this game is poison.

i will never finish this game. i will likely never touch it again if i have it my way.

it's unassuming. "oh, look at the graphics! they're pretty good! it has some style to it!" too bad. that's it.

it starts out fine, the gimmick is there but it has a decent flow to it. you can chain jumps, switch platforms, etc. but then Sonic decides to stop responding to your button presses. the gimmicks get worse. the Wisps are fucking back again. the story is the definitive worst the series has. fuck the Deadly Six. more like the Deadly Bad.

the game doesn't even have good music. even bad titles like Forces have some good tracks to keep you somewhat sane. not Lost World. no sir.

i wanted to beat this. but i literally can't bring myself to.

stopped at Frozen Factory.

Sonic Lost World doesn't have a vocal theme song.

Vocal theme songs have been a staple part of the series since Sonic Adventure 1 (arguably earlier, with Sonic CD's themes and 3D Blast's credits song etc) and part and parcel of the fanbase's excitement for each new game lies in the hype for a new epic track to add to the canon. By Lost World's release in 2013 it was practically mandatory, especially for a mainline 3D title; Sonic Generations had skipped on that too but it was a game purposefully built on nostalgia and included so many of the old ones that you didn't even miss it. But it's striking in its absence, particularly as the game's end credits roll and all you have is the semi-orchestral but wholly instrumental title theme. Lost World has plenty of other, real problems, but having recently revisited a number of Sonic soundtracks the lack of a "proper" theme song struck me as a really strange occurrence - and in a roundabout way it's a summary of the game's key issue. Lost World just doesn't really seem to want to be a Sonic game and that indifference permiates through the game so much that it never feels like one either.

It all piles up. There's a separate button to make Sonic run which, in a Sonic game, is borderline absurd. Super Sonic is almost completely absent except as a simple unlockable bonus. The character and plot focus is on the Deadly Six, a group of budget Saturday morning cartoon rejects that look like they came from an entirely different series. Part of the magic of the Sonic series is that the Sonic Team isn't afraid to experiment or shuffle things around, and so breaking away from the series' conventions isn't an unwelcome thing, but Lost World acts like an unfocused collection of hodgepodge ideas that have hastily had a Sonic skin wrapped over it. It doesnt feel like a Sonic title, and the more I played the game the more it bugged me; I'm by no means a Mario expert and the Galaxy comparisons around Lost World are done to death, but the final world in particular with its Bowser-esque castles, tricky 2D platforming focus and the Giant Zavok puzzle fight all felt too eerily like a "heavily inspired" fan game of another series. I'm a big Sonic dweeb and normally even many of the weaker titles have that tone of a Sonic game that hits certain pleasure spots in my brain in a particular way. The closest Lost World ever came to that was with the bonus stage featuring Tails' plane - ironically because of its interpolation of Tails' vocal theme from Sonic Adventure 2.

Lost World is also just not fun to play, and no matter how it feels that's of course the biggest issue. Much like the overall design, the gameplay and level design also feel unfocused and like the team didn't really have a clear plan ahead. The idea of small segmented 360-degree environments (think Mario Galaxy's planetoids), where theoretically each side is its own path, never really comes to life in a manner that would make it seem inspired. Sonic is always either too slippy to control when you hold the run button or too slow to get anywhere if you let go, and the 2D platforming sections can be especially awkward thanks to the inconsistent speed and floatiness. The game tries to add depth to Sonic's basic moveset by introducing a way to build up power for the homing attack, giving Sonic a dedicated kick move to alternate attacks and enabling the hedgehog to parkour over ledges and across walls and ceilings with a tactical use of that infamous run button, but the ideas feel raw and half-implemented. The power-up wisps from Colours are inexplicably back again too, feeling more superfluous than ever like a quickly implemented afterthought that rarely results in genuinely rewarding gameplay changes. The game also has a bad habit of not actually teaching the player properly how to make use out of all these ideas and then suddenly mandating their use, which frequently results in the feeling of being stuck until you find out that there's a now-mandatory mechanic you never even noticed before.

I just don't have fun with Lost World. At best it's fine, at worst it's a frustrating churn. There are very few memorable levels, and the most memorable of them is the Dessert zone in the Desert world which, honestly, genuinely a funny idea and kudos for that but I also primarily remember it because it's an extended joke. I never had a desire to go back and replay a stage either for fun or to get all the red rings. Add to that the middling soundtrack which is like a discard pile of Ohtani's demos that weren't good enough for the last two scores, and barely-there plot with little space given even for any of the casual banter dialogue that is typically all over these games. It is quite possibly the weakest mainline Sonic, even below the infamous '06 because that game at least tried; Lost World, on the other hand, plays like the whole dev team operated on zero enthusiasm for it after the decision was made to trap it as as a WiiU exclusive at the time.

Recentemente eu assisti a um curta chamado "Dolapo is Fine" tratasse de uma garota preta, nigeriana e com um sonho de trabalhar com mercado financeiro de sua cidade, até que ela consegue uma entrevista com uma pessoa que era sua referencia. Na entrevista, Dolapo foi julgada por ser o que é, por ter o que tem, mas a pessoa diz a ela "Assimilação é tudo, Dolapo" no sentido de que a protagonista devesse abdicar de suas raízes para que fosse aceita ou tivesse alguma relevância. Mas o que isso tem a ver com Sonic?

Assimilação sempre foi tudo para Sonic.

Mas geralmente, Sonic sempre assumiu pra si todas as tendências de mercado e em internalizar sempre tomou pra si e fiz daquilo tão único, tão seu. Sonic 1 assimilou o debate ambiental dos anos 90, Sonic Adventures assimilou a rebeldia da juventude dos anos 00 e Sonic Unleashed assimilou a essência da cultura emo.

Veja, Sonic nasce assimilando sempre, mas o que tem de errado com Sonic Lost World? Ora, não existe sonic, existe apenas uma tentativa de se assemelhar com Mario Galaxy e podemos definir ai, Sonic Lost World é uma tentativa barata de ser Mario Galaxy.

No caso, o jogo leva em questão de brincadeiras com a câmera e o level design, mas enquanto em Mario galaxy é quase uma ouroboros do game design aonde o sentido de galáxia está ligado desde o nome até ao level design... Em sonic Lost World o que você tem é apenas a estética sem base alguma, um sonic da serie boost que é lento, e os chefes são primos distantes dos poupançudos da caixa.

Sonic Lost World é o exemplo de uma assimilação dando errado, não se trata apenas de roubar pra si, mas de roubar como um artista, e nisso (e em todo o resto) o jogo deixa a desejar.

I used to like this game entirely just because it's not a boost game but man, this just isn't good at all.

This whole game is trying so hard to just be a Mario rip-off instead of a Sonic game. Visually the game looks like a 3D World bootleg, the main antagonist is a blatant Bowser rip-off, the rest are basically just the Koopalings but they can talk and are annoying, and the main gimmick is taken from Mario Galaxy. Also Sonic isn't fast! He moves slowly by default and has a run button to make him run at average speed. Yeah, it's just a shitty version of Mario.

Extremely boring and uninspired level design, which somehow manages to feel more linear than the boost games, very generic OST which isn't Sonic music at all, bland presentation, terrible writing, etc. etc.

This game doesn't do a single thing right. Straight up, not one decision made in this game's development was good. How the hell is this the game that came after Generations?