Mix and Match

[SoniClub]

Sonic Reviews are usually these days around the half way mark for their score, which means they must have some things right about them. With Sonic Unleashed, it was the Daytime stages. With Black Night, it was presentation. With Sonic 06, it was...uh...well never mind that one. But generally there's something in the games that SEGA manages to get spot on, or very near so.

So what I'm asking you is, if you could mix and match bits of recent Sonic games to create the perfect game in your opinion (not the actual songs etc. from that game, just the way they were handled), what parts would they be? Would it be the Graphics of Unleashed with the gameplay of SA2? Well here's my thoughts anyhow.

The Graphics and Music would come from Sonic Unleashed. That game cracked it in my opinion. The Graphics were catoony and very beautiful but yet could be very realistic in some aspects. They even got the humans right graphically.

Musically Unleashed, I feel, got it to. Although some stuff may be repetitive, they took a leaf out of Mario Galaxy's book and started using more orchestral sounds, and treated us to some very high quality and extremely fitting tunes.

Sonic gameplay would be a mix of SA2/SA and Unleashed. Unleashed was almost there; I would've chosen it, but I recentlly played the Adventure games again and realised how a mix of the two would be perfect. Unleashed is really fast and fun, but with certain sections it feels like it's just a question of remembering the layout of the level. However the adventure games are a bit shoddy with camera and controls, but have some decent platforming sections. If you were to put the two together, or just have faster sections and slower ones, I think it would work.

Tails (as would be playable) would basically be his SA gameplay. Racing against Sonic was something I always really enjoyed. Only it would have to be faster, as would Tails' abilities. (Otherwise how would he keep up?!)

Other characters, I can't really think of any decent appearences for them. Knuckles would appear with his SA2 Emerald Hunting (however boring it may be, it's literally one of his only decent 3D appearences) And possibly the same amount of stages Amy had in SA, but with her Heroes move set. (she's barely had any decent ones either!)

Presentation I think would be...well...Sonic 06. Wow. As in presentation I mean the menu screens etc. Although I didn't like the colours, it was very clear (Unlike: Unleashed, Black Knight, Secret Rings, Shadow the Hedgehog...) which is a very important feature to stop confusion.

Generally this is what I think would make it quite well overall. But what do you think?

Discuss ...please

[JezMM]

Hmm, let's see...

Graphics: Sonic Unleashed 360 for sure. For Wii, Sonic and the Secret Rings/Black Knight style is best. Very pretty. Also, cartooney humans > realistic humans.

Music: Sonic and the Secret Rings. Minus the arabian influences for a regular game of course, but I really dug the mixture of styles and plentitude of vocal songs. Vocal songs can really get me pumped in a level, however, if the game has many missions, as Secret Rings does, I'd only use vocals for long missions such as the standard storyline get to the goal one. Smaller missions should have instrumental versions of the regular songs so as to not sound silly when only being heard for 30 seconds - 1 minute.

Tone: Sonic Adventure 2. This game got the balance of upbeat cartoon style to seriousness perfect, however I'd definately want as much humour as Unleashed and Black Knight had injected into it. During the final boss of Black Knight, I absoloutely adore

the line where the Dark Queen shows surprise as Excalibur's existence, and Sonic replies very casually with "Yeah, it was a shocker for me too" in the middle of this epic battle. I loved that - it really let Sonic's character shone and yet didn't spoil the serious tone having Sonic say silly things like "looks like it's time for the big finale!" in Sonic Unleashed was a bit stupid.

Gameplay: A mixture of the slow platforming of Sonic Adventure/2006, Cool set-pieces of Sonic Adventure 2, and 2D/Fast paced platforming of Unleashed. I'm cool with other characters being playable, though the emphasis should be on Sonic, or the other characters should just have different routes, like Sonic 3/Advance etc. I am still totally fine with multiple stories though, as long as there aren't any totally unplatformy ones.

Presentation: Sonic and the Black Knight for sure. That game had flashy menus but they were well made and not confusing at all. Sonic Unleashed was a bit annoying with it's world map and holding down a button to turn to night. Nice idea, but I'd much rather have it so I just flick from one country to the next. It's not like there's anything inbetween each country to click on.

Edited March 24, 2009 by JezMM

[ovarloard]

Music would come from Black Knight. The soundtrack for that game was excellent, IMO, but if it doesn't fit because of the whole "medival" theme, then I'd say the daytime music from Unleashed. (I frickin hated all the nighttime stages' music, not to mention the garbage that played every time enemies appeared.)

Graphics... well, if this game were for the Wii, I'd again take a page out of Secret Rings' book, because though the graphics aren't as great as Unleashed's, the style is a lot prettier. If this new game were for the 360, the simplicity of Secret Rings' style wouldn't work in hi-def. In that case, I'd want to stick with the graphics from Unleashed.

I'd like SA2 style level layout. Unleashed was fun, but it was mindless "ZOMGSPEED" fun. SA2 was fun because it was more precise. So I'd like the game to play like Unleashed, with the speed and the boost, but the levels would be styled like SA2's.

I don't care who is playable, as long as they get Sonic's right. If they do that, it'll already be good. (I would like to see Shadow, as he may not be that difficult to put in due to their similarities.)

Presentation... I liked Black Knight's menu style, though others say it was confusing. You have a map with all the locations, and in each location, separate missions are marked on a smaller map. On the main menu map, a location displays "NEW" if there is a new mission. In the smaller maps, the icons with which they are marked change to green after they have been beaten, from red or blue before they were beaten. It sounds complex, but if you have Black Knight, I hope you'll realize it's not as hard as everyone thinks.

And that'd be my kind of Sonic game.

[123654]

Graphics

Unleashed for the 360. Perfect in every way, especially the human caricatures.

Music

Rush and Rush Adventure. I loved the punk and pop and I'd love to see it in more games.

Tone

Sonic Adventure. I think the atmosphere and feel of the game and its story were perfect. Not too dark and edgy, but still with a good story overall.

Gameplay

A blend of Sonic Adventure and Unleashed gameplay. Unleashed had the 2.5D switching that I really liked and I loved the feeling of speed. On the same token, though, Sonic Adventure had bigger areas to explore and do slower platforming so it wasn't just speed. There needs to be a mixture of speed and platforming. The levels should be more like Cool Edge; open and interactive. Holoska had the interesting implementation of half-pipes and quarter-pipes, which are potentially great features of Sonic levels.