and less fond of it as time goes on. Needless to say, I ended up playing Generations a ton more.

Part of the problem is if you didn’t play SA2 when it came out on Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo Gamecube, back then the graphics were top notch. While I standby that SA2 has the best story and gameplay, if you’ve been reading the hype all these years and play it on Steam or Xbox, you might be let down by graphics. I wish they’d remaster SA and SA2 for 30th Anniversary. 

[Dr. Detective]

That would be Sonic Forces my friend. I hadn't been as excited about an idea attached to Sonic in quite some time up until I saw the initial teaser for Project 2017. I've spoken about how it got my blood pumping and my heart going up and until Classic Sonic showed up to ruin my good vibes. I tried my best to let the hype flow through me but Classic Sonic being there kind of itched at my brain, telling me that regardless of what I was seeing something about this was going to wildly be off-kilter.

The more and more we saw of the game, the more convinced of that I became to the point where literally, only the story was all I had left to anticipate. But even then, that was fine. I got into Sonic, and video games in general, because SA2 taught me how valuable the feeling of controlling a character through a narrative was and how that kind of immersion was different from TV and Film. So long as the story was good, I'd have come away with something huge that would have endeared me to the game regardless of the copy-paste asset-flippy feel it had.

Then Forces arrived.

Yeah, the story was shit too.

Nowadays, I've tempered my expectations to the point where I don't expect anything. It's not exactly the same as having lost faith. I just realized that if you expect nothing, you won't be disappointed when its bad. However, at the same time, if it's good, you'll be pleasantly surprised. There's no way to lose in that scenario. 

 

 

[Wraith]

Lost World is just about the only Sonic game where it wasn't obvious to me how good it was going to be. A revamped artstyle and movement mechanics along with a brand new setting all seemed like the right move after Generations. Some aspects of it like a clear focus on the Sonic-Tails-Eggman trio and the designs of the new characters were disappointing, but I was willing to take those parts of the game on the chin, so to speak, to get a new Sonic game that was actually able to slow engage with 3d platforming in new and interesting ways. The new artstyle wasn't my favorite, but it was pleasant enough in motion and could have potentially meant that the series could finally start having more content. 3 hour, full priced romps were turning into kind of a ripoff compared to what you could get from other developers even within the same genre.

The game starts off on the wrong foot when it starts to become clear that sonic doesn't really feel good to control even compared to the boost games, but the disappointments keep piling on with a lackluster, gimmicky level selection and a poor story. The soundtrack is just about the only thing that feels like a huge success, but that's the bare minimum for a Sonic title. Every risky changed that seemed like it made sense and could have made for a better game turned out to defeat itself in some way or another.  I still respect the game for being experimental and honestly kind of wish they tried it one more time instead of going with Forces, but I can't give it much credit beyond that. 

With almost every other game it was obvious to me what we were getting into. Forces in particular tossed out just about every red flag it could as early as possible so I hopped off that train early.

[FReaK]

Sonic the Hedgehog 4. I grew up playing the shit out of the classics, when Sonic 4 was announced as Project Needlemouse, my excitement went through the roof. I was disappointed about the graphical style when it was revealed, and that it didn't feature classic Sonic. But I was ok with that..until the big leak happened and we saw how bad and short the game actually is. I still gave it a chance when it came out but..yeah, you know how that one went. Thank the Sonic gods that Mania happend a few years later.

[knuckles20]

Out of the games I’ve played personally Colors. Sonic only character playable, story was uninteresting, over abundance of 2D sections; all of these aspects made me unmotivated to finish the game. Generations 3DS is a close 2nd place the difference being I actually beat the game but along with my issues with Colors and the fact I beat it hours after buying it in the same day, it was the game to stop playing Sonic games for nearly a decade.

Now out of all of the games, Forces got me disappointed for many reasons but the main catalyst was the moment Classic Sonic showed up in the first trailer.

[ChaddyFant9me]

On 9/15/2020 at 7:25 AM, Blue Blood said:

I was cautiously optimistic about Forces when it was first revealed. I hated that Classic Sonic showed up right away in the first trailer and that had me temper my expectations quite a bit, but if the game had turned out to be Generations 2 with original levels and an actual story then it would have been plenty acceptable. It quickly became apparent that this wasn't going to be the case however, so Forces didn't disappoint me on release as much as it did meet my low expectations perfectly. The same could be said of Sonic 4 as soon as it was revealed following the Project Needlemouse teases, and Rise of Lyric when we saw real gameplay at E3 (instead of the carefully-crafted reveal trailer that contained loads of things not in the final game). Those games all disappointed me in their own ways, but it became apparent during production that they would be rubbish. I didn't feel cheated after I bought them.

