What a breath of fresh air after playing Sonic Forces. Whilst that felt like an incompetent game that couldn't have been made by more than one person, this feels like the first game from a new studio, but is that really acceptable for the 40th game from a well-established and high-budged team of devs? I feel like the fact Sonic Team has been unable to make a fully competent game for about two decades is something that needs to be addressed.
The good:
I clearly enjoyed the game, it was over before I knew it but when I checked the time I spent a solid five hours on it, and that was just today, after playing it for a decent chunk of yesterday... So that's always a good start.
The environments are some of the best I've seen in 3D sonic, there's a real variety and they feel a lot less empty than other games in the series. The sonic levels in general feel really nice compared to some of the other stuff I've played in the series.
I liked some elements of the story, the fact it basically begins with eggman winning off-the-bat is pretty cool. I'm glad they kept amy as having the exact same intro as it feels like she has in every one of these games (that being, walking in and mistaking someone for sonic and then leaving), it's kinda charming imo. And the twist this time that it actually is Sonic is nice too. I'll talk more about stuff I didn't like as much later.
I was told the Werehog sections aren't great, and I'll talk about why they're bad later, but I didn't HATE them, I thought they were an interesting new idea for the series, and the added variety works well on paper.
The sonic levels not only look nice but have a nice sense of spectacle, but I'll say more about them later.
This is one of the least buggy 3D Sonic games I've played, but more on that later.
The bosses have a nice feeling of variety, not all of them are winners but they're all nicely paced and spaced out within the game.
The music is great as always, so good that I didn't even mind THAT much how often I have to hear the same songs.
Honestly, this game has reinvigorated me a little on the franchise, maybe I need to give Generations another go. This game shows that Sonic Team at least kinda knows how to make a video game, at least a little.
The bad:
I'll start this section off with some small points of the bad, like I did with the good, and then the main bad point of this game, that I really want to dedicate time to.
As much as I liked the Sonic sections more than normal, they are nearly totally devoid of any platforming, they're basically just pushing forward and occasionally jumping and clicking the homing button, about the same level of 'gameplay' as the climbing sections in Uncharted.
Firstly the music might be good but the sound design is shocking. Werehog's blood-curdling screams have been meme-fodder for years, completing a QTE rewards you with a... Doorbell (I assume it's meant to sound like the checkpoint sound but it just doesn't), projectile enemies make Star Wars blaster sounds that sound very out of place not only in this world but coming from a plant, and the cutscenes are sprinkled with strange character sound effects that consistently go on way too long, mostly at the fault of Chip.
As much as I like ELEMENTS of the story, at a certain point it seems strange why it's trying so hard to add depth to it's story. This could have been a pretty simple set-up, world is blown up, find temples to put it back together, easy. Instead the walking around town sections not only play on stereotypes some of the time (Mazuri, anyone?) but show a world of people, who look more akin to enemy characters from Little Nightmares, who seem to not really have more than a passing care about the fact the planet they're stood on just became shrapnel.
And Speaking of the sections where you walk around talking to people, a couple of times in the game you need to 'investigate' something, and that equates to just talking to a certain number of people until you can progress, with no puzzle or mechanic here, you can barely call this gameplay.
And speaking of barely being able to call something gameplay, The sonic levels in this game still have about as much 'gameplay' as a climbing section in an uncharted game, press forward and ocasionally the homing attack button, there's barely any difference between these levels and the three identical on-rails shooter QTE sections scattered throughout the game. This, of course, can be remedied by just holding the boost button at all times, essentially allowing you to have even less input on the gameplay.
And speaking of (master of transitions here) the boosting, the PS3 version of this game has some of the worst framerate drops I've seen in a long time. Too many enemies on screen causing a tank is one thing, but why is it so common for sonic games to have framerate issues for going 'too fast'. Surely that's the exact thing you DON'T want in this series.
Does it even bare mentioning how little variety the combat in the werehog sections have?
As well as framerate issues, this game has it's fair share of bugs. The worst being grabbing a block that you need to push in the werehog levels clipping sonic through the floor or a wall, which happened at least twice to me over the course of the game. This isn't the buggiest game I've ever played, but it's still worth mentioning.
Sonic team still can design great enemies but can't design a friendly design to save their lives.
Like most things in Sonic games, there isn't much to learn here, unlike other titles that this game takes 'inspiration' from (more on that in a bit), there is absolutely no depth to the sonic or the werehog sections, this doesn't mean there's no challenge, but it does mean that any point you fail at isn't a case of refining your play, but instead just bashing your head against a wall until you've progressed.
