Confounded at this game’s reputation as a cardinal sin of gaming and the hate you and I as capital G Gamers are expected to levy at it. Sure, it's got problems, least of which is wearing its heart on its sleeve, but it’s still leagues from what I’d call the true lows of the Sonic series (Chronicles, Labyrinth, etc). So why does everyone take the bait and sweep this one under the rug? To appease the hordes of gremlins cackling endlessly for Sonic Adventure 3 so they’ll shut up for 5 minutes while they bicker endlessly about the game mom wouldn’t pick up at the Rent-a-Video? Are you really content marching into the grave with the most milquetoast of WatchMojian opinions? I had to find out for myself, and as one who found the lulls in gameplay (every single treasure and mech stage) in Sonic Adventure 2 an achilles heel to the pacing, I would have ran head over heels to Shadow if I had known it was structured as a back-to-back series of the Sonic & Shadow stages from its prequel. I hadn’t even know of it’s status as a direct continuation of the story in SA2 because of the persistence of this game as a footnote best forgotten in the same manner the proletariat & bourgeoisie amass in unison to turn their collective noses up at other black sheep of gaming like Dark Souls 2 and Devil May Cry 2.
I do quite enjoy DaSII, and while it’s likely I’ll walk away from DMC2 feeling less than stellar about it, I still want to give it a shot. Unfortunately it’s unlikely I ever will because the people egging me on to do so expect me to validate their own hatred of the game as if I was checking it off a list. I don’t fuck with that approach to absorbing media anymore, and while I’m reluctant to embrace Shadow the Hedgehog I also do not feel emboldened to take cheap shots at the lowest hanging fruit of the early 2000s. I couldn't think of a better poster child for the term “guilty pleasure” if I tried and that frustrates me. Compared to the other 3D Sonic games I’ve played (SA1,2, and Heroes) I found it to be largely jank free with solid collision overall, something I couldn’t say about any of the aforementioned. Why must experiences like Shadow be eternally doomed to categorization in varying shades of irony? As the last game made by the "classic" 3D Sonic group (Iizuka, Eitaro Toyoda, Hiroshi Nishiyama, etc) I can’t not see it as anything but a reappraisal of what stuck in Sonic Adventure 2, even going so far as to reimplement the scrapped branching paths from it’s early development. Admittedly, they didn’t quite stick the landing, and I have my good friend /u/Bojangles4th to thank for helping me navigate through the game with minimal retreads on my way to unlocking the game’s “Final Story”, a feat that requires the player to obtain the other endings by way of playing the game over and over which DISCLAIMER: I don’t recommend doing; call it after a few endings and watch the rest on YouTube. I’d still say Sonic Heroes embodies the worst of these faults but it gets looked over because it’s not the game with a skrunklified genocidal gun-toting baby Vegeta tied to its back.
And that’s a good thing!
I do quite enjoy DaSII, and while it’s likely I’ll walk away from DMC2 feeling less than stellar about it, I still want to give it a shot. Unfortunately it’s unlikely I ever will because the people egging me on to do so expect me to validate their own hatred of the game as if I was checking it off a list. I don’t fuck with that approach to absorbing media anymore, and while I’m reluctant to embrace Shadow the Hedgehog I also do not feel emboldened to take cheap shots at the lowest hanging fruit of the early 2000s. I couldn't think of a better poster child for the term “guilty pleasure” if I tried and that frustrates me. Compared to the other 3D Sonic games I’ve played (SA1,2, and Heroes) I found it to be largely jank free with solid collision overall, something I couldn’t say about any of the aforementioned. Why must experiences like Shadow be eternally doomed to categorization in varying shades of irony? As the last game made by the "classic" 3D Sonic group (Iizuka, Eitaro Toyoda, Hiroshi Nishiyama, etc) I can’t not see it as anything but a reappraisal of what stuck in Sonic Adventure 2, even going so far as to reimplement the scrapped branching paths from it’s early development. Admittedly, they didn’t quite stick the landing, and I have my good friend /u/Bojangles4th to thank for helping me navigate through the game with minimal retreads on my way to unlocking the game’s “Final Story”, a feat that requires the player to obtain the other endings by way of playing the game over and over which DISCLAIMER: I don’t recommend doing; call it after a few endings and watch the rest on YouTube. I’d still say Sonic Heroes embodies the worst of these faults but it gets looked over because it’s not the game with a skrunklified genocidal gun-toting baby Vegeta tied to its back.
And that’s a good thing!
MalditoMur
1 year ago