In all the time building up to this game and Mario Wonder, I have constantly argued about what "soul" means for a video game. To have a "soul" means to have substance, a reason to exist in the first place, something of inherent value. There are many games I would argue that have a vast "soul," Fallout New Vegas, Lobotomy Corporation, hell, even something like Tsukihime has some value buried deep down inherently. So the question then becomes, what does a game with no "soul" look like?
Enter Sonic Superstars.
While this game may have the facade of Classic Sonic down, it lacks any of the charm that makes any of those titles feel fresh and exciting. Every stage feels dead and lifeless as if they were put into an AI Sonic Level generator and shat out like pig slop; All the most generic and bland concepts. We have bitchless Green Hill, we have bitchless Chemical Plant, We have bitchless Death Egg Zone, everything so utterly devoid of true originality.
None of these stages brought any semblance of joy to me, even with the physics being relatively similar; going through these vapid, boring worlds left me tired and unhappy. While the game isn't offensively bad in the way that something like Sonic 4 is, it represents an arguably worse issue: Pure Unadulterated Mediocrity.
Starting first with the Chaos Emeralds, while the Special Stages are mostly mindless nonsense, the Chaos Emeralds have functions beyond granting you your Super State. Each Emerald has individual powers, a concept not seen since Tails' Adventure on the Game Gear. In theory, these would all be very cool, but in practice, almost all of the abilities are situational at best, and borderline useless otherwise.
What is the purpose of the Vision power when the game doesn't blatantly tell you to use it? Fucking nothing, absolutely nothing. The ability to turn into water is so situational, given that most of the areas in the game don't have water, and it isn't even that helpful when used. I guess the beanstalk one is helpful, but if you play Tails (like me), it doesn't serve much purpose. The ones I got the most use out of were the Screen Nuke (the first one you get for some reason) and the Slowdown Power. The slowdown power was helpful in particular instances in boss fights, and well, the Screen Nuke is part of why this game isn't even worse in my eyes because let's talk about the bosses.
Sonic Bosses have never indeed been the pinnacle of boss fights, especially in Classic, but usually, they were a relatively speedy process. Superstars decides to nix that and make it so that bosses can only be damaged at certain times, removing the strat of multi-hitting a boss that the older games and even Mania used. This results in fights where you must wait before you can do anything. Waiting in a Sonic Game, indeed, we have reached the point of stupidity I didn't think was possible. The Screen Nuke exists because it can essentially chain hits on bosses, annihilating them to make them less lengthy… Not that it matters because some of these later boss fights start getting so long you'd wonder if you're playing Sonic or a JRPG.
Not to mention this game still falls into annoying tropes I hate, like random shmup level near the end of the game that plays like shit and wastes your time. Hell, at one point in the final level, the game has you go through the same four level gimmicks in a row, like three fucking times, and then the next act have you do it all backward; I cannot make this shit up.
I'm sure all this will come across as foaming at the mouth, but you must understand I love Sonic. Sonic is my favorite platformer franchise, and I am so sick of seeing it fall back into mediocrity when games like Mania prove that this franchise can move forward. But here at Arzest, I can see the only thing being moved forward is level gimmick after level gimmick, hell there was even a Gimmick Programmer in the fucking credits.
There are other things I could say: Unlimited Lives is stupid, the character-specific and fruit stages are literal wastes of time, the music is forgettable minus the one Tee Lopes track, and every level looks boring.
The profound lack of soul comes from the fact that Sonic Superstars is what happens when you make a mass-produced Sonic game, gentrified Sonic the Hedgehog. All you have are some dull level concepts and a bunch of wasted potential.
To think I wanted to make a video comparing this game to Mario Wonder… I have to scrap it because it'd be like comparing a Coughing Baby to a Hydrogen Bomb.
Enter Sonic Superstars.
While this game may have the facade of Classic Sonic down, it lacks any of the charm that makes any of those titles feel fresh and exciting. Every stage feels dead and lifeless as if they were put into an AI Sonic Level generator and shat out like pig slop; All the most generic and bland concepts. We have bitchless Green Hill, we have bitchless Chemical Plant, We have bitchless Death Egg Zone, everything so utterly devoid of true originality.
None of these stages brought any semblance of joy to me, even with the physics being relatively similar; going through these vapid, boring worlds left me tired and unhappy. While the game isn't offensively bad in the way that something like Sonic 4 is, it represents an arguably worse issue: Pure Unadulterated Mediocrity.