But what is that big issue I metnioned earlier? Hearing about this game from people, this sounds like the most interesting 3D Sonic game because of the variety introduced in the Werehog sections, and when I started playing I was kinda feeling it, it was fun, different.
But something felt off about it, something seemed familliar. I don't throw the phrase rip-off around lightly, however... At one point early on in the game I found myself pushing a lever in a circle, pushing a box onto a platform and then opening a door, but something about it suddenly made me realise what the issue is.
The werehog sections aren't just a sub-par action game ripoff, the werehog sections are a sub-par ripoff of God of War, in fact they're so close to God of War that I legitimately wonder how there wasn't legal trouble as a result of this.
taken individually the elements of the werehog gameplay are innocuous, but together it becomes impossible to ignore to anyone who has played even a small ammount of the first three God of War games. The wall sliding and climbing, the box pushing, the tapping circle top lift heavy doors, an icon appeating above an enemy's head which you can interact with with circle to trigger a quicktime event which insta-kills the enemy. Even the choice to add stretchy arms, which at first seem strange but, again, innocuous, soon becomes obvious as a way to mirror the chains on Kratos' iconic blades of chaos.
The puzzles, combat and interaction, even down to the exact control sceme, are all shameless and obvious and total rip-offs of God of War, and it is constantly distracting for the duration of the game. I've not seen a clone this shameless outside of the space of mobile gaming in a long time, and it's shocking that I didn't hear anything about this before starting the game.
The worst part of all, though? The fact it takes God of War and simplifies it down to such a basic, minimal state that any and all depth is totally lost. It's as though they went out of their way to remove any ability for real combos or, really, anything to learn to improve your ability at the combat. For god's sake, they removed the entire dodging mechanic.
Since starting the game, I've looked some things up and come to the belief that I'm playing the worst version of the game, apparently a lot of the framerate issues and bugs are solved in the xbox 360 version of the game, and the Wii version is basically an entirely different game, which may negate a lot of the shameless ripping-off that any of the parts of this game that could have been even slightly different does. I will say, this game has reignited my interest in the series by being the first 3D sonic game I've played that actually feels made by people who know what game/character/environment design is, and this may push me to playing more of the series. But I don't know if it would be possible to even jokingly call this game anything higher than 'good enough'.
The good:
I clearly enjoyed the game, it was over before I knew it but when I checked the time I spent a solid five hours on it, and that was just today, after playing it for a decent chunk of yesterday... So that's always a good start.
The environments are some of the best I've seen in 3D sonic, there's a real variety and they feel a lot less empty than other games in the series. The sonic levels in general feel really nice compared to some of the other stuff I've played in the series.
I liked some elements of the story, the fact it basically begins with eggman winning off-the-bat is pretty cool. I'm glad they kept amy as having the exact same intro as it feels like she has in every one of these games (that being, walking in and mistaking someone for sonic and then leaving), it's kinda charming imo. And the twist this time that it actually is Sonic is nice too. I'll talk more about stuff I didn't like as much later.
I was told the Werehog sections aren't great, and I'll talk about why they're bad later, but I didn't HATE them, I thought they were an interesting new idea for the series, and the added variety works well on paper.
The sonic levels not only look nice but have a nice sense of spectacle, but I'll say more about them later.
This is one of the least buggy 3D Sonic games I've played, but more on that later.
The bosses have a nice feeling of variety, not all of them are winners but they're all nicely paced and spaced out within the game.
The music is great as always, so good that I didn't even mind THAT much how often I have to hear the same songs.
Honestly, this game has reinvigorated me a little on the franchise, maybe I need to give Generations another go. This game shows that Sonic Team at least kinda knows how to make a video game, at least a little.
The bad:
I'll start this section off with some small points of the bad, like I did with the good, and then the main bad point of this game, that I really want to dedicate time to.
As much as I liked the Sonic sections more than normal, they are nearly totally devoid of any platforming, they're basically just pushing forward and occasionally jumping and clicking the homing button, about the same level of 'gameplay' as the climbing sections in Uncharted.
Firstly the music might be good but the sound design is shocking. Werehog's blood-curdling screams have been meme-fodder for years, completing a QTE rewards you with a... Doorbell (I assume it's meant to sound like the checkpoint sound but it just doesn't), projectile enemies make Star Wars blaster sounds that sound very out of place not only in this world but coming from a plant, and the cutscenes are sprinkled with strange character sound effects that consistently go on way too long, mostly at the fault of Chip.