I guess that looking back on it, '06 and Lost World may have been the biggest disappointments for me. I was only  13 or 14 when '06 was released, and SEGA managed to successfully pull the wool over my eyes with it. I greatly enjoyed the game at the time, but that was because I would take anything with Sonic's face on it back then and love it. I fully understood and acknowledged the huge problems with the game (I never did like the story or photorealistic artstyle) and looked past all of them to enjoy it. I was disappointed by how buggy the game was and how was thoroughly trashed by critics, but I did like it myself. Thing is, I knew it was bad when I played it but didn't get that impression from the pre-release material. 

Now on to Lost World. That game sold me on its early screenshots, the reveal of the Deadly Six and the first trailer. This actually applies to both the Wii U and 3DS versions. It was clearly Mario-inspired, but it looked like such a solid game with a strong vision. I even went on a media blackout for the game after E3 so that I could be surprised by everything the game had to offer. The result was... Urgh. Lost World Wii U is all good ideas and horrible execution. On paper, the game sounds amazing and so many ideas from the game deserve to be revisited. In practice though, reach any every one of them was handled poorly. The run button, the parkour, the chained and charged homing attack, the planetoid level structure, the cartoony artstyle, the story, the setting, the Deadly Six... All of it awfully handled. List World Wii U is playable yet deeply flawed and more often that not it simply isn't fun. Lost World World 3DS on the other hand is one of the worst Sonic games in existence.

So yeah, Lost World and '06 are the two that disappointed me the most. Other games have let me know in advance that they wouldn't be any good and not to get my hopes up.

Your experience in kinda like what mine with Sonic Colors was.

It was the first well reviewed and received Sonic game in so long, even though i had a lot of problems with it, i felt obligated to like it and talk about it positively.

I dont hate the game, as after replaying it, i found it okay for what it is, and there are still parts of it i genuinely love but i feel in this fandom, optics has an overwhelming effect on the stances people take when expressing opinions on the series. 

At the end of the day, Sonic fans just want to be allowed to like the series without ridicule and for the series to be respected again.

[Redemption]

On 9/20/2020 at 9:36 AM, SBR2 said:

Hmm. Maybe Sonic Riders. I thought it would be like a Skateboarding game and then I found out about the air gimmick. Chronicles is another one. I was hoping for a Sonic RPG to maybe take the crown from the various Mario RPG's but it didn't even come close.

Chronicles Story was good it showed a little bit of Knuckles and his past.

On 9/21/2020 at 3:16 AM, Sonario said:

Lost World. Sonic had some decent momentum going with Colors being good and Generations being great, so I had my hopes up that it was only uphill from there. Unfortunately, instead of keeping the refined boost formula that developed over the course of Unleashed, Colors and Gens, LW tried going in a completely different direction and made it a playable but wonky experience that doesn't really hold a candle to its predecessors in terms of quality.

Lost World lived up to it's name. I was completely lost on why it was even a thing. Then people started talking about demons summoned by Eggman and i had to see what it was all about it wasn't the Sonic game i know and love. (RCS was good though)

On 9/21/2020 at 8:53 AM, Iko said:

For me it was Sonic Generatiosn (both versions).

It's not the worst game I've played, it's actually decent gameplay-wise (not perfect but still enjoyable). My issue with the game is that it was a random collection of stages with not much depth nor substance. The story was almost non-existent, it had that "nothing of this is canon" feel that really made the game look like if it was a fanmade mod of Sonic Unleashed. And the final boss (at least in the console version) was and still is the worst final boss (or boss overall) I've ever played in a Sonic game.

While it was decently enjoyable, it was still a very unsatisfying experience for me.

Generations was fine it introduced Classic Sonic and Tails which i wish would have stayed in that one game and that would be it for him but of course that brings me to the next game...

On 9/19/2020 at 10:21 AM, Nintenboi said:

Definitely Sonic Forces. Sega hyped it up so much, and the trailers made it seem so great! So when I first played it and saw just how mediocre it was. I just gave up.

Everyone was like ooooooh a new project but then reality happened and we went back to being dissapointed in the fact that Classic Sonic was back, The avatar was shit, clunky controls and nothing near to what SA2 was.

On 10/4/2020 at 9:37 AM, ChaddyFant9me said:

Your experience in kinda like what mine with Sonic Colors was.

It was the first well reviewed and received Sonic game in so long, even though i had a lot of problems with it, i felt obligated to like it and talk about it positively.

I dont hate the game, as after replaying it, i found it okay for what it is, and there are still parts of it i genuinely love but i feel in this fandom, optics has an overwhelming effect on the stances people take when expressing opinions on the series. 

At the end of the day, Sonic fans just want to be allowed to like the series without ridicule and for the series to be respected again.

Colors was not dissapointing it was a turning point that the franchise needed after Unleashed came out(two years before) i was pissed and i got over it.

Colors was sorta Sonic's Super Mario Galaxy (besides Lost World).

[Mattjohn234]

Sonic Xtreme, one person actually got into the hospital while making the game, then it got canceled.