Starting first with the Chaos Emeralds, while the Special Stages are mostly mindless nonsense, the Chaos Emeralds have functions beyond granting you your Super State. Each Emerald has individual powers, a concept not seen since Tails' Adventure on the Game Gear. In theory, these would all be very cool, but in practice, almost all of the abilities are situational at best, and borderline useless otherwise.
What is the purpose of the Vision power when the game doesn't blatantly tell you to use it? Fucking nothing, absolutely nothing. The ability to turn into water is so situational, given that most of the areas in the game don't have water, and it isn't even that helpful when used. I guess the beanstalk one is helpful, but if you play Tails (like me), it doesn't serve much purpose. The ones I got the most use out of were the Screen Nuke (the first one you get for some reason) and the Slowdown Power. The slowdown power was helpful in particular instances in boss fights, and well, the Screen Nuke is part of why this game isn't even worse in my eyes because let's talk about the bosses.
Sonic Bosses have never indeed been the pinnacle of boss fights, especially in Classic, but usually, they were a relatively speedy process. Superstars decides to nix that and make it so that bosses can only be damaged at certain times, removing the strat of multi-hitting a boss that the older games and even Mania used. This results in fights where you must wait before you can do anything. Waiting in a Sonic Game, indeed, we have reached the point of stupidity I didn't think was possible. The Screen Nuke exists because it can essentially chain hits on bosses, annihilating them to make them less lengthy… Not that it matters because some of these later boss fights start getting so long you'd wonder if you're playing Sonic or a JRPG.
Not to mention this game still falls into annoying tropes I hate, like random shmup level near the end of the game that plays like shit and wastes your time. Hell, at one point in the final level, the game has you go through the same four level gimmicks in a row, like three fucking times, and then the next act have you do it all backward; I cannot make this shit up.
I'm sure all this will come across as foaming at the mouth, but you must understand I love Sonic. Sonic is my favorite platformer franchise, and I am so sick of seeing it fall back into mediocrity when games like Mania prove that this franchise can move forward. But here at Arzest, I can see the only thing being moved forward is level gimmick after level gimmick, hell there was even a Gimmick Programmer in the fucking credits.
There are other things I could say: Unlimited Lives is stupid, the character-specific and fruit stages are literal wastes of time, the music is forgettable minus the one Tee Lopes track, and every level looks boring.
The profound lack of soul comes from the fact that Sonic Superstars is what happens when you make a mass-produced Sonic game, gentrified Sonic the Hedgehog. All you have are some dull level concepts and a bunch of wasted potential.
To think I wanted to make a video comparing this game to Mario Wonder… I have to scrap it because it'd be like comparing a Coughing Baby to a Hydrogen Bomb.
15 Comments
real sonic fan
why are you dunking on tsukihime with the archer pfp, we're no better than they are man
I decided to go back to do the Trip Mode, and found a really annoying issue with how this game deals with Super Forms and Chaos Emerald powers. The fact you can't turn off your super form manually is utter bullshit.
Tbf i respect this one of the only times i see popular review on here that doesn't shit (completely) on that blue guy
Rockman 9, the 2000s era ignorant westoid NES Scene and the Japanese NicoNicoDouga Rockman 2 obsessed scene (especially that fucking stupid as fuck and ironic as shit 'Airman ga Taosenai' song) that led to Rockman 9's conception in the first place, and their consequences have been disasterous to the human race.
Flyingomelette was blissfully ignorant as to how dangerous the dreaded NES Scene she rightfully hated would be to games as a whole
Flyingomelette still is not without sin, mainly for gassing up Zanac and its one level it was pretending was actually twelve 5-10 minute levels despite not really having level design and instead relying on an omnipresent enemy spawner affected by picking up powerups and shit affecting some sort of STG rank system, and ground turret fortresses of various shapes and sizes for bosses for all twelve 'levels'.
And also saying that Lufia 2's US release's glitched blacked out room was intended, though at least her reasoning for thinking it was intended and not just a borked localization moment was because of how fucked and overly experimental Lufia 2's puzzles are usually, so it's not completely unreasonable there.
Flyingomelette was blissfully ignorant as to how dangerous the dreaded NES Scene she rightfully hated would be to games as a whole
Flyingomelette still is not without sin, mainly for gassing up Zanac and its one level it was pretending was actually twelve 5-10 minute levels despite not really having level design and instead relying on an omnipresent enemy spawner affected by picking up powerups and shit affecting some sort of STG rank system, and ground turret fortresses of various shapes and sizes for bosses for all twelve 'levels'.
And also saying that Lufia 2's US release's glitched blacked out room was intended, though at least her reasoning for thinking it was intended and not just a borked localization moment was because of how fucked and overly experimental Lufia 2's puzzles are usually, so it's not completely unreasonable there.