As much as I like ELEMENTS of the story, at a certain point it seems strange why it's trying so hard to add depth to it's story. This could have been a pretty simple set-up, world is blown up, find temples to put it back together, easy. Instead the walking around town sections not only play on stereotypes some of the time (Mazuri, anyone?) but show a world of people, who look more akin to enemy characters from Little Nightmares, who seem to not really have more than a passing care about the fact the planet they're stood on just became shrapnel.
And Speaking of the sections where you walk around talking to people, a couple of times in the game you need to 'investigate' something, and that equates to just talking to a certain number of people until you can progress, with no puzzle or mechanic here, you can barely call this gameplay.
And speaking of barely being able to call something gameplay, The sonic levels in this game still have about as much 'gameplay' as a climbing section in an uncharted game, press forward and ocasionally the homing attack button, there's barely any difference between these levels and the three identical on-rails shooter QTE sections scattered throughout the game. This, of course, can be remedied by just holding the boost button at all times, essentially allowing you to have even less input on the gameplay.
And speaking of (master of transitions here) the boosting, the PS3 version of this game has some of the worst framerate drops I've seen in a long time. Too many enemies on screen causing a tank is one thing, but why is it so common for sonic games to have framerate issues for going 'too fast'. Surely that's the exact thing you DON'T want in this series.
Does it even bare mentioning how little variety the combat in the werehog sections have?
As well as framerate issues, this game has it's fair share of bugs. The worst being grabbing a block that you need to push in the werehog levels clipping sonic through the floor or a wall, which happened at least twice to me over the course of the game. This isn't the buggiest game I've ever played, but it's still worth mentioning.
Sonic team still can design great enemies but can't design a friendly design to save their lives.
Like most things in Sonic games, there isn't much to learn here, unlike other titles that this game takes 'inspiration' from (more on that in a bit), there is absolutely no depth to the sonic or the werehog sections, this doesn't mean there's no challenge, but it does mean that any point you fail at isn't a case of refining your play, but instead just bashing your head against a wall until you've progressed.
But what is that big issue I metnioned earlier? Hearing about this game from people, this sounds like the most interesting 3D Sonic game because of the variety introduced in the Werehog sections, and when I started playing I was kinda feeling it, it was fun, different.
But something felt off about it, something seemed familliar. I don't throw the phrase rip-off around lightly, however... At one point early on in the game I found myself pushing a lever in a circle, pushing a box onto a platform and then opening a door, but something about it suddenly made me realise what the issue is.
The werehog sections aren't just a sub-par action game ripoff, the werehog sections are a sub-par ripoff of God of War, in fact they're so close to God of War that I legitimately wonder how there wasn't legal trouble as a result of this.
taken individually the elements of the werehog gameplay are innocuous, but together it becomes impossible to ignore to anyone who has played even a small ammount of the first three God of War games. The wall sliding and climbing, the box pushing, the tapping circle top lift heavy doors, an icon appeating above an enemy's head which you can interact with with circle to trigger a quicktime event which insta-kills the enemy. Even the choice to add stretchy arms, which at first seem strange but, again, innocuous, soon becomes obvious as a way to mirror the chains on Kratos' iconic blades of chaos.
The puzzles, combat and interaction, even down to the exact control sceme, are all shameless and obvious and total rip-offs of God of War, and it is constantly distracting for the duration of the game. I've not seen a clone this shameless outside of the space of mobile gaming in a long time, and it's shocking that I didn't hear anything about this before starting the game.
The worst part of all, though? The fact it takes God of War and simplifies it down to such a basic, minimal state that any and all depth is totally lost. It's as though they went out of their way to remove any ability for real combos or, really, anything to learn to improve your ability at the combat. For god's sake, they removed the entire dodging mechanic.
Since starting the game, I've looked some things up and come to the belief that I'm playing the worst version of the game, apparently a lot of the framerate issues and bugs are solved in the xbox 360 version of the game, and the Wii version is basically an entirely different game, which may negate a lot of the shameless ripping-off that any of the parts of this game that could have been even slightly different does. I will say, this game has reignited my interest in the series by being the first 3D sonic game I've played that actually feels made by people who know what game/character/environment design is, and this may push me to playing more of the series. But I don't know if it would be possible to even jokingly call this game anything higher than 'good enough'.