@OppositeWinner Blud, what the fuck are you waffling about.
This comment was deleted
Calls it mediocre but gives it 1/5, the hypocrisy...
/J
/J
Rockman 9 and its cult of retVrn strikes again with another retVrn 'banger' in Sonic Superstars
brotherman thinks he's him!
@Cab
Ignoring whatever the hell is going on in the comments right now, there are parts of this review that I find questionable at best and just poor analysis at worst. Going on a tangent about how you hate "gimmicks" in a platforming game is silly to me. Sure, you "go through the same 4 gimmicks" in the final stage... but like, that's nothing different than any other Sonic game? I like Mania as much as the next guy but what differentiates it from Superstars with the way they use new mechanics in the levels? If anything Mania uses a lot more of them.
Aside from that, some of the sentiment expressed in the review is not great even when our conclusions are ultimately the same. I don't like the "Sonic should a series where you go fast and nothing else" connotation of the quote "[why is there] waiting in a Sonic game", and I don't like the unwillingness to engage with stuff like the Emerald powers (which AREN'T very good on the whole, but you can find uses for things like Ivy instead of ignoring them, even as Tails) and minor things like the lives or character-specific stages. Superstars isn't even a good game but I do not think it is this atrocious piece of Sonic media.
Also, that complaint about the Super Sonic thing is wrong. You can cancel super forms the same way you activate them.
Ignoring whatever the hell is going on in the comments right now, there are parts of this review that I find questionable at best and just poor analysis at worst. Going on a tangent about how you hate "gimmicks" in a platforming game is silly to me. Sure, you "go through the same 4 gimmicks" in the final stage... but like, that's nothing different than any other Sonic game? I like Mania as much as the next guy but what differentiates it from Superstars with the way they use new mechanics in the levels? If anything Mania uses a lot more of them.
Aside from that, some of the sentiment expressed in the review is not great even when our conclusions are ultimately the same. I don't like the "Sonic should a series where you go fast and nothing else" connotation of the quote "[why is there] waiting in a Sonic game", and I don't like the unwillingness to engage with stuff like the Emerald powers (which AREN'T very good on the whole, but you can find uses for things like Ivy instead of ignoring them, even as Tails) and minor things like the lives or character-specific stages. Superstars isn't even a good game but I do not think it is this atrocious piece of Sonic media.
Also, that complaint about the Super Sonic thing is wrong. You can cancel super forms the same way you activate them.
@UnluckyLucky: First, I'd like to say thanks for the honest reply.
Moving on, the issue with Superstar's gimmicks compared to the other Classic games is that they often don't really mesh well or tend to focus on wasting the player's time. In the final level, in particular, there are several instances of being trapped in elevators or slow anti-gravity sequences that aren't fun to engage with. While yes, in comparison, something like Sonic Mania also contains an extensive array of gimmicks, most of the time, they are used in ways that test the player's skill and don't decimate the pacing.
Next, I'll address your critique of my complaint that the game makes the player "wait" in a Sonic game. You state that I am presenting the connotation that Sonic must always be about speed and going fast. However, one of my favorite games in this franchise is Sonic 3 & Knuckles, a game which in a review of mine I wrote nearly two years ago I claimed has a style of "Fast-Slow-Fast," based on giving the player speed while also requiring certain moments of downtime to create a rollercoaster-like feel. The problem with Superstars, however, is that many of the level gimmicks and boss fights are arbitrarily slow. In any other Classic Sonic title, you can chain hits on the boss in a repeat cycle. I think a good example would be in Sonic 3, in which I distinctly recall beating both the bosses in Act 1 of Angel Island and Ice Cap by balancing jumps on the top of the boss, ripping them to shreds. Superstars, however, decides that bosses can choose when they can or cannot be hit and sometimes just can't be hit at all for extended periods. During my run through Trip's Story mode, there was a specific point with the Act 3 boss of the Carnival zone, where I was on top of the boss in my Super Form, doing no damage for around 10-15 seconds. It's not that I want Sonic to be fast constantly, but I don't want the boss fights to disregard my time actively. To top it off, you also have fights like Fang that force you into mini-level sections that serve as nothing but padding and could've easily been cut with no consequences.
Next, you stated that I was unwilling to use the Emerald powers, and to that, I argue I did genuinely try to utilize them, but a lot of the time, they are very situational. I got more usage out of the beanstalk power in the Trip Story. Still, even then, if you get Trip's Super form, which you'll already have unlocked if you got all the Emeralds in your first run, it winds up semi-redundant because Trip literally has unlimited flight in her super form, allowing her to disregard most of the game. Still, I always tried to use the powers if it would give me any leverage. Still, the fact that the powers also dissipate when you get hit mitigates their usefulness, especially in combat. Also, no argument can be made that the Water ability is remotely helpful for more than two specific zones in the game because most of the game is non-water levels.
Also, I did engage with every Character-specific zone and even the Fruit levels, which is why I said they were wastes of time. They don't use the characters in exciting ways, and to top it off, they are forced on you in the Trip Story, where the level design is even worse and has more moments that remind me of the worst of the Classic series than I ever wanted. The only one I could even argue was semi-fun was Sonic's level, and even then, that is mostly a rip-off of the Metal Sonic boss from CD, something this game ultimately apes twice.
As for the Unlimited Lives argument, Unlimited Lives is always a stupid thing; there is no need for a game to have unlimited lives, especially one like this where you have a hub world and can easily access the stage that way.
As for your final statement, I will concede there, though I will admit I tried multiple times to turn the power off, so I'll argue it didn't necessarily feel clear how I could do that.
Anyway, I hope this serves as a satisfying response. Thank you for your time.
Moving on, the issue with Superstar's gimmicks compared to the other Classic games is that they often don't really mesh well or tend to focus on wasting the player's time. In the final level, in particular, there are several instances of being trapped in elevators or slow anti-gravity sequences that aren't fun to engage with. While yes, in comparison, something like Sonic Mania also contains an extensive array of gimmicks, most of the time, they are used in ways that test the player's skill and don't decimate the pacing.
Next, I'll address your critique of my complaint that the game makes the player "wait" in a Sonic game. You state that I am presenting the connotation that Sonic must always be about speed and going fast. However, one of my favorite games in this franchise is Sonic 3 & Knuckles, a game which in a review of mine I wrote nearly two years ago I claimed has a style of "Fast-Slow-Fast," based on giving the player speed while also requiring certain moments of downtime to create a rollercoaster-like feel. The problem with Superstars, however, is that many of the level gimmicks and boss fights are arbitrarily slow. In any other Classic Sonic title, you can chain hits on the boss in a repeat cycle. I think a good example would be in Sonic 3, in which I distinctly recall beating both the bosses in Act 1 of Angel Island and Ice Cap by balancing jumps on the top of the boss, ripping them to shreds. Superstars, however, decides that bosses can choose when they can or cannot be hit and sometimes just can't be hit at all for extended periods. During my run through Trip's Story mode, there was a specific point with the Act 3 boss of the Carnival zone, where I was on top of the boss in my Super Form, doing no damage for around 10-15 seconds. It's not that I want Sonic to be fast constantly, but I don't want the boss fights to disregard my time actively. To top it off, you also have fights like Fang that force you into mini-level sections that serve as nothing but padding and could've easily been cut with no consequences.
Next, you stated that I was unwilling to use the Emerald powers, and to that, I argue I did genuinely try to utilize them, but a lot of the time, they are very situational. I got more usage out of the beanstalk power in the Trip Story. Still, even then, if you get Trip's Super form, which you'll already have unlocked if you got all the Emeralds in your first run, it winds up semi-redundant because Trip literally has unlimited flight in her super form, allowing her to disregard most of the game. Still, I always tried to use the powers if it would give me any leverage. Still, the fact that the powers also dissipate when you get hit mitigates their usefulness, especially in combat. Also, no argument can be made that the Water ability is remotely helpful for more than two specific zones in the game because most of the game is non-water levels.
Also, I did engage with every Character-specific zone and even the Fruit levels, which is why I said they were wastes of time. They don't use the characters in exciting ways, and to top it off, they are forced on you in the Trip Story, where the level design is even worse and has more moments that remind me of the worst of the Classic series than I ever wanted. The only one I could even argue was semi-fun was Sonic's level, and even then, that is mostly a rip-off of the Metal Sonic boss from CD, something this game ultimately apes twice.
As for the Unlimited Lives argument, Unlimited Lives is always a stupid thing; there is no need for a game to have unlimited lives, especially one like this where you have a hub world and can easily access the stage that way.
As for your final statement, I will concede there, though I will admit I tried multiple times to turn the power off, so I'll argue it didn't necessarily feel clear how I could do that.
Anyway, I hope this serves as a satisfying response. Thank you for your time.
I think I finally understand what you we're saying in here and the comment of my review, after playing more of it I truly genuinley understand why you don't like it lol,
You had me at pig slop
No other review I've read on this website has resonated with me more than this one. The untethered frustration is genuinely inspiring.
Cab
6 months ago